Tempest v Rural Payments Agency Tribunal Thread (follow on from Chair of SEEN is being sued)

[myladydisdainisyetliving]

Previous thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5031904-the-chair-of-seen-is-being-sued
TT substack: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/tempest-vs-defra-and-rural-payments

Tempest (a TW) is claiming discrimination, harassment and/or victimisation on grounds of gender reassignment. Central to the claim is the Sex Equality and Equity Network in the Civil Service (SEEN or IP). SEEN has been granted right to intervene. Parts of the original claim against the co-chair of SEEN (Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley) and another party (Andreas Mueller) were struck out or narrowed. Another claimant, PQ, is no longer part of the case.

The hearing is in Leeds; the number of online observers has been limited by the court due to "capacity" and posters are reporting that requests for links are being declined on those grounds.

Also to note that Elspeth still has a garden in need of seeds and water to support the ability of SEEN to be an intervenor in this case.

GC people to not be SEEN and generally not be heard...
Beaten and not fed
Deprived and harried and comprehensively oppressed.

Tinkerbell Tempest

Having now caught up...

Well that was another day of the me me me me MEEEEEE show wasn't it.

Imagine being so far up your own arse at work that nothing and no one else matters.

A years unpaid leave to get over this thread
Added back to the breastfeeding group for the pictures
A hall pass from Naomi’s cross examination
Repaid for the six counselling sessions that left him in financial hardship
And a partridge in a pear tree

I feel the partridge may be too much. The pear tree fine, but not the bird as well!

I'm wondering if he's just another bog standard male narcissist who's found an extra special peg to hang his specialness on.

This stood out from Nick's article

My complaint has always been about the manifestation of those beliefs in the workplace and the Respondents’ [ie DEFRA’s] failure to protect me from the harm that has resulted.

Don't ST's beliefs manifest themselves at work with him 'prancing around in little girl dresses'. By his argument, why should other people have to put up with his belief manifestations at work?

Well quite, he's a walking manifestation of GI, he doesn't have to discuss it, he is it. He's harrassing women by using our words and spaces but hasn't a care in the world for the women he is affecting, he just wants to shut them up so he can live in his fantasy bubble.

Not the same.bloke but this really does remind me of the bloke at my work that turned up dressed as Little Bo Peep.

If my coworkers genuinely feel forced to lie simply to interact with me, how am I meant to believe they have my best interests at heart? It’s simply a direct attack on my legitimacy and my ability to set the terms on how people interact with me......

The obvious difficulty shown here...

How does he have the best interests of his coworkers at heart when he forces them into a position of feeling compelled to lie because of him? How do they set terms on how people interact with them?

Of course he's showing that he doesn't, and that setting terms isn't something his coworkers get to do as he does. It would suggest that in his way of thinking, they have a duty and responsibility to provide for him but that he has no equal responsibility in turn. He would seem to have confused coworkers somewhat with therapeutic carers.

when I present my authentic self, they view it as a deception to access women’s spaces

His authentic self is a man who identifies as a woman, and that is protected in law, with additional provisions now clearly required in law. He is not able to see or understand that the resistance from groups such as SEEN is that he would like to be seen as a woman and permitted into women's spaces, and he is not able to see or understand (if my coworkers genuinely feel forced to lie) or accept that there is an impact on women that requires defense against what he would like - the provided labour of being validated in the way he wishes, while women vanish away their own competing needs to meet his. It seems unlikely that he will be able to process or understand any explanations of this, and will regard any defense of women's needs and equality in the workplace to his as just more evidence of them harming him.

In which case, this kind of workplace is never going to work for him, no matter what anyone does. Saying to him that other people have rights too just won't click when he sees them as there to protect and serve his best interests, and to maintain his tight rules of safety and stability without any intruding needs or personhood of their own. It's the saddest situation I've yet seen in court in all this mess.

ST's answers read as prompt, full, well-constructed, confident, sometimes argumentative

And he sounds it too. I was able to remotely observe today and expected hesitation and fragility. But he spoke confidently, firmly, no ums or ahs, in full properly constructed sentences. Any pauses did not sound like the result of uncertainty. Although it sounds slightly husky, his voice is deep and unwavering.

Side question were you one of the 40 originals or a later addition?

If my coworkers genuinely feel forced to lie simply to interact with me, how am I meant to believe they have my best interests at heart?

Breaking news: these are your coworkers, not your mother. They don’t have to have your best interests at heart. They need to act in the best interest of their employer. All they have to do with you is be professional.

One of the things that struck me in his witness statement was just how much of it is couched in entirely emotional and entirely self-centred terms. Distressed, hurt, devastated crop up over and over again. And the hyperbole about Defra not being able to keep him safe. I really hope someone, whether AL or NC, tries to unpack exactly what safe and unsafe mean here, because they sure don't mean what any of us mean.

Thanks for the update, I remember the case, though not the details, it's good to know ECHR tossed such a ridiculous case out.

I wonder who funded that one as well, there's an awful lot of idiots getting support from somewhere.

He feels unsafe because he knows he's not, and he knows other people know he's not, and he knows they know he knows they know.

😂

And yet, as CriticalCondition confirmed what I had observed in writing, he expresses all this distress and hurt and devastation in very well-constructed, thought-through sentences.
Of course he's had plenty of time to rehearse them, but I feel that there's a disconnect between his fragility and 'unsafeness', and the strong, confident way he expresses them.
If somebody can stand up so competently and strongly in the formal and fairly stressful context of a tribunal, surely they could be equally resilient in the workplace?

I think NC on Tuesday.

Because he says his is not a belief but is the truest true thing in the whole wide world ever.

I've now got an earworm of that Little Does She Know song going round in my head with slight adaptations!

It was after 6 months of sick leave at full pay, as I understood his testimony, that he would have automatically been reduced to half pay which is why he went through OH assessment etc so he could return (phased/light dutied) to working from home. 4 adjustments were recommended, the 4th was fully do-able so then he demanded special leave on full pay, open-ended. He was told special leave wasn’t for that but was given some anyway. They bent over backwards because, we can assume, they knew their every action would be examined in ET. IANAL but perhaps it could be argued this extreme bending over backwards for unreasonable demands from one staff member could have encouraged him to believe his demands were reasonable - because they were being accommodated to a large degree.

on another point, his unwillingness to give a yes/no answer to the question of whether he had been looking at SEEN whilst off sick suggests he had found a means to trawl their postings incognito but could not add posts to his claims of harassment without admitting to accessing SEEN and this is why he is frustrated the manager didn’t go looking. I suspect a colleague was sharing posts that riled him up but he couldn't report them without giving himself away, but imagined they would be seen (sic) anyway.

Spot on

He probably accessed via a trans colleague who had not complained or asked them to send him posts