Here's a cut-and-paste from my "News of Interest" thread;

“BULLY BEEFEATERS FIRED OVER GIRL YEOMAN”;Two Beefeaters have been sacked for bullying the Tower of London's first female Yeoman Warder, it was revealed yesterday.
Mark Sanders-Crook and Bob Brown got the bullet for a vicious hate campaign against Moira Cameron.
The pair lose £20,000-a-year jobs and their reduced-rent homes in the Tower. A third Beefeater alleged to have taunted Moira has kept his job.
It is believed to be the first time any Beefeater has been sacked rather than resigning.
It was revealed earlier this month how Moira, 44, went bald amid bullying by male colleagues.
She is thought to have developed stress-related alopecia after nasty notes were left in her locker and her uniform was defaced.
The men fired had both been senior Army NCOs, racking up 22-years' service each.
Brown, 56, also received a police caution for tampering with Moira's Wikipedia entry.
Sanders-Crook, 46, is believed to have served with Moira in the Army.
A Tower insider said: “There was a bit of history between them. The allegation was that his bullying was more verbal. To some it might have seemed childish behaviour, but it upset Moira so much her hair fell out.”
Moira made history in 2007 by becoming the first female Beefeater in the Tower's 1,000 years. But she began wearing a wig as her ordeal continued. She burst into a meeting of male Yeoman Warders, pulled off her hairpiece and shouted: “Look what you bastards have done to me.”
Tower sources said Moira was “delighted” at the outcome. One said: “She has many friends among the Beefeaters and is determined to carry on.”
Sanders-Crook's father Raymond was also a Beefeater for 18-years. Last night his mother said: “He's a scapegoat and is devastated. The only thing he's done wrong is that he and his wife and his son didn't talk to her. They were wrong to employ a single woman in the Tower, an environment full of married men.”
Tower authorities said last night: “An investigation concluded that the allegations had foundation and disciplinary action was appropriate. We believe everyone is entitled to work in an environment free from harassment. The dismissed staff have the right to lodge an appeal.”
THE SUN says;
At long last the tables are being turned on bullying men at the Tower of London.
Two Beefeaters are sacked for a hate campaign against the first female Yeoman Warder.
Moira Cameron found herself persecuted by men who thought a woman had no right to the job.
Yet brave Moira had spent 22-years in the Army and many women serve with our Forces today in Afghanistan.

Serves the bullies right.


Not once has there been any evidence to suggest this bullying was gender based.

The way in which the above article depicts male Beefeaters (i.e. – all other Beefeaters) as an oppressive and sexist majority would be laughable if it wasn't so damaging.

Comments such as “Moira, 44, went bald amid bullying by male colleagues”, and “ She burst into a meeting of male Yeoman Warders” suggest that gender was - and is - an issue, when in fact ALL of Cameron's colleagues are male, meaning that any bullying would naturally have to come from a male colleague, and that her absence from any staff meeting would unavoidably create a situation where all the remaining staff were male. They make it sound like a sinister plot by men to oust her from her position. They do not take into account the possibility that Moira has character traits that might have contributed to her unpopularity and that her gender may not even be relevant at all.

Since this story broke I have suspected there was more - or to be more precise - LESS to this story than was implied.
It seems now that it is a disciplinary offence not to socialise off-duty with a colleague... if that particular colleague just so happens to be female!
Can I get a female colleague sacked if she refuses to socialise with me? Hell no! I'd be sacked for even suggesting it. And rightly so! So... how does this work in reverse?
Are men now considered sexist if they don't embrace the unpleasant character traits of a colleague they neither get along or see eye-to-eye with if the colleague in question is female rather than male?
Are we supposed to pretend that women are incapable of having unpleasant and negative character traits that some people might choose to avoid - and that male sexism and resistance to female equality are the sole reasons behind any male employee's ill-feeling towards a female colleague?

I'm happy someone has made the effort to set up a Facebook account supporting Mark Sanders-Crook, demanding his reinstatement and condemning the over-handed and blatantly agenda-influenced treatment he has been subjected to.

Heads ought to be rolling at the Tower of London!

Beefeater sacked for harassing first female Yeoman tells how her arrival caused ructions at the Tower... and cost him his job



By Ian Gallagher
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-job-home.html
Last updated at 1:00 AM on 29th November 2009

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Tomorrow Mark Sanders-Crook will be forced to surrender his scarlet dress uniform and ceremonial sword and spear to a Yeoman at the Tower of London.

For the former Grenadier Guardsman and his family, it will be a deeply emotional moment, and an ignominious end to a hitherto unblemished 29-year career serving Queen and country.

Mr Sanders-Crook, 44, is one of the two ‘bullying Beefeaters’ sacked last week for harassing Moira Cameron – the Tower’s first female Beefeater – and, in her words, ‘causing unprecedented stress to the extent that my hair fell out’.

The case made headlines around the world, and, for some, undermined long-held notions about the jovial men in red, who nurture ravens, guard the Crown Jewels and beguile tourists with centuries-old stories.

Worried: Mark Sanders-Crook as a proud Beefeater. Tomorrow he will be forced to surrender his uniform

To many, it seemed unthinkable that two of their number, possibly motivated by anger at the arrival of a woman, had conducted a hate campaign.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the account of Mr Sanders-Crook – part of a seven-man group of Beefeaters known as the ‘Ripper Crew’ who took the public on Jack the Ripper tours of London in their spare time – differs considerably from his accuser.

‘To me, this is not just a job, it is a calling – but now I am unemployed and soon to be homeless, and I have done absolutely nothing wrong. I refute, totally, all her claims,’ he says.

Ms Cameron, 44, appointed two years ago, insists she ‘suffered immensely’ at his hands.


He would not risk his job by 'harassing' anyone
And in what must have been uncomfortable for the Tower authorities, who trumpeted her arrival with much fanfare, she has told them that ‘because of Mark and others like him’ she would not recommend they employ another female Beefeater.

So where did this bold attempt at modernisation go so terribly wrong? What is the truth about the case of the bullying Beefeaters? And just what goes on behind the Tower’s 1,000-year-old walls when its broad gates close to the public, with attendant ceremony, at 10pm every night?

Until now details of the case have been closely guarded. But The Mail on Sunday can today reveal exactly what Ms Cameron told police and her bosses about the series of dark episodes that ‘turned my life upside down’.

Mark Sanders-Crook on patrol in Bosnia in 1997 as part of the Medical Corp

And in an exclusive interview, Mr Sanders-Crook – as well as publicly defending himself for the first time – offers an insight into the lives of the 35 modern-day Beefeaters – officially known as Yeomen Warders – who all live at the Tower in a ‘very tight-knit community’.

A rugby-loving former sergeant major, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, his manner is open and straightforward. Like him, his father was a soldier then a Beefeater, and it was always his ambition ‘to make it to the Tower’.

For ex-Servicemen, Beefeater posts are highly coveted as well as prestigious – coming with a £25,000-a-year salary and a reduced-rent home at the Tower, both which Mr Sanders-Crook will lose.


'I had nothing in common with her'
All are former senior non-commissioned officers from the Army, RAF and Royal Marines. They must have served for a minimum of 22 years, and hold long-service and good conduct medals.

‘It was the cherry on the cake of my Army career,’ says Mr Sanders-Crook.
‘At the Tower you are not in the Army, but you have many of the same traditions, the ethos and camaraderie. It is a halfway house. I loved the job and there was a great social life that went with it.’

One of the key planks of Ms Cameron’s evidence is her account of a visit she made with seven other Yeomen Warders, including Mr Sanders-Crook, to a restaurant in October last year. Mr Sanders-Crook’s then nine-year-old son was also among the party.

It would later be considered so pertinent to her case that a diagram of the seating plan was submitted to the Beefeater’s disciplinary hearing.

Moira Cameron, just after being made the first female Beefeater at the Tower of London

Because supper at, say, a steak house would have been a bit of a busman’s holiday, the Beefeaters went to Bodean’s, which specialises in pork dishes.

In a statement, Ms Cameron set the scene. ‘We met outside the Tower and I felt Mark bristling because I was there.’ She said he had a sharp intake of breath when he saw her arrive.
‘When we went into Bodean’s I sat at the other end of the table to Mark but Crawford [another Beefeater] came up beside me and said move over which meant that I sat beside Mark.’

Mr Sanders-Crook, meanwhile, denies her claim that the ‘atmosphere went from bad to worse’ and, while acknowledging that they didn’t talk directly, maintains that this was because ‘there was communal food, which meant the whole table was talking’.


'I have been punished for being a man'
Later that night Ms Cameron was asked by a friend ‘what was wrong’. She said: ‘I apologised and explained that Mark Sanders-Crook had a problem with me being a Yeoman Warder.’

But Mr Sanders-Crook retorted: ‘There was no problem. Because I was sitting opposite my son, I talked a lot to him because I didn’t want him to hear everything people were saying at the table. I didn’t deliberately ignore Moira.

‘The whole evening was very enjoyable and the company was great. The conversation between the adults was not for my son’s ears but it didn’t matter because he was enjoying watching and talking about the American football on the big screens.’

Elsewhere in her statement, and in a record of a meeting she had with a human resources manager and Tower official, Ms Cameron outlines the rest of her complaints.

Moira Cameron, who 'enjoyed a drink', out with friends

She insists Mr Sanders-Crook swore more frequently in her company, and recalls how his wife once appeared to deliberately leave her out of a round of drinks during a Beefeaters get-together at their private watering hole at the Tower, known as The Club.

Then there was a morning soon after she started when she alleges that Mr Sanders-Crook shunned her on the way to work.

‘I was walking to the office and noticed Yeomen Warders Mark Sanders-Crook and Terry Humphries in front of me,’ she said in her statement.

‘When Mark saw me coming towards them, he motioned to Terry to go up the Flint Tower stairs so they wouldn’t have to talk to me. This was a regular occurrence; certain people would walk over to the other side of the street or go off in a different direction to avoid speaking to me.’

Beyond a complaint about a parking space, which she claims Mark and another Beefeater connived to stop her getting – he denies this – she provides no other tangible examples of victimisation.

Mr Sanders-Crook says none of the incidents she describes ever happened.
The record of her meeting with human resources shows, however, that she believed Mr Sanders-Crook, prior to her arrival, ‘may have started rumours’ that a lesbian was coming to the Tower.

She admits, however, that she didn’t have any proof, and he vehemently denied the claim when he was asked about it during his disciplinary hearing.

In her statement Ms Cameron also talks about how she was unfairly treated by some of the Beefeaters, and describes Mark as ‘a ringleader’.

She says: ‘He constantly ignored me and the times that he did speak to me, apart from twice when we did have sensible conversations, he would bark his answers at me. He would cause an atmosphere when I was around and others would conform to his mood.’

But when he wasn’t around, she added, his friends spoke to her in a civil manner.
Mr Sanders-Crook’s closest friends among the Beefeaters were fellow members of the ‘Ripper Crew’ and according to the record of her HR meeting, Ms Cameron said many of the Rippers were opposed to her.

It says: ‘Even before arriving at the Tower she got a feeling as to who was anti her appointment and who was pro it. She assumed they had been given a “gipsy’s warning” and this was confirmed by the Chief Yeomen Warder one night in the Tower Club.

‘Quite a lot of the Yeomen Warders were friendly and positive towards her, especially YW Bill Callaghan and the Yeoman Gaoler.’

It adds that one of the Beefeaters ‘was really good on a one-to-one basis, but changed when he was in the Byward Tower (the Beefeaters’ office) with the other Rippers’.

Mr Sanders-Crook, who is married with two children, a boy of ten and 15-year-old daughter, who is at private school, became a Beefeater in 2004.

It was the one of the proudest moments of his life. Familiar with the Tower because of his father, his children were both christened there and he had wanted to become a Beefeater since being a teenager. It is nonsense, he says, that he would risk his prestigious job by harassing anyone.

He says of Ms Cameron’s claims: ‘I never bullied her, excluded her or victimised her. It is simple. I spoke to her civilly at work but didn’t socialise with her afterwards. But then I don’t socialise with 70 per cent of the Beefeaters.’

However, he is the first to admit that Ms Cameron’s arrival at the Tower was not met with universal approval among the yeoman body, of which all but three are married.

‘The biggest thing that stuck in a lot of people’s throats was the break in tradition,’ he says. ‘There was no outright hostility. But we wondered if it was a PR stunt, or political correctness. And we were hoping, too, that they had got the right person.

‘People say it is a male bastion. Well, yes, it was. The Yeomen Body was formed by Henry VII who stated that he wanted to leave his old soldiers behind with their wives.

‘What concerned me most, and what caused apprehension and shock among the wives of the Beefeaters, was that she was single. I don’t have a problem with her being female.

'But I have seen a lot of very good friends’ marriages go down the pan in the Army, not because they have done anything, but because other people perceive they have done something.

‘We’re a close community. And in the Tower you cannot go to the toilet without someone knowing. It is not difficult to see the potential for trouble in employing a single woman.’

Mr Sanders-Crook added the Tower authorities ‘should have brought in two or three woment to take the pressure off Moira’.

He recalls the day the Beefeaters were officially told a woman was joining them.
‘All the warders were called to the Byward Tower where The Governor of the Tower, Major General Keith Cima, was leading the meeting, along with the Chief Yeomen warder.

‘The Governor came in as proud as punch and said: “Gentleman, I have something to announce. We are going to have the first female warder and her name is Moira Cameron.”

'There was silence. We were told from day one that no matter what, she would not be treated differently from the rest of us. After that it hit the papers. It was the topic of conversation.’

Naturally there was some ribald speculation as to what she might look like and ‘whether she would wear high heels with her scarlet tunic’.

‘We jokingly wondered what we were going to call her. Was she going to be a yeoman warder, or yeowoman or a yeoperson? That was the sort of banter that was going around.

‘She formed friendships with some of the warders and their wives. They made her feel welcome and took her out for meals. Outside work I had no contact with her. My social circle was men, couples and families. I wouldn’t go out with a single woman. I had nothing in common with her.’

It was in these early months that Ms Cameron felt the most hostility. And she later told the Tower authorities that she had been quite vocal about leaving at this point.

In fact, she even considered quitting shortly before starting the job after hearing a former Beefeater talking on the radio of how life would be made difficult for her.

Mr Sanders-Crook says: ‘I had no idea that she felt this way. As far as I was concerned everything was fine. I admit I did swear in front of her. I am a former soldier after all.

But no more than I would do normally. In any case, she also swore. The only person who ever corrected us for swearing was one of the other warders, the union rep. His biggest worry was the public hearing as the last thing he wanted was a complaint.’

He adds: ‘The big thing that happened to her when she was here was that she went out one night and her drink was spiked. She said she had been to a bar with some friends, took a few sips of her drink and then felt funny.

She couldn’t remember much about what happened next, but said she tripped over the step getting into the Tower and ended up with a black eye and a fat lip. We all tried to give as much support as we could and told her to report it. I’m not sure if she did.

‘She appeared to have lots of friends, men and women, and went out a lot, at least three times a week. She was fond of a drink – I remember she liked Bacardi. I don’t know if she had a particular boyfriend. But on her website she stated, “I do not wear comfortable shoes”.

‘That is a military saying and it means she is not a lesbian. The thing about me supposedly spreading rumours about her being a lesbian – which I didn’t – was brought up at my disciplinary.

'As for her alopecia, she said to everybody at the Tower that she lost her hair because of the stress caused by her drink being spiked.’

Mr Sanders-Crook was suspended on October 23, three weeks after his Beefeater colleague Bob Brown, 57, was also suspended – for changing Ms Cameron’s Wikipedia entry to say that she was leaving the Tower for medical reasons, even though she isn’t.

For this he received a police caution and was later dismissed.

‘The police were involved only because of the Wikipedia entry. But they gave Moira’s statement to the Tower authorities and that’s what started the investigation into me.’

It is worth noting that in the statement she does not appear to demonstate much of an appetite for punishing Mr Sanders-Crook.

She says: ‘I think Mark is a very good yeoman and his tours are excellent...if he was willing to compromise just a little on his feelings about me then life at the Tower would be better.’

Mr Sanders-Crook was sacked last week, punished, he says, ‘because I am a man, because of political correctness’. He plans to appeal and launch a claim for unfair dismissal.

‘I was summarily dismissed by the Governor. He was sitting at his big wooden desk and behind him, on the wall, was the 5ft-long Gaoler’s Axe, which represents the old executioner’s axe. He said I was guilty of harassment and gross misconduct.

As it was Christmas, he said that he would give me until January 6 to leave the Tower.
‘My life is in ruins now, and my family are worried about the future. And I did absolutely nothing wrong.’

A Tower spokeswoman said: ‘We cannot go into the details of the allegations. They were investigated extremely thoroughly.’



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231756/Beefeater-sacked-harassing-female-Yeoman-tells-arrival-caused-ructions-Tower-cost-job-home.html#ixzz0YIPv4BV5

As he said, he's being punished because he's a man.

Who cares about his home, his family, his life, his career..?

Well, we do - but I mean, who cares when a woman's feelings are clearly so much more important that a man's (and his family's) wellbeing.