Tempest v Rural Payments Agency Tribunal Thread 8

[myladydisdainisyetliving]

Previous thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5551959-tempest-v-rural-payments-agency-tribunal-thread-7

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.

Please 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.

It’s harassment by process. Why is this not a disciplinary?

For obvious reasons it would be a terrible policy if raising a grievance or instituting legal action was subject to any kind of penalty.

Just caught up on today. Amazing fortitude from CA - that can't have been easy. I also feel for Elspeth who has been through the wringer for years at the hands of this narcissistic man. Have done some gardening to show support.🌷

Yes agreed. Unless it could be proved to be malicious. In this case ST probably genuinely believes it all

Wow.

Every one of these insane tribunals has its golden moment! A star witness. CA is epic.

Name change for our glorious manly Tinkerbell.

I do deny your existence as a woman.

You’re a man who looks like a man in inappropriate dresses.

No matter what you do to yourself - you’re a heterosexual man with AGP.

I may well be a Rural Payments Agency civil service employee.

I may well be a member of SEEN.

You are a grifter bringing an unwillable case funded either by idiot lawyers who want to open a new work stream or a fantasist backer who will be out of pocket and red in the face when the dust settles.

Please do feel free to report me to your manager and heck put in a request to Mumsnet for my details. You can harass a woman or two - but know that thousands of women pity you and you’ve exposed yourself, Emma Dunn and your other cronies as workshy delusional fantasists focused on anything other than working and serving the public.

People have the measure of you, and it’s unpleasant.

Just caught up. That CS subreddit!

These people are supposed to be running the country on a day to day level. They all come across as so silly, abusive and unserious. Obviously Reddit is where they congregate to whine about exclusionary staff networks. Doing a bit of digging, it seems many of the recent problems with CS staff networks aren’t to do with SEEN, but Israel/Palestine.

@Ereshkigalangcleg I had idly wondered this week how an e-mail sign-off with either of those flags might have gone down...

Are they talking about this case? I would look, but it will depress me too much. I have to put up with enough of this shit at work 😩

Apparently they've just arrested a 26 yo man.

That poor woman. I don't share her politics but she was 78 years old! I hope she didn't suffer. I hope it was quick.

fanOfBen · Today 14:11

NC: Nothing much from me - allow an hour perhaps?

J: then re-exam. So we are into day 2 here.

J: How long for Ms Adair?

HH: An hour?

That's going to be a Windows hour, isn't it? 3 days, more like.

Reflecting back I think ST may have instructed HH to go to every post where ST thinks it should have been removed and believes they constituted harassment. HH has to do as instructed and that maybe why she struggled.

I really feel for CA having this hanging over her until December - she is however a really good witness. As a pp pointed out CA has made it clear being GC is not anti trans it’s pro biological sex.

Whilst NC has had the SS of Doom since the first week this break does give her or CE to do a proper interrogation and I expect hone in on posts that are vile to EDW and SEEN.

I don't mean to be disloyal, but on how many occasions that we know of has NC cross-examined a witness in an hour, too?

It’s a fair point as you don’t know how a witness will respond.

And this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/07/civil-servants-hold-nonsense-guilt-of-being-british-seminar/

Sorry can't archive.

I've read half of Invisible Women before I gave up because I was ranting so much, not because of Caroline but because it was so enraging how invisible women are.

I don't remember it mentioning women of colour or non-binary women because it was about women and nobody thinks they aren't women.

It's also very much about the biological reality of being a woman - for example the car crash dummies chapter which explains women are more likely to die in a car crash as the test dummies are all based on an average male body, not an average female body.

No wonder ST found the book transphobic as he gets upset if we just have one thing for ourselves, even just one lone book about how we are ignored.

Does anyone else suspect that this inevitable delay ( following on from HH ‘s long drawn out repetitive interrogation) is some what intentional? A time for reflection perhaps for all interested parties and maybe an opportunity to spare some individuals by removing them from the case and interrogation later in the year. All the legal parties were keen to delay only CA wanted to continue and just get it over with and you can hardly blame her after the last two days. There seems to be a much stronger case in part against the organisation’s handling of issues and not named individuals.

Not at the moment but it might be worth keeping an eye on. They were whining generally about SEEN and its members and attacking anyone who said its right to exist was in keeping with the law (in the same way as CS and NB saw it) with their own comedy takes on Forstater.

It’s simply that equating women with being female is considered transphobia by these people. It’s exclusionary of men who call themselves women and women who don’t think of themselves as women by default. The world revolves around them and their identity so no other perspective can or should be considered, not only by them but by anyone at all.

You can ask the court to declare someone a vexatious litigant; then they need permission of the court to make a claim. But it's a stunningly high bar.

Again I think this is appropriate: "proving a case to be malicious" is too close to fighting the same case in reverse, putting the claimant in the seat of a defendant. Which well-resourced company fighting a discrimination suit from a low-paid employee would pass up the opportunity to try to turn the tables either in practice, or simply as a threat to cut off the action in the first place? The goal of the ET is to be accessible to litigants in person. I accept that we've see a range of very expensive highly lawyered cases but that's most unusual.

Overall I don't think the idea of seeking to punishing people for malicious court actions is a good one.

I've read half of Invisible Women before I gave up because I was ranting so much, not because of Caroline but because it was so enraging how invisible women are.

I got it the day it was published. On the day it came out in paperback I bought six more copies and I contributed to the campaign to send every MP a copy.

It's one of the most important books to be written in the 21st century. As I recall, it doesn't talk about non-binary women or transmen or white women or women of colour, it talks about the reality of our sex. How that is ignored, how males are assumed to be default humans, how that has real world implications for lives.

Anyone who objects to that is a misogynist, an asshole or both.

In Sara Morrison’s case they rattled through a few minor characters in mere hours. Charlotte was a beauty in how easily and briefly she dispatched with IRA bully McKeown. Killing people is ok but it’s beyond the law to say women should have rape crisis facilities not centered around men with a fetish.

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that HH knows Elspeth's testimony will blow their case out of the water and was trying to manipulate a break in the proceedings to lessen the impact.

It’s simply that equating women with being female is considered transphobia by these people.

yet when they want to 'be women' many male people assume characteristics of the female body. make it make sense!
If someone genuinely thought that a woman is 'a male or female person who....[has xyz feelings/soul/brain/personality]' then being seen as male or female would be utterly irrelevant.

Well quite. But expecting their logic to be in any way consistent is denying their existence, so people don’t.