In the news

I'm not suggesting it does. You said that, not me. They saved my mum's life. that's it.

I hope you get sorted soon as well.

I do to but it's not going to happen on the NHS. I think that's pretty tragic, as it's an institution I previously believed in and with all the resources and expertise at their disposal it's unjustifiable that they have such an insipid and indifferent response to situations such as mine or the phlebotomist's I referred to earlier.

get the fatality rate down

As I understand it, planned home births for 2nd (and further) babies (for otherwise low risk women) are no more or less risky than hospital births, based on available evidence.

that doesn’t really help when the uk hospital rate is unacceptable

Fucking amazing but rapidly becoming less so.

Idk. I think it's always been up and down / hit and miss.

Spending some time with the US system does highlight the differences. The biggest of which is the speed of diagnosis / testing. You literally get a referral, book an appointment at the test facility* and away you go.

*after checking who is in network, and calling your insurance to check your covered for the test, what your co-pay is and then calling a second time because the first person gave you zero confidence, then spending ages waiting for your appointment because its a weird first-come-first-served even though you booked a specific time, followed by possibility arguing over your copay.

Finally there's an upside to middle aged British men going to Thailand in search of young boys.

Dark

Pretty much pitch black down there by all accounts.

australia just implemented a bunch of laws cutting the right to protest, journalistic freedoms and draconian sentences for people campaigning against big industry

the whole world is moving to the right
#globalrevolution

From the NHS website.

The overall rate of negative outcomes (a composite of outcomes of death or serious complications) was 4.3 per 1000 births (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.3 to 5.5) and there was no difference between non-obstetric unit settings compared with obstetric units. This indicates that as a whole, home births are as safe as ones in medical settings.
Linky

Although it does go on to break down the results from the study and some demographics do have a harder time of it, but not significantly so, anyway this is not an area of expertise for me, my sis seemed far more clued up, having gone through it twice now, once in a maternity unit and once at home, she much preferred the home birth.

did lol

Yes, but as above, our rates are bad overall.

This makes me feel very sad.

It's like some kind of global mental ice age.

source?

Found this
Which shows an improving trend with other nations improving faster (since 1990 to 2017) but nothing to suggest that home births are detrimental to our statistics, although I'm pretty sure that's not what you are saying.

From the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia:

"As part of the investigation the police carried out raids on their homes, in which jewellery, handbags and watches worth up to $273m, and $29m in cash were seized. The couple maintain the luxury goods were gifts and that the cash was election funds."

Doesn't sound great, but hasn't Australia always been pretty right wing?

Hadn't heard of this before.

Allegations over the misappropriation of state funds at 1MBD emerged in 2015 as the public learned that $4bn had gone missing from the fund, and nearly $700m was allegedly transferred into Najib's bank account.

Fuck me it puts duck moats and pay-per-view in perspective.

$29m in cash

That's like...a garage full?

Or 29 microwaves

http://izismile.com/2011/05/31/where_can_you_hide_one_million_dollars_cash_13_pics.html

Have we noticed the sheer number of current and ex-national leaders being prosecuted for fraud and corruption at the moment?

Razak
Netanyahu
Sarkozy
Zuma

Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Spain, Kenya, Ghana, South Korea etc. too

So Sean Hannity of Fox News has presented this summary of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's platform, as a reason why she is dangerous:

Damn, she gets my vote.

I guess that's a good thing, right? Same amount of corruption as there's always been, just now former leaders are no longer automatically seen as untouchable.

Have we had that twat Gavin Williamson’s Siri incident yet? How amusing.

Until you realise that he’s the Defence Secretary and all his conversations are going straight to Apple.

Twat.