End unfair IVF lottery
CHILDLESS couples desperate for a baby shouldn’t be forced to pay a heartbreaking price for Tory austerity starving the National Health Service of funds.
Infertility is a medical condition, yet in England where the Conservatives run the NHS – unlike in Wales and Scotland – the squeezing of IVF treatment is creating a painful postcode lottery for would-be parents.
Most working couples can’t afford £5,000 for a private clinic to buy a chance of having that precious son or daughter.
As few as three of 195 local NHS areas offer would-be parents the recommended help.
Every one of us has a view about NHS priorities but just about all of us agree the most vital of public services is criminally underfunded after years of Tory austerity.
Some 41 years after the birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, infertile couples surely deserve a better chance in 2019. My resolutions are fairly predictable: eat more greens, fewer Greggs, drink more water, less wine. Exercise more. Police children’s teeth brushing more effectively.
Such resolutions generally fade faster than my New Year’s Day hangover.
Yet the yearning to Be Better lies deep. Which is why I’m aiming to do all of the above. Again. And I’m vowing to slash red meat intake to once a week. I read that producing a kilo of lamb results in the same CO2 emissions as driving 91 miles. Given how much flesh I’ve consumed in a fortnight it would have been better for me to drive to Neptune.
So I’m going to give it a go. Until someone offers me a bacon roll around lunchtime... My least successful resolution was, in its defence, wellintentioned at least.
In an increasingly negative, cynical, depressing world, I was going to be positive, strive to see the silver linings instead of focussing on the clouds, look for the good in people, even when they were being really annoying – my new catchphrase would be “Yes!”
I lasted longer than you’re presuming, actually. Yes, OK, it was January 1, but it was quite late in the evening.
Ever since, I haven’t bothered with New Year resolutions because I am now well aware of my limitations. Plus there’s nothing like not being allowed to do something to make you desperate to do it.
So maybe my resolution worked, in a way. In a bid not to be negative I tried to be positive – and ended up being realistic. I’m such a failure at keeping resolutions that I probably shouldn’t bother.
There was the time I vowed to join the gym but, having signed up and had my photo taken, I never even returned to collect the membership card. An average £300 a visit so far. Of course I’ve resolved many times to eat more healthily. But in January I’m still eating Christmas selection boxes for breakfast. It’s perfectly reasonable – I wouldn’t want to waste them.
Another regular vow is to stop shouting at the kids so much – one usually broken by dinner time on January 1. This year I’ll make them all again, but I’ll stick to them this time.
Definitely, maybe. In 2018 my mantra was to drink more and care less and I did rather splendidly on both counts.
But my other promise was not to buy any more coats (and shoes, boots, jumpers and dresses). My house cannot fit them.
I was doing really well and 2018 had been a year of restraint. Then the pre-Christmas sale thing happened. Two glasses of red wine and three clicks later it all went pear-shaped. But all is not lost, I still have the receipt and – theoretically – it could all be going back tomorrow. Learning French, supping less beer, eating healthier, reading a book a fortnight, running three times a week and getting to grips with the latest tech survived January in the past but never February or March.
I’ve repeated a resolution to fix the garage roof six years on the trot now and it might be recycled again in 2020.
But my most unsuccessful was drinking three litres of water a day – about six pints, or three quarters of a gallon.
Health experts recommend we have two litres so I thought half as much again would be a fitness tonic. I lasted an agonising week of feeling bloated and running to the toilet.
I’ll down half a dozen pints of beer no trouble on a night out but that volume of
H2O is for the bath. Every resolution I’ve made has been broken while the Christmas decs were still up.
I vowed to never use Amazon then ordered a saw from them on January 2 because I couldn’t face B&Q (the CEO was a Tory backer so boycotting them was more important.)
I promised to lose my belly by swapping cheese butties for detox shakes until I tasted one and thought I’d swallowed the product of a squeezed dishcloth after the dog’s sick had been mopped up.
Countless times I’ve pledged to stay sober through January. Until my first night out, when watching others get drunk made me hit the bottle.
But the quickest to be broken came when I swore I’d stop swearing – then saw the f***ing New Year’s Honours List.
The safest resolution? Don’t make one. When it comes to resolutions, I am well and truly hopeless.
I resolved to shave every day and had a beard like Captain Birdseye by mid-February. Giving up alcohol usually lasts until getting back from whatever match I am at on January 1.
And the only debate about foregoing takeaways is which takeaway is going to break the resolution.
It is usually
Chinese.
But one year I made myself a promise to keep a daily diary, a quiet half-hour every night actually putting pen to paper.
I kept it up for a couple of months then realised it was a detailed record of all the things I should have resolved not to do – so I jacked it.