Today’s yawning otter comes via Peter G Trimming and flickr. Peter’s caption: “Seen at the British Wildlife Centre, Newchapel, Surrey. ‘Emmy’ awaiting the afternoon Keeper’s talk, and anticipating food.”
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
Hey all,
I’m a 25 year old WOC and policy-nerd-in-training. This Thomson business just feels like Example #5967236 as to why attempting to enter politics in any capacity other than policy development* would be a frustrating and futile exercise for me. It also serves as a reminder of the frightfully inclusive, welcoming and totally non-hostile environment that will greet me once I graduate and (hopefully) gain employment.
*Non-policy development role = public office, or any role that’s more “visible” than your average PD post.
@Perla, I hear you. Australia is not yet a post-racist country, not by a long shot.
Thanks tigtog. I was also thinking about sexism, misogyny and the possibility of Ironsian (Ironsesque?) “friendliness”.
(TW: rape culture/sexual assault/sexual harassment/related awfulness: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/08/quote-of-day_09.html).
On a lighter note, eating icing straight from the bowl is the best flu cure ever. I may not have the energy to bake, but icing isn’t out of the question!
The SMH has an irritating report that Medical Insurance Group Australia, which insures private midwives, doesn’t want them to accompany their clients if they are transferred to hospital, apparently following a specific complaint from a doctor that a private midwife applied a hot pack to her client’s back after transfer.
The major problems (aside from heaven forbid that a laboring person be offered comfort/care measures that weren’t authorised by a doctor*) with this are of course twofold: the impact on labouring people whose trusted long-term care provider must leave them in what is usually a stressful and sometimes an upsetting moment, and the other that labouring people and midwives who might otherwise decide to transfer for whatever they identify as beyond their skills/risk tolerance/pain tolerance etc will presumably be less likely to do so.
* I’m assuming without proof that the decision to use a hot pack is not a contentious or risky thing in labour, I think this is a fair lay assumption at least. (Obviously there’s some risk of burns if heated or applied carelessly.)
Mary – applied a hot pack??!!??? We can’t allow that kind of kinky thing to go on!!
(WTF?!)
I am Not a Happy Camper, to quote the other thread, because I am an inveterate watcher of UK crime and Silent Witness just killed off Harry. With Extreme Prejudice! Nooooooooooooooo!! Not Harrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!
A quick google has also alerted me to the fact that he may be making a Miraculous Comeback, which if true (given the very graphic and nasty manner of his onscreen demise) would mean that Silent Witness has finally jumped the shark.
(Obviously there’s some risk of burns if heated or applied carelessly.)
But I think we can safely err on the side of the midwife being careful.
SunlessNick: never! That’s why if a hospital midwife had applied the hot pack, the doctor would have observed the heating process (microwave, I assume) and personally verified the temp before application. Right?
Just found out one of my aunties (technically a cousin, but wev) died. She lived in the country, so I rarely saw her, but she was very kind to me during my short-lived stint at a rural uni campus back in ’04. Her twin sister (who I have also recently neglected) lives in metro Melbourne and was a stand-in grandmother to me and my siblings growing up.*
My parents visited my aunt in hospital a few weeks ago. I had to get an application form signed by a non-relative referee, so I couldn’t go with them (it was very last-minute). If I hadn’t dragged my feet when getting my form stuff together, I could have visited her one last time.
*My father’s parents died decades before I was born and my mum’s late parents were overseas.
So sorry to hear of your loss Perla.
Thanks Mindy. sorry for the novel – I just blurted it out not long after I heard.
My goodness you get some shitbags on Twitter. #notmepersonally