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This feels like a courageous decision by John Swinney – politicalbetting.com

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  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    Come on Foxy, that’s hearsay. Todays witness has a clear dislike of Peggie. Peggie will be back to testify again this week to rebu some of the shit flung at her.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    You just said negotiaton with Westminster was the only legitimate approach.

    Now you're saying this. That negotiaton is too uppity.

    You're a joke on this topic.
    I didn’t - I said that the radical wing of the SNP doesn’t like the negotiation strategy.

    Fundamentally a further referendum is in Westminster’s gift. That’s it. The SNP can beg and plead and cajole. But it doesn’t have anything to give in return. So they need to convinced Westminster that there should be a regular cadence of referenda to maintain democratic legitimacy for the union.

    But saying “you must give us a referendum or else” just elicits the response “whatever”.

    (I may be a joke in your eyes, but I’ve also been correct so far)
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,601
    Geoff Boycott is right as usual.

    "Sir Geoffrey Boycott
    Gobby England are in the wrong, no one could have dragged me off on 89
    Draw with India only highlighted weaknesses in hosts’ attack and there is now a risk of over-bowling Jofra Archer" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2025/07/28/geoffrey-boycott-england-india-row-stokes-handshake-test
  • theProletheProle Posts: 1,425
    edited July 28
    Andy_JS said:

    eek said:

    So from April 2028 if you earn over £20,000 a year from self employment you will need to report your income to HMRC every 3 months.

    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tax-change-vulnerable-people-work-savings-050034681.html

    Hmm I wonder when they will announce that the VAT threshold is reduced to £20,000....

    What's the thinking behind this? Seems like over-the-top bureaucracy to me.
    It's part of "making tax digital", which could be better described as "making accounting software companies riches".

    They are trying to make it impossible to use paper records or homebrew excel sheets to do simple book-keeping and to instead force everyone onto Xero and Quickbooks. I think it's because they think everyone self employed is on the fiddle* and doing this makes being on the fiddle harder.

    *they mostly are, but it usually involves bundles of twenty quid notes rather than anything which ever appears anywhere in the books. The best cure would be to reduce tax rates from the current insane levels so that being paid cash doesn't equate to taking home twice as much in your pocket as much as invoicing the same amount.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379
    ...
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Me?

    Oh I'm just eating the world's best salad nicoise (Ortiz jarred tuna!) off a 19th century Japanese imari plate while drinking an OBSCENELY overaged white Burgundy: Saint Aubin, Domaine du Primont, Premier Cru, 2012, which is now so old it tastes like a vintage Sauternes that did heroin and somehow survived to live in Hyeres in a small chalet decorated with Django Reinhardt vinyl album covers

    Yawn.
    So you don't want to know what I had for my tea either then?
    Ah yes, well that's different. Bit less poncey.

    Crispy pancakes and chips?
    God no. I may not be fine dining like our restaurant critic, but I am not an animal you know.
    Well that was my 'tea' for years as a kid. My mum wasn't big on cooking.
    I had a friend who's family were very space age, they had a Citroen GS for goodness sake! When I had tea at his house it was all Birds Eye fish fingers, Birds Eye beefburgers and Findus crispy pancakes. It was very exciting.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,358

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    Come on Foxy, that’s hearsay. Todays witness has a clear dislike of Peggie. Peggie will be back to testify again this week to rebu some of the shit flung at her.
    Hearsay that is in accord with the WhatsApp "jokes".

    And if work colleagues dislike Peggie, doesn't that fit with what I suggested earlier, that things had been building for some time before a flashpoint was reached, "impeccable 30 year record" or not?

  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 30,655

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    You just said negotiaton with Westminster was the only legitimate approach.

    Now you're saying this. That negotiaton is too uppity.

    You're a joke on this topic.
    I didn’t - I said that the radical wing of the SNP doesn’t like the negotiation strategy.

    Fundamentally a further referendum is in Westminster’s gift. That’s it. The SNP can beg and plead and cajole. But it doesn’t have anything to give in return. So they need to convinced Westminster that there should be a regular cadence of referenda to maintain democratic legitimacy for the union.

    But saying “you must give us a referendum or else” just elicits the response “whatever”.

    (I may be a joke in your eyes, but I’ve also been correct so far)
    The absurdity of Swinney's position is that in the 2021 election there was an arguable majority of votes in support of independence positions. He's now saying that such majorities do not count. Vote Alba? You're a Unionist.

    Why he is doing this is simple - he doesn't want independence. The frootloop running Wings is right in his bitter criticism of the SNP because they have clearly given up on independence.

    What really really makes me laugh is the coming campaign. "Unless you vote for an SNP majority you won't get independence". And is that likely? No. And yet every problem created by the English (hi) such as not being able to see an NHS Dentist will be offered as curable with independence.

    So for all the angry people fed up with the state of the country? Vote SNP and it won't get better.

    Madness.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,601
    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,601
    theProle said:

    Andy_JS said:

    eek said:

    So from April 2028 if you earn over £20,000 a year from self employment you will need to report your income to HMRC every 3 months.

    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tax-change-vulnerable-people-work-savings-050034681.html

    Hmm I wonder when they will announce that the VAT threshold is reduced to £20,000....

    What's the thinking behind this? Seems like over-the-top bureaucracy to me.
    It's part of "making tax digital", which could be better described as "making accounting software companies riches".

    They are trying to make it impossible to use paper records or homebrew excel sheets to do simple book-keeping and to instead force everyone onto Xero and Quickbooks. I think it's because they think everyone self employed is on the fiddle* and doing this makes being on the fiddle harder.

    *they mostly are, but it usually involves bundles of twenty quid notes rather than anything which ever appears anywhere in the books. The best cure would be to reduce tax rates from the current insane levels so that being paid cash doesn't equate to taking home twice as much in your pocket as much as invoicing the same amount.
    Making everything digital will probably make things less secure and less effective. We see that again and again.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379
    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    Come on Foxy, that’s hearsay. Todays witness has a clear dislike of Peggie. Peggie will be back to testify again this week to rebu some of the shit flung at her.
    Hearsay that is in accord with the WhatsApp "jokes".

    And if work colleagues dislike Peggie, doesn't that fit with what I suggested earlier, that things had been building for some time before a flashpoint was reached, "impeccable 30 year record" or not?

    So you’re choosing the ‘no smoke without fire approach’? I think she is going to win, I think NHS Fife has some serious issues and the sooner we get a workable solution that balances the rights of trans women with actual women then the world might be a better place. We have gone down a rabbit hole with things such as self identification etc. Whether you believe trans are mentally unwell, or genuinely born in the wrong body, they are all human beings with feelings etc. But so is Sandie Peggie and she has and had the right to a single sex changing room.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Andy_JS said:

    Geoff Boycott is right as usual.

    "Sir Geoffrey Boycott
    Gobby England are in the wrong, no one could have dragged me off on 89
    Draw with India only highlighted weaknesses in hosts’ attack and there is now a risk of over-bowling Jofra Archer" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2025/07/28/geoffrey-boycott-england-india-row-stokes-handshake-test

    In the context of a three day turnaround I think I would have kept my opponents out there till the close. But it also wasn’t quite cricket, either.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379
    Earlier on I gave the big televised Trump v Starmer fight to Trump. American lefties are calling it for Starmer.

    https://youtu.be/1OvD88zugD4?si=dGcvcOv_AvUdnkHM
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 15,355
    Zarah Sultana interview, her first since launching the new party: https://youtu.be/VDC8lNkFfTQ

    She supports the WASPI women. 🤯
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379

    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I note the virtually unanimous condemnation of the OSA on here, and indeed have many reservations myself. However, in all the commentary I've yet to read of any practical solutions to the problem of online harm - unless, of course, one thinks there isn't a problem.

    To give just one example. It's very easy for kids to access really hard-core pornography online (it's not about 'naked ladies and boobies', as some have fatuously claimed). And if you think, as I do, that such material can damage some kids' perception of women and sex, and also contributes to an incel culture that demeans women and is a potential danger to them, it might be a good idea to make such access harder. But how? I don't believe for a minute that 'parents' is the answer.
    It's also worth remembering that some of the impetus for the OSA came from the Molly Russell case. Are we okay with kids like her being able to access so much stuff about suicide so easily?

    Yes; but does it achieve its goal?

    And unless you think the goal is to enrich the owners of VPN services, then I suspect it doesn't

    Those people who wish to see porn (of any kind) or to find information about suicide, will simply avoid the issue by using VPNs, or will use sites that are criminal and which don't care about UK regulation.

    What exactly has been gained by the regulation other than adding a whole bunch of hoops, that otherwise law-abiding people have to jump through?
    The cynic within me wonders if the plan is actually to ban VPNs (governments never like the population using strong encryption very much) and the whole point of the OSA is to provide a justification for banning VPNs - "won't somebody think of the children".

    The only flaw in this argument is that it ascribes a level of devious cunning to Tory ministers usually considered unable to find their way out of a wet paper bag unaided. But possibly their civil service mandarins were the ones playing the long(er) game.
    And banning VPNs would go a long way to end working from home
    How do we watch BBC iPlayer from far flung lands?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,998
    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    Nah, the bloke needed calling out. Says it all that the pro-men's lot on here are clutching at anything that can be held against the woman.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,358

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    Come on Foxy, that’s hearsay. Todays witness has a clear dislike of Peggie. Peggie will be back to testify again this week to rebu some of the shit flung at her.
    Hearsay that is in accord with the WhatsApp "jokes".

    And if work colleagues dislike Peggie, doesn't that fit with what I suggested earlier, that things had been building for some time before a flashpoint was reached, "impeccable 30 year record" or not?

    So you’re choosing the ‘no smoke without fire approach’? I think she is going to win, I think NHS Fife has some serious issues and the sooner we get a workable solution that balances the rights of trans women with actual women then the world might be a better place. We have gone down a rabbit hole with things such as self identification etc. Whether you believe trans are mentally unwell, or genuinely born in the wrong body, they are all human beings with feelings etc. But so is Sandie Peggie and she has and had the right to a single sex changing room.
    I have never denied that Peggie is entitled to a single sex changing area, even if she is an islamophobic bigot.

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,022
    Breaking news: Donald Trump’s administration has denied permission for Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te to stop in New York en route to Central America, after China raised objections with Washington about the visit

    https://on.ft.com/44RWYpm
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,601

    Zarah Sultana interview, her first since launching the new party: https://youtu.be/VDC8lNkFfTQ

    She supports the WASPI women. 🤯

    She'll probably lose her seat if she stands in Coventry again. A better idea might be to stand against Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 67,076

    ...

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Me?

    Oh I'm just eating the world's best salad nicoise (Ortiz jarred tuna!) off a 19th century Japanese imari plate while drinking an OBSCENELY overaged white Burgundy: Saint Aubin, Domaine du Primont, Premier Cru, 2012, which is now so old it tastes like a vintage Sauternes that did heroin and somehow survived to live in Hyeres in a small chalet decorated with Django Reinhardt vinyl album covers

    Yawn.
    So you don't want to know what I had for my tea either then?
    Ah yes, well that's different. Bit less poncey.

    Crispy pancakes and chips?
    God no. I may not be fine dining like our restaurant critic, but I am not an animal you know.
    Well that was my 'tea' for years as a kid. My mum wasn't big on cooking.
    I had a friend who's family were very space age, they had a Citroen GS for goodness sake! When I had tea at his house it was all Birds Eye fish fingers, Birds Eye beefburgers and Findus crispy pancakes. It was very exciting.
    Findus crispy pancakes were a real treat in our house. As were Vesta curries with those little crispy bits. My mum went down hard on cooking properly from fresh and healthy ingredients etc etc. So eating processed food was an exciting alternative evening!
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,358

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379

    Zarah Sultana interview, her first since launching the new party: https://youtu.be/VDC8lNkFfTQ

    She supports the WASPI women. 🤯

    Free money for everyone is a great vote winner for an infinity opposition.

    When she decimates Labour and delivers a Reform government I don't believe the Waspi Women will be at the front of Sir Nigel's queue.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,756
    edited July 28

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,358

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379

    ...

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Me?

    Oh I'm just eating the world's best salad nicoise (Ortiz jarred tuna!) off a 19th century Japanese imari plate while drinking an OBSCENELY overaged white Burgundy: Saint Aubin, Domaine du Primont, Premier Cru, 2012, which is now so old it tastes like a vintage Sauternes that did heroin and somehow survived to live in Hyeres in a small chalet decorated with Django Reinhardt vinyl album covers

    Yawn.
    So you don't want to know what I had for my tea either then?
    Ah yes, well that's different. Bit less poncey.

    Crispy pancakes and chips?
    God no. I may not be fine dining like our restaurant critic, but I am not an animal you know.
    Well that was my 'tea' for years as a kid. My mum wasn't big on cooking.
    I had a friend who's family were very space age, they had a Citroen GS for goodness sake! When I had tea at his house it was all Birds Eye fish fingers, Birds Eye beefburgers and Findus crispy pancakes. It was very exciting.
    Findus crispy pancakes were a real treat in our house. As were Vesta curries with those little crispy bits. My mum went down hard on cooking properly from fresh and healthy ingredients etc etc. So eating processed food was an exciting alternative evening!
    So did my mum but she was no Delia Smith.

    Vesta chicken curry was food from the Gods.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379

    Breaking news: Donald Trump’s administration has denied permission for Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te to stop in New York en route to Central America, after China raised objections with Washington about the visit

    https://on.ft.com/44RWYpm

    TACO
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,756
    NB. My understanding of the current state of the law is that the Equality Act provisions simultaneously protect both natal women & trans women from bullying and harassment at work. If this nurse made derogatory remarks about a trans woman at work then that can be construed as creating a hostile environment & the trust would have been within their rights to sack her on those grounds.

    If she had limited her complaints to the sharing of single sex spaces (which recent supreme court rulings have opined on, as we all know) then she’d be on much stronger ground.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Phil said:

    NB. My understanding of the current state of the law is that the Equality Act provisions simultaneously protect both natal women & trans women from bullying and harassment at work. If this nurse made derogatory remarks about a trans woman at work then that can be construed as creating a hostile environment & the trust would have been within their rights to sack her on those grounds.

    If she had limited her complaints to the sharing of single sex spaces (which recent supreme court rulings have opined on, as we all know) then she’d be on much stronger ground.

    And again - she has been cleared by NHS Fife. The current case is HER claim against the employer.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,287
    Andy_JS said:

    eek said:

    So from April 2028 if you earn over £20,000 a year from self employment you will need to report your income to HMRC every 3 months.

    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tax-change-vulnerable-people-work-savings-050034681.html

    Hmm I wonder when they will announce that the VAT threshold is reduced to £20,000....

    What's the thinking behind this? Seems like over-the-top bureaucracy to me.
    It's been on the agenda since the March 2015 Budget (so the coalition) and was originally meant to be in place by 2020;

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Tax_Digital

    Sometimes, the gap between a political announcement and its governmental practical implications is scary.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,728
    edited July 28

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
    Irrelevent to the point, but are group chats "Social Media"? How is it different from a chat in a coffee shop, other than being automatically recorded...?
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,756

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,379
    Trump "I never had the privilege of attending Epstein Island".
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    edited July 28
    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
    Irrelevent to the point, but are group chats "Social Media"? How is it different from a chat in a coffee shop, other than being automatically recorded...
    Well see police officers and misconduct in public office. I personally think it shouldn’t be, but it’s crept in. It’s grey. My good friend and colleague would often share pretty crude stuff on WhatsApp. Stuff that I think could get someone into trouble in the wrong circs. Yet he would argue we were doing it as friends.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,358
    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
    Irrelevent to the point, but are group chats "Social Media"? How is it different from a chat in a coffee shop, other than being automatically recorded...?
    Yes,

    While texts, WhatsApp and emails appear ephemeral they have a permenancy far beyond casual conversation or even handwritten notes.

    I thought everyone knew this by now?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    I can only assume you have not been following the case, from what you are posting. There is no suggestion that Peggie is in the habit of doing those things. A few isolated jokes on years of social media? And a witness who admits to ‘hating’ Peggie throwing out accusations that Peggie has not yet had a chance to rebut. A witness who has admitted breaching patient confidentiality in the same socials. It’s desperate stuff.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 25,362

    ...Vesta chicken curry was food from the Gods...

    It had peas! And proper gravy! And Vesta Beef Curry had fruit (raisins/sultanas!) in it! Very fond memories!

  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,728
    Foxy said:

    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
    Irrelevent to the point, but are group chats "Social Media"? How is it different from a chat in a coffee shop, other than being automatically recorded...?
    Yes,

    While texts, WhatsApp and emails appear ephemeral they have a permenancy far beyond casual conversation or even handwritten notes.

    I thought everyone knew this by now?
    Some of us are self employed and haven't done any corporate training sessions!
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    carnforth said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    Well in this case she has already been found to have no case to answer. She is going after her employers for what they did to her.
    Did the "no case to answer" know about these social media postings?
    Well as the NHS Fife lot have brought them up, I’d wager the answer is yes.
    Would you or I expect to get off scot free if our employers found us making such remarks to other members of staff on social media?
    Depends of what the investigation was about. It’s not about her views, it’s about the incident in the CR and whether what she did crossed a line. Ruling is not.

    Incidentally the witness today has admitted breaking patient confidentiality in those same social media posts. Pick the bones out of that.
    Irrelevent to the point, but are group chats "Social Media"? How is it different from a chat in a coffee shop, other than being automatically recorded...?
    Yes,

    While texts, WhatsApp and emails appear ephemeral they have a permenancy far beyond casual conversation or even handwritten notes.

    I thought everyone knew this by now?
    Some of us are self employed and haven't done any corporate training sessions!
    Outrageous! If you are not careful you may find yourself going after your employer for something you should have been gained about… And you will win (and lose at the same time)
  • nunu2nunu2 Posts: 1,538
    2 killed in London, hasn't even made the main BBC News headlines

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487
    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    How utterly outrageous, clearly mentally disturbed.

    What kind of monster would waste good bacon like that?
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,756
    edited July 28
    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    NB. Obviously I don’t know what’s in Sandie Peggie’s heart & neither would her NHS Trust: As I understand the law, the Trust could have legally sacked her for making those remarks / posts & creating a hostile environment for other employees, regardless of her personal beliefs.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    NB. Obviously I don’t know what’s in Sandie Peggie’s heart & neither would her NHS Trust: I’m saying that, as I understand the law, the Trust could have legally sacked her for making those remarks / posts & creating a hostile environment for other employees.
    But she hasnt done that!
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
  • eekeek Posts: 30,802
    edited July 28
    nunu2 said:

    2 killed in London, hasn't even made the main BBC News headlines

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

    You mean https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39dlwdev08o which seems to be connected to a particular business - with the culprit in hospital
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 1,113
    viewcode said:

    ...Vesta chicken curry was food from the Gods...

    It had peas! And proper gravy! And Vesta Beef Curry had fruit (raisins/sultanas!) in it! Very fond memories!

    My favourite Vesta was the Paella. Back when I was young and my parents didn't travel abroad I used to eat it and dream I was in Spain. They still sell them in Poundstretcher and I got heavily into them again during lockdown. That and paste sandwiches and Spam with Heinz sandwich spread
  • LeonLeon Posts: 63,574
    Clarkson’s Farm season 2 is a masterpiece

    How does he do it? A genius of tv

    Weirdly I was married to the stepdaughter of his longterm producer. I guess she must take some major credit, even if she is REDACTED REDACTED
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 3,432
    Off topic: A somewhat belated congratulations to the Lionesses.

    Who I admit I like partly because of the team name.

    Good team names are much harder to find for women's teams than men's teams. Compare, for example, team names for the NBA:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Association#Teams

    With those from the WNBA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_National_Basketball_Association#Teams
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,972
    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,442
    edited July 28

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    You just said negotiaton with Westminster was the only legitimate approach.

    Now you're saying this. That negotiaton is too uppity.

    You're a joke on this topic.
    I didn’t - I said that the radical wing of the SNP doesn’t like the negotiation strategy.

    Fundamentally a further referendum is in Westminster’s gift. That’s it. The SNP can beg and plead and cajole. But it doesn’t have anything to give in return. So they need to convinced Westminster that there should be a regular cadence of referenda to maintain democratic legitimacy for the union.

    But saying “you must give us a referendum or else” just elicits the response “whatever”.

    (I may be a joke in your eyes, but I’ve also been correct so far)
    Specifically on this topic. Not meant as a general insult.

    But cmon you posted that negotiation is the only legitimate approach then in your very next post that they can't negotiate because they have nothing to offer!

    As for you being correct that Westminster can and will block regardless, well yes. I'm correct too on that. It was my first point made on the thread.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    Perhaps I misunderstood? You suggested an Indy ref every 5 years.

    The uncertainty about whether Scotland would be part of the uk would make it uninvestable from a long term business perspective
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    You just said negotiaton with Westminster was the only legitimate approach.

    Now you're saying this. That negotiaton is too uppity.

    You're a joke on this topic.
    I didn’t - I said that the radical wing of the SNP doesn’t like the negotiation strategy.

    Fundamentally a further referendum is in Westminster’s gift. That’s it. The SNP can beg and plead and cajole. But it doesn’t have anything to give in return. So they need to convinced Westminster that there should be a regular cadence of referenda to maintain democratic legitimacy for the union.

    But saying “you must give us a referendum or else” just elicits the response “whatever”.

    (I may be a joke in your eyes, but I’ve also been correct so far)
    Specifically on this topic. Not meant as a general insult.

    But cmon you posted that negotiation is the only legitimate approach then in your very next post that they can't negotiate because they have nothing to offer!

    As for you being correct that Westminster can and will block regardless, well yes. I'm correct too on that. It was my first point made on the thread.
    I don’t believe I did, at least not in this conversation. If I did it was sloppy wording - a discussion with Westminster is the only path forward. (I’m trying to avoid saying “Westminster has all the cards”)
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 25,362
    The trailer for Avatar 3 is out. James Cameron's next billion dollars awaits

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb_fFj_0rq8
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    Perhaps I misunderstood? You suggested an Indy ref every 5 years.

    The uncertainty about whether Scotland would be part of the uk would make it uninvestable from a long term business perspective
    I think you missed the most important words which were if that's what the electorate vote for. I suggested no more than one per Parliament, and only if the electorate vote for it.

    Is it a good idea to have them frequently? No.

    Are people entitled to vote for bad ideas? Yes.

    We should respect what the people vote for, however they vote. Even if it goes against what you like, or what was determined in earlier Parliaments, since no Parliament can bind its successors.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    edited July 28
    Ratters said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I note the virtually unanimous condemnation of the OSA on here, and indeed have many reservations myself. However, in all the commentary I've yet to read of any practical solutions to the problem of online harm - unless, of course, one thinks there isn't a problem.

    To give just one example. It's very easy for kids to access really hard-core pornography online (it's not about 'naked ladies and boobies', as some have fatuously claimed). And if you think, as I do, that such material can damage some kids' perception of women and sex, and also contributes to an incel culture that demeans women and is a potential danger to them, it might be a good idea to make such access harder. But how? I don't believe for a minute that 'parents' is the answer.
    It's also worth remembering that some of the impetus for the OSA came from the Molly Russell case. Are we okay with kids like her being able to access so much stuff about suicide so easily?

    Yes; but does it achieve its goal?

    And unless you think the goal is to enrich the owners of VPN services, then I suspect it doesn't

    Those people who wish to see porn (of any kind) or to find information about suicide, will simply avoid the issue by using VPNs, or will use sites that are criminal and which don't care about UK regulation.

    What exactly has been gained by the regulation other than adding a whole bunch of hoops, that otherwise law-abiding people have to jump through?
    Exactly.

    It's creating new regulatory burden on websites that has no end impact on end users other than requiring them to click a couple of extra buttons before accessing porn, or whatever else.

    Ironically, teenagers and others this is aiming to protect are the least likely to be put off by VPNs to see what they want. They are the most resourceful.

    Essentially the legislation's main impact on porn usage will be to reduce the number of 70+ year olds who access porn because they don't want to enter their credit card details.
    Wasn't there polling which showed essentially that most people don't think the legislation will work but support it anyway, presumably on a vibes basis?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,009
    edited July 28
    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,465

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    Perhaps I misunderstood? You suggested an Indy ref every 5 years.

    The uncertainty about whether Scotland would be part of the uk would make it uninvestable from a long term business perspective
    I think you missed the most important words which were if that's what the electorate vote for. I suggested no more than one per Parliament, and only if the electorate vote for it.

    Is it a good idea to have them frequently? No.

    Are people entitled to vote for bad ideas? Yes.

    We should respect what the people vote for, however they vote. Even if it goes against what you like, or what was determined in earlier Parliaments, since no Parliament can bind its successors.
    Sure. They can have a vote every time the Westminster parliament votes for it. Of course they can. My point was more setting a policy of what is reasonable (given that the snp is unlikely to ever have a majority at Westminster)
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    edited July 28
    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    I wasn't aware there were no witnesses, it sounds like it should have been deemed unfortunately impossible to determine who was telling the truth - without past actions recorded even if you knew one or both were shits in some personal capacity you couldn't be confident what had happened between them unless one tripped themselves up in their explanation unintentionally and in part proved the others' accusation.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.
    I was hoping things would hold out for me for another 20 years at least, but I'm not confident of that. A lot of complacency still about.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487
    kyf_100 said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
    Quite amusing, given the tendency in the not-so-distant past to see advice lifted almost word for word from Stonewall, which you never once objected to.

    Sex does matter, its a protected characteristic distinct from identity and so those who wish to eradicate sex from the law have lost at the Supreme Court and may object to single sex spaces existing where there are legitimate reasons for them to do so such as in sport, or changing rooms etc but that's not problematic, its the law.

    If you are trans and wish to identify as a different sex to the one you actually are biologically then good luck to you, so long as it doesn't violate anyone else's rights or safeguarding.

    When safeguarding comes into play though, women's-only spaces are for actual women, and not men who identify as women.

    Wear whatever you want to wear.
    Go by whatever name you wish to be identified with.

    But don't violate the safeguarding of others.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    viewcode said:

    The trailer for Avatar 3 is out. James Cameron's next billion dollars awaits

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb_fFj_0rq8

    Avatar 2 had hilariously bad writing for a project which took so long, when a five minute rewrite could have fixed some of the most glaring issues which undermined the entire premise of the plot. Given it had voiceover in parts it wouldn't have even needed reshoots or reanimation to make some improvements, I guess when the first made so much money no one had the guts to tell Cameron the script could use another pass.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Sure, but if that's what they keep asking for...
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,972

    kyf_100 said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
    Quite amusing, given the tendency in the not-so-distant past to see advice lifted almost word for word from Stonewall, which you never once objected to.

    Sex does matter, its a protected characteristic distinct from identity and so those who wish to eradicate sex from the law have lost at the Supreme Court and may object to single sex spaces existing where there are legitimate reasons for them to do so such as in sport, or changing rooms etc but that's not problematic, its the law.

    If you are trans and wish to identify as a different sex to the one you actually are biologically then good luck to you, so long as it doesn't violate anyone else's rights or safeguarding.

    When safeguarding comes into play though, women's-only spaces are for actual women, and not men who identify as women.

    Wear whatever you want to wear.
    Go by whatever name you wish to be identified with.

    But don't violate the safeguarding of others.
    Quite amusing is it? Yes, I see now ha ha, very funny. Let's all have a right old chortle about bypassing parliament, government by decree, silencing voices we disagree with, and appointing one's chums to deliver the 'right' verdict.

    My sides are splitting, mate. Splitting. Have you considered a career as a stand up?

    I have no idea what kind of privileged access Stonewall were or weren't given in the past, but frankly, if they were given privileged access over and above other groups, they shouldn't have, and I would condemn it for the same reasons I have condemned the privileged access above.

    I believe in fairness, openness, transparency and accountability. These are the hallmarks of good government. I have given three clear examples above, where that is not happening.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 67,076
    The Lincoln Project
    @ProjectLincoln
    ·
    11m

    Rogan: The Epstein files are a line in the sand. We thought Trump was gonna come in and drain the swamp, we're gonna figure everything out.

    https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1949953122157171127
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 40,378
    kyf_100 said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
    That's all nonsense, it's biology not fantasy that matters. In 1000 years the fossilised remains of a transgender will be dug up and the archeologists of that era will say "this man died a thousand years ago". There is nothing in the world that will change that and the government has stopped fighting reality.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165

    The Lincoln Project
    @ProjectLincoln
    ·
    11m

    Rogan: The Epstein files are a line in the sand. We thought Trump was gonna come in and drain the swamp, we're gonna figure everything out.

    https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1949953122157171127

    I am not confident that people who thought Trump was going to 'drain the swamp' are going to be able to figure out The Epstein Files.

    Though I always live in hope.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 40,378

    The Lincoln Project
    @ProjectLincoln
    ·
    11m

    Rogan: The Epstein files are a line in the sand. We thought Trump was gonna come in and drain the swamp, we're gonna figure everything out.

    https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1949953122157171127

    Anyone who's been paying attention has realised the MAGA coalition is fractured beyond repair. While people who voted Trump still support many of the MAGA aims and deportation programme etc... a big chunk feel 100% betrayed by the decision to not release the Epstein list in full and have turned their back on Trump and the wider GOP. Definitely something to look out for in the run up to the mid-terms, I think it could make for quite a lot of decent betting opportunities at district level where there's a higher than average concentration of under 35 male voters.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,198

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    We are a representative not direct democracy, see Edmund Burke.

    Personally I would never have another referendum on any issue ever again in the UK
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 67,076
    edited July 28
    MaxPB said:

    The Lincoln Project
    @ProjectLincoln
    ·
    11m

    Rogan: The Epstein files are a line in the sand. We thought Trump was gonna come in and drain the swamp, we're gonna figure everything out.

    https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1949953122157171127

    Anyone who's been paying attention has realised the MAGA coalition is fractured beyond repair. While people who voted Trump still support many of the MAGA aims and deportation programme etc... a big chunk feel 100% betrayed by the decision to not release the Epstein list in full and have turned their back on Trump and the wider GOP. Definitely something to look out for in the run up to the mid-terms, I think it could make for quite a lot of decent betting opportunities at district level where there's a higher than average concentration of under 35 male voters.
    I suspect that the MAGA types who are pissed off about stuff like this will just not turn out to vote. They will sit on their fat hands. The vote is usually down anyway during mid terms.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    We are a representative not direct democracy, see Edmund Burke.

    Personally I would never have another referendum on any issue ever again in the UK
    I'm sure many MPs share that feeling, though I doubt they will be able to stick to it in practice.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,198

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    Anybody out of work of working age should be actively looking for work and seeking to expand their skills in order to receive taxpayer funded UC and unemployment benefits even if it takes a while to get a job
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,198
    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    We are a representative not direct democracy, see Edmund Burke.

    Personally I would never have another referendum on any issue ever again in the UK
    I'm sure many MPs share that feeling, though I doubt they will be able to stick to it in practice.
    Parliament is sovereign, constitutionally they can
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,660
    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.
    I was hoping things would hold out for me for another 20 years at least, but I'm not confident of that. A lot of complacency still about.
    My ultimate fall back has always been science/maths teacher. But my avowed intention is to never leave Uni. Despite the low pay, ever increasing workload, financial stresses and what not, I still love be8ng a Uni academic. But I’m pretty confident I would get employed as a STEM teacher somewhere if I needed it, or failing that tutor.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,487
    kyf_100 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
    Quite amusing, given the tendency in the not-so-distant past to see advice lifted almost word for word from Stonewall, which you never once objected to.

    Sex does matter, its a protected characteristic distinct from identity and so those who wish to eradicate sex from the law have lost at the Supreme Court and may object to single sex spaces existing where there are legitimate reasons for them to do so such as in sport, or changing rooms etc but that's not problematic, its the law.

    If you are trans and wish to identify as a different sex to the one you actually are biologically then good luck to you, so long as it doesn't violate anyone else's rights or safeguarding.

    When safeguarding comes into play though, women's-only spaces are for actual women, and not men who identify as women.

    Wear whatever you want to wear.
    Go by whatever name you wish to be identified with.

    But don't violate the safeguarding of others.
    Quite amusing is it? Yes, I see now ha ha, very funny. Let's all have a right old chortle about bypassing parliament, government by decree, silencing voices we disagree with, and appointing one's chums to deliver the 'right' verdict.

    My sides are splitting, mate. Splitting. Have you considered a career as a stand up?

    I have no idea what kind of privileged access Stonewall were or weren't given in the past, but frankly, if they were given privileged access over and above other groups, they shouldn't have, and I would condemn it for the same reasons I have condemned the privileged access above.

    I believe in fairness, openness, transparency and accountability. These are the hallmarks of good government. I have given three clear examples above, where that is not happening.
    No, you haven't. You've given vague, not clear, objections that some vested interests of 'some communities' have 'concerns' about someone with 'pro TERF views'.

    Which is weird, given that TERF views are actually the law should be respected and women's spaces belong to actual women and the extremists are those who wish to eradicate single sex spaces and let men like Beth Upton stand in a female changing room while an actual woman gets changed from clothes that are bloodied by her period. A period Beth won't have or understand since she's not an actual woman despite insisting upon going into the women's changing facilities where women get undressed.

    If communities have objections to being told that sex matters, those communities need to get over it. Women's spaces belong to actual women. Trans people should be treated with respect but that respect does not entail biological men going into women's-only spaces, even if they identify as women.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    eek said:

    First? Really? Like the SNP at the next Holyrood elections?

    I can see the logic if the aim is to justify an SNP move away from Independece will solve all problems approach
    Nah, he thinks that the unionist vote will split 4 ways and the SNP will win a majority

    Trying to build the conditions whereby he can claim legitimacy for independence from a Holyrood vote even though it is ultra vires
    Well what's the alternative other than "it's purely down to Westminster, so there's no point us even agitating for it"?
    Negotiations with Westminster isn’t a spiky enough approach for the more radical wing of the SNP. But it’s the only one with legitimacy
    Claiming a mandate from the election (if they win) is exactly that - the opening of a negotiation.
    Nah - it’s an overreach

    Westminster will say “it’s not a mandate l, the Supreme Court has ruled as such”

    There’s no negotiation possible. Scotland needs to persuade and influence not negotiate
    Persuade and influence politicians based in Westminster presumably.
    Fair play for dispensing with the union of consent bullshit.
    The government.

    It is a union of consent. The voters consented less than 15 years ago. At some point it will be reasonable to retest that consent - I’d say every 25-30 years is about right - but for a vote to have meaningful you need to respect the wishes of the majority of voters who plumped for the union
    Once a Parliament is reasonable in my eyes, if that's what the electorate vote for.

    No Parliament can bind its successor and if the people vote for it, that's their choice.
    If you have a referendum on major constitutional change every 5 years it will be a perpetual campaign and the instability will prevent anything else getting done
    Only if the electorate vote for it.

    Keep asking the electorate the same question and they tend to get pissed off about it and vote for someone else, but if they choose not to, that's their choice too.

    Democracy.
    We are a representative not direct democracy, see Edmund Burke.

    Personally I would never have another referendum on any issue ever again in the UK
    I'm sure many MPs share that feeling, though I doubt they will be able to stick to it in practice.
    Parliament is sovereign, constitutionally they can
    That's why I included the words 'in practice'. There are a great many things Parliament can do that it doesn't do, and some things its members may not want to do but end up doing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 63,574
    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165

    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.
    I was hoping things would hold out for me for another 20 years at least, but I'm not confident of that. A lot of complacency still about.
    My ultimate fall back has always been science/maths teacher. But my avowed intention is to never leave Uni. Despite the low pay, ever increasing workload, financial stresses and what not, I still love be8ng a Uni academic. But I’m pretty confident I would get employed as a STEM teacher somewhere if I needed it, or failing that tutor.
    Genuine question - as I work in .ac.uk - are you getting any hints of 'the AI' effecting private tuition? I am a mere forelock-tugging techy in the machine, so am just occasionality asked if 'the AI' can solve some coursework (answer is always 'yes' these days).
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,198

    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.
    I was hoping things would hold out for me for another 20 years at least, but I'm not confident of that. A lot of complacency still about.
    My ultimate fall back has always been science/maths teacher. But my avowed intention is to never leave Uni. Despite the low pay, ever increasing workload, financial stresses and what not, I still love be8ng a Uni academic. But I’m pretty confident I would get employed as a STEM teacher somewhere if I needed it, or failing that tutor.
    Plus you don't have to crowd control a class of rowdy 14 year olds as a university tutor
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,009
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    Anybody out of work of working age should be actively looking for work and seeking to expand their skills in order to receive taxpayer funded UC and unemployment benefits even if it takes a while to get a job
    Most are because most people do want to work. But while the number of jobseekers is greater than the number of jobs, it makes little sense to prioritise those least willing and therefore least suitable.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165
    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
    A fair percentage of them - for sure. Getting on for 70% just now. Thankfully most of those are spotted by my "was this written by an AI bot" filter. There are so many applicants who even submit cover letters (and I do truly mean this literally) containing "Certainly! I can help you write a cover letter!" or "I am excited to apply for the post of [REPLACE WITH POST NAME] at [REPLACE WITH COMPANY NAME]". The last post I was on the interview panel for - those must have accounted for 30% or more.

    But aside from the low-effort candidates, the degree/boot-camp programmes are all geared to the same tickboxes. 'Java' - tick. 'Python' - tick. Nothing specific, nothing interesting. Always the same 'springboot with a react front end'.

    It's getting to the stage of "oh, you even know what a raspberry pi is?! hired!" in geek terms.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 55,534
    I wonder how many under 18s will acquire a VPN this week?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 67,076
    Louise McKinlay
    @LouiseMcKinlay
    ·
    4h
    I am thrilled to have been selected as the Conservative candidate for the first Mayor of Greater Essex.
    https://x.com/LouiseMcKinlay/status/1949888910265323725
  • LeonLeon Posts: 63,574
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
    A fair percentage of them - for sure. Getting on for 70% just now. Thankfully most of those are spotted by my "was this written by an AI bot" filter. There are so many applicants who even submit cover letters (and I do truly mean this literally) containing "Certainly! I can help you write a cover letter!" or "I am excited to apply for the post of [REPLACE WITH POST NAME] at [REPLACE WITH COMPANY NAME]". The last post I was on the interview panel for - those must have accounted for 30% or more.

    But aside from the low-effort candidates, the degree/boot-camp programmes are all geared to the same tickboxes. 'Java' - tick. 'Python' - tick. Nothing specific, nothing interesting. Always the same 'springboot with a react front end'.

    It's getting to the stage of "oh, you even know what a raspberry pi is?! hired!" in geek terms.
    Universities are doomed. As I’ve said many times

    Likewise most jobs. It’s just a fact, now. It’s no longer disputable it’s already happening
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165

    I wonder how many under 18s will acquire a VPN this week?

    I can recommend https://mullvad.net/en . If you've ever seen Mozilla Firefox offering their own VPN - it's just a rebadge of Mullvad after they audited them and gave them a clean bill of health. They even let you pay in ye olde cash if you want to be very anonymous.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,836
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
    A fair percentage of them - for sure. Getting on for 70% just now. Thankfully most of those are spotted by my "was this written by an AI bot" filter. There are so many applicants who even submit cover letters (and I do truly mean this literally) containing "Certainly! I can help you write a cover letter!" or "I am excited to apply for the post of [REPLACE WITH POST NAME] at [REPLACE WITH COMPANY NAME]". The last post I was on the interview panel for - those must have accounted for 30% or more.

    But aside from the low-effort candidates, the degree/boot-camp programmes are all geared to the same tickboxes. 'Java' - tick. 'Python' - tick. Nothing specific, nothing interesting. Always the same 'springboot with a react front end'.

    It's getting to the stage of "oh, you even know what a raspberry pi is?! hired!" in geek terms.
    That's why I will only even interview people whose cover letter contain obvious typos.
  • MaxPB said:

    That's all nonsense, it's biology not fantasy that matters. In 1000 years the fossilised remains of a transgender will be dug up and the archeologists of that era will say "this man died a thousand years ago". There is nothing in the world that will change that and the government has stopped fighting reality.

    In 1000 years technology will mean people can have whatever body they want and children learning history will laugh at the foolish ancients who screamed and raged that gender is immutable, like they'll laugh at the idea people once thought the Sun orbited the Earth.

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,009

    Louise McKinlay
    @LouiseMcKinlay
    ·
    4h
    I am thrilled to have been selected as the Conservative candidate for the first Mayor of Greater Essex.
    https://x.com/LouiseMcKinlay/status/1949888910265323725

    Like Greater Essex is a place, let alone one that needs a mayor. It almost makes one yearn for the days when towns demanded city status.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,836

    theProle said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I note the virtually unanimous condemnation of the OSA on here, and indeed have many reservations myself. However, in all the commentary I've yet to read of any practical solutions to the problem of online harm - unless, of course, one thinks there isn't a problem.

    To give just one example. It's very easy for kids to access really hard-core pornography online (it's not about 'naked ladies and boobies', as some have fatuously claimed). And if you think, as I do, that such material can damage some kids' perception of women and sex, and also contributes to an incel culture that demeans women and is a potential danger to them, it might be a good idea to make such access harder. But how? I don't believe for a minute that 'parents' is the answer.
    It's also worth remembering that some of the impetus for the OSA came from the Molly Russell case. Are we okay with kids like her being able to access so much stuff about suicide so easily?

    Yes; but does it achieve its goal?

    And unless you think the goal is to enrich the owners of VPN services, then I suspect it doesn't

    Those people who wish to see porn (of any kind) or to find information about suicide, will simply avoid the issue by using VPNs, or will use sites that are criminal and which don't care about UK regulation.

    What exactly has been gained by the regulation other than adding a whole bunch of hoops, that otherwise law-abiding people have to jump through?
    The cynic within me wonders if the plan is actually to ban VPNs (governments never like the population using strong encryption very much) and the whole point of the OSA is to provide a justification for banning VPNs - "won't somebody think of the children".

    The only flaw in this argument is that it ascribes a level of devious cunning to Tory ministers usually considered unable to find their way out of a wet paper bag unaided. But possibly their civil service mandarins were the ones playing the long(er) game.
    And banning VPNs would go a long way to end working from home
    Presumably they would ban private VPN providers, rather than attempting to ban VPNs altogether.

    Although people with a modicum of tech ability can already use alternatives like Tor or indeed rolling their own VPN.

    (Personally, I use Tailscale everywhere, which means if I am using a "VPN", I'm using the IP address of my London flat.)
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 5,165

    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    Anybody out of work of working age should be actively looking for work and seeking to expand their skills in order to receive taxpayer funded UC and unemployment benefits even if it takes a while to get a job
    Most are because most people do want to work. But while the number of jobseekers is greater than the number of jobs, it makes little sense to prioritise those least willing and therefore least suitable.
    I've sometimes wondered if it would be more efficient to ask people - without prejudice - "Are you just at it?".

    Split them into a different group - just give them a bit of cash and move along. And direct the real resources to people who genuinely did want to work and just needed a bit of retraining, upskilling, whatever. I just have a horrible feeling that we're spending a load of cash of the former at the detriment of the latter.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,836

    MaxPB said:

    That's all nonsense, it's biology not fantasy that matters. In 1000 years the fossilised remains of a transgender will be dug up and the archeologists of that era will say "this man died a thousand years ago". There is nothing in the world that will change that and the government has stopped fighting reality.

    In 1000 years technology will mean people can have whatever body they want and children learning history will laugh at the foolish ancients who screamed and raged that gender is immutable, like they'll laugh at the idea people once thought the Sun orbited the Earth.

    You've been reading the Iain Banks' Culture novels again, haven't you?

    (Thinking about it; it's hilarious that Musk named his recovery vessels after spaceships from that series; and yet the series also emphasises the mutability of gender in a world where technology is as near to magic as makes no difference.)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,009
    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
    A fair percentage of them - for sure. Getting on for 70% just now. Thankfully most of those are spotted by my "was this written by an AI bot" filter. There are so many applicants who even submit cover letters (and I do truly mean this literally) containing "Certainly! I can help you write a cover letter!" or "I am excited to apply for the post of [REPLACE WITH POST NAME] at [REPLACE WITH COMPANY NAME]". The last post I was on the interview panel for - those must have accounted for 30% or more.

    But aside from the low-effort candidates, the degree/boot-camp programmes are all geared to the same tickboxes. 'Java' - tick. 'Python' - tick. Nothing specific, nothing interesting. Always the same 'springboot with a react front end'.

    It's getting to the stage of "oh, you even know what a raspberry pi is?! hired!" in geek terms.
    If you have 100 near-identical candidates, are you sure you do not have 100 suitable candidates and could probably give the job to any one of them? You might be wasting your time looking for one who stands out because at this stage, none of them will.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,972

    kyf_100 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:


    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    And?

    The case isn’t about whether Peggie made a few off colour jokes on a WhatsApp group. It’s about single sex spaces and men going into them. It’s about NHS fife conspiring against Peggie because she is gender critical. It’s about Upton falsifying electronic notes after the alleged incident to make Peggie look bad (the interpretation of the computer expert). That Peggie might find Upton ‘weird’ is irrelevant.
    It's not about that either (and there are other explanations for email asynchrony) .

    It does not matter if Nurse Peggie is a staggering racist or not: if she is she has kept it to social media and does not appear to have reflected that in IRL, so it's not a problem and nobody's perfect. It does not matter if the procedures followed by NHS Fife were imperfect: no process can withstand the scrutiny it's being subjected to. What does matter is the facts of the encounter and I remind you of my post , which I paraphrase below:

    "...That (hidden letter/email) may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant. The devolution of the case into procedural points distracts from the central points, which are below.
    i) Was Dr Beth Upton (BU) entitled to be in the room?
    ii) Was Nurse Sandie Peggie (SP) entitled to object to her presence?

    [This is] the crux of the case: can a man become a woman and if so under what circs? BU believed that she could and had. SP believed that he couldn't and hadn't. Everything flows from there and everybody on here is interpreting the situation depending on their stance..."


    Oddly the defence, prosecution, BU, SP and the witnesses all agree that there was an encounter in the nurse's changing room, that SP objected to BU's presence, that BU was upset by it, and that NHS Fife suspended her for it. Minutae and the personal qualities of BU and SP are not relevant.

    I haven't been following this especially closely, but testimony has been heard that Peggie did not restrict her Islamophobic and other views to social media:

    https://bsky.app/profile/davidbol.bsky.social/post/3lv23wbt72c2u

    While Upton should not have been in that changing room, that does not give Peggie carte blanche to use abusive language of a discriminatory nature in that changing room confrontation.

    There were no witnesses, so the credibility and past behaviour of the protagonists is a key issue to investigate.
    PBers do like to lie down in the road to protest the innocence of some pretty rum old birds. Lucy Connolly and now this version of Florence Nightingale.

    Most peculiar...
    “Gender row nurse ‘wanted to post bacon through mosque letterbox’, tribunal told”

    She sounds like a lovely person.
    And on and on it goes. Keep smearing her if it makes you happy. Nasty old bigot wanting not to get naked in front of a man.

    Just shows how well targeted NHS Fifes lawyers are.
    If this nurse was in the habit of making both racist remarks /and/ anti-trans comments aimed at an individual, then those would both be valid grounds to sack her given her employer’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010. That anti-trans campaigners are desperate to drag the discussion back to changing rooms is unsurprising, since they’re on stronger legal ground there, but this is relevant to the court case as far as I can see.

    If the trust sacked her for being a bigot, not for her complaints about sharing single sex spaces & it turns out she is in fact a bigot, with the evidence being her own words, then the whole case looks very different doesn’t it?
    Greetings from Ireland (or at least, that's where my VPN says I live now).

    I don't want to get into speculation on an ongoing tribunal, what I will say is the whole thing is an absolute sideshow compared to

    1)

    The government's determination to limit 'trans people's ability to exist in public space', but moreover have chosen to do it in a way that 'has given up on parliamentary democracy and instinctively reverts to ministerial power'.

    This is covered excellently by Ian Dunt on his substack, here -

    https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-trans-rights-stitch-up-2ca -

    He describes it as 'a mortifying stitch up' that would 'constitute the de-facto eradication of trans people from Britain's social fabric'. Which is, of course, the point.

    If you're bored by the narrow focus of the trans debate, Dunt widens his article to note to the increased use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament on issues ranging from restrictions on pornography to pandemic lockdowns. So essential reading even if you're bored by traaaaans.

    2)

    The capture of the EHRC by so-called 'Sex Matters', a sectional interest group that has been given privileged access to both the EHRC and the consultation process, indeed, much of the new code of practice has been lifted directly from the anti-trans pressure group. This is covered extensively by published documents under a FOI request, accessible here:

    https://tacc.org.uk/2025/07/01/foi-exposes-ehrc-bias/

    Tacc notes that Sex Matters have been given privileged access with 'Language from Sex Matters appears almost word-for-word in EHRC policy guidance on single-sex spaces and sports'. If a pro-trans group was given this level of access, anti trans campaigners would be shouting from the rooftops about it being a stitch up.

    People with any sense of fairness should be shouting about it now.

    3)

    Bridget Philipson looking set to appoint Dr Mary Ann Stephenson, a woman with notable pro TERF views (google them if you want a full history) to replace Kishwer Falkner, despite the fact that the Women and Equalites Commission have written to her to reject her as a candidate on the basis of concerns about 'vision and leadership' as well as 'restoring trust' in the organisation, noting that the 'EHRC has lost the trust of some communities'

    https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48942/documents/256871/default/

    The lack of fairness and impartiality exposed by all three examples above is shocking and should be seen as problematic irrespective of whether or not you hold gender critical views.

    These are real issues. And they strike deep at the heart of good government. Which is far bigger in scale than the narrow focus of the NHS Fife case.
    Quite amusing, given the tendency in the not-so-distant past to see advice lifted almost word for word from Stonewall, which you never once objected to.

    Sex does matter, its a protected characteristic distinct from identity and so those who wish to eradicate sex from the law have lost at the Supreme Court and may object to single sex spaces existing where there are legitimate reasons for them to do so such as in sport, or changing rooms etc but that's not problematic, its the law.

    If you are trans and wish to identify as a different sex to the one you actually are biologically then good luck to you, so long as it doesn't violate anyone else's rights or safeguarding.

    When safeguarding comes into play though, women's-only spaces are for actual women, and not men who identify as women.

    Wear whatever you want to wear.
    Go by whatever name you wish to be identified with.

    But don't violate the safeguarding of others.
    Quite amusing is it? Yes, I see now ha ha, very funny. Let's all have a right old chortle about bypassing parliament, government by decree, silencing voices we disagree with, and appointing one's chums to deliver the 'right' verdict.

    My sides are splitting, mate. Splitting. Have you considered a career as a stand up?

    I have no idea what kind of privileged access Stonewall were or weren't given in the past, but frankly, if they were given privileged access over and above other groups, they shouldn't have, and I would condemn it for the same reasons I have condemned the privileged access above.

    I believe in fairness, openness, transparency and accountability. These are the hallmarks of good government. I have given three clear examples above, where that is not happening.
    No, you haven't. You've given vague, not clear, objections that some vested interests of 'some communities' have 'concerns' about someone with 'pro TERF views'.

    Which is weird, given that TERF views are actually the law should be respected and women's spaces belong to actual women and the extremists are those who wish to eradicate single sex spaces and let men like Beth Upton stand in a female changing room while an actual woman gets changed from clothes that are bloodied by her period. A period Beth won't have or understand since she's not an actual woman despite insisting upon going into the women's changing facilities where women get undressed.

    If communities have objections to being told that sex matters, those communities need to get over it. Women's spaces belong to actual women. Trans people should be treated with respect but that respect does not entail biological men going into women's-only spaces, even if they identify as women.
    No, I've linked to a very detailed substack article published by a well known journalist and former editor of politics.co.uk that goes into detail about the use of statutory instruments to bypass parliament, not just on the trans issue, but on matters such as lockdowns etc, and the pernicious effect on democracy.

    I've linked to a full and detailed FOI request data dump of correspondence between Sex Matters and the EHRC demonstrating privileged access over and above other groups, including writing their recommendations into the new guidance almost word-for-word (and I would condemn any other sectional interest group of any stripe having such privileged access).

    Finally I've literally linked to a letter jointly signed by Lord Alton, Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and Sarah Owen MP, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, rejecting Bridget Phillipson's pick for the new head of the EHRC as 'lacking in vision and leadership' and being unable to 'restore confidence' in the EHCR. Their views are widely expected to be ignored by Mrs Phillipson, see the report in the Times dated 18th July, 'Bridget Phillipson to overrule MPs with gender-critical EHRC chair'.

    All sourced with links. If these are 'vague, not clear, objections about the vested interests of some communities', I'm not really sure what your standards for exactness are.

    My point, again, is that this is about the importance of the democratic process - oversight, checks and balances, the primacy of Parliament- vs rule by ministerial decree and law being written by sectional interest groups. It's not about 'trans'. It's about democracy and accountability. See also the ability of the responsible minister to change what counts as objectionable material in the Online Safety Act without any oversight, something that definitely doesn't have any potential for abuse at all.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 99,232
    rcs1000 said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "The hollowing-out of middle-class jobs like mine has left me lonely and terrified

    When I lost my job, I thought I’d bounce back quickly. But gradually, all the things I took for granted began to fall away

    Geoff Ho" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/28/disturbing-trend-decline-middle-class-employment

    I feel his pain. It affects the middle-aged and also the young as graduate and mid-level jobs vanish. And I happen to know the young woman who served me in the fish and chip shop this afternoon, whose birthday was last week, has a degree; I don't suppose fish and chips was her or her mother's plan A when waving her off to college but at least she earns an honest bob and demonstrates a clear work ethic that will be ignored by hiring managers.

    It is interesting that the Telegraph traces this phenomenon back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s. It is not just AI or increased employment costs but all these things, and also the increased sale of anything not nailed down which means the good jobs (and the profits) flow overseas.

    ETA this is also a reason for thinking the government's concern over forcing people off benefits is at best misguided. There just aren't enough jobs around, so better for employer and employee that they go to those who actually want them.
    I'm not sure about other sectors - but in education-IT-land we're not-not hiring because of AI. It's because for every one post we are seeing 50-100 identical candidates. All churned out by various boot-camps and masters programmes. "I have skills in X and Y".

    Yep - you and the other identical 99 candidates.

    Whether because of the economic incentives ~4yrs ago, or whether X and Y were the only things your lecturers or trainers knew - no idea. But it's very noticeable at the hiring end of the funnel - that our current supply chain is problematic.

    (Quite different from the likes of Amazon who have a combination of over-hiring, and massive city/state tax-breaks to try and keep).
    Surely the bots are writing their applications and cvs. Hence the identicality
    A fair percentage of them - for sure. Getting on for 70% just now. Thankfully most of those are spotted by my "was this written by an AI bot" filter. There are so many applicants who even submit cover letters (and I do truly mean this literally) containing "Certainly! I can help you write a cover letter!" or "I am excited to apply for the post of [REPLACE WITH POST NAME] at [REPLACE WITH COMPANY NAME]". The last post I was on the interview panel for - those must have accounted for 30% or more.

    But aside from the low-effort candidates, the degree/boot-camp programmes are all geared to the same tickboxes. 'Java' - tick. 'Python' - tick. Nothing specific, nothing interesting. Always the same 'springboot with a react front end'.

    It's getting to the stage of "oh, you even know what a raspberry pi is?! hired!" in geek terms.
    That's why I will only even interview people whose cover letter contain obvious typos.
    I know someone who completed a piece of work and was told the language had been screened as probably done with AI, which was concerning as it was in the same tone and style I would naturally use, so I am hoping maybe I can just pass myself off as a chatbot somehow.
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