Rate rises by 19% compared with 2020, prompting fresh concerns about NHS maternity care
The risk of women in England suffering severe bleeding after giving birth has risen to its highest level for five years, prompting fresh concern about NHS maternity care.
The rate at which mothers in England experience postpartum haemorrhage has increased from 27 per 1,000 births in 2020 to 32 per 1,000 this year – a rise of 19%.
Several European nations are already planning similar moves while Britain has said ‘nothing is off the table’
Australia is taking on powerful tech companies with its under-16 social media ban, but will the rest of the world follow? The country’s enactment of the policy is being watched closely by politicians, safety campaigners and parents. A number of other countries are not far behind, with Europe in particular hoping to replicate Australia, while the UK is keeping more of a watchful interest.
King extols early diagnosis which can give ‘invaluable time’ and backs launch of screening checker tool
King Charles has hailed a “milestone” in his “cancer journey” and revealed he is to reduce his schedule of treatment in the new year, describing the news as a “personal blessing”.
His treatment will move into a precautionary phase with its regularity significantly reduced as his recovery reaches a very positive stage, it is understood. His medical team will assess how much longer he will require treatment to protect and prioritise his continued recovery.
Exclusive: As Labour ministers prepare long awaited strategy, campaigners accuse them of sidelining experts
Leading organisations have criticised the development of the government’s flagship violence against women and girls strategy, calling the process chaotic, haphazard and “worse than under the Tories”.
Ministers are gearing up for a policy announcement blitz before the publication of the long-awaited plan next week.
A super flu epidemic is sweeping the country. Let us come together to protect the institution we all love
Keir Starmer is the British prime minister
I am a Labour prime minister who believes in workers’ right to strike. But let’s be clear about the strikes planned by resident doctors next week. They should not happen. They are reckless. They place the NHS and patients who need it in grave danger.
I remain hopeful they can be averted. A good deal is on the table, and the British Medical Association (BMA) is putting it to members this weekend. My message to the doctors is simple – take it.
Keir Starmer is the prime minister of the United Kingdom
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Keir Starmer has said it is “frankly beyond belief” that resident doctors would strike during the NHS’s worst moment since the pandemic, in remarks that risk inflaming tensions with medical staff.
Writing for the Guardian, the prime minister made an outspoken attack on the strikes planned for 17-22 December for placing “the NHS and patients who need it in grave danger”.
The University of Leeds complex was a prototype for the Barbican – and the work done to it over time demonstrates how brutalist buildings can be humanised, writes Alan Radford
I read with interest about the refurbishment plans for the Barbican (Barbican revamp to give ‘bewildering’ arts centre a new lease of life, 5 December). I spent more than 30 years working on the prototype – the large complex of buildings that the architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon designed for the University of Leeds, constructed circa 1970.
All of the design features in the Barbican were there in the Leeds complex of offices, laboratories, library and so on, including all the problems. I always explained to visitors that I regarded the Chamberlin buildings primarily as a large-scale piece of brutalist sculpture rather than as a working environment.
Women are trailblazing efforts in the UK and US to improve sustainability on film and TV sets, from donating catering and rehoming props to reducing emissions
It’s two days before Thanksgiving and Hillary Cohen and Samantha Luu are trying to figure out how they’re going to cook 120 turkeys with limited oven space in their food warehouse in downtown LA. “We’re going to have to do a bit of spatchcocking. It’s not very showbiz,” Cohen says.
It’s the busiest time of year for Cohen and Luu, assistant directors who founded not-for-profit organisation Every Day Action during the Covid pandemic. Designed to help unhoused people and those facing food insecurity across the city, the idea was born when Cohen noticed the amount of food waste on film and TV sets, and looked into redistributing it to those in need. “I remember asking, ‘Why can’t we donate this food?’ I kept being told it was illegal and that people could sue us if they got sick.” It didn’t take Luu, who grew up working in a soup kitchen her father founded, long to establish this was not the case. “In the US, there’s the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act that’s been around since 1996,” she says. “It protects food donors from liability issues.”
Members of the House of Lords have proposed “totally unnecessary” and “very cruel” amendments to the assisted dying bill in an attempt to scupper it, the MP leading the campaign has said.
Kim Leadbeater said on Friday she believed that peers opposed to the bill were trying to block it by proposing hundreds of changes, including one that would require terminally ill people to be filmed as they undergo an assisted death.
We’d like to hear from people in Britain who have turned to family or friends to borrow money instead of to banks, and how this has affected them
Britons often turn to family and friends to borrow money now, a new survey has suggested.
The survey of more than 4,000 adults commissioned by non-profit Fair4All Finance found that while 25% of respondents had taken out a Buy Now Pay Later loan, 26% had borrowed from family and 15% from friends this year.
Tribute to Sylvia Townsend Warner follows campaign to nominate overlooked women
“The thing all women hate is to be thought dull,” says the title character of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 novel, Lolly Willowes, an early feminist classic about a middle-aged woman who moves to the countryside, sells her soul to the devil and becomes a witch.
Although women’s lives are so limited by society, Lolly observes, they “know they are dynamite … know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are”.
Just as lullabies send babies to sleep, so songs can help those at the other end of life on their way. The leader of a Threshold Choir reveals what they do – and the personal tragedies that convinced her we need to get better at dealing with death
It’s a brisk November afternoon in the village of South Brent in Devon and, in a daffodil yellow cottage, two women are singing me lullabies. But these aren’t the sort of lullabies that parents sing to their children. They are songs written and sung for terminally ill people, to ease them towards what will hopefully be a peaceful and painless death.
We are at the home of Nickie Aven, singer and leader of a Threshold Choir. Aven and her friend are giving me a glimpse of what happens when they sing for people receiving end-of-life care. These patients are usually in hospices or in their own homes being supported by relatives, which is why 67-year-old Aven – who is softly spoken and radiates warmth and kindness – has asked me to lie down on the sofa under a rug while they sing. She says I can look at them, or I can close my eyes and allow my mind to drift. In fact, my eyes settle on Lennon, Aven’s large black labrador retriever who squeezes himself between the singers and is as gentle and well-mannered as his owner. The pair sing a cappella and in harmony. Distinct from elegies or laments, the songs are gently meditative, written to provide human connection and foster feelings of love and safety. They are not just for the benefit of the dying but for friends and relatives caring for them or holding vigil. Their singing is simple, intimate and beautiful. It is also utterly calming.
Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed. For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.
Announcement draws anger from Labour MP over refusal to remove tonnes of rubbish dumped near school in Wigan
The Environment Agency is to spend millions of pounds to clear an enormous illegal rubbish dump in Oxfordshire, saying the waste is at risk of catching fire.
But the decision announced on Thursday to clear up the thousands of tonnes of waste illegally dumped outside Kidlington has drawn an angry response from a Labour MP in Greater Manchester whose constituents have been living alongside 25,000 tonnes of toxic rubbish for nearly a year.
The courts are a clumsy means to negotiate social relationships. Let organisations make up their own minds about inclusion
Towards the end of her life, I was a friend of the writer Jan Morris. I had known her for many years and, much to my regret, had declined an offer to do her “tell all” interview when she transitioned. Jan presented herself as a woman and had undergone an operation. To me she was simply a remarkable woman. She touched, sometimes humorously, on embarrassing incidents in her life. But it never occurred to me that a legal ruling might hover over our restaurant table and block her from going to the ladies.
Last April, the supreme court issued a ruling confirming that the word “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, not a person’s legal gender. This has a wide-reaching impact on how equality law is applied in practice, particularly in providing sex-based rights such as single-sex spaces. Six months later, a draft code on the ruling’s implementation was sent bythe Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson. She has been sitting on it ever since, pleading for more time.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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Health secretary urges resident doctors, who are to strike from 17 December, to accept his offer to end dispute
Wes Streeting has told resident doctors that strikes and a sharp rise in the number of flu cases over the Christmas period could be “the Jenga piece” that forces the NHS to collapse.
The health secretary said the NHS faced a “challenge unlike any it has seen since the pandemic” and urged resident doctors to accept the government’s offer and end their action.
Not long ago, artists such as Lil Nas X and Olly Alexander were ruling pop. But success has stalled as acts face industry obstacles and rising homophobia. What now?
At the turn of the decade, gay male and non-binary pop stars seemed poised to take pop music by storm. Lil Nas X broke out with Old Town Road – which blew up on TikTok, sold about 18.5m copies and remains tied with Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You as the longest-running No 1 single in US history – and artists such as Sam Smith, Troye Sivan and Olly Alexander from Years & Years were all singing about gay love and sex.
But the initial promise has stalled. Lil Nas X’s attempts to build on his smash debut album have fizzled, and he is publicly dealing with mental health issues. In October, Khalid released his first album since being outed by his ex last year but only sold 10,000 copies in the first week in the US. A previous album, 2019’s Free Spirit, sold some 200,000 copies in the first week and led to him briefly dethroning Ariana Grande as the most listened to artist on Spotify.
Plummeting birth rates mean that without attracting immigration, many countries are sliding towards collapse
I know what “civilisational erasure” looks like: I’ve seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It’s a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. After a minor bump over the past 20 years, the EU rate appears to be declining once more, and now stands at 1.38. The UK’s is 1.44. A population’s replacement rate is 2.1. You may or may not see this as a disaster, but the maths doesn’t care what you think. We are gliding, as if by gravitational force, towards the ground.
Civilisational erasure is the term the Trump administration used in its new national security strategy, published last week. It claimed that immigration, among other factors, will result in the destruction of European civilisation. In reality, without immigration there will be no Europe, no civilisation and no one left to argue about it.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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The first week of the Guardian’s Hope appeal has raised more than £200,000 for grassroots charities doing inspiring work to bring divided communities together, promoting tolerance and positive change, and opposing racism and hate.
The milestone was reached before the annual fundraising telethon on Saturday. Journalists preparing to take donations over the phone include Polly Toynbee, John Crace, Jonathan Liew, Patrick Wintour and Simon Hattenstone.
For her directorial debut, Winslet assembled a cast including Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough to tell a story inspired by her own family’s bereavement. The actors talk mourning, immortality and hospital vending machines
In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, “like the north star just dropped out of the sky”.
It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. “I do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her.”
Health secretary announces investigation into Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys trust that has seen young patients take their own lives
A public inquiry will be held into the failures of a north-east NHS foundation after the deaths of several patients, Wes Streeting has confirmed.
The health secretary made the announcement in Darlington, speaking to the families of patients who died while receiving treatment from hospitals run by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS foundation trust, which is headquartered in the County Durham town.
Hospitals treating record numbers of flu patients but worst is yet to come as medical bosses urge people to get vaccinated
The NHS is bracing for its worst ever winter crisis in the next fortnight because of a worsening “flu-nami” that has left hospitals, GP surgeries and ambulances services under intense strain.
Hospitals are already treating record numbers of people seriously ill because of flu for the time of year. But things will get worse in the days ahead, NHS leaders said, as medical bosses urged people to get vaccinated against the virus so they can enjoy Christmas gatherings more safely.
Defying the will of the House of Commons will increase calls for radical reform of the upper house sooner rather than later, say the MPs Nia Griffith, Justin Madders and Debbie Abrahams
When visitors come to parliament, it seems incongruous to explain that, in our mother of parliaments, we have a second chamber – the House of Lords – which is unelected. Those who support its existence in its current or similar form justify it on the grounds that it performs a useful revising function which can improve the detail of legislation, and it undoubtedly does good work.
But the fact that it is unelected can only be tolerated in a democracy provided its members accept that it is for the House of Commons to have the last word on what becomes law and what doesn’t in this country.
As corridor care has become the norm, safest option for those with flu symptoms is to contact GP or NHS 111 and try to stay home
As cases of flu rise sharply across the UK, the Guardian spoke to Amir Hassan, an emergency medicine consultant and the divisional medical director at Epsom and St Helier University hospitals NHS trust, who shared his views.
“We’re seeing increased numbers of patients coming through, a lot of them with respiratory-type illnesses. It means we need to try to isolate these patients and treat them – so they’ll come in with shortness of breath, [and a] cough.
Labour’s £500m national youth strategy has some positives, but real change must start by tackling the root causes of unhappiness
Bonnie Blue, the porn actor who recently made headlines for her antics in Bali – which you probably shouldn’t Google – has come out in support of Nigel Farage.
And in not unconnected news, “rage baiting” – saying deliberately annoying things to get attention – is the Oxford University Press’s word of the year. Bonnie’s most effective way of advertising her X-rated content to the masses now is by generating enough controversy to get her publicly talked about, and she’s very good at making just enough noise (this time in the Spectator, of all places) to drum up a bit of traffic.
Letters arguing research could harm participating children sent to medical regulators, health secretary and NHS
Campaigners have begun a legal process intended to suspend a clinical trial of puberty blockers on the grounds that the research could prove harmful to the children taking part.
The study was commissioned in response to last year’s review of gender identity services by Dr Hilary Cass, which found that gender medicine was an “area of remarkably weak evidence” and “built on shaky foundations”.
Number of people in England being treated remains at record level for this time of year with daily average of 2,660
The NHS is facing its “worst-case scenario” for flu cases this month across England after the number of people in hospital with the illness increased by 55% in a week.
An average of 2,660 patients a day were in an NHS hospital bed with flu, up from 1,717 last week and the highest ever for this time of year. By comparison, in the same week last year the number of patients in hospital with flu stood at 1,861, compared with 402 in 2023.
It’s a scandal laid bare. A stark new report highlights the price paid in Britain’s former industrial heartlands for this silent piece of ministerial vandalism
The Welsh valleys have some of the highest numbers of people claiming incapacity benefits in the whole of Britain. In Abertillery, Maesteg and Merthyr Tydfil, getting on for a quarter of the working-age population is not employed – in large part due to long-term ill-health. If the government was serious about reducing the growing welfare bill, it would be starting here and in the other parts of the country blighted by deindustrialisation and poverty. It would identify the parts of the country most in need – Wales, Scotland and large swaths of northern England – and love-bomb them.
Yet instead of devoting more money to regional economic development, ministers are doing the opposite. In one of its less-publicised policy moves, Labour has quietly gutted the fund designed to create jobs, a scheme inherited from the Conservatives. The silent demolition job on regional policy is laid bare in a new report by Steve Fothergill, national director of the Industrial Communities Alliance, an umbrella group for the local authorities worst affected by the hollowing out of Britain’s industrial base and the closure of the coalfields.
When 47-year-old shop assistant Claire Carter was younger, her mother told her to “never live on the long streets” – terrace-lined roads about half a mile long that lead from the centre of Hendon, Sunderland, to the sea. These six streets have a reputation for being “full of wrong ’uns, full of stolen cars, places getting smashed up”, she says. Close by is Fletcher’s News & Booze, the shop where Tommy Robinson hosted a book signing in 2017 that ended in physical fights and 21 arrests.
Sunderland more widely has been a key site for far-right politics: in 2024 violent anti-Muslim riots broke out after misinformation spread on social media, suggesting that the man behind fatal stabbings at a children’s dance class in Southport was an illegal migrant. About 500 people came to Sunderland’s city centre to a protest that quickly descended into what a judge has since described as “an orgy of mindless destruction, violence and disorder”, with rioters setting a car on fire, shouting Islamophobic chants and throwing stones at the police.
No parent should worry about their child’s safety while they work. But a crisis in our early-years sector is shielding predators such as Vincent Chan
I remember those initial heart-wrenching days and weeks leaving my daughter, aged nine months, at the nursery. She was distraught as I left, and I – like so many parents – headed off to work feeling guilty for leaving her, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Every parent does the research and nursery visits, reads the Ofsted reports and assumes that the staff in their chosen nursery will have the necessary qualifications and training to take care of their child. Obviously, there will be hiccups along the way, but never in your wildest nightmares do you think your child might be physically – or worse still, sexually – abused.
Yet the harrowing case of Vincent Chan, a former nursery worker in Camden, north London, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault and 17 counts of taking or making indecent photos of children, hit the headlines last week, leaving parents with young children across the country feeling physically sick and asking the question: How did this happen? Tragically, this is not an isolated case.
Munira Wilson is Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham
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Some businesses still waiting for final EHRC guidance while firms that moved early to exclude trans people show no sign of backtracking
On Monday, a Dundee employment tribunal ruled a narrow win for Sandie Peggie, the nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. But the lengthy judgment also takes on the pivotal question that has been challenging employers, lawyers and campaign groups since April – does a supreme court judgment mean that transgender people must now be excluded from same-sex facilities that align with their chosen gender? Does it amount to a bathroom ban or not?
The supreme court ruled earlier this year that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Interim advice released by the Equality and Human Rights Commissionsoon after the judgment in effect banned trans people from using facilities according to their lived gender, and its official guidance is expected to closely reflect that advice.
More than £3bn that could have been used for UK patients will go to big pharma for its branded products – money for care siphoned off for profit
Of Arthur Scargill it was said that he began each day with two newspapers. The miners’ leader read the Morning Star of course, but only after consulting the Financial Times. Why did a class warrior from Yorkshire accord such importance to the house journal of pinstriped Londoners? Before imbibing views, he told a journalist, he wanted “to get the facts”.
In that spirit, let us parse a deal just struck by the governments of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. You may not have heard much about this agreement on medicine, but it is huge in both financial and political significance – and Downing Street could not be more proud.
A “world-beating deal,” boasts the science minister, Patrick Vallance. It “paves the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences,” claims the business secretary, Peter Kyle, with the government press release adding: “Tens of thousands of NHS patients will benefit.”
Figures for England and Wales show there were 51,672 offences for child sexual exploitation and abuse online in 2024
Online child sexual abuse in England and Wales has surged by a quarter within a year, figures show, prompting police to call for social media platforms to do more to protect young people.
Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable of Staffordshire police, called for tech companies to use AI tools to automatically prevent indecent pictures from being uploaded and shared on their sites.
PwC warns that future of a generation is at risk and that jobs crisis is costing UK economy up to £26bn a year
Britain is slipping down the global league table for youth employment amid a dramatic rise in worklessness that is putting a generation’s future at risk, research has warned.
Sounding the alarm over a worsening youth jobs crisis, the report from the accountancy firm PwC said Britain’s economy was missing out on £26bn a year because of sharp regional divisions in youth joblessness.
Exclusive: Alison McGovern makes target for end of this parliament, but figures show homelessness has jumped
The homelessness minister has pledged to end the use of bed and breakfasts as emergency housing, even as new figures show that the country’s homelessness problem has worsened since Labour came into government.
Alison McGovern said she would consider it a personal failing if people were still being placed in B&Bs by the end of this parliament as she launched the government’s three-year homelessness strategy.
Transport infrastructure in the US is a hot mess – and the guy in charge thinks ‘wellness spaces’ are going to solve the problem
Sean “Dog” Duffy is a legend in the lumberjack world: a three-time world champion in the 90ft lumberjack speed climb who is renowned for his prowess in mounting and rolling big bits of wood. Not just a lumberjack, Duffy also made waves on late-90s reality TV shows The Real World: Boston and Road Rules: All Stars. And now Duffy is parlaying his experience on Road Rules into his role as US transportation secretary.
Duffy has got a lot on his big lumberjack hands: transport infrastructure in the US is, to use the technical term, a hot mess. More than a third of the country’s bridges need major repair work or replacement. There has been little historical investment in railways and the country lags behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to high-speed trains. Meanwhile, there’s a chronic air-traffic-controller shortage, which was exacerbated by the recent government shutdown when a number of controllers, fed up with the dysfunctional system, took early retirement.
BMA puts health secretary’s offer, which includes pledge to double number of extra training places, to resident doctors
Wes Streeting has made an improved offer to end the long-running dispute with resident doctors before their strike next week that threatens to bring chaos to the NHS as it battles a flu surge.
The health secretary has pledged to double the number of extra places that early career doctors in England can apply for in order to train in the area of medicine they have chosen to specialise in.
An NHS leader who said people with flu symptoms “must wear” a face mask in public risks causing “confusion” among the public over official guidance on how to fight the virus, health experts have warned.
The number of people in hospital with flu in England is at a record level for this time of year. At least six hospitals across the UK have told patients to stay away due to a surge in flu cases sweeping the country this week.
Roy Marsh, 86, says the penalty from enforcement officers was ‘unnecessary and all out of proportion’
A man has claimed he was fined £250 for spitting after a leaf blew into his mouth in Lincolnshire.
Roy Marsh, 86, was given the financial penalty after the incident in Skegness earlier this year. He is now calling for “responsible” litter enforcement.
The Free Birth Society was selling pregnant women a simple message. They could exit the medical system and take back their power. By free birthing. But Nicole Garrison believes FBS ideology nearly cost her her life. This is episode one of a year-long investigation by Guardian journalists Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne
Austerity hollowed out provision and hardened eligibility rules. A broken safety net now shuts out the poorest and drives rising homelessness
Moral logic is flipped on its head in England’s benefits system, which systematically excludes the poorest people from the only housing that was ever intended for them. Social homes were supposed to be for those who couldn’t afford private rents. However, a new report by Crisis shows that, because the stock of homes has been allowed to collapse, housing associations now ration supply by applying strict affordability tests. The homeless charity found that seven in 10 people with a history of rent arrears and no repayment plan would “sometimes” or “always” be excluded from housing registers. Perversely, England’s welfare system induces the very homelessness that it claims to alleviate.
Financial checks, along with rules requiring “local connections”, sharply narrow who can join the queue for social housing. For those who do, a further round of pre-tenancy checks means that about a third of housing associations refuse accommodation because applicants cannot afford even modest rents, a problem rooted in benefit levels that are simply too low. Homelessness therefore rises by design rather than accident. Its origins lie in the coalition’s austerity programme: instead of building social homes, which would have eased pressure on welfare, the government redefined who could qualify. The then chancellor George Osborne, it was said, resisted building houses that might create Labour voters.
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What his account overlooks are the thousands of patients in the UK denied genuine choice because they lack access to palliative care. The House of Lords is rightly undertaking line‑by‑line scrutiny of the proposals, and expert testimony has raised serious concerns and widespread opposition. The current law already affords dignity and protection to vulnerable, elderly and disabled people. What we lack is sufficient palliative care and hospice provision, as repeatedly shown by Hospice UK and National Audit Office reports.
Until you create an environment where staff have access to all the necessary resources to do their job, you will not fix bullying, writes an anonymous former NHS worker
I write in response to your article on Blackpool Victoria hospital (Leaked report reveals culture of bullying and harassment at scandal-hit NHS hospital, 3 December). I joined the NHS as a research fellow at a large teaching hospital after completing my PhD in public health. I wanted to make a more meaningful impact in the most deprived communities in England but, after two gruelling years of continuous bullying by senior leadership, I was forced to leave.
If I could describe my time at the hospital, it would be soul-destroying – not from working with extremely poor and marginalised communities, but from the toxic culture imposed by senior management. Bullying was widespread, with senior management (who were mostly consultants that had pivoted to research) being the main instigators. On day one I was told that I was going to be made to work “until I drop” by my manager. I had comments made about clothing, which followed the dress code but was labelled “too bright” and “parrot-like”. I tried speaking up, and quickly realised that the director was just as much part of the bullying as the rest. I left and have never looked back.
Women say fears were dismissed and help was unavailable at crucial moments during labour
Almost one in five women feel their concerns were not taken seriously by healthcare professionals during childbirth, according to the “concerning” results of a national survey of maternity experiences.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) survey of almost 17,000 women who gave birth across England in NHS settings this year found that 15% felt they had not been given relevant advice or support when they contacted a midwife at the start of their labour, while 18% said their concerns had not been taken seriously.
Cross-party group of MSPs says bill going through Holyrood could attract people from elsewhere in UK
Senior Scottish politicians fear there could be a risk of “death tourism” from terminally ill people travelling from other parts of the UK to end their lives in Scotland.
A cross-party group of MSPs, including the deputy first minister, Kate Forbes, said the looser controls on eligibility written into an assisted dying bill for Scotland could attract people who are unhappy with stricter rules planned for England and Wales.
Keeping reindeer in pens for public enjoyment can cause them physical and mental harm, charities warn
With their fluffy coats, big brown eyes and reputation as Santa’s helpers, reindeer are a common and popular attraction at Christmas markets around the UK.
But being stuck in a pen and approached by hordes of adoring fans is harming the mental and physical health of Rudolph and his brethren, animal charities have warned.
As James Corden and Ruth Jones announce new series, people share how choirs have brought friendship, belonging and valuable memories
For many, singing is one of life’s great pleasures.
The actor and writer James Corden has said he was so inspired by the joy he saw when his mum sang in her choir that he teamed up once again with writing partner Ruth Jones to write a new comedy drama called, appropriately, The Choir.
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