Council worker "lied" about police investigation of artist Victoria Culf

[DustyWindowsills]

I dimly recall a news story about this last year. Artist Victoria Culf, while setting up an exhibition at Council premises (a museum), chatted about gender issues with a council worker (who brought up the subject). Subsequently the Council blocked her from easy access to her own exhibition, on the grounds of a police investigation into a hate crime. She is now suing the Council.

It now turns out (so her legal team claim) that there was no police investigation. The council worker made it all up. WTAF?

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/council-staff-lied-about-police-investigating-artist-for-gender-views-bbnf5cs2m

This is the Times. Sorry I don't know how to do those archive link thingies.

As @CassOle rightly says, because they believe the end justifies the means.

The council worker probably recorded the HC incident number as part of contemporaneous notes on their phone - so it must be true.

The police are obviously mistaken

With the added impetus, as Helen Joyce has pointed out, that once a parent has decided to trans their child they MUST seek out and receive reassurance that they are doing the right thing, because the alternative is horrendous. And if they don’t get that reassurance, they lash out.

Not the first time we’ve this, either.

Damaged artwork too - criminal damage?

once a parent has decided to trans their child they MUST seek out and receive reassurance that they are doing the right thing

That does help me make sense of it, because I was struggling to understand why you’d talk about your child’s health in a casual conversation with someone you didn’t know.

Errr wot?

The police officer opened the official police system?
On the system typed in their login code on the keyboard to start creating a record?
This record created a unique record code?
Which was given by the officer to the employee?
The the employee recorded this number on their personal phone?
The police officer then created a second record which recorded no crime occured as VC had a right to express a view?
Some time later ( between these two records being created and VC collecting data for her case) some how the first record vanished from the system and the second one remained?

That sounds like the police failed to had basic Data Protection systems in place (designed I am sure ) to prevent an audit trail being created. 👀

Additionally an office as yet unidentified accessed the first (now missing record) and called the employee to up date the employee on the progress but the police have no record of that interaction either?

The defense will have a field day proving how the police made such a basic mistake.

It was joke reference to the Sandie Peggie case, Dr Upton claimed that he made notes on his phone that prove when things happened but has been unable to produce them.

Ahhh gotya☺️

Can the nice judge give SP an search warrent for his tec and backups?
Or did he claim the phone and notes end up falling into the nearest clinical waste box etc etc

They asked for the phone to be searched but the tribunal denied the request they also wanted to add Upton's supervisor as a respondent, this was also refused.

The judge denied it because the lawyer for Dr Upton and NHS Fife said it was already being examined.
So we may yet see the data

They follow the official line but off record are not hardline

Yeah that's what I thought, I'm not a fan of the Lib Dems in general but whenever I have spoken with the mayor (either Dorothy or Peter) or councillors they have been OK and they have helped a lot with a project I used to work on.

But realistically in this situation it isn't the elected officials who caused this but the council staff who could, and clearly do, have their own agendas.

If it’s true the employee even made up a police crime number, that looks to me like fraud.

It's an EA issue - but only in 1 direction. So it's not a case of a clash of PCs.

The council worker is (via the coincil) providing a service, and discriminated against the artist because of her protected characteristic.

The artist is not providing a service, and didn't discriminate against the council worker - who doesn't have a relevant protected characteristic.

Yes, I agree. I have not suggested otherwise.