Posts by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
(DIR) Post #B2gT2AruIFVrGKCmm0 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T16:25:45.090547Z
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2jkp5ke1poA PE teacher has told how she went from swimming the Channel to struggling to get through each day after doctors failed to diagnose she had cancer.Victoria Rodwell, 31, from East Malling, who swam the Channel in 2022, enjoyed scuba diving, played hockey and netball, and ran half-marathons. She visited her GP, and later hospital specialists in Kent and London, 20 times over 16 months after she had difficulties swallowing, but was nothing wrong. On 15 January 2026, she was diagnosed with stage four oesophageal cancer. The BBC has approached her GP for comment. Meanwhile, Dr Clare Wykes, deputy medical director at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS, said the trust was looking into concerns. Under Jess's Rule, GPs are being urged to "think again" if they see a sick patient three times and cannot pin down a diagnosis.As first reported by Kent Online, external, Rodwell said she was first prescribed laxatives, heartburn medication and antidepressants. She told how her health rapidly deteriorated and in five months she lost over 23kg (3st 8lb) and could barely swallow.
(DIR) Post #B2gT3GQH7zoYmJng92 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T16:22:23.183413Z
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx4rk5zy37oShopkeepers in Sheffield are calling for more protection and support after experiencing harassment and threatening behaviour while at work. Kate Nixon, the owner of Novel bookshop and café in Crookes, says she has been forced to close after 18 months after repeated incidents involving '"intimidating" and "antisocial" behaviour, with other female business owners in the city sharing similar stories. Kilvinder Vigurs, deputy mayor of policing and crime for South Yorkshire, describes the reports as "unacceptable" and says she is "deeply concerned" about the issue. "Unfortunately something that was supposed to provide me a living and safety is now arguably the place I feel least safe," Kate says.The former teacher previously sold books at local markets and opened the shop with her husband in 2024. "I think every place deserves its own independent bookshop and there was definitely a gap in the market," she says. "This unit became available and I felt like everything just fell into place." Shortly after the opening weekend, Kate says a man who appeared "mentally unwell" started "trashing the shop, threatening to fight people and getting very angry". A second man would turn up each morning and watch staff with his "teeth gritted", she says. South Yorkshire Police recently issued a formal warning to a third man after he repeatedly made staff feel uncomfortable.
(DIR) Post #B2gT4pJYt351HaPBeC by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T16:19:01.877087Z
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyw6vg79dgoAn asylum seeker has been found guilty of two counts of raping a woman in a park in Nottinghamshire.A trial at Birmingham Crown Court heard the 18-year-old woman had been drinking at Sutton Lawn park in Sutton-in-Ashfield when she was attacked by Sheraz Malik, shortly after being raped by another man he was with.Malik, 28, had claimed the sex was consensual, but the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on two counts of rape and a not guilty verdict on a third.It can be now reported that Malik is an asylum seeker who was born in Pakistan and lived in Italy, Germany and France before coming to the UK.The judge adjourned the case for a mention hearing on 6 February so a date for sentencing Malik - who lived at an address in Bath Street in Sutton-in-Ashfield at the time - could be fixed.
(DIR) Post #B2gT8dhpzMj2RDZuFc by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T16:14:29.739291Z
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How absolutely disgusting and extremely dangerous. This filth should not be allowed.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3edx275jlkoA historic Glasgow sawmill will not be demolished and turned into flats - accidently saving a sex club in the process.Developers had sought to turn the old City Sawmill, in Port Dundas, into about 60 flats, only for the proposals to be blocked by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and a local MSP. In recent years it has been used as a location for CJ's which - according to its website - has eight playrooms, including a "fully equipped dungeon".Labour's Paul Sweeney said the site offered a reminder of Glasgow's "rich industrial heritage" but added that he had no idea it housed a sex club as well. Sweeney said: "I am pleased an important piece of Glasgow's heritage has been preserved for future generations to enjoy."However when I first heard that the building was to be knocked down to make way for flats I wasn't aware there was a so-called adult club operating in there."It's just one of those things – what can you do?"
(DIR) Post #B2gbaMq35vzfrk9See by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:13:37.882399Z
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https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/blocking-andy-burnham-betrays-more-weakness-67tlcbsnrThere were some good reasons for the Labour Party high command to turn down Andy Burnham’s request to return to the House of Commons at this time. But there were many more and many better reasons to let the former MP try his luck at winning the Gorton & Denton by-election. Unfortunately, the first set of reasons serve the Labour Party and its leaders. The second set serve the people of Manchester and the wider electorate. Sir Keir Starmer and his team appear to have chosen the first. So much for country before party.There are some perfectly rational objections to Burnham’s request to run. First, he implicitly promised the electors of Greater Manchester that he would serve them faithfully until 2028. At that point, ahead of the probable date of the next general election, he will still be in his fifties, a relatively young man. There is no obvious reason other than personal ambition to break his vow. Leaving Manchester would mean he had put himself before his city — a bad look for him and for his party. Second, a contest for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority would present Nigel Farage, who Burnham identifies as the most divisive threat to Labour values, with the golden opportunity of which he dreams. Polling this month by More In Common forecast that Reform UK would win in 22 of the 27 Manchester constituencies comprising the mayoralty. Any Labour candidate without Burnham’s personal following and charisma would almost certainly go down to a humiliating defeat in the local elections this May — probably triggering both the demise of Starmer’s premiership and an early general election. Finally, blocking Burnham shows everyone who is boss in the Labour Party. I won’t go on about this one as I wouldn’t want older readers to injure themselves laughing. There could be no clearer demonstration of the absence of the leader’s grip on the party than the evidence that he and his clique are afraid to share the green benches with a man widely derided as Mr Flaky in the parliamentary party.https://archive.ph/GafVV#selection-1651.0-1677.400
(DIR) Post #B2gbfJ8OIIU9pF5QjA by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:07:41.397199Z
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https://unherd.com/newsroom/manfluencers-testosterone-therapy-a-sign-of-cultural-decay/Profit-minded manosphere influencers, many with pecuniary relationships with various laboratories and pharmacies, are now pushing testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) on young men who have no clinical need for it. New research says that these influencers are reaching millions on social media, and even a cursory glance at their accounts reveals how they promise today’s young men that the needle will transform them into the alpha males they were meant to be. The trend has a name: “testosterone maxxing”, or “t-maxxing”. Last year, Dazed documented how young TikTokers including Kade Martinelli, who has been injecting for four years, tell followers that “alpha” and “high-level” men use TRT. James Manteit, 27, boasts to his 75,000 followers that women “can just smell the testosterone in the air”. Doctors report college-aged patients arriving at clinics having already started self-administering testosterone based on this influencer advice.https://archive.ph/1X12d
(DIR) Post #B2gblpOJHFGjbbdqd6 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:06:57.342828Z
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https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/ian-paterson-surgeon-victims-story-experience-scxs5c5dmMy breast cancer surgeon maimed me and hundreds of women After finding a lump in her breast, Tracy King was reassured by her charming, clever doctor Ian Paterson. Then she learnt he was a madmanIan Paterson was my knight in a white coat. I could never have imagined the nightmare that was to come. The lawsuits, the criminal trial, women who were disfigured and damaged, the women who died. I trusted him completely and the price of that trust was betrayal. I thought I was getting the best medical care possible but instead I would become part of the worst medical scandal since Harold Shipman, one that continues to unfold.In January 2011 my phone pinged. It was my sister, messaging to ask if I had seen the news about “that mad surgeon who has been operating on women for no reason”. It hadn’t occurred to either of us that it would be my doctor. I opened the link to the news site and with horror saw Paterson’s face. He was being investigated for unnecessary surgery. What doctor would do that? He had been kind, clever and reassuring. It was impossible he could have lied to me. The next day I called the solicitors named in the article and they investigated my case. During a medical review with Spire and an independent surgeon, I learnt that I had never had any risk at all. The lump he had removed was simply a swollen lymph node and the results from “the boys at the lab” didn’t exist because Paterson had missed with the needle and failed to take a viable tissue sample. Everything he said had been a lie and I had never needed an operation. My medical saviour was not just a conman but a serial disfigurer of women. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of victims — women who have had their breasts cut off for no reason and women with breast cancer to whom he gave unapproved “cleavage-sparing mastectomies” which left breast tissue behind, thereby increasing the risk of the cancer returning. He carried out his operations privately and in the NHS, and was praised for how quickly he could work, getting through a mastectomy in 30 minutes when it usually takes two hours. His theatres were known as especially bloody.https://archive.ph/lp3QC
(DIR) Post #B2gcMLhOdPlWEPz3hY by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:18:52.884296Z
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SNP's centralisation mania has fucked everything.https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/uk-news/labour-warned-snps-botched-creation-36616902Labour Ministers at Westminster are being warned not to use the creation of Police Scotland as an inspiration for centralising services in England and Wales. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has set out her plans for a radical overhaul of policing in reforms billed as the most significant in two centuries.
(DIR) Post #B2gcNENnJzlXpYEgHg by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:18:35.263031Z
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https://unherd.com/2026/01/how-maid-killed-canadas-humanity/Those awkward, painful moments deepened me. I didn’t grow comfortable with suffering, but I grew comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was obliged to witness suffering, which is distinct from the pain of grief, and so her dying laid a demand upon me. It forced me to be connected to her, to suffer with her. It compelled me to learn about duty. I’ve realised, only in hindsight, that this burden was a gift. I learned, in part, how to suffer, and that suffering should not be done alone. There are more important things than ease.“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”Does it trouble me that almost all MAiD cases, 95.6% of them, are white and middle class, my own cohort? It does. We are either very progressive, believing that burdening loved ones is unethical and limits their agency, or we are keen to defer to experts, limiting our own. But no doctor, no health policy expert, no politician, has more moral authority over death than you or me. Dying has no expert class, no progressive elites. They are not more involved in mankind than you or me. We are entangled creatures; we are involved with each other. To burden our loved ones by forcing them to act dutifully, against ease, sitting at the side of a dying loved one, is to precisely act with compassion and treat the dying with dignity. It is also to treat the living with a kind of dignity, one that has faith in our capacity to endure the suffering of others, to not flinch from painfully awkward tedium, to be able to endure the burden placed on us by sitting beside someone dying. It is a gift that the dying can bequeath to the living.https://archive.ph/GqoOc
(DIR) Post #B2gfJwcLDSIjj4AFg8 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:40:14.814948Z
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@Flick Interesting.
(DIR) Post #B2gfRz7lmNLNokhNo0 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:30:19.483540Z
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@Flick Couriers, so annoying.We're going to have to order a new washing machine, the evil swine we have is peeing water on the floor now, so I'm wondering how much messing about this will cause re delivery.
(DIR) Post #B2gftrdPDfOghGn31U by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T20:00:51.269290Z
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@Flick Will probably go with Argos as at least they do deliver here.
(DIR) Post #B2ggDR3viwME4nWrGy by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T20:07:07.507876Z
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@Flick No idea if would do it here or not, they do offer it, but some of the reviews are NOT inspiring re work done, will just get local plumber to do it and have to get the Council to take it away.I know some places which are meant to offer these services balk when it comes to up here.
(DIR) Post #B2ggR3mn3tjPwL0bNA by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:50:53.678249Z
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/26/face-to-face-with-shamima-begum-camp-packing-bags-freedom/A sudden offensive in north-east Syria stirs unrest in Al-Roj camp, where IS brides are anticipating changeThe British IS bride, stripped of her citizenship after a series of unapologetic media appearances, has learnt to avoid attention. She is also a potential target for more radical inmates. But her chances of escape may be rising. Women here have access to contraband telephones and are in contact with IS sympathisers elsewhere in Syria and worldwide, meaning hopes of a rapid reversal were spreading even before al-Sharaa launched his January 2026 assault as news spread of the Islamist takeover in Damascus. Others remain deeply radicalised. Umm Hamza, an Egyptian woman formerly married to an IS fighter, says the most extreme inmates stay hidden. “There are dangerous women here, those who also caused problems in their home countries,” she said. “If I go into some parts of the camp, I have to completely cover my face, or they will attack me for being an infidel.” For now, Roj is still closely guarded by members of the Kurds’ all-female Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), who walk confidently along muddy tracks between tents, while children play in the remnants of a recent snowfall.But an IS flag appeared on a wall near the camp bakery four days ago, alongside the slogan “we will return”, scrawled by children who have spent the best part of a decade growing up surrounded by radicalised female IS militants. But the US is now throwing its weight behind Syria’s new government, with al-Sharaa demonstrating his willingness to align with US security and geopolitical interests. But ongoing IS outbreaks suggest this change of policy may well backfire, Kurdish officials warn. “Isis’s number one target is the Kurds, because it’s us that defeated them,” says Ibrahim. “And then – the world.”https://archive.ph/LE9wJ
(DIR) Post #B2ggSC3tmH0dtfYFl2 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T19:43:13.950490Z
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/26/celia-walden-midwives-newborns-sexual-orientation/Asking midwives to record the sexual orientation of newborns is sickening. According to the warped NHS, a baby’s gender identity is now more important than its biological sexOne midwife was brave enough to blow the whistle, saying staff are “worried” by the forms, but don’t want to raise the issue with NHS managers. Because that’s how effective the gender warriors have been with their intimidation tactics. Like the fearful subjects in The Emperor’s New Clothes, nobody wants to be the one to point out the obvious and say, “But the child is either a boy or a girl!” It gets worse. Whilst there is no obligation to record biological sex on the new American-made software, the default settings do include a form asking for a newborn’s gender identity, pronouns and sexual orientation. You know, alongside the time and date.I’m just going to let that sit for a moment. Let us all digest how warped a group of human beings have to be by their own ideology to suggest that a newborn baby could have decided – in the five minutes that he/she/they has existed on earth – that on balance, they are “neutrois” (a non-binary identity for those who aren’t exclusively male or female), “stone butch” (someone who embodies traits associated with feminine butchness or stereotypes associated with traditional masculinity) or perhaps “trigender” (having three gender identities, simultaneously or over time). It would be funny if this were all part of some inconsequential, narcissistic little game that people liked to play in their spare time. Only this new software is being used in at least 10 NHS trusts. Oh, and the “upgrade” cost £450m.Identity isn’t just a new toy for a spoilt generation to play around with because they don’t have anything more serious to pour their energies into. Being able to identify one human being from another is critical in a medical context. It’s critical in a societal context too, for our safety, our human rights and our dignity, allowing – among other things – for the orderly functioning of financial and legal systems, and for the protection of both the living and the dead.
(DIR) Post #B2ggcmgCULQmMQW6XA by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T20:10:45.716576Z
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@Flick Nope, many don't. What they hell they think we are meant to do is beyond me! Argos I am not keen on but needs must.
(DIR) Post #B2gmisWqFolrxoQdVo by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T21:09:03.609129Z
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@Maud_Gonner @Flick https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/3879300/200-million-highland-delivery-charge/A north man was left flabbergasted after being quoted more than £200m for a delivery to Inverness.Jim Oliver stepped in to conduct a good deed for his mother-in-law who was looking for a hand chainsaw from OnBuy.com.But after she was quoted almost £2,000 for delivery, Mr Oliver went to see if he could find a more reasonable fee.Much to his surprise, after adding the item to his basket, he was quoted an astronomical £200,001,997 for delivery. The technical glitch might have raised a smile but people in the north of Scotland have been hit by extortionate delivery charges for a long time. The P&J made our own attempts to use OnBuy.com and were hit with the same £2,000 charge for the hand chainsaw.On other items, they are charging £15 for delivery for products costing less than £30.Change your postcode from IV to AB – or indeed any other non-island postcode – and suddenly delivery is free again.
(DIR) Post #B2gmxDVr25D36Bnttg by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T20:21:45.739927Z
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@Flick I'd had a look at them this morning, but they're just too expensive, the stove is also considering turning up its toes and dying so that's on the cards as well. We try not to think about the boiler. I swear to God, I think this house is cursed. I certainly curse it daily! Every hour on the hour, bastard place.
(DIR) Post #B2gnEmQWTb0eJ0gWHI by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T21:24:57.223314Z
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@Flick No, hope worth it, were it not for the stove situation would definitely consider it. The Miele ones made me faint! One was over 3 grand :blob_dizzy_face:
(DIR) Post #B2gnHWDzAjzYvM7uL2 by HebrideanHecate@spinster.xyz
2026-01-26T21:24:11.582994Z
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@Maud_Gonner @Flick As an example, take ebay, I used to buy tights regularly from an Edinburgh based company there, all of a sudden the postage went completely mental. I contacted them and they just said use this website instead, it was still their's but not on ebay. So can only assume it was something to do with ebay but who knows. I also notice that Chinese sellers on there have "does not post to H&I" on their pages, they probably don't even know where the hell we are!I recently bought something for a friend's birthday on there, from sellers in London, asking why were they doing international post but not H&I, got oh, umm, ahhh, hang on, came back to me with a oh, it only costs £3.50 to send it to you 🤦 So they changed the shipping for me, now I notice they seem to be making it free postage.