Tempest v Rural Payments Agency Tribunal Thread 5

[fanOfBen]

Previous thread:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5549488-tempest-v-rural-payments-agency-tribunal-thread-4

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 existence of the Sex Equality and Equity Network in the Civil Service (SEEN). 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.
I will also 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. The claim originated because she said "only women menstruate" and a search with her name and those terms at the usual gardening website should point you to her plot.

Even better. 😁

And if Karl was born in Basingstoke but is reflecting what a Northern woman might wear, a flat cap, a t shirt saying 'Eee, ba gum!' and have a whippet on a lead. Or something.

From my reading of TT it would seem C’s demands were complex, varied and varying and probably quite hard to parse. DH has made it clear he understood she was asking them to go find stuff if there wasn’t enough in evidence which is clearly batshit crazy and, I’m assuming, a lot of the C’s refusals for I/x involved numerous documents and demands that meant DH did a really good job at remaining focussed on the job at hand in amongst all that.

its really up to SM to explain why earlier drafts weren’t part of the review and I’m sure there will be a reason why.

what is hard to remember in the context of HH questions and only slightly implied by DH is there was a lot of overreaching demands, claims end batshit craziness generally obfuscating the ability to take a rationale line. He seems to have die that well.

i think a poster e@flier made the point that training around GRA would have likely been very biased and that might have suited C but the rationale line and its relationship to law was hard to muster because of too much training. He is kept up to date, it’s not his professional role, he doesn’t need to engage with the issues only that if SEEN is WORIADS then they can have lanyards if others have lanyards. This has all come about because of the transflagging of lanyards in the first place. There is no rationale argument that things that are not WORIADS might also get lanyards. But imagine DEFRA trying to tell a:gender all lanyard branding needs to go? I mean they’ll be doing that now bcos they have an ET to back it up but in the throes? Back then? There would have been a riot.

As far as this woman is concerned that's my normal garb. I don't possess a dress or skirt of any kind and haven't for many years.

It is possible SM sought legal advice.

One of the benefits of being in the CS is most departments have at least one lawyer or they can use the lawyers in GLD (GMT LegalDept) if they need to confirm legal position.

Legal advice would be legally privileged so not disclosed.

I'm about to make some very bitchy remarks - trigger warning.

It was off white/cream coloured suit. The jacket had a sort of scoop neck, with then rounded labels, little patch pockets, nipped in waist. It did not strike me as expensive (even ugly clothes can look expensive). It was not made for her, I'm not saying it came from Primark but possibly Next or M&S. (Other retailers are available). At a push Hobbs. It might have been an old favourite but it was not current season (I'm not sure when it may have been current season).

My point is that she's actually married to a peer, is a working barrister KC. She was not dressed or groomed to a high standard but vanity oozed from every pore. Many women barrister adopt a sort of uniform of black trouser suit and comfortable shoes - it's a neutral presentation, implication that my case and my client are the most important thing.

Was her presentation deliberate? Hard to see what that would achieve. Any way, I've had a hard day at the actual paid work and am just trying to catch up here.

I can't remember the timelines but would this fit with the meeting that 'sealed it' for ED when they were told 'Look, you're making this very difficult, we've had legal advice and the lawyers have told us this is fine' .

What strikes me about all this, but clearly hasn't struck ST on ED is, if they win, all staff networks based of protected characteristic will be vulnerable to being shut shown.

I could find things then offend me about A Gender and the faith networks, though to be fair to the latter they dont try to enforce beliefs on others.

Dave Tennant wanted Kemi Badenoch to not exist any more. Not awful.

Wims wanting to uphold women's rights and keep males out of female spaces somehow equals wanting these males to not exist. Awful.

Make it make sense!

Oh god, I'd forgotten about JR on that horse 😆

Have I understood correctly that DH presented no notes for the bundle, and maybe didn't make any? If so that suggests to me he read through reams of nonsense just mentally discounting paragraph after paragraph as irrelevant or unreasonable and was able to just summarise his response.
HH made a lot of him not responding to every qualm, but given the lack of substance evident to any outsider I would think he didn't see it warranted a reply. He can't change the outcome and do whatever ST says just because it might impact on ST's mental health if he doesn't.

Fuck me this is total drivel. Utter utter pish.

To use up days and days of court time to tell a grown adult that you cannot compel other people to believe that it is possible to change sex and you cannot suppress another group of people from organizing around that protected characteristic in the work place.

If you choose to live your life propped up by magical thinking then you have to be prepared for others not to believe in the spell.

It just feels like we have to wade through this shit to the nth degree to just get to a place of basic common sense.

Saying that sex is binary just cannot be viewed as an attack on someone's personhood.

It could do.

I suspect legal advice has been sought from quite early on.

Oh the minute they saw ST coming they will have lawyered up. He's got narcissistic trouble written all over him. As does ED. Nothing will have been done without legal checking.

Apart from highlighting the appalling sexism of Genderism, I think this tribunal is also highlighting the appalling student union-style politics that goes on in the civil service. As a taxpayer/citizen, I am deeply unhappy at all these affinity networks taking time and effort away from the main task of the civil service: making sure that the country is properly governed. Apart from causing division at work, these networks seem to allow busybody individuals too much latitude to police their colleagues for wrongthink. It's the job of HR to ensure that employees are treated in line with employment law - let's go back to HR doing their actual jobs.

In Northern Ireland, workplaces have a policy of no flags or emblems because carrying politics into a workplace can be destructive and divisive. I would like to see that policy adopted widely in the UK civil service and businesses in general. Nobody gets anything but the company lanyard and nobody wears brooches/flags/pins/political t-shirts - keep it all apolitical. Affinity networks were an experiment and have had their time and, to sound like an old fart, in the face of low productivity in the UK and growing public dissatisfaction with public sector output, let's just get back to doing our bloody jobs rather than attending endless EDI talks/training and trying to get other people fired because you dislike their political views.

To be honest, I forgot completely that ST claims to be a woman! In my mind (I've just been reading these threads), ST is just an overbearing, pushy jobsworth, like many I have worked with before, and that's all that comes across in everything he says (or what TT reports). A grievance addict, and ED is his pusher. Or the other way round, either works.

Oh I think ED is in charge here and ST is her implement/patsy.

Exactly. And when you realise that if, say 20 years ago, women had started demanding that everyone treat them as biological men, how far that would have gone, and how many people would have gone along with it, then you see it for what it is. It would have been three women, somebody's nice grandad and a dog, round a kitchen table, plotting world domination. Not at work, not in the Civil Service, not in the NHS, not in schools, without Stonewall and no children would have been indulged/harmed. And everyone who believed in this new ideology would have to have paid for everything themselves and would never have been able to bring it all into work. And no one else would ever have been forced to go along with it.

Fully agree. As is being repeatedly showcased in the courts, too many poorly managed affinity networks enable both the bullies and those adults without the interpersonal skills to manage peer relationships in the workplace.

It's time that the whole "bring your whole self to work' is dumped in favour of "bring your competent, professional, working self to work and leave your personal / political interests at home".

Oh I think ED is in charge here and ST is her implement/patsy.

I think the unseen hand of Cleo Lunt may also be at work. They/thems is a litigation lawyer and strikes me as much more of a cool strategist than little ole ED who can't hold a single thought or feeling without blurting it out all over everybody.

Yes, when we have it.

I'm catching up. But I am also not very impressed. He's been with DEFRA for 30 years, yet has only done i or 2 i/x or reviews. So alhough he might be senior he is very inexperienced at this. He seemed to do little to no real prep apart from reading a list of policies. He didnt even do a check on documents. And these events are a max of 3 years ago, so the cannot recalls are irritating. I think he thought this would go away with little effort required from him.I hope he is better at his day job.

Yes, when we have it will post it.

Agreed - every time these posts are quoted it adds to the derail. I believe some of these posters have been explained to numerous times and they deliberately come back and pretend to think GC is something it's not.

Would love it if this thread focused on the actual tribunal.

Speaking of which, it is interesting that SM's decision changed between draft and final, but I think having witnesses out of order has made it seem a little odd, but assume it will be addressed when SM is questioned.

More likely that as a senior CS he has been around the block a bit and wants as little paper trail as possible. So he reviewed the reams of battshittery, took some notes with a pencil and a piece of paper. Wrote his reply and consigned the notes to the round filing cabinet under his desk.

ED playing silly bugger language games in court. I do wonder what the judge makes of that. Seemed like she was trying to get the entirety of gender ideology labelled as 'inclusive feminism', which is quite the twist. And even trying to push for that it's offensive to not put a space in 'trans woman' in order to indicate that trans is an adjective, presumably even if you hold the WORIADS GC view that transwomen are not women.

I hereby declare that anyone who doesn't describe their views as 'thirdfiddle is right' is offensive and bigoted and shouldn't be allowed to mention this in the workplace.

I do hope NC will point out some of the deliberate language sleight of hand in her summing up.