Latest news with #IslaBumba
Evening Standard
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Evening Standard
Emails discussing nurse probe should not have been written, Peggie tribunal told
She said she Googled policies around self-identification, and added: 'I'm not a law expert – if you Google it, it comes up under Equality Act, there are many references to toilets and changing rooms. I subsequently emailed Isla Bumba who is much more expert in Equalities than me. She agreed there is no policy.'
Times
3 days ago
- Health
- Times
Look out for the mafia with rainbow lanyards
'N othing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' Martin Luther King Jr said that, a man I'd hope Isla Bumba, NHS Fife's equality and human rights lead officer, had heard of, considering her job is improving diversity. Although given Bumba admitted last week that she wasn't entirely sure if she was a woman, it's probably best not to make assumptions. Bumba was testifying at Sandie Peggie's employment tribunal, and I must first explain Peggie before I get to Bumba. In December 2023, Peggie, an NHS nurse with more than 30 years of unblemished service, went into the women's changing room of Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy because she'd had a heavy period and bled through her scrubs. There, she was surprised to encounter a 6ft-tall 27-year-old male undressing in front of her. This male is now known as Dr Beth Upton, and he had started identifying as a woman only the year before.
Scotsman
4 days ago
- Health
- Scotsman
How Sandie Peggie-NHS Fife case is writing the obituary of gender identity politics in Scotland
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Are we witnessing the slow death of the absurd ideology that has dominated our public discourse for the last decade, helping to bring down two First Ministers and which saw a male rapist briefly housed in a women's prison? Frankly, I believe we are. Earlier this week, an NHS equality and human rights officer, a woman with a degree in immunology, claimed under oath that she did not know her own sex. As the words stumbled from Isla Bumba's mouth, you could almost hear the country respond: 'Don't be daft, your chromosomes are XX which makes you a woman. What did they teach you at that university?' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Bumba, who also has a postgraduate degree in public health, became the object of ridicule while giving evidence at nurse Sandie Peggie's employment tribunal earlier this week. Her role, as set out in the 2022 job advert, was to give NHS Fife advice on the interpretation of and compliance with the Equality Act 2010. READ MORE: Why trans activists who hound their work colleagues could cost employers dear Sandie Peggie smiles as her solicitor Margaret Gribbon, left, reveals the NHS Fife nurse had been cleared of gross misconduct following disciplinary proceedings (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images Believing in fairy tales Unfortunately for Peggie, who was suspended last year for daring to object to a male-born doctor using female changing rooms, Bumba based her guidance, not on the law of the land, as clarified by the Supreme Court earlier this year, but on the theory of gender identity. This proposition, which claims that humans can change their sex at will and that we all have an inner 'gender identity', has infected Scotland's public realm for a decade or more. When transgender campaigners – paid for by the public purse – came up with their cunning plan in 2014 to persuade the Scottish Prison Service to include trans-identified male offenders in the women's estate, Bumba was only 18. During her early adult years, gender identity was embedded in public services, as well as in universities, charities, the arts and culture. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Little wonder then that she grew up believing in fairy tales. Her understanding of human physiology is based, not on her science degree, but on the same misinformation that led my ten-year-old granddaughter to assert 'men can have babies too granny, if they are trans'. While NHS Fife's Equality and Human Rights Isla Bumba 'hazarded a guess' that she was female, she stressed 'no one knows what their chromosomes are' until they are tested (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images Sturgeon's zeal for gender identity The poster girl for the cult – because that is what it became – was Nicola Sturgeon. The politician who in 2000 had dragged her feet over the repeal of Section 2A, the law that banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools, emerged diva-like after the independence referendum as the champion of all things queer. 'Trans women are women,' she insisted, even as Adam Graham (aka Isla Bryson), a man in a cheap blonde wig, was found guilty of rape. Sturgeon was not alone in her zeal for gender identity. Whether because of internal party pressure, a desire to maintain their status within Scotland's narrow but powerful civic elite, or sheer stupidity, we will never know, the majority of Scotland's political class went along with the charade – with the notable exception of the Scottish Conservatives and a few determined women like Alba MSP Ash Regan, Labour's Claire Baker and Carol Mochan, and SNP MSP Michelle Thompson. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Regan became one of the leading figures of a grassroots movement that grew up in support of women's rights, along with her erstwhile SNP colleagues Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine and Labour's Johann Lamont. The movement now encompasses one of the most famous women in the world, author and philanthropist JK Rowling, as well as an army of anonymous women sewing banners, writing emails and mastering equality law at their kitchen table. Sturgeon did her best to undermine them, sneering that their views were 'not valid', but reality has a way of asserting itself, even in in the face of petty authoritarianism. Slowly but surely, the empress's new clothes were stripped away and then she was gone. The penny drops That landmark Supreme Court judgment, which ruled that For Women Scotland was right to argue that the legal definition of 'woman' in the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex, was the single most important moment in the campaign to re-assert women's rights. It will force the Scottish Government, and bodies such as NHS Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service, to unpick the tapestry of transgender guidance and diktats that have been firmly sewn into the fabric of our public life. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The surreal utterings of NHS Fife's equality and human rights officer are another milestone in the myth's destruction. Bumba's public assertion that she could only hazard a guess that she is female and 'no one knows' their chromosomes unless they had undergone tests must surely be the moment when the penny dropped for everyone – including, I imagine, John Swinney and Labour leader Anas Sarwar. The First Minister may well insist that NHS Fife has his full backing, but I will be shocked if the SNP's 2026 manifesto contains a promise to amend gender laws, as the last one did. With less than a year to the Holyrood elections, Swinney will calculate that public opinion is now firmly on the side of biology, and while the majority are content to live and let live, most people do not believe that a man who says he is a woman has changed his sex. Nor will Sarwar sacrifice his slim electoral chances on the altar of gender ideology. I hazard a guess that he has always known exactly what his chromosomes are, and that he now realises the electorate know theirs too. Sturgeon had a ball for a few years, revelling in the adulation of the LGBTQI+ community. But while she and her allies boasted of their progressiveness, children were being harmed, families broken, women hounded. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Equalities boss in trans doctor row 'Googled' policies of other health boards, tribunal told
An NHS equalities boss Googled the trans policies of other health boards as they did not have their own, a tribunal was told yesterday. Nurse Sandie Peggie was suspended from Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy after she complained about having to share a changing room with trans medic Dr Beth Upton. The 51-year-old nurse has since sued the health board and medic, and the landmark employment tribunal she brought against them returned yesterday. Isla Bumba, NHS Fife's equality and human rights lead officer, told the tribunal she had researched the policies of other health boards as there was no policy in place regarding trans employees in 2023. And she revealed she had been using a search engine to investigate the trans patient policies of other health boards after being tasked with writing one. As the tribunal returned for what is expected to be another eleven days, she said she would 'hazard a guess at being female' but that she has not had a chromosome test. And the NHS employee defended having the phrase 'LGBT ally' on her email signature, telling the tribunal it 'matter of fact' about herself but did not mean she was not an ally to women. Yesterday the tribunal was told in August 2023 Esther Davidson, who worked in the emergency department, had sought advice on transgender policies. Ms Bumba said she had been asked for 'very generic and informal advice' because they had a 'transgender staff member who was due to join the workforce' so was seeking advice on how to accommodate them, particularly around changing rooms. She told Jane Russell, KC, for NHS Fife: 'I said it could be deemed discriminatory to not allow a trans person access to facilities that aligned with their gender, but I recommended that it might be worthwhile having a conversation with the person directly if they had been open about their trans status to see where they would be most comfortable.' The inquiry was told Ms Bumba looked at policies from other health boards, with NHS Highland's policy saying that 'staff must be treated in accordance with their self-declared gender regardless of whether under medical supervision or have a gender recognition certificate'. As well as not having a policy for staff, they did not have a policy for patients. And Ms Bumba said: 'I had been tasked with writing a trans policy for patients, because we also did not have one at that time, and so part of my scoping I was contacting or leaning on the other equality leads. 'Having discussions with them, trying to get copies if I could, or be referenced to their existing policies if they had one and doing my own research on what other policies were - so I would have been Googling them, I could have came across English policies online, but I reached out directly to some of my Scottish colleagues for their policies.' Ms Bumba has been at the health board for just over three years, and she told the tribunal her job was to make sure NHS Fife was adhering to the Equality Act among other duties. The witness disputed the definition of biological sex when questioned by Mrs Peggie's lawyer Naomi Cunningham. She told the barrister: 'I think you've simplified what could be deemed biological sex, but in actual fact it's far more complex. 'I don't know anything about Beth's body, I didn't at the time I don't now, I don't need to know. But it wouldn't be something that I would ever have the information of exactly what she is made of biologically. 'Nor do I know what my own body is made of biologically. 'I hazard a guess that I would be female, but no one knows what their chromosomes are or their hormonal composition unless you've had that test and I at least have not and I'm not sure Beth has.' On her email signature she was listed as an 'LGBT ally', the tribunal heard, and Ms Cunningham challenged her on it. The lawyer, who highlighted other things she does not list including being a 'disability ally', said: 'Doesn't singling out LGBT ally on your email signature give the impression that the board's human rights and equality lead thinks that the protected characteristics of sexual orientation and gender reassignment are the most important ones and they come first?' But Ms Bumba, who studied at Aberdeen University, said: 'I don't think having that on my email signature suggests that its my top priority no. A priority, but not necessarily the top priority. 'Being an LGBT ally does not mean that I'm not an ally to other protected characteristics.' Following her involvement in the incident in early January 2024, Ms Bumba said she did not have any more involvement until July. The inquiry heard of a Daily Mail article which told of the incident involving Mrs Peggie and Dr Upton, 30. Ms Bumba, who said she was not aware of the identity of the nurse and doctor concerned at this point, said she told a follow up meeting: 'I did remind the group that the nurse involved was entitled to her personal beliefs and that gender critical beliefs were protected under the Equality Act specifically, however, that being said, the NHS expects its employees to conduct themselves in a certain way that aligns with our values and ethics.' The tribunal continues.
