NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #7

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 January 2025 and is expected to continue for 2 weeks. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on 6 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely can be obtained by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse

Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2

Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3

Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4

Thread 5: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5

Thread 6: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269635-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-6

I've spent some time on TT this weekend refreshing my memory and catching up on the bits I missed.

So many gaps and inconsistencies. I'm looking forward very much to hearing how the fragrant doctor got out of his raspberry scrubs and into his jeans while remaining 'fully dressed at all times'. A trouser transition if you will. Perhaps magic words were involved.

Oh, and the metadata. Really looking forward to the metadata.

You want the metadata? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE METADATA!

I’ve been in the village pub tonight and just back (late one; day off tomorrow).

Was chatting with a farmer friend and mentioned my plans for tomorrow (observing the ET).

He is a dairy farmer. He said he sometimes has the bollocks of his bulls removed to calm them down (those he’d be selling for meat). But, funnily enough, once the bollocks were removed, he wouldn’t suddenly be able to milk them. They would be bulls without bollocks (but bulls they would be).

We reflected pleasantly on the arrogance of some people thinking that we are a different kind of mammal.

Still catching up so this may be a repeat, but I'll forget if I don't make a note now. From TT / DUs notes I am confused by some inconsistencies, which seem odd considering DUs notes where taken almost in real time.

DU - C was standing at the end of lockers closest to sink
JR - body position.
DU - standing, looked comfortable facing me.
JR - how sere you feeling
DU - when I saw her and not my other colleagues I was anxious. ANy other time I had been in the CR she had left, so when I was alone with her I was anxious. The usual pattern is she knows I'm in CR she leaves. The way she was sat looking gave me the impression she was waiting for me.
(Was she sitting or standing? He seems very confused despite all his note taking)

DU - she said it wasn't safe for me to be there, asked what my chromosomes were, said it was analagous to the recent case, I assumed Isla Bryson...
JR - hang on please explain exactly the prisons comment (extrapolated prison from an earlier assumption!?)
DU - she said it's like the situation in the prisons. (did SP say prison this time or carrying on the earlier assumption?)
JR -what did you think
DU - I assumed she meant Isla Bryson, that she was comparing me to a sexual predator, there was an argument over men and women's estates (so still only assuming Isla Bryson? And also, prisons?)
JR - she said you were a man, asked about chromosomes and prisons, how did you feel?

Thank you @nauticant for the threads, @Justabaker for TT, and the other Vipers for the sanity!

It was explained earlier that "she was sat" is likely a Scottish linguistic feature, in which the person was situated, and doesn't have to have been literally sitting.

The way JR went from Bryson to prisons - do you mean that it looks as though JR is understanding what BU meant better than any other hearer would? Iiuc she will have gone over Upton's evidence with him before the hearing (or at the least, heard from the solicitor who had), she wasn't learning anything here for the first time (unlike NC, who I think won't have talked to him yet). So presumably when she heard him mention Bryson, she knew that his settled version of what SP had actually said was "the situation in prisons" and that he'd inferred she was talking about the Bryson case. She will have assumed that NC also knows, from SP, what was actually said. It will have been important to JR to get BU to say what he actually said, to try to avoid him being made to look like a liar by NC in cross examination.

Some reading material to while away the time WFTCHTJ later today.

I've read this and found it so disturbing that I'm hoping that, despite its well-written explanations of some phenomena, it's somehow deeply mistaken about some of the content. This part gave me a shock of recognition for the phenomena in play. It has many points of correspondence with Lifton's work on thought reform (aka brainwashing) as well as social psychologists.

The permission structure machine that Barack Obama and David Axelrod built to replace the Democratic Party was in its essence neither modern nor conservative, though. Rather it is totalitarian in its essence, a device for getting people to act against their beliefs by substituting new and better beliefs through the top-down controlled and leveraged application of social pressure, which among other things eliminates the position of the spectator. The integrity of the individual is violated in order to further the superior interests of the superego of humanity, the party, which knows which beliefs are right and which are wrong. The party is the ghost in the machine, which appears to run on automatic pilot, using the human desire for companionship and social connection as fuel for an effort to detach individuals from their own desires and substitute the dictates of the party, which is granted the unlimited right to enforce its superior opinions on all of mankind.
Constructing a giant permission structure machine that would mechanize the formation of public opinion through social media was never David Axelrod’s intention. Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists. Everyone can agree that racism is bad, just like they can agree that poverty is bad, or disease is bad. The question is whether a given instance of racism or poverty or disease is so bad that, when it comes to eliminating or reducing their ill effects, all other human values, including the value of independent thought and feeling, should be trampled. If the answer is yes, you have placed your trust outside of the nexus of contingent human relationships into the hands of a larger, crushingly powerful machine that you believe might incarnate your idea of justice. That is totalitarianism, or as George Orwell put it in 1984, the image of “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Every form of totalitarianism is unique.…

https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment

Men are not women — at last the US is united
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5270799-men-are-not-women-at-last-the-us-is-united?reply=142031394&utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Love this !!

Good morning peeps!

@CriticalCondition at the moment we know that Dr U went from scrubs to outdoor clothes during the “hate incident”. The judge was careful to ask questions about this.

While I’ve also been musing on this I think there’s enough info on that already.

Looking at the charges SP has to prove I’m much more interested in the somewhat dry procedural stuff around the suspension. I think the “smoking gun” as it were lies in the timeline and who was told what/when at the hospital (while SP was left at home in the dark without anyone asking for her version of events until months later). If/how the investigation was prejudiced etc

The good Dr is so pleased with their notes on SP. How they were written pre-emptive of a problem “escalating” etc. (Which in itself implies a witch hunt or a pre meditated TERF hunting) How his version is more accurate because she didn’t write notes. But the flip side of that is the injustice of being left for months before SP was asked for a statement. SP wasnt given a fair crack of the whip.

And the weird investigation/non investigation rides roughshod over the Trust’s own policies etc NHS Fife’s press release about treating people fairly?! Pah!

NC needs to prove bad procedure and that there was a degree of punishment and victimisation of SP “by process” to win. Based on Friday’s discussions it sounds like she’s got a lot more in the tank than the colour of Dr U’s undies!?

Maybe that’s the T-shirt?

More Litigious than a Bull Without Bollocks

The sat and standing thing is probably a Scottishism rather than indicating a lie. The judge being Scottish won’t be looking at that I don’t think. Yes it was very clear he’d taken offended assuming meaning and did admit that to his own barrister

I have a legal question.

We are aware that the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require separate facilities for 'men' and 'women'.

1992 was pre GRA so clearly, when written, there was no need to define men and women and it meant biological.

Does that mean, even after the GRA, it means biological?

Or does the GRA trump this and mean, unless the workplace says otherwise, women includes biological men with a GRC?

And am I right in thinking that the EqA means that if it wants to, the employer can still have a policy that toilets/changing rooms are separated biologically?

I'm awake, I'm ready for a day of intense listening, I'm... Oh my god it's not even 8am.

<rolls over>

Zzzzzz

To those who don't know me, I have filed a similar employment tribunal complaint against a large public sector employer in England's side, also represented by Naomi Cunningham. Second preliminary hearing will be in February. More info available on CrowdJustice.com, pls search for Faye Russell-Caldicott.

This is interesting.

I think he’s probably been told through TRA propaganda that he has to be ‘afraid’ of men as he’s one of the ‘most vulnerable’ class ever. I think it’s part of the whole victim complex and doubt it’s been given any more thought than ‘that’s just how it is’.

I doubt, though of course don’t know, he would have the same kind of primal feeling of being on alert or on edge around men in a changing room type situation as that’s an evolutionary thing for women. I expect men may feel something similar in threatening situations (in an evolutionary sense) e.g. around a large boisterous group of drunk men who look like they might be on the edge of a fight.

But I also think it’s telling that he also described feeling unsafe around Sandie Peggie specifically. I think that betrays that feeling unsafe or under threat to him is directly linked to how people perceive him - the ‘words are violence’ thing in practice. Although it didn’t even take words, no eye contact is violence, waiting outside for privacy is violence, not waving at someone 50cm from you is violence.

I think it’s poor form that we speculate on what goes on in the head of men in changing rooms, then challenge the man who answers what happens in his head.

Realistically DrU went into this looking for a fight. His evidence shows he was primed to see things as transphobic. NC will show that.

I think the questioning will be uncomfortable not just for Dr U but also his family who will have to face what he has done

I don't understand what you mean? @myplace

IANAL, but I think part of the reason we've ended up here is because there are clear conflicts in the law that have to be tested on court before we can answer that question.

If you read Hansard from the time that the GRA was introduced, there are MP's pointing out that it will create this situation (I think Anne widdecombe is one of them) and it was ignored.

In other words, we don't know what's legal and what isn't, and an assumption has been made that what men want = must be what's legal and true

Earlier several posters criticized pr47 (whose full nn I've forgotten) for commenting on his feelings, saying they weren't wanted on this thread, although he had done so in response to someone else who had wondered aloud about men's feeling. Best forgotten now, I am pretty sure he's robust enough to understand that feelings run high here.

Sorry it was me that asked how men would deal with a women who says she’s a man in their changing room.

I think my main thought that it’s less likely to happen or if it does they may be unaware. I doubt that the vast majority of these woman would want to change out in the open. If there is a gender neutral space they will use it. If they do chose to use the men’s, they will use the cubicle. There may be the very odd exception but I just can’t see these women being so brazen as these men are. And I very much doubt it’s a very validating experience.

@Chrysanthemum5 I noticed the posts before mine were again speculating what men think v what women think.
However when a man answered that speculation he was told his answer was unwelcome and his subsequent apology inadequate.

I'm so disappointed that I have several fixed meetings today where I'll have to pay attention and do some work.

I can only imagine how fast these threads are going to move and I have no real hope of catching up in the gaps! It's very sad!

The impending FWS Supreme Court decision might shed some light on this question. In the meantime it’s hard to say for certain.

Ah thank you I hadn't seen that exchange

IANAL but from what I can tell - you’ve got all the muddle down thats lead to this idiotic situation. So now all these legal folks will make a shit ton of money to eventually define what is a woman.

I think the GRA being passed, passed me by. Like a lot of folks I thought it was about being kind to others which is good - but not sure anyone thinks what’s happened to SP is at all kind.