Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, following Employment Tribunal judgment - thread #60

[nauticant]

Judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936ce28a6fc97b81e57436a/S_Peggie_v_Fife_Health_Board__Dr_Upton.pdf

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), 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.
Following handing down of the judgment on 8 December 2025, on 11 December 2025, it was announced by Sandie Peggie and her legal team that they would be pursuing an appeal.

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.

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
Thread 53: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404208-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-53 3 September 2025 to 1 October 2025
Thread 54: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5418690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-54 28 September 2025 to 21 November 2025
Thread 55: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5447019-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-55 19 November 2025 to 8 December 2025
Thread 56: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5456749-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-56 8 December 2025 to 9 December 2025
Thread 57: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5457132-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-57 9 December 2025 to 11 December 2025
Thread 58: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5458443-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-58 11 December 2025 to 12 December 2025
Thread 59: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5459115-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-59 12 December 2025 to 17 December 2025

That comparison doesn’t work for me.
The SC judgment set out their thinking in very clear, logical detail without any mistakes, misinterpretations (although this is still contested by the GLP) or made up rulings.
FWS ended up at the SC by appealing the first 2 judgements.
On the other hand Kemp made loads of errors and had spurious logic - why would SP not appeal?

It might be worth noting that Patrick Harvie demanded earlier this month that following Kemp's judgment, men should be allowed back into women's spaces. Has he gone quiet since then?

GLP is not contesting FWS/the SC. GLP is contesting one bit of the EHRC interim guidance.

The level of intellectual engagement in the TRA community is, with a few notable exceptions very low - far below what we see on this site. Most contributors to trans Reddit aren’t capable of reading FWS with even a basic level of understanding. It’s not really surprising that they see conspiracy in it.

I doubt they'd appreciate this, but I feel a certain kinship for Protect-the-dollz on trans Reddit. I too, in a different context, have been the isolated voice in a highly ideological community, where it didn't do you any good to point out that the majority were indulging in magical thinking that would harm their cause in the long run.

I was able to cut my losses and get out. I don't think P-t-d can.

IMO while some of it is lack of intellectual capability, a lot of it is people on trans reddit prioritising their entrenched positions and emotional reactions over rationality and logic.

They are so invested in their trans identities or in enabling others' or in looking inclusive, they cannot bear to consider something critically, pragmatically and neutrally.

And once you do look at something critically and neutrally and rationally, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down.

Much as I feel for P-t-d and his shouting into the void on Reddit, he still thinks he's a woman, he still thinks women should budge up for men like him, and he's still a TRA.

I suspect they can leave any time they want, and are probably quite at home on mumsnet 😁

I would guess the average age on transgenderUK is decades younger than on this board of mumsnet. Many will have spent most of their adolescence getting wedded to the idea of being trans, maybe with complex mental health problems thrown into the mix, and they may not have been exposed to many other ideas or got beyond the adolescent footstamping "It's all about Me" stage of life. The smarter ones (who are there as actual trans identifying people) will be cultivating followers from the younger more vulnerable trans identified youngsters. In my not at all humble opinion (!)

P-t-d has one delusion, and knows that social acceptance of that delusion is fragile. His compadres on Reddit are full spectrum bonkers and believe that society will give them cutted up pear their full demands if they just shout loud enough.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think eventually there will come a time where there are TRAs who are rational enough to know they've lost, and they'll need to have a dialogue about how society accommodates them. Maybe not many, but there will be some.

The problem isn't (generally) lack of intellectual capacity, it's the effect that living in an ideological bubble has on you.

If I were a trans litigant, I wouldn't necessarily want a lawyer who's a true believer. I certainly wouldn't want a lawyer who told me I had a slam dunk case and only a corrupt court could find against me. I'd want someone to tell me honestly what the weaknesses in my case were. I think it's telling that trans Reddit is so uncritical of Jolyon and so unwilling to listen to sceptical voices in their own community.

The problem isn't (generally) lack of intellectual capacity

I’m pretty sure it actually is.

All of this.

Also, they'll have come up with their own world building logic from the beginning, making it harder to then accept actual 'other' logic.

It's also not logical to say that just because some people made claims that the SC is corrupt, therefore Kemp is not corrupt.

Maybe he's not. Maybe he is just ragingly incompetent and deeply sexist. But I think it would be naive to not consider other reasons for his travesty of a judgment.

I hope at the very least there's going to be an internal investigation into why Kemp's judgment was so erroneous. Although I cynically doubt that would cover any bias, at the very least there should be an explanation as to why quotes were made that were incorrectly attributed to the wrong cases.

I should not go down the rabbit hole but those reddit sites are "interesting". Someone was going to "come out" to their wife the other day. Apparently she had been sympathetic to their two teenage children who had also come out as trans. What are the odds?
Amazing too is the outrage about NHS services. They won't de-hair my downstairs!!!
Treat my male-pattern baldness!
Tho I am pretty amazed that "SRS" is available at all on the NHS.
And the "kinks"....coming up to 65 i have obviously led a very protected life.

It's not a medical condition, you see, but somehow the NHS has to perform all these procedures on demand.

And it never seems to make them any happier. It's like Michael Jackson's quest for the perfect nose.

Following up on the suggestion of bias from Judge Kemp.

During the tribunal Dr Upton was asked if he was a biological woman, he responded something along the lines - I am not a robot so I must be biological, I know that I am a woman not a man, therefore I am a biological woman.

In his judgment Kemp gave weight to how committed Upton was to his identity and described repeated mis-gendering during cross-examination as offensive. He further stated that he believed Dr Upton's account of what had happed more than SP's because he was a more credible witness.

To my mind the opposite is true, Dr Upton was clearly stating 'facts' that were demonstrably untrue - he was telling lies in his evidence. Repeatedly.

Dr Upton's evidence repeatedly demonstrated that his grip on reality was somewhat tenuous.

Faced with Dr Upton's lies, Judge Kemp uses Olympic level metal gymnastics to turn them into a laudable demonstration of true belief in gender identity.

To me, Judge Kemp has introduced a new concept to law - it is Ok to lie to a tribunal as long as you really, really believe what you are saying is true.

Well yes. Incompetence is not the same as corruption.

For the love of god, are you all so used to arguing with people that you don't even read what people are saying before launching into them? Just attack when you get a sniff of disagreement with you?

I specifically commented on the accusations of corruption. That is not the same thing as incompetence. Read my post. Properly.

If you're going to argue with me at least have the basic courtesy to read what I said and argue with what I actually said rather than putting words into my mouth, thanks.

Please show me where I said that Peggie shouldn't appeal, thanks.

Er, maybe it would serve you to read what you see as some kind of attack, again? It follows logically as an assertion following your comment about corruption.

This was the point at which I lost any vestige of sympathy I might have had for Dr Upton. He'd got his eye on any woman who didn't toe his line right from the start, so the precise nature of any confrontation, when it happened, was incidental.

I wrote "judicial incompetence, at the very least". Given the politics in Scotland, it's not unreasonable to suspect that corruption may be involved.

I didn't comment on the competency, I commented on GC posters undermining the judiciary by claiming corruption or that Kemp was bought.

Incompetence and corruption are not synonyms. Someone can be woefully incompetent without being corrupt.

There is no evidential basis to claim corruption or that he was bought other than that it didn't go the way GC people wanted. Arguably if he had been bought he wouldn't have produced such a shoddy judgment, so these accusations make as little logical sense as those put forward about the SC judges.

Plenty of them are middle aged men, they’re just very selfish and immature.