After a vasectomy, you have to give two semen samples, two weeks apart, to confirm that the operation has been a success. In a small number of vasectomies, the tubes join themselves back together; and it takes some time for the sperm to be cleared out of the system, so Read more…
In 1998, I made a New Year's resolution to run a marathon in less than 3 hours. It has taken me six years to achieve this goal. I've tried many different approaches to training; looked for shortcuts; made mistakes; and learned lessons. I have learned a lot from books, magazines Read more…
Targets for the management of businesses, including public services, do more harm than good. Target setting is based on a command and control mindset which assumes that the job of managers is to find a way to “get the workers to do the work”. The Civil Service has taught managers Read more…
It is now 6 weeks and a day since I had the snip. I now have only very occasional discomfort when running – usually just at the start, when I still sometimes feel as if I need to urinate. When I am not running, and most of the time when Read more…
I attended the World Social Forum in Mumbai in January 2004. It became clear to me during the five days of the WSF that there is a common theme underlying many of concerns and campaigns that make up the anti-globalisation movement. There is anxiety that globalisation entails the rolling back Read more…
After ten days, the stitches are beginning to dissolve, and the incisisions seem to be healing well. However, there is still some inflammation in the groin area, on either side of the base of my penis, and at in the scrotum at about the point where my vas deferens was Read more…
3 days later, I still feel as if someone has gripped my balls and given them a hard twist. I am not in pain exactly – more of a dull ache, really. As a result, I feel a little nauseus. I think it is getting better, but more slowly than Read more…
Today I had a vasectomy. I realise that this is relatively unusual for a man of only 36 with no children. But I have absolutely no doubt, and nor does my partner, that we do not want to have children, so I regard the risk of wanting to reverse it Read more…
The Reverend Joanne Jepson has been given permission to seek a judicial review of the decision by West Mercia Police not to prosecute a woman who had an abortion of a foetus that would have been born with a cleft palate. The current abortion law in England is the 1967 Read more…
Thirteen million people died last year of curable diseases. Of these, three million children died from diseases that are preventable with currently available vaccines (see GAVI). This is 35,000 people every day – seven times as many deaths each day as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre Read more…