NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #33

[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 was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July and then there will be 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing will end on 30 July.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.
Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] by 5pm on Wednesday 9 July. Detailed instructions were provided here:

drive.google.com/file/d/16-9POEZ7yHWUr6EmbfquJZO18Gv78bSm/view

The hearing is being live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. 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.ph/WSSjg.

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

Links to previous threads #1 to #29 can be found in the header of thread #30.

Thread 30: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375337-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-30
Thread 31: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375819-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-31
Thread 32: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5376072-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-32

Those organisations should be afraid of men as well. Because now, if a trans identified male is allowed to use a single sex facility, but a non-trans identified male isn't, then that is discrimination.

Take, for instance, Hampstead Ladies' Swimming Pond...

After the Christmas Eve incident, Dr Upton wrote that they were "distraught."
"I feel attacked and cornered. I explained, this is the first time I’ve experienced anything like this in person."

Oh hello.

He was pre-conditioned.

Anecdote time.

When my brother was first transitioning he didn't want to tell me or my fiancé because he thought DH would be prejudiced.

It then became apparent that he was surrounded by a number of individuals who explained how badly they had been treated and then conditioned him to believe this to be what to expect. It was clear he'd been wound up into this state.

So it came out as overly defensive and actually aggressive because of HIS OWN prejudices. We literally didn't even KNOW never mind say a word! It was the first time paths had crossed and we hadn't opened our mouths and we're met with hostility.

His behaviour was intolerable and unacceptable. Even my mother was saying, to us, that he was way out of line, but also telling me I should put up with it because 'poor ickle hurt thing'. Her pandering to it and unwillingness to challenge him damaged our relationship because she expected me to play second fiddle and be a doormat.

And I said in no uncertain terms it was not acceptable behaviour and I wasn't going to put up with it, and that was nothing to do with identity and everything to do with being a twat. I said No.

It's exactly the same pattern.

Now this isn't the first time I've recounted this story on MN.

It's fascinating to see the same thing, potentially at the heart of this case.

I really really want this to unfold fully. Even more so now.

Those of us who have been in the weeds of this for years know that whenever a stone is overturned, you will find a LibDem (see Tavistock).

The thing is, if you are being bullied, then keeping short factual notes of interactions is standard advice and not a problem. It was when Upton turned soothsayer and started predicting things that might happen in the future, and then started making stuff up that it all got problematic.

I think the fact that SP had only one previous issue with a colleague, a newly qualified nurse 8 years ago, who found her intimidating, indicates someone who works well with others. That is a very low rate of friction in a high pressure work environment.

By the way, anyone suggesting that crybullying is a typically female activity - my experience of primary schoolmates Roy, Julie, Paul, Roger, suggests it's fairly equal opportunity, but that maybe boys get away with it more. Ditto adult colleagues Becky and Mike (though Mike's self pitying whinges shaded into scarlet-faced foot-stamping rage even more often than Becky's did).

Some of those names may (or may not) have been changed to protect the not particularly innocent.

Auditor General now on the case. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14921601/Now-Auditor-General-stands-ready-probe-NHS-Fife-chiefs-handling-trans-battle.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=social-twitter_mailonline

DU should be stripped of his licence of that's the case. I know it was said before on one of the threads (or all of them) but out and out lying about a nurse compromising patient safety if fucking indefensible. Just wowsers.

Didn't the LibDems take a massive donation from a puberty blocker pharmaceutical company?

I remember when Lynne Featherstone said that women who wouldn't share toilets with men weren't welcome in the party. Fine, fuck off then. It's the kind of thing a LibDem can say. Not like it's going to cost them the next election.

Also, (rhetorical) why did the Herald writer use they to refer to Upton instead of he (the obvious choice) or she? So much misgendering!

I wouldn't disagree with that.

He stated a very specific incident but if I remember correctly, it took ages and ages on the stand to commit to a specific time frame which meant the veracity of his claim could have been checked through staff records - he eventually had to concede 'possibly on or around Halloween.

And of course, there was the 8 month delay in reporting this 'incident' -

https://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/national/24930987.transgender-doctor-raised-concerns-nurse-eight-months-incident/

DH has kindly offered to build me an agent based model to demonstrate this social phenomenon.

I'd like to thank Mumsnet for helping me to talk to DH about his work as usually I haven't fucking clue what he does all day.

A weekend thought: On the prevalence of organizations going well beyond the law and still maintaining that they will not enforce single sec spaces, preference falsification and fashionable nonsense / luxury beliefs, I have always found this essay by C S Lewis on the "inner ring" to be extremely insightful about the process by which individuals get drawn into unreflectively causing great harm to others. The whole essay ( www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ ) is long and in quite a pompous style, but the pertinent paragraphs on the desire to be part of a special in group / accepted by someone you admire are here and how that really works on an interpersonal level:
And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

I keep seeing this phrase, but I don't understand what it is?

People being peaked?

Realising the lunacy of it all....peaked

I’m noticing on twitter lots of folk spreading the idea that there was a nearby doctors changing room he could have used. I think this might be a misunderstanding around some testimony which stated there was a consultant‘s changing room. DU wouldn’t have had access to that? Or is there mention of another room?

That being said it would have been an interesting option to give DU. Please feel free to use the consultants c r. I think he would have creamed himself at that!!

I think it’s questionable to be trawling the internet for info on the counsel and her family, however much you disagree with the actions of NHS Fife. Doesn’t make MN look like a beacon of reasonableness. She’ll have taken the case on the cab rank rule, and she’s entitled to her beliefs.

I'd guess it refers to people's interest being piqued ie gaining attention

We will probably never know, but I bet every single person he has started taking micro aggression notes on is a woman.

I wonder if Fiona Wishart is the "Fiona" who SP mentioned being in the changing room before the incident. (I've been reading the Feb transcripts, so it's fresh in my mind!)

I had also mistakenly though the internal disciplinary was solely about the bogus clinical safety concerns, not the incident in the changing room.

Me too. Not finding a problem about the incident in the changing room seems like a bit of reverse ferret No?
I'm also wondering if the timing of the conclusion of the internal investigation, along with the findings is not a coincidence. Could it have been one small effort at damage limitation given Sandie's refusal to cut a deal and settle the case?

Yes, I think this is a misunderstanding. SP said early on that the cr is used by nurses, doctors, support staff. It's not a case of him barging into a nurses-only cr.

Re : peaked.

I've always found Datun's post on the Break It Down For Me thread to explain it best -

'Yes, peak trans is meant to invoke the image of a hill.

So people might start in the foothills wondering what on earth women are talking about, why is it so important?
Then they begin to question. Still not sure, because up until now, they didn't see any problem. Why not be nice? What's the big deal?

Then they start to understand the concepts. Sometimes they still waver, because this all feels like it's happening somewhere else. Online, or not really affecting them. And anyway, feminists have a downer on men, so it's unsurprising they're cross. And, honestly, I know a transwoman and she's absolutely delightful.

Then they read about a rapist being transferred to a female prison. So what, one news story. Are you saying all transwomen are rapists?!

Then they read about the woman who asked for a female HCP and got a man. Oh well, a little uncomfortable, but still, what's the big deal? Then they read that the woman was called a transphobic bigot for objecting.

Hmmm, well that's a bit off. I may not mind a man doing my smear test, but I can understand women who do. It's not really bigoted.

At this point you have advanced a few hundred yards up the hill.

Then a sports story is mentioned on here. A mediocre male weightlifter suddenly winning awards by competing as a woman.

Oh, whatever, I don't like sport anyway.
Then another one. Then someone in cycling, fell running, roller derby, football, cricket, golf.

Then suddenly it appears to be less about sport, and more about women being disadvantaged.

The crampons come out and you advance another few hundred yards up the hill.

Then you notice that a 19-year-old boy has been elected as labour's women's officer. Oh well, he probably feels like a woman inside. That's gender dysphoria, right?

Except he starts to compile a secret list of all women who disagree with him to get them ousted from the party. Despite his remit being to include as many women as possible in the party. Claims he can get pregnant in that biology is irrelevant.

Then you start to notice intimidating tactics against women. Meetings to discuss the upcoming law change are targetted, a 60-year-old woman is hit at speakers corner. Venues pull out, peoples jobs are threatened, they are doxxed online, they are reported to the police for disagreeing.

You scramble up towards the peak of the hill.

Then someone tells you about autogynephilia, and all the men's rights activists flocking to the trans movement. You realise that it is actually true that the government is legislating to legitimise a fetish.

You peak. You look back down the hill and can't believe you ever stood at the bottom.

Then you read of 2 transwomen, one of whom has been asked to speak at the Women's March. Who claims that being treated like a piece of meat by men is sexy and objectification is hot. And because they are woman, they speak on behalf of women. And the other one who claims that women are allowed to go to the Women's March, as long as they don't talk about their reproductive systems. You know, the very basis of women's oppression. Because it excludes men. The ones who are doing the oppressing.
And you peak all over again.

This keeps going.

You look at the handful of men with gender dysphoria and how to include them, and wish, with all your heart, that it could be that simple again.'

It's also worth noting that until quite recently, even mentioning the word peak in a post could get your post deleted.

Yes they did, circa £1.6 million from Ferring Pharmaceuticals (manufacturer of PBs and funder of Dutch trials iirc).

Time for a citizens' arrest!