Letter from our Labour MP addressed to the missus about her recent birth.

Are our medical records available? I'm assuming its as innocent as a birth register thats available to everyone?

They will have been able to access via the register of births & deaths. Write back to the person asking how her recently treated case of clap has been.
You don't have a labour MP at the moment though do you as parliament is dissolved until after the election.

She calls herself Rt Honourable, I'm guessing this was written late last week.

The letter was telling about the recent birth of her first Grandchild and how much it meant to her etc. I'm guessing sincerity isn't that high on politicians priorities.

she can call herself that as she is a member of the privy council ("Right" honourable is the title given to privy councilors) even when the house has been dissolved. It is a title for life but earned whilst an MP/Lord.

Have you registered the birth?

That goes onto the big computer which is owned by the government. Your nipper is in the system now.

Oh goody. I look forward to targeted mailshots from companies selling life, health etc insurance to him 🙄

Oh goody. I look forward to targeted mailshots from companies selling life, health etc insurance to him

It's a good while since I was last in your position but we got sent loads of freebie baby stuff samples from various companies

Ooo hello, a ray of light 😀

Thats the Bounty Pack, IIRC the hospital have fingers in pies there.

All we got was nappies and some powdered milk IIRC.

No Bountys and no pies but our lad struggled with pies for the first 12 months anyway.

so which of our parliamentary candidates shoved a tiny box of nestle shreddies through my letter box yesterday then? and who wants them?

xherbivorex – the scary thing is someone, somewhere will be wavering THAT MUCH that that little 'thought' will tip them towards their party. Madness!

well if any of the turkeys round ours were to get dressed up as a massive fruity tiger then i'd vote for them. and their cornflakes.

We've had crap loads of free baby stuff.

Several different Bounty packs with nappies, wipes, fabric softener, washing powder/gel, books etc plus packs from the various baby clubs (Tesco, Mothercare etc)

Hora,

It is worth registering for some of the freebies, the bounty packs etc, the Boots and Tesco baby clubs are very good this leads onto free book packs as well, be warned though, if you get a letter from the NSPCC, bin it, we got one and as a result cancelled our monthly donation to them and asked them never to get in touch, some of their targeted mailing techniques left a lot to be desired

Not wanting to be too nosey, but what (roughly) did the NSPCC do that upset you so much?

I've always thought they were quite good.

I imagine its the images, shock wording.

Was it the NSPCC who sent the pens out – "Look you lazy fückers, if you can't find a pen, we'll even send you one"?

Sorry, we can all choose our own charities to support (NCDS, Cancer Research UK, Brain Tumour UK……….Dogs Trust)

Images would make shocking wording

I've never liked the way that the NSPCC goes about its business – far too much hard sell for my liking & the need to opt out of them selling on your contact info was the last straw for us

I never actually realised that they don't do any charity work per se, they're just a campaigning organisation

I imagine its the images, shock wording.

Got it in one, we donated to them monthly, then 3 days after the birth of out 1st child we got a targeted mail listing names for babies, first name in the booklet was our babies name(coincidence I know)and it was detailing some not so nice details and images, also asking us to make sure we did no harm to our child, not nice so we binned them, they explained that they targeted new mothers\families

Chris

Why would you even care if someone had access to your medical records? Have you ever seen one?

If it's hospital based it's probably a paper file, tatty, with nice stickers all over the front and with completely out-of-date results sheets falling out of the back pockets. The medical history will be virtually unreadable, and pretty useless even if it were legible. If you're taken into hospital some junior doc will clerk you in and take your relevant medical history anyway. Very few doctors will bother to read your notes in detail. Stealing patient data is possible, but only on a small scale. It's great strength in terms of security it that it's so damn cumbersome.

Conversely, if it's GP based it will be an electronic patient record. And yes, it WILL likely contain all sorts of stuff you wouldn't care to have your best friend knowing. Electronic patient records are highly insecure and impossible to protect given the current patient administrative systems in place in most GP surgeries. In short, any member of practice staff could access and download patient data without much chance of being discovered. A really naughty person could download the complete practice patient record simply by modifying the backup routine. It has, to the best of my knowledge, already been done.

But the point is, why worry about it? You can't change anything. Worry about things you can influence, like what you're going to have for dinner. That makes sense:-)

Aye and agree ro I just don't want to receive mailshots and especially anything thats linked to medical or personal records.

Its bad enough receiving local freepapers and the countless children charity 'give us your free clothes' (Im amazed how many variations on these there actually are- surely a money laundering/tax-fronts?).

We now have five large plastic wheelie bins in our garden to sort and recycle ffs.

absolutely 100% do not agree with ro.

you worry about matching your shoes to your handbag luv, if thats all you can manage.

Got it in one, we donated to them monthly, then 3 days after the birth
of out 1st child we got a targeted mail listing names for babies, first
name in the booklet was our babies name(coincidence I know)and it
was detailing some not so nice details and images, also asking us to
make sure we did no harm to our child, not nice so we binned them,
they explained that they targeted new mothers\families

Hmmm… hard hitting certainly, but not sure I would have taken particular offence or binned them for that. If they deliberately chose to alter the child's name to be the same as yours then that would be pretty low, but just detailing some of the bad stuff they are fighting against seems reasonable to me. ymmv obviously.

I don't want to open a can of worms here but if someone abused a child they're not going to be think 'oh this isnt right I shall stop this now'.

The only good I can see is the helpline and I really hope they are not lobbying parliament to end all smacking/disciplining of children?

The governments guidelines on this are FINE IMO.

Wrong time to be targeted for us and they were a bit snotty about it when we rang

how did you know my shoes ALWAYS match my handbag?

stress all you like, worrying about things you can't change is pointless. well, sure, you might be able to effect change, but you'd have to dedicate a fair portion of your life to achieving it.

my point. SOOBalias, is that worying about things does not bring about change. DOING something does.

you may care to try it one day. it's called putting your money where your mouth is.

I never actually realised that they don't do any charity work per se, they're just a campaigning organisation

Through my work I've worked with an NSPCC professional who was undertaking recovery work with a child who'd experienced sexual abuse when he was younger. They can & do provide services but often only accessible via other professional/statutory agencies.