I am woman here me...AROOOOOOOO!!
Amazingly there are things in my life other than babies, pregnancy and my dog. I am a woman on a mission. I have spent much of the last few weeks fighting various causes of injustice in my life. Letters have been sent to MSPs, MPs, Ministers of Health, Chief Nurses, and Banks all in the name of justice.
Essentially I am in the midst of three battles. The first is to reclaim what turn out to be illegal bank charges placed upon me by Lloyds TSB for going over my overdraft. Apparently you can reclaim these and I am in the process of doing so. (Consumer Action Group has loads of info, if you are interested). They haven't replied, so it looks like I will have to take them to court in England, but no matter. I am far too much of a cheapskate to allow some rich bank to walk away with my money unnecessarily. I will prevail.
My second area of campaigning is the threat to Independent Midwifery. Currently, parliament is debating on whether to make professional indemnity insurance mandatory for all midwives in the UK. Now the fact that there IS NO PII GLOBALLY AVAILABLE FOR ANY MIDWIVES seems to be irrelevant to the government and they are trying to effectively ban the practice of midwives outside of the NHS. This fundamentally limits the choices of women in childbirth and erases the gold standard of maternity care in the UK. Independent midwives have a 75% normal birth rate and a 15% C Section rate. My local trust has a normal birth rate of 46% and a C Section + instrumental Delivery rate of 35%!!!!!! As an employer currently of an independent midwife, I have written to a number of MPs and MSPs about the issue. There is quite a bit of information available about these changes if you are interested here.
Finally, the Pseudo-Liberal Fascist, I mean Labour, Government has recently announced changes to the way it will handle applications for immigration--increasing the charges 150% and making tests and community service mandatory. Effectively this means that rich people with time on their hands are going to be able to be citizens of the UK and the rest of us should just pack up and go.
It is enough to make one cry...
