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

I like to collect plant stuff to try and dye things with them. I have made jam, but tend to just scoff brambles on the fly as the dog takes me past them. I like a bit of rosebay willowherb foraged for tea too - that's in season just now as well. Cannae knit for me life (it just doesn't work with my stupid hands!) but I do like doing sashiko-esque faffing with scraps. Made coasters recently, a friend gave me a bag of dressmaking scraps, she has beautiful taste in fabric, it's been such a pleasure. I darn all my socks too. Visible mending, the imperfect kind, sometimes use an orange or apple if I don't have a darning mushroom. AND I told my OH I want to be an engineer last week. But I also want to be a Stenographer and also JKB, but I'd be pathetic in the military with my shonky joints. (Could fix their socks tho, if they don't already do that themselves.)
Love Pterry, but am on a Hilary Mantel binge at the mo. Also love Ann Swinfen's Bookseller (et al)'s Tale books, they're hist fic too.

Edited to add a parenthesis because I left one out

That’s in one of them - possibly not the first but I haven’t read that one for a while. There are some spin-offs called the Time Police. They make me laugh a lot.

I nearly spat out my tea there!!!
The last part about NHS Fife won’t comment while the tribunal is ongoing……

"Impugned as a mother" - this was particularly heinous - suggesting (apparently on the basis of hearsay and assumptions) that horrid homophobe Sandie didn't accept her lesbian daughter. It's good that Nicole has felt able to speak out and say that's entirely untrue.

Bowditch on fire:

”When the tribunal ends next week, the focus should be on NHS Fife and those who conducted this witch-hunt, a medical organisation where basic biology is deliberately misunderstood and the only things being doctored are the evidence and the truth.”

Such clarity and so true.

Lindsay, as quoted in the Times article said "I've never met Beth but I feel the level of courage she has shown in life is immense by going down this path..." So she's another fan of the 'stunning and brave' narrative.

Sometimes, on the Dull Women's Facebook group, men post pictures of themselves in their wives' dresses wearing ill-fitting wigs, and they get thousands of likes and comments (way more than any of the posts from the old fashioned, boring type of women) from women absolutely fawning over them, telling them how stunning they are etc. 🙄🙄🙄 Lindsay reminds me of these women. They have contributed so much to the sense of utter entitlement men such as DU feel. It's a real issue.

And up until DU met Sandie, that is probably how all women treated him - telling him how special he is and how brave blah blah. So it must have been quite a shock to him when Sandie told him he had no right to be in the women's changing room.

Spotted on Julie bindle’s twitter:

Jane Russell’s chambers profile has THE BEST TYPO

I should probably give Pratchett another go (I do like Josephine Tey).

I’ve read about 3 of the St Mary’s Chronicles (are there really 20 now!). It was a novel idea, but I was worried it might get a bit repetitive.

I got into breadmaking during lockdown when the only simple way to get flour (and get groceries delivered) was from restaurant/catering suppliers (so we bought all sorts of things in bulk).

[whispers: we don’t really eat much jam, so I stopped making it after our plum tree expired].

I wonder how all this week’s witnesses are feeling if they’ve been looking at Scottish press (I doubt that they venture onto X or Mumsnet; they’d feel unsafe)? I expect JR isn’t feeling too great either after her performance on Friday.

I can remember reading one damn thing after another, and enjoying it, but for some reason never got round to reading more. Thanks for the nudge. Off to investigate!

I found the Times reporting today to be pretty accurate.

What a Freudian slip?!

I’m surprised her Chambers profile doesn’t include her patented How to Talk To A Witness As if They’ve Suffered a Horrendous Head Injury specialty.

That voice would make St Francis himself swear.

Oh I do natural dyeing as well! And natural basket making (not just Willow, use rushes, brambles, nettles etc)

And patchwork, quilting, darning, visible mending.

Also love Hillary Mantel and Diana Gabaldon books , (as well as the TV series, but read the books first)

And yes, I want to be KJB (I did a bit of that, a very long time ago)

I think you are right about this. Sandie said in her testimony (I think it was her testimony as part of the internal investigation) that after the changing room incident, she put the matter out of her mind and got on with her shift. Because that is presumably what an experienced A&E nurse would do.

Whereas DU put on quite the performance and made sure he had a gullible witness to see it in Elspeth Pitt. And all the talk of tears and being distraught. It just seemed so contrived. I think he was acting out how a 'vulnerable lady' would show distress. Although I'm sure there were some narcissistic tears of outrage in there as well. He comes across as so bloody manipulative and he seems to have played everyone like a fiddle.

Whereas there is no drama with Sandie, and she comes across as so much more credible as a witness as a result.

All this fruit picking, jam making, knitting, crocheting, and assorted stuff...

Am I the only one who lays around all day in my pyjamas getting stoned?

Now I remember why I married you. 😍

Or was that 'divorced you'? Well, one or the other.

@ifIwerenotanandroid

So you did only marry me for my weed!

I knew it!

@thatcyancat @cigarsmokingwoman and @Boiledbeetle

I am in awe of all your writing skills. Bravo

😍

It was the 🍅. Too many 🍅🍅🍅🍅s

No marriage could survive that.

I like to do a hybrid version, whereupon I gaze out of the window, all lady- of- shallot like, think “One day, I’m going to have chickens and make jam from the garden”, and then go back to watching 90 Day Fiancé and eating Aldi value chicken tikka chunks straight from the packet.

This is why we need female spaces for the dynamic as well as for safety, dignity and propriety. Once a man is in there, the whole dynamic changes, whether he claims to be a woman or not. First off, many women just self exclude and don't go at all. And of the ones who do, although everyone will claim they don't behave any differently and it doesn't change anything, a depressing number will start prioritising and fawning over the man. I did this myself back when my oldest was a baby and there was a man at baby groups. I was trying to be nice and welcoming because men at baby sensory etc were unusual and I wanted them to feel they belonged. And they did, those spaces weren't designated single sex. But still, I and other mothers did act differently and we did give particular care to the dads. I was more aware of it by the time my second came around, although obviously I always tried to be nice to everyone. But it absolutely happens. Doesn't really matter in that context but it does mean that a mixed sex space just isn't the same dynamic as a single sex one and we need the options for both.

Not at all. It was your sensible attitude to life. Weed has no effect on an android, anyway. If I want to get out of things for a while, I just let my battery run down (& hope somebody notices after a couple of hours, & plugs me back in).

😂😂😂 oh my god a bluestocking takeover bid.

our world is better

I just read that (thank you very much for the link). Ouch, she doesn't pull any punches does she?

She ends the article in this way:

Last week JK Rowling, the Zola figure in this scenario, argued that there was a class element to the case. Rowling tweeted that “the employment tribunal is currently exposing … the issue of class as it relates to the top-down imposition of gender identity ideology in the workplace … a belief that gender identity trumps biological sex is proof you’re intellectually and morally superior to women like … Peggie”.

While there has traditionally been a hierarchy within the NHS, where doctors protect their own and nurses are treated as second class, I’m not sure Rowling is right about its basis in snobbery. I think it has more to do with moral cowardice. Many of the most egregious witness testimonies come from women in middle management positions for which they have not received proper training.

They will have seen prominent women such as the academic Kathleen Stock, the tax expert Maya Forstater and the criminal barrister Allison Bailey cancelled because of their belief that biological sex, not gender identity, defines the term “woman”, a belief backed up by the UK Supreme Court. They will have seen the backlash, the pile-on, the loss of livelihoods and reputations. And they have decided to appease the angriest voices and throw anyone else under a bus to save their skins.

The herd mentality is a powerful deterrent to independent thought and courageous action. In febrile ideological climes, those taking a stand for truth or empiricism, who fall foul of the modish dogma of the day, are made an example of, pour encourager les autres.

I needed a distraction after reading that chat in the Times article, or I would've started throwing things.

I'll stop now, purely for @nauticant 's sake.