NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #10

[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 February 2025 and is expected to continue for 2 weeks. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on Thursday 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
Thread 7: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5270365-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-7
Thread 8: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271511-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-8
Thread 9: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271596-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-9

@WearyAuldWumman what a horrible ordeal for you and your DH. I hope he is doing better now.

Yes, I agree, CheekySnake, surely that's what he'll do. Not that it's good enough of course - it would be awful to find yourself in a room with him, having asked for a woman, and then to have to wonder whether to assert yourself and insist he leave or not.

I once refused consent for examination by a particular individual. I went for an appointment at a reproductive health clinic, and they told me they had a male doctor on and did I mind seeing him or would I like a woman. Being young and progressive I said that was fine. When I actually met him I got a creepy vibe off him and found I wasn't ok at all. I asked for a woman at that point and he was absolutely professional about it and probably my creepy vibe was just a mis-firing detector. Even so, it wasn't a good experience.

Apparently he's wearing the earrings his wife wore on her wedding day!

@Signalbox this just epitomises Labour! They shoot themselves in the foot every time they start to make progress. If anyone actually had oversight of Labour policy and progress they wouldn't leak the fact they are giving up on self ID and then appoint Ashley Dalton. It's ridiculous.

And in A&E, where women are often very frightened, in pain and distress, confused, drunk, high, have been given IV morphine, have just been in a car accident, are having a miscarriage etc etc.

A&E is a very difficult place in which to assert yourself.

@Signalbox I can’t agree harder on that 1 in 3 statistic. A friend says she’s never experienced it. It’s hard to push though, because I feel I’m risking a friendship and suggesting she must be terribly unattractive to be so little abused.

I don’t know whether she’s minimised the routine, constantly groping- and would accuse me of over reacting- or literally had different experiences from me and what on earth that might mean.

It’s a minefield I’m not ready to tackle.

I mean it’s been fine for years but back in the day it was continuous from the age of about 14.

Appropriation.

You should send that information in to NHS Fife as a complaint @WearyAuldWumman - it’s absolutely shocking.

I'm not so sure about the claim against Dr U. I think much is going to depend on whether KS's evidence is "No I did not give Dr U permission to use the women's changing rooms" or "Yes I did give Dr U permission to use the women's changing rooms"

The point about having Upton as a party was to get him into the ET hearing and for everyone to see who he is and how he thinks. That's why the NHS were compelled to make their Rule 50 privacy/anonymity application, and why it was such a great result when it failed. It doesn't matter if Sandie Peggie doesn't win against Upton. The main thing is for her to win against the NHS and a significant part of that claim is going to be based on there being an unfair process.

Quite a few cross people suggesting The Crocodile Dundee Test.

It's glorious because here is an intelligent educated gender believer being forced to answer the questions gender believers usually shout bigot and run away from. And as we all kind of knew, there's nothing there at all. No logic, nothing except I want it so gimme.

Women are perfectly reasonable to want male free spaces right up to the point the male in question says he wants to be there when they're bigots for even mentioning their discomfort.

And a medical professional pretending sex is a guess made by a doctor at birth - a guess at what exactly if sex doesn't exist? A guess at whether they may choose pink or blue t-shirts at some unspecified future date?

His claim earlier to having faced discrimination because he’s in a same sex marriage - more appropriation.

He’s literally using his privilege to stand on a whole shit heap of victims claiming their suffering as his own.

Having read tribunal tweets now I agree that he comes across better than people are suggesting - you probably had to watch to sense the entitlement. And we know there are some judges out there who are pretty biased.

He clearly believed he was entitled to be in the changing room and shows no understanding at all of why women might not see it that way. However the what could Sandie have done - probably nothing - was pretty indicative of him having ti in for her for a long time. Also interesting that he claims to be so fragile yet is able to not only stand up to questioning in court but to try and compel the language used.

Is it true as someone said that the judge referred to him as a "victim" before correcting himself? If so that ought to be grounds for an appeal.

There's a Space on Twitter discussing this right now
https://x.com/i/spaces/1OyKALPwzkLxb

Ridiculous. I was in a pub in Bristol at the weekend which didn't have women's toilets.

Instead the signage was either

'For people who use cubicles' and the alternative was 'For people who use Urinals'

I went in the cubicle option to find there was piss all over the floor and a queue for 2 cubicles. A bloke (not identifying as trans) came out of the first one as breezy as you like, the second cubical contained two blokes having a giggle. They then came out and then said that one of them needed the other to hold their cock - both probably straight but rather pissed blokes.

I, very gently, asked why the girls queueing with me thought this was OK, while the blokes were in there, they said they had no idea why the pub had done this because there was a cubical in the urinals toilet too! I just said that none of this 'progressive' stuff benefits female people. No mention of trans. Hopefully some of the young people took the point. I can't really blame the lads for behaving like this. They weren't threatening they were just pissed and young and followed the signs. Hopefully they'll think more about this in the future.

As for the Labour Party, they've never given a shit about women and this is not progress and they know it.

Upton is building on the permission structure that has already successfully dismantled any consideration of women's needs or rights and precluded the possibility that those of a progressive or thoughtful mindset should admit to considering them.

I don't know how accurate the overall content is but I found this fascinating for the discussion of permission structures and how they can persuade people to act against their own interests. For me, it creates a quilt from Arendt, Fisher's Exiting the Vampire Castle, Havel's grocer, preference falsification, the Denton playbook, Lifton, and so many other recognisable phenomena.

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.”

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

https://x.com/topgirls/status/1888998231318680020?t=7PIdaVr3Lnah-LzpSyvzZw&s=19

A key feature of coercive control is DAVRO. As part of that, another common feature is to use authority and/or institutions against the individual they wish to control.

The lack of awareness by organisations such as the NHS and the police, is disturbing. It's not unusual to threaten to use social services either.

I note the number of cases relating to trans individuals where 'harassment' has been claimed only for it to go to court and it become rather eye opening.

This case has many parallel with the Edinburgh Rape Crisis one too in terms of how the institution involved has become part of the story, where an individual has been singled out.

It's alarming.

I note that coercive control has, just this week, been upgraded to being regarded as domestic abuse:

Coercive control is to be put on a par with other forms of domestic abuse in England and Wales with police and other enforcement agencies working together to tackle it.

From Monday, offenders serving a sentence of at least 12 months for controlling or coercive behaviour will be automatically managed under multi-agency public protection arrangements

This means the police, the probation service and other agencies will be legally required to share with one another information about offenders that suggests they are a risk to others, such as their former partners or members of the public.

The provision was part of the Victims and Prisoners Act, which was passed under the previous government last May. The statutory instrument to implement the change was signed into law by James Timpson, the prisons minister, earlier this year.

Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour intended to make the victim feel isolated and dependent on their abuser, and includes threats, intimidation, humiliation and assault. Charities say it is at the heart of domestic abuse.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/03/coercive-control-domestic-abuse-england-wales

I note this law change effectively being something that has cross party support too...

I can't help but wonder why the 'assigning' of sex began? If there is no such thing a sex or any way of defining it why did humans all over the globe decide to split humans into two groups?

On BBC now https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gx07xdpw5o

Me too, left wing, horrified at this issue being made into a left vs right.

I wonder who it is leaking his wedding photos and the rest of it. I hope it's his wife on her secret terf account.

It's being made into a left-right issues, as a few things are, by people who are right wing and who have an agenda to rebadge their causes as "for the people."

During another Twitter exchange in 2016 Ms Dalton was asked whether people should be taken seriously if they decided they were a llama.

She replied: 'Yes. And treat you with dignity and respect.'

Oh my fucking God!

I know I've said it before, but there really does come a point where you think they're fucking insane. And how can we get these fucking people out of our lives