Without Fear Or Favour?
Update 644. Two Wins Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Just halting film season and I am jumping back in a bit early with two great bits of news and an important update.
Linzi Smith has won her case against the Chief Constable of the Northumbria Police 🎈🥳
Sandie Peggie has been cleared of the gross misconduct allegations. 🎈🥳
This, I think, puts Dr Upton in an even more difficult situation!
Linzi Smith
Sarah Phillimore reports on Linzi’s excellent victory on her substack. By participating in Newcastle Pride 2024 the Northumbria Police breached their duty of impartiality. This judgment was deliberately handed down prior to Newcastle Pride 2025 so let’s see what happens next!! The case, of course, has ramifications not just for other police forces but for all public sector organisations.
Gender Wars: The Police must not take sides
Linzi Smith has won a considerable victory against the wholesale abandonment by the Northumbrian police of their crucial duty of impartiality - so what now?
Jul 16, 2025
Summary
The court found participation by Northumbria Police in the 2024 Pride Event was contrary to the uniformed officers’ duty of impartiality as it would have clearly given the impression to members of the public that it may interfere with their ability to discharge their duties impartially. This conclusion is even stronger when considering that the Chief Constable ‘led the contingent’. As far as gender critical people were concerned, this force was taking sides. And this is unlawful.
I wrote about Linzi’s judicial review here, setting out the fundamental importance of the statutory duty of police impartiality and how she argued Northumbria police were in breach for their enthusiastic endorsement of a contested and controversial political ideology at last years Pride. The hearing and the judgment were expedited, as Northumbria were proposing to engage in this year’s Pride celebrations on July 25th.
We got the judgment today, July 16 2025. Linzi won. It’s a fantastic achievement and will have considerable consequences for all police forces who still think that having police cars and riot shields in the colour of the trans flag is a massive PR coup.
I asked Grok to give me an image of a morose police man waving a Progress Pride flag and sadly this was the best it could do
The judgment
The judgment sets out the background to the application from para 2. Linzi accepted that the Pride Event needed to be policed but her objection was to Northumbria police actively participating in the event and thereby associating themselves with ‘supporters of gender ideology and transgender activists’.
The police took a dismissive response, asserting her claim was ‘academic’ because they would do things differently this year - they wouldn’t wear a uniform and won’t wear Pride insignia at their stall. If the court disagreed, well, they hadn’t done anything wrong because it didn’t breach the duty of impartiality and it was perfectly rational for the Chief Constable to authorise participation in and support for the Pride Event.
The court made it clear (para 7) that it was deciding only if the decisions made about the 2024 event were lawful - but obviously the Chief Constable would need to consider the implications of the court decision for how she permitted participation in 2025. Also the court did not need to express any view on the rights or wrongs of any competing view and would not do so.
The full piece is here:
Well done Linzi and her legal team, Tom Cross KC and Conrathe Gardner solicitors.
Andrew Learmonth in The Herald (Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations 16 July) reports:
Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations (Image: Andrew Milligan)
NHS Fife has cleared the nurse at the centre of a high-profile tribunal case of all disciplinary charges.
Sandie Peggie was being investigated by the health board after Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman [ Dusty - MALE!!] doctor, accused her of a “hate incident” and patient safety breaches following a confrontation in a changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.
News of the outcome of the internal investigation came just hours before Ms Peggie’s Employment Tribunal against the health board and Dr Upton is due to resume.
In a statement, Ms Peggie's solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, said: “On Tuesday July 14, the evening before the resuming of her tribunal, Sandie Peggie received confirmation from Fife Health Board that, following a disciplinary hearing, none of the gross misconduct allegations against her were upheld.
“This follows a disciplinary hearing on June 25, which considered four gross misconduct allegations: two relating to patient care failures, one of ‘misgendering’ Dr Upton, and one relating to her encounter with Dr Upton in the workplace female-only changing room on Christmas Eve 2023.
“Sandie is relieved and delighted that this 18-month-long internal process has concluded and cleared her of all allegations.”
Ms Peggie was initially suspended following Dr Upton’s complaint about the confrontation on Christmas Eve.
The nurse had experienced a sudden heavy period and was worried she had bled through her scrubs. When she went to the changing room and found Dr Upton there, she stated that, in her view, the medic was a man and should not be in the space.
The specific words exchanged between the two are disputed.
Ms Peggie was placed on special leave on December 30, 2023, and formally suspended on January 4, 2024, following the complaint.
During the investigation, further allegations were made against Ms Peggie, raising “clear fitness to practise questions”.
These included a claim she “walked out of a resuscitation unit when Dr Upton entered, leaving a patient unseen”.
Another allegation involved a “missing patient incident” on December 18, 2023, in which a patient was triaged and left the hospital without being seen. Dr Upton noted that Ms Peggie “did not acknowledge my presence”.
Ms Peggie has consistently denied all wrongdoing, describing the patient safety allegations as “fabricated” and “not true”. Under cross-examination, she suggested Dr Upton was “making them up”.
In a statement, NHS Fife said there was "insufficient evidence" to support any evidence of misconduct.
The implications for the tribunal of the nurse being cleared and the doctor's allegations being dismissed could be significant.
The health board and Dr Upton share a legal team, but taking to X, Michael Foran, the incoming Associate Professor of Law at Oxford University, said their interests may now diverge.
He said it was "hard to see how [counsel for NHS Fife and Dr Upton] Jane Russell KC can continue to argue that Sandie Peggie harassed Dr Upton and endangered patient safety when one of her clients has now determined this didn’t happen.
"This last reiterates the tension between NHS Fife and Dr Upton. It’s probably still in Dr Upton’s best interests to argue that Sandie Peggie engaged in harassment and endangered patients safety. It’s very hard to see how that’s still in NHS Fife’s best interests."
The full piece is here:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25316918.sandie-peggie-cleared-gross-misconduct-allegations/
Meanwhile, Sandie’s Tribunal case resumed.
Evidence was given today by Isla Bumba, the Equalities and Human Rights Lead Officer for NHS Fife.She is paid a salary in the range of £48,788 to £56,747 per year, according to a 2025 report by The Telegraph. Gissajob!
I dipped into a bit of the cross examination of Ms Bumba by Naomi Cunningham for Sandie. Ms Bumba did not know about the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme. She did not seem to know about the primary regulations requiring employers to provide single-sex facilities for employees namely the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. She stated that she would “hazard a guess that I would be female.” Given that these are ongoing proceedings I won’t comment further on this at this stage!
Michael Foran, who is present at the Tribunal, will helpfully be providing a report back each day and here is his first one:
Excellent piece on the Sandie Peggie case and wider issues on his substack from Andrew Doyle:
How genderism could have won
The Sandie Peggie tribunal is a reminder of why the justice system must remain free from ideological capture.
Jul 16, 2025
The list of people who have been harassed by their employers for stating irrefutable biological facts continues to grow. Sandie Peggie, a nurse at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy in Scotland, has finally been cleared of all wrongdoing in NHS Fife’s internal disciplinary investigation. And why had she been suspended and subjected to this eighteen-month ordeal? Because she had objected to a man being present in the women’s changing facilities.
It’s the kind of case that, just fifteen years ago, no sane person – on the left or the right – would have thought possible. Such has been the rapidity of the spread of genderism through our major institutions that NHS Fife is happy to shred the reputation of a nurse with an impeccable 30-year career simply because a man doesn’t know that he is male. The man in question is Dr Beth Upton, who refused to leave the female changing area when Peggie had asked him to, and accused her of ‘bullying’ for making this entirely reasonable request.
It is bad enough that NHS Fife wasted so much time dragging Peggie through a needless disciplinary rigmarole, but it has done so while her case against them is still ongoing. This tribunal has coincided with the Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act has always meant biological sex, which means that NHS Fife has been disregarding the law when it comes to its obligation to provide its employees with single-sex spaces. This is why this health board now finds itself in so much trouble.
The courts have proven to be the key to the collapse of gender identity ideology, precisely because they have necessitated the kind of scrutiny that activists have been at pains to avoid. Given that no one has ever been able to provide a satisfactory definition of ‘gender identity’, it is alarming that major institutions, corporations and even the police have been happy to demonise anyone who does not accept the belief-system as gospel. But this does raise an important question: what would have happened had the judiciary been similarly captured?
The full piece is here:
Meanwhile the new Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education (RSHE) guidance for English schools has been snuck out. Clare Page comments on it here (16 July):
The new RSHE Guidance is out.
From its authoritarian, nanny-state tone, its intrusion into family life and attempt at hegemonic cultural control, its hidden agenda, unstated implications and lack of proper definitions, its acceptance of underage sex and a race-to-the-bottom precautionary exposure to sexualising topics for ever younger children, its pressure against parents withdrawing kids from lessons, to its bias towards ‘view only’ access to materials… I don’t like it one bit! Oh but, hey, it doesn’t outright lie about the fictional law on gender identity anymore… are we supposed to be grateful? Detailed thoughts will follow. But take note, there’s a reason the RSHE lobby isn’t shouting about this - they’ve got what they wanted - a strengthening of their grip on the future social mores of the country.
https://x.com/NoSecretLessons/status/1945145029678309726
I haven’t yet read the Guidance or seen what others are saying about it in more detail, so bear with me!!
Since we are not having a film, we will have …
Terf Island Discs
Thanks to an excellent suggestion from Tenaciously Terfin, we are pausing Endpieces for the time being and giving Tenaciously and Liz a well earned rest from their hard work. So welcome to Terf Island Discs. Please let us have four of your favourite songs or pieces of music and provide a link if possible. They need to be reasonably short. We can’t expect to have readers listening to the whole of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto in B flat minor, albeit it is magnificent. Obviously, the choices don’t actually have to be from Terf Island - anywhere in the world! We will feature one piece of music in each general update. Thanks to all those readers who have already sent in their choices.
Please send in your choices via the comments section at this link: https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/terf-island-discs
Next up!!
Chosen by: Laurie Winogrand
‘She Works Hard For The Money’ by Donna Summer
#BeMorePorcupine
#BeEvenMorePorcupineAndThenSome
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#JoinFreeSpeechUnion
#LeaveKidsAlone
#StandWithSandiePeggie
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Thanks Dusty. I was wondering what pay grade Isla Bumba was on since she seemed to have a rather tenuous grasp of relevant law/guidance for an equality lead person - your post reveals it, thanks. On that level of pay I would expect her to be capable of more than just emailing other NHS boards to find out what they were doing!
> "Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman [ Dusty - MALE!!] doc ..."
Indeed, though you might be more consistent by calling "Ms." Upton a transwoman -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't. "trans woman" -- as an adjective-noun pair -- is more or less shooting yourself in the feet, conceding that "she" is a woman, i.e., an adult human female. Does not compute ... 🙂