"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 7

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, KD (day 1 of evidence) and BH (day 2).
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct; BH (day 2), CH, JP, MG (day 3&4), TH, SS, ST, LL (day 4), JS, AT (day 5)
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct; AT (day 5&6), TA (day 6&7)
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct; TA, AM (day 7) JB (day 8)
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov; JB (day 8), SW, CG, JR (day 9)
Thread 6, 04-Nov to 05-Nov; RH (day 10), SW (day 11)

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital have filed a legal case suing their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses object to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The hearing started on October 20th, with evidence starting on October 22nd and is scheduled to last 3 weeks. To view the hearing online requests for access had to be made by October 17th. The hearing is being live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have background to this case on their substack. An alternative to X is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

The Judge made clear at the start of the public hearing on Day 1 that only TT or press have permission to tweet. If online observers see/hear something in the court that isn’t reported by TT, we don’t mention it until the next time there’s a break. This is a very cautious approach to avoid any accusations of “live reporting” on MN. Commentary on the content of TT tweets is fine as soon as they’re posted on X.

Key people:
C/Ns - Claimants, the Darlington nurses
R/T/Trust - Respondent, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
J/EJ – Judge/Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney
NF - Niazi Fetto KC, barrister for claimants
SC - Simon Cheetham, KC, barrister for respondents
RH - Rose Henderson, trans identifying nurse
CG – Clare Gregory, NHS ward manager
SW - Sue Williams, NHS Trust HR
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, claimant
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
CH – Carly Hoy, claimant
JP – Jane Peveller, claimant
MG – Mary Anne (aka Annice) Grundy, claimant
TH – Tracy Hooper, claimant
SS – Siobhan Sinclair, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust
ST – Sharron Trevarrow, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust, former housekeeper and wellbeing officer
LL – Lisa Lockey, claimant
JP – Professor Jo Phoenix, expert witness
JS – Jane Shields, witness for the claimants
AT - Andrew Thacker, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, NHS trust HR.
AM – Andrew Moore, NHS Head of Workforce Experience
JB – Jillian Bailey, NHS Workforce Experience Manager
AT – Anna Telfer, NHS Deputy Director of Nursing
SW – Sandra Watson, Matron for General and Elective Surgery
JR – Jodie Robinson, manager of Rose

"Sex Matters will be in court next week, as they have been given permission to intervene in the judicial review being brought by the Good Law Project against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
The hearing on 12th and 13th November in London comes nearly a year after the Supreme Court heard the For Women Scotland case."

(from the Sex Matters website here.)

It's in the High Court of Justce, King's Bench Division Administrative Court.
Claim No: AC-2025-LON-001953

Does anyone know if judicial reviews can be watched online, and if so, how? It may be too late to apply if they have a system like Fife, Leonardo and Darlington.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if women from another faith had been involved and they'd got support from a charity funded from that group? Something tells me that that level of prejudice wouldn't have been there.

You're not being asked to do that. You're being asked to support a group of women who have been treated appallingly and let down by all those who should have supported them.

None of the money will go to Christian Concern.

I agree with you, but part of the issue is that many males who wish to live as women do not want to use a gender neutral facility. They want to be in the ladies toilets because it affirms their gender. What women want or need or should have a legal right to is of absolutely no concern to them, as shown by Beth Upton and Rose Henderson both saying 'I had a right to be there.'

If you're a cynic like me then you might wonder where 'be kind' fits in and ponder upon the fact that there is no way to tell what their true motives are. 'I'm sure most of them are lovely' won't be any consolation to a woman who's at best been harrassed.

But I'm not agender. As a great poster said on FWR, non-Catholics should not refer to themselves as "heathens" (And I say that as a happy Catholic), or non-Muslims as "kuffars".

I'm someone who doesn't believe in gender. I'm GC, or gender-refuser. Actually I dislike conflating GC and " Sex realism" because you could theoretically acknowledge that sex is real, immutable and important, but still believe in gender as a slightly different concept (as that prick Ben Ryan who while recognizing males should not be in women's sports advocates for "preferred pronouns"). And I don't.

The JR is in the Royal Courts of Justice and those cases are not routinely live streamed. TT have asked for permission to live tweet and for remote access but not hopeful. We attended the first hearing, see link below. They got spanked by the Judge for not properly pleading their case and rescheduled. Judge didn't grant them JR, but reserved 2 days for a rolled up hearing.

open.substack.com/pub/tribunaltweets/p/good-law-project-and-others-vs-the?r=2u6ds&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Yes, of course, I wasn't saying anyone on this board was.
It as a digression from a casual point mentioned earlier.

@FragilityOfCups I took it as such! It just offered me an opportunity to muse myself on how I'm moving my red line to the very use of gender. We now use it in French as a euphemism for sex (which is 100% a mimick from the English corporate culture, since "sex" never meant intercourse in French and was much less awkward than in English for prudish people)... And I dislike it very much as it's a door opener. So now when I have to mention studies of "inégalités de salaire selon le genre" I deliberately change it to "inégalités de salaire selon le sexe".
Granted, it's easy for me to do it, I'm a popular manager and there's no TRA in my teams that I know of.

We now use it in French as a euphemism for sex (which is 100% a mimick from the English corporate culture, since "sex" never meant intercourse in French and was much less awkward than in English for prudish people)

This is so interesting!
Someone said on another thread that even in English "sex" to mean intercourse is a fairly recent thing - which I did not know.

GC and sex realism are definitely different things. Sex realism is a necessary condition for being GC, I think, but it’s not sufficient. Conservative Christians tend to be sex realists but are extremely supportive of traditional gender roles. They are not GC at all.
wheres that Venn diagram …

Trans people have the ability to live their lives as they wish, but just because they want to do something do something doesn’t give them the right to trample upon the rights of others. Living in a trans role is a choice with lots of complications and drawbacks, and I don’t every them at all.

@Justabaker Thanks for the pps for the GLP Judicial review

the KC for the GLP seems entirely incompetent.

It is recent. When I was young (so 50-ish years ago) people didn’t “have sex”. They made love to, slept with or had (sexual) intercourse with others. There were a range of other activities such as “heavy petting” that bordered on intercourse then but might be classed as “having sex” now. The expression started to be used generally perhaps 30 years ago as far as I know.

100%. Thank you for helping me spill it out in my own head!

30 years ago is the mid 90s so using sex to mean sexual intercourse was in general use long before that.

The film, No sex please we're British was 1973.

Not in my memory, and a film title isn’t representative of the way people spoke about such things pre 1990s.
”Slept with” would have been the general term covering sexual intercourse, and would be understood to be actual intercourse, PIV with or without contraception.
“Having sex” with someone now seems to cover things that in my youth might have been classed as heavy petting or fooling around.

But it is a choice where disability isn't, so, frankly, I'd like to see fairer shares of sympathy amongst the allegedly protected groups, which in turn means that the answer is not 'use the accessible facilities instead.'

Your memory is different to mine. We were certainly talking about having sex with people in the 1980s

If the difference is interesting to some, it's VERY recent in French. Sex scenes for instance were called "scenes with sexual content" In official words, and "scènes de cul" (arse scenes) among friends when I was a teenager, ie 20 years ago. We also don't use "fck" (baiser) to designate anything but that (ie we don't say that RH is a fing AH but that he is a c*nting AH, taken literally).

😂

I suppose some people - probably younger ones - would have. But lots wouldn’t.
I was in my late twenties/early thirties then and wouldn’t have used the expression in general conversation (and I wasn’t prudish or constrained in my speech).

What is the exact phrase in French, please? Despite speaking it reasonably well, and being spectacularly sweary in English, I've never mastered French swears beyond con and putain.

I'm a generation older than you and back when I was a student in the middle of the Swinging Sixties, we talked about sleeping with people, not having sex. Making love was what you did if you were in a serious relationship.

If Walter Presents is to be believed, most Europeans say "fuck" (in English) when swearing. Even the French. I wonder if this is really true, I suppose it must be.

Oh goodness, EmmyFr, my 1980's A level French is well out of date: I felt sure that "baiser" was to kiss (like a peck on the cheek rather than a full blown snog)!

I must get back into Walter Presents

Thank you very much, @Justabaker . I should have realised that you would be The person who would know. I do hope your remote access is granted.

It’s similar having Jo Phoenix join the thread. TT are so well known for their invaluable work that I forget you post here, too.