NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #48

[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 was 29 July 2025. It will resume again on 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February 2025. Sandie Peggie returned to give evidence on 29 July 2025.

Access to view the second part of 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/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: 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: 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
Thread 43: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/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/womens_rights/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/womens_rights/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/womens_rights/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
Thread 47: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5382102-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-47 29 July 2025 to 29 July 2025

@Tangfastic71 I’m unable to come to any kind of understanding re trans. I am so angry for the many young people with autism who have been caught up in this and brainwashed. Children who made it to their late teens without a thought for gender but uneasy within themselves and lacking a connection to their bodies. This is well known in autism but trans has poisoned these young people to believe that this lack of connection is because they were born in the wrong body - that their brain is one sex and their body another. There is no scientific evidence that this can happen. These young people lack interoception - as do people with eating disorders. But the #bekind movement has done them great harm. Suddenly they present as trans and the world is kinder to them - so they persist, sacrificing so much - and not understanding that many people are kinder because they feel pity or just don’t know how else to react.
i know this is not the topic of these threads but I hope that those reading will give a second thought to how they are around young trans people with autism. Because if you really think about the consequences for their futures you will realise that affirmation is not kind. Be supportive and kind but don’t cement this young person on a path that is likely to lead to life long medical intervention. Remember that people with autism lack flexible thinking and can have an all or nothing mentality.
Be mindful that some parents who affirm have no option but to do so as to do anything else might cut them off from their child forever thus losing all hope.

Please talk about this topic in the playground, at school pick up and in the doctor’s surgery. It is only by spreading awareness that we can hope to turn the tide and protect our young people from easy to access hormones.

Fiona Wishart, I believe, confirmed that she had only ever seen Upton in his bra. It is rather telling, isn't it?

Oh, and the fact that Upton only ever looked away. It is like the performance of shyness. And after seeing Upton as a witness, performance is a very key attribute to his identity. It was remarkable to see Upton in action during the trial, including all the support people lined up behind him. What a performance it was.

With NHS Fife’s rather cavalier approach to risk assessments I wonder if they conduct an assessment if Risk by Association?

But not biologically?
Because even pretend women are male?

Disqualification by association was removed some years ago. (Some exceptions remain.)

That said, I’ve no idea (as above) whether: this story is accurate; the timeline of the alleged partnership or cohabitation and if relevant to JD’s duties at that time etc. Or it disqualification by association was still live then.

I think Fiona, the one Fife witness who has actually changed in the changing room.

To a point I don't think it's helpful to raise this point in this context for this particular case as it's not terribly relevant to JR taking the case. It's yet more heresy and rumour which is detracting from the actual matters at hand.

That said we must keep pushing the point about the spectre of the silencing effect and radicalising fact of influential individuals having a trans child does matter.

What I do find fascinating is the quote from Hansard from her husband:

Their child a) probably is in a private school b) their priority is to push the trans stuff WITHOUT the mental health safety net in the full knowledge that their own child does have the benefit of access to mental health support and access to prompt relevant diagnosis. This makes their personal activism problematic regardless of whether their child identifies as trans or not. Once again we see the problem with privilege.

Their priority is NOT to safeguard everyone first and THEN think about the children who, after having proper mental health support STILL want to pursue this. Their position is affirm without question and then dismiss concerns about suitability of this approach for those with mental health concerns.

This is exactly what happened at the Tavistock and has been exposed by Cass as not ok. Because it's causing harm.

This is NOT a do no harm position. It's a 'I'm alright Jack, everyone for themselves" attitude. The snobbery needs to stop.

And it's in line with my previous point about where the conversation now is in 2025 and where activists are in denial about this 'being contentious'. We know that blanket approaches to affirmation and a lack of appropriate support IS causing harm. We have multiple sources of evidence for it.

They don't want to safeguard. It's not their concern nor priority. Indeed, this is about an unwillingness to address their own political blind spots. They are willing to CONTINUE to harm rather than admit that they may be part of causing harm.

And of course, why would you roll back from this - to acknowledge you may have contributed to the harm of children, especially if it's your own, isn't something that most people are willing to do. It causes its own form of trauma to come to that particular stinking revelation.

So it is understandable. And why we are seeing a doubling down.

However this just stresses the need for us to continue driving home the point about where the conversation now is, how it isn't actually as contentious as some wish to make it out to be and to ask the question repeatedly about where do we go from here.

All whilst giving very short shrift to those who want to read from the dated TRA script.

Of course human rights are human rights*

*exemptions / workarounds may apply in order to prevent greater harms to various groups.

According to Twitter, nonce David Graham, former Labour councillor, allegedly was on the Fife NHS Board.
Can anyone confirm that?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg37wm388ro

and don’t forget ‘transmen are men, transwomen are women … except if there’s a hereditary peerage at stake’ .

Yes, she was the one who said Beth always does this and always does that based on being in the same changing room for a total of 4 occasions.

Perhaps we should be glad of the TRAs who openly contradict themselves when they say that TWAW except when... The alternative is the TRAs who recognise this contradiction and cognitive dissonance and deal with it by declaring that TWAW and therefore have rights to women's sports, rape centres and so on... and so, when the obvious is pointed out, resort to Newspeak and attempting to make it impossible to articulate that men aren't women, and a crime against humanity to act in any way that suggests you are thinking it.

This above all else ...

Made me 100% sure that this is a Male Rights Movement.

They quietly protected themselves from the one small detriment it could have caused them. And then they merrily threw women's rights, safety and dignity to the wolves.

Tossers

I've been thinking a bit more about 'I'm enjoying this' man who I linked to upthread.

I'm grateful to him in a way. He made it clear that his underwear purchasing was part of the fun for him - he could have bought the stuff online. He insisted on meeting the eye of the woman at the cash register who had not consented to part of this sex act, and he knows she is not enjoying it.

That reminded me of Dr Beth Upton's complaint that Sandy Peggie didn't make eye contact with him. I've already commented that women learn early not to make eye contact with strange men. She really had his number. He has shown such a sense of entitlement. Women must play his game by his rules.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/03/my-life-in-sex

Oh was that the "will we find something worse that the confidentiality breach?" thing that NC mentioned but then diverted from on the last day?

Bonkers. Luckily the pension age has levelled out as we’d see a lot more old men trying it on… the government would probably have let them as well the fucking wet wipes.

Perhaps Jolyon would fancy taking over from Fife as DU's legal sugar daddy.

Absolutely cracking post from RedToothBrush so I'm copying it again - maybe this can be the response to the usual nonsense? Sick of having the same conversations with people that don't want them to go anywhere.

------
To add to this comment.
Let's be clear, we do welcome opposing views.
Well thought out and reasoned views.
If you are going to come along and read from the script of bollocks and say things like "you are homophobic and it's just like being gay" or "if you knew any transpeople" or the particularly dipshit "it doesn't harm anyone else" and "well I've never had a problem so I don't understand why anyone else should" well frankly you need pulling up and telling.
We aren't prepared to put up with this level of lame conversation. We are so far beyond that and are done with the sealioning. Catch up and actually bother to listen to where the current conversation is.
It has been demonstrated that there ARE issues with safeguarding on many levels and the ideology IS hurting multiple groups. It is BEYOND contention on these points now, no matter how many people want to pretend it is. Labouring the point, doesn't change where we are in terms of identifying problems.
The conversation is now at "ok, how do we handle this in a fair way that recognises these issues and causes the least amount of conflict and upset".
Get with it. Have that conversation.
All this bollocks of 'transrights are human rights'. Yeah we know. We aren't arguing that. We also know how rights work and how there are exemptions and workarounds needs for particular situations for various legitimate reasons. And human rights apply to every other group including women. Including 'bad women'
It's terrible that we have got to a place where not only are their conversations about 'deserving and undeserving poor' about money, but we are now also have conversations about 'deserving and undeserving women' about moral issues. This is fundamentally regressive and really is far right shit even if it's not recognised as such.
It's about time, 'the other side' got their heads out their arse or looked up from a screen with short mantras and bothered to read the whole of these laws and bothered to understand them for themselves. Instead they listen to grifters, influencers and charlatans rather than using the brain cells of their own that they were given.
Basically wakey wakey, this is 2025 not 2018 or 2022. As the saying went 'Educate yourselves'. (Irony intended).
It's not the labour of women to do this for you. It's not like women were 'helped' to educate themselves when told to before is it? We had to get up off our arses and do it ourselves. So we did.

And trans people in the UK have exactly the same civil rights as everyone else, based on their biological sex, not their unprovable inner feelings.

Can you imagine!

All too easily, alas!

And to add, Upton knew well enough that anytime he perhaps was caught looking at a female person in the CR could mean that he was removed from that space. Because Upton knows that he is male and had cross the boundaries into what should have only been for female people.

That knowledge that they are there knowing that they are male in a female space and that female people can do little about it is all part of the motivation. This is why we keep pointing out the inherent misogyny and complete disregard and disrespect for any female people in the decisions that these male people make. If they had any care for female people, they would know that they should find alternatives for themselves. But the insistence that they are to be treated as female in aspects such as this, can only be driven by having power over female people.

Because there are those male people who have transgender beliefs that use the male spaces or unisex spaces all the time with no issue at all.

@RedToothBrush Brilliant post. Thank you.

Michael said yesterday that GLP might be picking up Upton's tab if it goes to appeal by Upton. I thought I saw a bemused expression flicker across Michael's face as he said that.

I'm not sticking around to continue posting after so many days glued to my sofa & laptop so don't hurry back to me, but I'm glad SP has shown us a dark underbelly. If she wins, it reinforces that even people we don't like have rights that are enforceable under the law.

@CapeGooseberry, I am sorry that I have complex disabilities that need a different approach to a standard hearing dog. A hearing dog would only be trained for my hearing needs. Would not be trained to support my other needs. The industry has bad faith actors rather like any movement and it needs regulating. I believe you can tell a genuinely trained support dog from a pretend support dog. Rather like being able to distinguish between men and women.

Thats a really valid point we shouldn't underestimate.

She's actually something of a more worthy case in terms of driving home the point that ALL women have rights.