NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #47

[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. (Considerable understatement.)

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: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/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: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/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
Thread 43: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5379979-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-43 25 July 2025 to 27 July 2025
Thread 44: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5380196-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-44 25 July 2025 to 28 July 2025
Thread 45: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5381518-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-45 28 July 2025 to 28 July 2025
Thread 46: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5381640-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-46 28 July 2025 to 29 July 2025

My favourite tiny pasta is pastini stars. Pastini in chicken broth with a squeeze of lemon and an extremely generous twisting of cracked black pepper.

Couscous is just wrong though because although it is a pasta, it would feel awful in the mouth with a pasta sauce on it. It would be akin to committing a serious crime.

Omg...I thought that was Dr Upton in the change room!!

Theme song for Netflix series sorted

It’s the target.
Some words are just words. When they are used against specific people they take on whole additional layers of offensiveness!

DU cannot be called a weirdo, no matter how weird his behaviour.
SP can be called weird for leaving a room, or waiting outside, because she’s fussy about who she strips off with.

Sad times, Pandora.

@nauticant
Thank you so much for managing all the threads, it must be a record for Mumsnet. I am hoping for your sake there will be an initial flurry then it calms down until September.

In the world's largest reach ever, maybe it's that 'o' is traditionally a masculine ending to nouns of Latin extraction. Maybe weirda would have been fine.

@YourWiseBee My dad landed in Fife as a Displaced Person. Most of the DPs of my acquaintance either anglicised their surname or took the name of their spouse. My dad resisted that, and I did encounter some racism as a result.

Dad once got into an altercation with a bloke at work which did not end well for the other bloke. The other chap kept calling dad a "Polish bastard".

Dad: "I keep telling you...I'm not Polish."

So far as the sectarian divide is concerned, it's still here but not as bad as when I was a child.

I'm sure I saw some price comedic routines on the billionaires in the submarine, just as an example of recent 'inappropriate humour'.

DS is supposed to be the NT member of the family, yet has an issue with risotto and couscous. All the little bits, apparently.

Whatever the verdict it will always come back to the unacceptable racism

No, it won't. It'll come back to the issue the case is actually there for: A female being forced to share a changing room with a man and then unlawfully suspended and victimised.

I tried giant couscous the other day. I was surprised how unlike normal, blgggghh, couscous it was.

Good point.

Yes, it's actually food, and perfectly nice. Unlike the other stuff.

So sorry for this - best ignore the disrupter. We always get them.

One of my good friends says 'alright bird' as a greeting. Coming from her it's fine. We'll often jokingly use it back. From a man and I'd be livid.

Another one that's widely used in America is handicapped- meaning going 'cap in hand'. It went out of use long ago in England. It feels very jarring to go over there and find it's in every day innocent use

This all now seems to be about something else. I will say, as an Irish person, I would never really have heard any derogatory comments about Asian shop owners and such. I don’t think that is because Irish people were more aware of it being derogatory. There was very little immigration into Ireland. Certainly from places outside Europe.

The derogatory terms in Ireland were widely and frequently used on those who were in the country. The now used term ‘Traveller’ was not used at all when I was growing up. A term originally coined for the people who went from town to town, repairing things, especially metal/tin utensils and the like, was used almost universally. It is not used any more, I think.

Or for rural people - culchies. Definitely in a ‘redneck’ kind of way. Heard someone from Dublin calling a country woman a ‘bog Sally’ once. Dublin people were in turn called Jackeens.

Couscous is just wrong though because tabbouleh is so much tastier, and better mouth-feel too.

I've never heard of giant couscous before today. I'm a little bit scared. How giant exactly is giant?

I used to eat food separately, to the chagrin of family members. Eventually, one of my cousin's kids got a formal diagnosis - it explained a lot about our family.

On the other hand, I once had a pupil who would pour his pudding onto his main course and eat it all at the same time because it was much more 'efficient'.

We used to have the most wonderful discussions about Doctor Who when I was on dinner duty.

@nauticantThankyou for heroically keeping this thread alive. ❤️

Not that giant, say lentil sized?

I hope you are right. That is the issue that we all should be talking about but it's not. That's unfortunate. I certainly wouldn't want to stand beside her and celebrate her victory when it comes.

I’m surprised that less was made about the Adult baby fetish comments.
aren’t they part of the alphabet soup?
surely JR should have been focusing on SP’s phobia about them as well.
I don’t think there was overwhelming evidence of transphobia identified by JR

I just wanted to say thanks wims, and Bez, for the insight, humour and articulate contributions across these threads. I was a FWR regular back in pre-2015 days then through Spartacus and moved away during the first lockdown, when anything internet was proving bad for my MH. This tribunal brought me back, albeit as a lurker.
Taking a break for the rest of the summer, back in September.

Nope - for me the giant stuff feel like insect eggs - same as the inside of okra.

The trans activists will definitely dwell on it and use it to argue Sandie ( and therefore all women ) have no right to SSS.

But they’ve never understood the reality that all women want is privacy and safety
They've never understood Sex Matters

They've just never understood …🥱 what it’s all about