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Peggie v RCN Day 3: unProvan
Read More…: Peggie v RCN Day 3: unProvanI want to focus my Day 3 report on a specific passage of cross-examination which to my mind went beyond the (undoubtedly very important) rights and wrongs of Sandie Peggie’s claim against the RCN. It demonstrated the effectiveness of using a courtroom to hold power to account. Norman Provan was today’s only witness. He is the Royal College of Nursing’s Associate Director for Employment Relations and he has been in the job for 18 years. He sits on the senior management board of the RCN and reports directly to its executive director. He is a big man in the world’s…
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Peggie v RCN Day 2: Trans-Organisational Madness
Read More…: Peggie v RCN Day 2: Trans-Organisational MadnessThe witnesses who gave evidence today were not directly connected to Sandie Peggie’s case, but they all had direct experience of dealing with the Royal College of Nursing. They painted a picture of a union which had happily waved gender ideology into their organisation, and when it started causing chaos, appeared both institutionally and intellectually incapable (or unwilling) to deal with it. The first witness was Lisa Mackenzie, who worked part time for RCN Scotland as a policy officer in Edinburgh between 2017 and 2019. Mackenzie told the tribunal prisons were part of her policy portfolio. In her previous job…
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Peggie v RCN Day 1: Getting Taken Seriously
Read More…: Peggie v RCN Day 1: Getting Taken SeriouslySandie Peggie was back in the witness box today for the first time since her epic tribunal against NHS Fife. Peggie is claiming discrimination against her for her gender critical beliefs, but this time the fight is against her union, the Royal College of Nursing. Both cases originated from events which began in August 2023 when a trans-identifying junior doctor called Beth Upton was given permission by NHS Fife to use the female changing rooms at Victoria Hospital’s A&E department in Kirkcaldy, Fife, where Sandie Peggie worked as a senior (Grade 5) nurse. Peggie encountered Upton on three occasions, complained…
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Peggie v RCN: “I want this to be a wake-up call”
Read More…: Peggie v RCN: “I want this to be a wake-up call”This is an expanded and re-edited version of the interview which appeared in the Sunday Times on 20 September: Although she seems a little weary when we speak, there’s a certain steel about Sandie Peggie. “I do feel like a poster girl,” she says. “I’m kind of glad that I’m at the forefront of it.” It requires some explanation. Three years ago Peggie, a senior nurse, objected to a male doctor, Beth Upton, using a female changing room at the A&E department in the NHS hospital in Kirkcaldy where they both worked. After a confrontation between Peggie and the transgender doctor just…
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NHS Wales to review “paused” surgeries by Christmas
Read More…: NHS Wales to review “paused” surgeries by ChristmasAround sixty people whose gender surgeries were cancelled by NHS Wales are expected to have an investigation into the necessity of those surgeries completed by the end of December. NHS Wales is currently undertaking an “urgent independent clinical review” of all patients on the Welsh Gender Service surgery waiting lists due to, among other things, its incredibly high surgery referral rate compared to the rest of the UK. Juliet Brown, NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee’s Chief Commissioner, has provided an update on the status of the Welsh Gender Service ahead of a full meeting of the NWJCC on Tuesday next…
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Former Gender Clinician: “It’s pseudo-medicine”
Read More…: Former Gender Clinician: “It’s pseudo-medicine”Shortly after publishing the piece which flagged the Welsh Gender Service as a potential Service of Concern (now a fully fledged Actual Concern) I received an email from a former gender clinician I had briefly met in London earlier this year. Let’s call her Anna. Anna worked at an adult gender clinic between 2016 and 2019 and still works in the NHS. When I met her, I asked if she would consider doing an interview. At the time she politely declined, but took my card. Anna told me she had been prompted to get in touch after reading reports about…
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A transsexual writes…
Read More…: A transsexual writes…Over the past couple of years I’ve been corresponding with a couple of older male transsexuals. They are courteous types who have watched in horror at what they see as the politicisation of the environment around their identities. Both are post-op and have Gender Recognition Certificates. Before what Róisín Michaux calls “the great entrooning”, both felt less under scrutiny to the extent they passed and/or were tolerated by their local communities. One correspondent, who I have agreed we will call ‘Louise’, has written to me on several occasions about developments in the public sphere. Louise is annoyed at both “GCs”…
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BBC Gender Apology Row
Read More…: BBC Gender Apology RowNow they’re in trouble. I am not a defund the BBC sort, but I can understand the frustrations of those who are. I have spoken at length (here, here and here) about the BBC consciously lying to (and therefore losing the trust of) its audience, and I will never forgive its treatment of the heroic Cath Leng. However, there are some good people inside it, trying to make a difference. But… On 6 August 2026, BBC Three Counties local radio station, which covers Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, ran a half hour current affairs chat on the Jonathan Vernon-Smith Show. The…
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WGS surgery referral free-for-all
Read More…: WGS surgery referral free-for-allOn Tuesday this week, 29 year old Sion Jewell told the BBC about the cancellation of her double mastectomy. “It was just the most heartbreaking feeling in the world” said Jewell, “to know I can’t be in the body I’ve always been in my head… the dysphoria is a pain like nothing… nothing imaginable can describe that pain.” Jewell’s surgery was cancelled 24 hours before she was due to go under the knife. We are now finally starting to get a bit more information as to why NHS Wales’ senior body, the Joint Commissioning Committee (JCC) decided to cancel all…
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Bash Back Threaten NHS Staff
Read More…: Bash Back Threaten NHS StaffOn Friday, NHS Wales confirmed they had cancelled all scheduled surgeries and paused all surgery referrals made by the Welsh Gender Service, pending an investigation. I speculated this might be about to happen in a blog post I published earlier the same day. Within a few hours that speculation had been confirmed to me and Hugo Daniel at the Sunday Times, allowing us to publish the story on Saturday morning. Yesterday afternoon, the trans activist group Bash Back produced a seven page statement on X and BlueSky. Bash Back said the decision to cancel surgeries “will kill” and that the…
Archives
- ▼2026
- ▼September (10)
- (25th) Peggie v RCN Day 3: unProvan
- (24th) Peggie v RCN Day 2: Trans-Organisational Madness
- (23rd) Peggie v RCN Day 1: Getting Taken Seriously
- (22nd) Peggie v RCN: “I want this to be a wake-up call”
- (17th) NHS Wales to review “paused” surgeries by Christmas
- (16th) Former Gender Clinician: “It’s pseudo-medicine”
- (15th) A transsexual writes…
- (11th) BBC Gender Apology Row
- (5th) WGS surgery referral free-for-all
- (1st) Bash Back Threaten NHS Staff
- ▼September (10)
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