NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #43

[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 had been intended to be 28 July with 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing was to have ended on 30 July. However, it became apparent as the hearing progressed that this schedule wouldn't be followed.

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 #40 can be found in this thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379334-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-41 24 July 2025 to 25 July 2025
Thread 42: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379820-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-42 25 July 2025 to 25 July 2025

And what he got instead was:

• widely being referred to as a man in the press, on t’interweb and in court;
• being seen to be the sort of cry bully who goes weeping to a manager in order to get a woman punished for saying things he didn’t like; and
• having it publicly alleged that he was very deliberately falsifying and manipulating evidence.

To quote St Ben of Cooper, it would be unkind for me to ask Dr Upton how this is all
panning out for him.

This from earlier in the thread

NebulousSupportPostcard · Yesterday 18:42

Monday's witnesses are:
Lindsey Nicoll, emergency nurse practitioner
Fiona Wishart, emergency nurse practitioner

R.e. physical bugs chat I highly recommend Bug and Sting Relief Antihistamine Creams, Active ingredients: Mepyramine Maleate. Not available in all pharmacies but Boots do a decent own brand.

So much better than the steroid bug creams at least for horse flies / midges etc don't know about bees and wasps.

I also use massive amounts of insect repellent although it isn't 100 per cent. Aside from being annoyingly attractive to insects, I somehow managed to catch Lyme disease off a tick bite in an urban allotment area with no known deer.

Thankfully sorted out with three weeks of strong antibiotics but Id rather not. Then when I tried to warn others they didn't believe me because no deer even though I had the bullseye 🎯 rash 🙄

Since I clicked on this thread (somewhat by accident in February and was then peaked during the course of Part 1) pps have posted question after question. Surely NHS Fife will realise this? Or Surely NHS Fife will stop this? Or Surely NHS Fife will settle now? No. They. Won't. For some reason they have strapped in for a last japanese soldier mission and there is no sign that intend to change course. Even Scotgov can't seem to understand why they keep making the wrong choices and making things worse at every turn. On the one hand it is gripping to watch but on the other hand it feels really undignified to watch the death throes. The only lessons to be learned I suspect will be don't write anything at all down and when asked say "I don't recall". Oh yes and the other one - if you go into hospital for treatment make sure to say you are non-binary and you will get a private room because you can't go on either male or female wards

Last time around NC was including BMA in the request to fully disclose. JR argued that getting paperwork from BMA would take ages and I think NC let it go rather than tackle further stalling tactics that would inevitably result

'Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!'

Someone on an earlier thread had mentioned that there's a fair amount of posters here with an interest genealogy/local history. Other interests I've seen which seem to be common to this board are the books of Pratchett, DL Sayers and PG Wodehouse and an interest in cooking/jam making/baking. I'm sure there's loads of variations and other interests too but I've never met so many Pratchett fans like myself in one place!

@KnottyAuty
OMG that is a great tip re: non-bino private room. I'm gonna use that!

I’m sorry to interrupt but I’m only up to thread 35 and I’ve been trying to catch up to ask a question.

Back on thread 29 on 17th July at 9.24 @Apollo441 wrote

In the 8 years before they started recording some men's crimes as women's there were 0 rapes committed by women. In the 8 years after there were over 400 rapes committed by women. Either women have suddenly found an enthusiasm for joint endeavour rape or a lot of men suddenly discover that they are actually women when charged with rape. Hmm.. tough one to decipher.
That is why TRAs hate the UK definition of rape being penetration with a penis. Only males can commit this crime. All other crimes it is hidden and they can say 'women do it too'. But rape gives a lie to what is going on.
Once organisations are forced to follow the supreme court ruling we must turn our attention to crime stats and end the practice of recording crime by self declared sex.

Does anyone have a source for these horrifying stats?

I had not heard of assassin beetles before. As if Australia didn't hold enough terrors....

I think the shopping list or part of it was visible on one of the screenshots of the 'contemporaneous notes' on the notes app?

Somewhat off -topic but I was thinking about how the trans world reject Bryson and say he's not real trans. He's just one of those wronguns who is faking trans after being caught. That these rapists and creeps have nothing to do with them because they're in no way a danger to anyone.

Do they also say that about Barker? I mean he tends to be their spokes person at numerous events? Do they also reject Barker as not being one of them? If they do, it must be awkward when he leads protests and so on.

IIUC, Upton screenshotted a note called Terrain shopping list, or something like that, in order to "demonstrate" that the oddity of some notes having creation dates later than their last edit dates was not limited to the notes in question. The idea that this was cannabis related is intriguing but given "terrain" and everything we know about Upton I'm really more inclined to think he wanted aluminium mesh to help model terrain on some gaming table he was working on!

The dates thing is curious and I really wish I had been able to hear the evidence not just the reports of the evidence from people who maybe haven't fully understood it (I was busy and not watching that session). Can anyone who was watching and understood help? I think the naive obvious thing would have been to ask Upton to use Google Takeout to request all his Keep data, and have him send that, as the zip file they give you... but it seems that isn't what happened. Perhaps he did get that zip file but then unpacked it himself on his machine and was guided through what to find where? I don't immediately know where they would have been instructing him to read the creation dates from. Using my Android phone Keep app, and looking at the data I can download for my Keep notes, here's what I notice:

• the Android app shows the last edit date prominently when you view the note ("Edited [human readable date]" at the bottom)
• but does not obviously show you the creation date, unless I'm missing something, nor give you access to the version history.
• So someone who only looked at the Android app might not know that the creation date and version history is maintained by Google.
• If you look at your notes on the desktop (keep.google.com), then under the three-dots menu you have a Version history option, which lets you see all previous versions of the file (unless it's old and was "migrated from Assistant", possibly other wrinkles too). It doesn't explicitly give creation date, but that will be the date of the oldest version.
• If you download the data (takeout.google.com), you can get more information:
• for each note, there is an HTML file and a JSON file.
• Some of them, in my case the ones I'd archived, have filenames that are mostly dates, but most have titles reflecting the title of the note, e.g. Shopping list
• The HTML file contains the last edit date, but not the creation date. It is trivial to modify the last edit date in any text editor, to anything you want. After that, if you view the HTML file, what you'll see will look like a presentation of your note with any date you like. (So it's not entirely clear to me why someone who wanted to modify a shown edit date would faff with manipulating screenshots, it would be easier to edit the HTML! At least that's what I'd do ;-))
• The JSON file, however, contains both the last edited date (userEditedTimestampUsec) and the creation date (createdTimestampUsec). These are not stored in human-readable form but it's trivial to convert between the number here and human-readable form, both ways: e.g. using www dot epochconverter dot com (sorry, making this a link breaks posting for some reason). You could trivially falsify that if you were just asked to download the files and pass them on at your leisure - on the other hand, they wouldn't be falsified on google's servers, i.e. if someone watched you re-download the archive and took the files straight off you they'd have the real data; on the third hand, BU wasn't asked to pass on the files anyway from the sound of it!
• Slightly curiously to me, nothing in what you get from a default takeout includes all the versions, even though they are available through the desktop interface. (So preparing a doctored version list would not be easy - it's not clear how you demonstrate the version history other than by using the desktop interface and then taking screenshots.)

The obvious interpretation is that Upton (perhaps with help) understood enough of this to make a clumsy go of changing a last edit date, at least in screenshots (e.g., by downloading the files himself in advance of the Teams meeting and having doctored versions of the screenshots to hand to pass on when asked), but the creation dates remained intact. I'd love to know what the instructions he was given for downloading the notes actually said, though - is the instruction sheet he was given in the bundle, does anyone know, and has anyone reported on what it says?

Last night I was reading these threads last thing, went to sleep and dreamed I was trying to get cash out, but the cash machine kept giving me riddles in the dulcet tones(? What is word for written tones?) of the Fifer and every time I answered a question wrong I paid for something else instead. I donated two hedgehogs to someone for their garden on one attempt. I never did get my £20 to get home. I've finally read the pertinent parts so I could come and post about it on the next thread!

Other thoughts: I want to be an apprentice to JKB, I've had this earworm every time someone said 'sad times' and part way through JB's part I suddenly remembered my electronic battleships game from childhood, with the computerised voice that said THIS IS A BATTLE OF WITS, ENTER YOUR SHIPS' POSITIONS. I don't have anything valuable to add but continue to try and keep on while I'm on holiday!

I wonder why Jane Russell keeps getting hired to represent government areas in employment tribunals as her track record seems embarrassing. I get that she can’t prevent an obviously guilty respondent from losing a tribunal, but she doesn’t seem to be great at her job.

Huge Terry Pratchett fan here. Back in the late 80s, in my public librarian days, I happened to hear an episode of Equal Rites being read on Woman's Hour on a day off and was instantly hooked. Borrowed the book, hooked DH and both teenage DC and the rest is history. I remember reading the whole of The Wee Free Men to all three grandsons at one time or another, despite being rubbish at accents. 😊Also rather a fan of DL Sayers and jam-making...

Unfortunately I think that has changed in Scotland, so hate crime doesn't need to be a crime afaik

I'm wiping tears from my eyes after listening to that! 😂😂😂

Before the soundtrack, when I read the poem I got distinct Monty Python meets Macc Lads vibes.

@tribunalObserver

I think the process with phone, Fife & Dr U worked like this.

1. they set a date for a teams meeting with the IT bod
2. on that teams meeting, DU harvested the 'data' about the notes whilst the IT bod 'watched'
3. somehow that 'data' was in form of screenshots
4. after the call, Dr U populated a form with data and links and sent it to IT bod
5. nobody recorded the Teams call
6. some of the chat for the Teams call was retrieved and it implies or can be interpreted as a 15 minute period where Dr U was 'frozen image' and thus not possible to be watched
7. there are things about the screenshot data that seem inexplicable.

Happy for others to correct but that's what I heard.

From what I have read on here, it is my understanding that she has close connections with powerful TRAs.

I agree, he thinks he’s clever but as you can all see, he’s not.

I suspect he didn’t get into medicine first time he applied , as there’s 3 years between him leaving school in 2013 and starting his medical degree in (presumably ) 2016, as he graduated in 2021.

Even if he went to St Andrews in 2016 to do a 3 year science degree first and then transferred to Dundee to do his MbChB , that still only takes 5 years.

He didn’t graduate from Dundee with distinction or merit , so he wasn’t one of the clever students in his year. So my guess is he’s a bit of am intellectual lightweight as medics go.

I notice that when the rest of his class went to their in person graduation in June 2022, he was one of the very few home students who didn’t turn up ( especially odd as he was working and living nearby ). Whereas everyone else in his year treated it as a big reunion a year after doing their FY1 - they travelled from all over the Uk to be there.

That suggests to me that he wasn’t very popular or well liked in his class.

On a totally different subject - I have a relative who has many narcissistic traits - arrogance, entitlement, believing that the rules only apply to little people , grandiose thinking , very controlling of others, no real sense of self so a need for constant admiration from everyone around .

He is superficially charming but as soon as you push back on even the tiniest thing, he flips to wanting you destroyed. There’s no grey area, you are either the best person in the world or an evil demon who deserves to die.

He is convinced that he can control everyone including the legal system. When he decided to leave his wife for his latest mistress, he took his wife to hell and back in the divorce and spent a significant proportion of the marital assets on legal fees. He forged ( very poorly ) financial records and insisted that his solicitor submitted them to the court in the divorce and was OUTRAGED that they were questioned. He was desperate for the divorce to go to court as he believed that he would shine in the witness box.

His adult children have little to do with him and he has no close friends, just a few superficial acquaintances. He attracts kind, empathetic, giving, intelligent, educated, professional women, who fall for his sob stories about how badly life has treated him ( despite his considerable privilege ) . He uses up these women and then discards them when they are no longer useful.

He is a terrible and dangerous person.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Has Mr. Hochhauser abandoned this area of law altogether!

See I'm wondering who is steering the ship. Is anyone from NHS Fife attending the tribunal? Are they being briefed by JR on how it's going? Or have they just sent everyone off to get on with it?

Just as the decision making in Sandie's treatment seemed like it didn't go high enough up the chain to a sensible decision maker, this doesn't seem to be either.

Yes, I agree with all that - what I mostly want is details of step 2 in your list!

@tribunalObserver

To answer your specific question - there does not seem to be 'written instructions'.

A bit more phone-gate history

The C's asked the judge to order Dr U's phone to be turned over for forensic examination of the notes. Big Sond (judge) said it was beyond his powers to order production of the phone. Dr U agreed to surrender the phone for examination. I assume because the C's counsel would ask the Tribunal to consider why it wasn't surrendered.

Cs retained an expert for this examination, JB. Date set for meeting, JB could not get necessary info from Rs to allow him to adequately prep for the meeting. There has been much speculation about why but there's an obvious explanation. Cs cancelled meeting. NHS Fife set up process described above for the 'examination' of the phone.

Happy to be corrected in details but I think that's it in broad strokes.