The council apologised
Nottingham Council admits wrongdoing.
A council spent more than £10,000 on legal fees and handed out £570 in compensation after “unlawfully” banning an event hosted by an author.
A talk by feminist campaigner Julie Bindel was stopped by Nottingham City Council due to what it said were her views on transgender rights.
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The talk, organised by Nottingham Women for Change, had been due to take place on 25 June. However, the day before the event, the group was told by the council it could not go ahead. The authority said Ms Bindel’s views “fly in the face” of its position on transgender rights.
The council’s position “flies in the face” of my position on women’s rights. Women are half of humanity; trans people are a tiny fraction of humanity, one with delusions about what sex and gender and identity and rights mean. It’s not obvious that trans ideology should trump women’s rights.
Following three months of pre-action correspondence, the parties reached agreement on mutually acceptable terms, including an apology, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
In October, the council apologised to Ms Bindel and admitted it had acted “unlawfully” in cancelling her talk. Now it has emerged the authority spent £10,680 on legal fees and provided a £569.99 “settlement”, which the council said was paid to the author, organisers and ticketholders “in respect to their reasonable losses”.
Ms Bindel says she had not asked for compensation and the payout was for “out-of-pocket expenses” incurred.
“I’m a socialist so I would never take money from a cash-strapped council,” she said.
She has principles. Nottingham City Council, not so much.
Fantastic that the cash-strapped council thought it was worth more than £10K to attempt to avoid admitting it screwed up, though.
Sheer genius.
It’s not like it’s their money they’re spending. I’m just wondering if they’ll remember this the next time they feel the urge to cancel a feminist event that “flies in the face of their values.” It would be cheaper to re-evaluate their “values” in the light of the Forestater ruling, but that would mean losing their Rainbow-Sparkle Virtue Signaling Merit Badge, and we know that’s just asking too much of them. Maintaining the precious integrity of their immortal, gendered souls is worth the ten thousand.