NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #53

[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 resumed again over 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 more 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].

The hearing was 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 #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025

I think he is still called a barrister (tho not authorised to practice in court) until disbarred, which the Bar Council seem reluctant to do

Joni O'Sullivan sounds like a breath of foul air, what with her EDI background.

Does anyone know anything about public access to the Darlington nurses tribunal (Newcastle)? I emailed them about remote access but haven't had a reply. I'm keen to see it as I can't work out what the dispute is, unless it's about damages

Fascinating. And Good Law has closed its in house legal services and now contracts it out.

Apparently, he says he was disillusioned with tax law, and that people were nasty to him and wouldn't give him work after the fox and kimono and baseball bat incident. Which is, of course, their right. I do wonder if we should challenge him under the Trades Description Act because Good Law doesn't quite describe what he does. The Toddler Tantrum Project does have a ring to it, but Toddlers might feel insulted.

It could work but, to be fair to toddlers, they are still developing and learning from their mistakes.
Joly and his fanz are theoretically fully developed adults (even if some of them want to ID as toddlers, which is sick).

He was dipping his toe into politics before the fox incident. In the runup to the 2015 election, he'd apparently convinced himself that Ed Miliband was going to make him Attorney General (presumably with a peerage; I haven't heard of Joly doing the basics like joining the Labour Party or applying to be a parliamentary candidate)

As it happens, Ed had other ideas for who he wanted as AG, and that's how we got Keir Starmer. But that's another story.

It's consistent with the idea that Joly had reached middle age and found himself in a niche area of law that was lucrative but incredibly boring, and fancied reinventing himself as a public figure. There's a streak of Rory Stewart style egotism in him, and just like Rory, he's good at getting publicity but makes the mistake of believing that he's as brilliant as his publicity suggests. If those two hadn't had wealth and connections to begin with, we could just as easily have seen them abseiling down Parliament dressed as Batman and Robin.

But think of the squabbles when both of them wanted to be Batman!

<considers making a joke about Catwoman>

<decides against>

As things stand, the Darlington nurses' full employment tribunal hearing against County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust will be going ahead in Newcastle from October 22 for three weeks.

It might currently be a bit early for them to be processing requests for remote access.

I have a theory about fox-gate.

I don’t think it really happened. I think he grossly underestimated how people would react to such barbarity.

He thought the tableau vivant of the baseball bat, dead chickens feathers, the bloodied fox, and his wife’s kimono - set against the backdrop of Boxing Day would make people laugh.

Christ knows why he thought that, of course. But, that’s my theory.

Yeah, he seems the sort who would send his wife to deal with anything. And then take the credit.

I sincerely hope you're right. I'd far rather think of him as being a rather odd Walter Mitty than the kind of bastard who'd set out to bludgeon an animal to death.

Let's face it, his judgement over just about anything is absolutely awful. Who knows what he was thinking posting about the fox incident. I was blocked almost instantly after commenting on it. Poor sensitive soul that he is.

The RSPCA apparently conducted a post mortem though? https://southwarknews.co.uk/area/southwark/jolyon-maugham-fox-death-prosecution/

"The RSPCA said an independent post-mortem discovered the fox died swiftly, but that it could not condone the killing of healthy foxes."

The NYT has an article on people being fired in the US for negative comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. One incident was a woman who posted on a private FB account and did not publicly identify her employer so whoever ratted her out had to know her well enough to know where she worked. In her case, she was the main breadwinner and has lost her health insurance as well. Made me think of SP and her ‘friend’. A variation on keeping friends close? Now we must keep frenemies at more than arms distance. This culture of turning on each other is escalating and our reliance on social media makes this turn quite dangerous.

I can't say I'm wholly convinced by anything the RSPCA says either. Their reputation also goes before them.

agree

The gratuitous kimono detail sounds like something straight out of Joly's strange imagination.

It wouldn't amaze me if he'd done it, but it would amaze me less if he'd made it up thinking it would make him look cool and completely failed to read the room.

Yup, this was not just her kimono, this was her 'too small' kimono. Grim.

I notice the GMC says "the regulations expressly require us to collect gender rather than sex information"

So I immediately wonder who wrote those regulations, and when.

Not related to the GMC, but my cop show DVD watching has brought me to season 15 of NCIS, late 2017, and McGee speculating repeatedly as to the probable sex of his and Delilah's expected child. Nobody mentions the 'g' word.

The GMC makes its own regulations under powers granted to it in the Medical Act 1983. The current regulations were made in 2015.

I mean if Joly were to take that trip to Malaga - and he's the prime age for it - you just know he'd be one of those transwomen in a leather mini with his bollocks hanging out.

I've just had my tea!

How can that possibly be right? Do they think same-sex care is a complete non-starter?