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Category Archives: Wellness Live
Ambulance demand spikes as flu season worsens
The service says calls increased by 20% in the past week, fuelled by illnesses such as the flu.
Our daughter died from meningitis after starting uni – a jab would have saved her
Meg Draper was enjoying the social side of student life – within weeks she had died from meningitis.
Doctors to stage five-day strike before Christmas
Walkout in England begins on 17 December and will be 14th strike in pay dispute.
US and UK agree zero tariffs deal on pharmaceuticals
The deal follows threats of tariffs as high as 100% on branded drug imports.
DfE’s Mock Apology Post To Parents Seriously Misread The Room
A Department for Education social media statement went viral, but not in a good way.
The Department published a mock ‘apology’ celebrating the impact of its Breakfast Club initiative.
Unfortunately, instead of sounding human or witty, it read as self-congratulatory and oddly patronising – and within hours, was circulating widely as an example of political comms gone wrong.
As CEO of nanny company Koru Kids, I watched this with dismay for several reasons.
I was saddened because the policy itself is well-evidenced and successful. Breakfast clubs are essential childcare infrastructure, and it’s great that they’ve served over 2.6 million meals. That’s something to celebrate.
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But the botched announcement also revealed something deeper about trust, empathy and the currently fragile relationship between families and the state.
One jarring aspect of the statement was its self-congratulatory tone. The government seemed to be taking credit for outcomes actually delivered by exhausted frontline workers.
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Breakfast clubs have run because kitchen staff show up at dawn. Childcare works because early years educators absorb the strain every day. Attendance has improved because teachers, SENCOs and safeguarding teams grind constantly.
Parents, too, commented the tone of the statement was ‘off’. One section said the Department’s policy has given parents “alarming amounts of unexpected free time”, suggesting British parents are now luxuriating in extra hours at the spa.
Any parent could tell you this is absurd. Parents use childcare to keep their jobs and put food on the table.
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But the humour in these cases was gentle, well-judged, and didn’t punch down.
Satire only works when the audience knows you get them. That’s why your friends can take the mickey out of you, but it’s rude if strangers do – because the jokes have to rest on a base of trust.
Sadly, the Department of Education just has not earned the right to joke about how hard it is to be a parent. They’ve misread the room.
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What’s actually happening is that life is becoming ever harder for families.
Brand-new data from Buttle UK shows that 43% of young people in crisis think they might need to drop out of education to work. More than half (55%) of children say they’re sometimes too hungry to learn. 60% of parents can’t afford school shoes. 59% can’t afford uniforms.
Against this backdrop, a joke about parents gaining “unexpected free time” doesn’t just misjudge the tone – it makes people wonder whether policymakers understand what life is like for most people at the moment.
This matters, because we are living through a profound crisis of confidence in institutions.
People reading this statement quite reasonably think, “If they don’t get it, how can we trust them to make policies in our interests?”
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Empathy isn’t just a layer of comms you add at the end, it needs to be an integral part of the whole process. When it’s missing, it makes you question the process itself.
And that’s something that really threatens us all.
Rachel Carrell is the CEO of Koru Kids.
Advent Has Begun. But What Does That Actually Mean, And Why Do We Have Advent Calendars?
Not to alarm you, but we’re a matter of weeks away from Christmas – and already in Advent.
Advent, which begins on the Sunday closest to November 30, lasts for four weeks. This year, it started on Sunday, November 30; the earliest it can begin is November 27.
But what does Advent mean, and why do we celebrate it?
Advent means “coming”
Per Britannica, Advent comes from the Latin word “Adventus,” meaning “coming”.
In the Christian faith, it refers to the coming of Christ, celebrated at Christmas.
It can also, the BBC shared, be a “time of preparation when Christians think about the second coming of Christ and what they need to do to be ready for his return.”
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The dates have not always been the same. For instance, under Bishop Perpetuus of Tours (461–490), Advent used to involve a fasting period which began on November 11.
Advent is linked to the Advent wreath, made from a circle of evergreen leaves used to represent eternal life. There are also four candles, one for each of the Sundays ’til Christmas. Some add a fifth candle that symbolises Jesus Christ.
This final candle, if present, is not usually lit until Christmas begins. The other candles are traditionally lit on each Sunday before Christmas.
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Why do we have Advent calendars?
Like Christmas trees, these started out as a German tradition – though Advent calendars took off a little later, in the 19th century.
It was simply a way to count down to Christmas.
Traditional Advent calendars often had Bible verses or pictures, though NPR pointed out Advent calendars weren’t the only way Germans built anticipation at the time – less long-lasting versions included keeping a chalk tally on walls and doors, and placing extra straws in the crib of a Nativity scene.
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So, though it took a few decades, perhaps it’s not surprising that German publisher Gerhard Lang is credited with the first printed Advent calendar, as well as the first Advent calendar with doors.
And though the first chocolate version is believed to have been made in the ’50s, it took Cadbury’s about 20 years to make the first mass-produced version in 1971.
Only in the ’90s did demand become high enough for them to keep the calendars in continuous production.
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Because Advent does not always begin on December 1, though, they don’t follow the exact dates every year – it is just easier to go 1-25, or 1-24.
‘My Boyfriend’s Jokes Started Including Creepy Details. Can I Ever Trust Him Again?’
Though closeness is an important part of a great relationship, the cofounder and COO of Fresh Starts Registry, Genevieve Dreizen, says that privacy is key, too.
“As a person who spends a great deal of time helping people navigate life transitions and emotional crossroads, I always remind people that privacy is not a threat to intimacy,” the etiquette expert said.
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In fact, she calls it a “necessary ingredient” for a healthy partnership.
Perhaps that’s why Redditor u/taliv_03 said she feels so “disgusted” after learning that her partner had been rifling through her diary.
Writing to the forum r/TwoHotTakes, the original poster (OP) said that she first suspected him of reading her journal about a month ago, when his jokes about her changed.
Here, we asked Dreizen to weigh in on the tricky situation.
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OP’s partner began joking about details only shared in her journal
The poster, a 27-year-old woman, said that her partner (a 29-year-old man) had been together for a little over a year when she noticed the change.
Throughout that period, she had a paper diary that her boyfriend knew about. It is a “non-negotiable” for her, she says; her partner had previously “teased me [about it] once in a sweet way, calling it my ‘brain compost bin.’”
About a month ago, though, she started noticing something strange about her partner’s jokes.
“We were with friends, and he made a joke about how I [research] symptoms for my cat more than for myself… It stung because that exact line was in my journal the night before, word for word,” OP wrote.
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“A week later, he told this story to my sister about how I still feel guilty for breaking a snow globe when I was five. I have never told that story out loud, only wrote it down after a therapy session.”
Two nights ago, she said she walked in to see her diary open on a coffee table in front of her. He claimed he had moved it to save it from the cat, she said.
After he mentioned yet another private musing, though, she raised her suspicions with him, “and he got defensive, said I should not write things down if I don’t want them to be ‘found art’, and that I was overreacting because ‘partners should not have secrets.’”
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Since then, OP writes, she has felt “disgusted and stupid, like my safe place just got ripped open for someone else’s stand-up routine.
“At the same time, I keep wondering if I am making this bigger than it is. Is reading a partner’s journal and then using their thoughts as jokes a hard deal breaker, or something you can actually rebuild trust from?” she ended.
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“This is a boundary violation”
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Dreizen explained: “When a partner reads your diary, they aren’t just crossing a line of etiquette; they are trespassing on the internal space where you tell the truth to yourself. That space is sacred.
“A diary is not a shared document, not a negotiation, not a relationship ledger.”
And when someone snoops in your diary, “You’re dealing with a breach of trust that destabilises the foundation of emotional safety in the relationship.”
It turns a private space into an arena where you suddenly have to worry about leaving yourself open to teasing and jokes, the expert added.
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“That kind of emotional exposure can make you question your reality, tiptoe around your own inner world, or feel ashamed of feelings you were never meant to defend.
“The injury is not just about the reading – it’s about the casualness with which your boundaries were dismissed, the entitlement to your inner life, and the refusal to take accountability afterwards.”
For her part, Dreizen said, “The first step is acknowledging that this isn’t a difference in opinion about privacy. This is a boundary violation. The partner’s belief that ‘partners shouldn’t have secrets’ is a misconception wrapped in control.
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She said that in this case, repair is only possible once OP’s partner has proven that he understands that he’s wrong and why and has taken concrete steps to change.
Dreizen asked the poster, should she wish to give her partner another try, to say something like, “I’m open to moving forward, but only if you take responsibility without minimising and commit to respecting my boundaries. What steps are you willing to take to make that happen?”
WHO warning over shortage of obesity jabs
Too few people who could benefit from so-called “skinny jabs” are able to access them, says WHO.
Satellites spot rapid “Doomsday Glacier” collapse
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — widely known as the “Doomsday Glacier” — is changing more quickly than almost any other ice-ocean system on the planet. Its future behavior remains one of the biggest unknowns in forecasts of global sea-level rise. One part of this system, the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS), floats on the ocean and is partly held in place by a pinning point at its northern edge. Over the past twenty years, this shelf has developed increasing fractures around a major shear zone located upstream of that pinning point.
A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (AGU, 2025) offers the most detailed account yet of how this slow breakdown has unfolded. The research was produced at the Centre for Earth Observation Sciences and led by Debangshu Banerjee, a recent graduate student from the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS), along with Dr. Karen Alley (Assistant Professor, CEOS) and Dr. David Lilien (Assistant Professor, Indiana University Bloomington and former Research Associate at CEOS). Their work contributes to the TARSAN (Thwaites-Amundsen Regional Survey and Network) project, one of the programs within the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) — a major U.S.-U.K. effort to understand the forces driving change in Thwaites Glacier. Several well-known glaciologists, including Dr. Ted Scambos, Dr. Martin Truffer, Dr. Adrian Luckman, and Dr. Erin Pettitt, also contributed to this research.
Fracture Growth, Ice Dynamics, and a Strengthening Feedback Loop
Using twenty years (2002-2022) of satellite observations, ice-flow speed measurements, and in-situ GPS data, the team documented how fractures within the TEIS shear zone formed and evolved. Their analysis shows that the gradual growth of these fractures weakened the shelf’s connection to the pinning point. As this attachment deteriorated, the ice upstream began to flow more quickly, reducing the shelf’s mechanical stability.
The researchers identified four clear stages in this weakening and highlighted two major findings. The first is that the fractures expanded in two distinct phases: long fractures aligned with the direction of ice flow appeared first, followed later by shorter fractures that cut across the flow. The second is evidence of a positive feedback cycle in which these fractures increased ice acceleration, which in turn caused further damage. This accelerating loop played a significant role in the shelf’s recent decline.
A Shift From Stabilizing Force to Source of Weakness
The study notes that the pinning point, once a key factor holding the TEIS in place, has slowly shifted into a feature that now contributes to its instability. This four-stage pattern of structural decline may be a signal for other Antarctic ice shelves that appear to be entering similar phases of weakness. If these floating shelves continue to deteriorate, the Antarctic Ice Sheet could contribute even more to future sea-level rise.
