(AFP) 2 May 2008:

There are indeed areas where men and women are becoming more equal: for example, in the UK, the levels of female public drunkeness have risen by as much as 1,000 percent in some areas to the same as that of men.  Now it’s true that having a larger number of women so drunk that they pass out in the street is not normally thought of as an advance in the civilization, but there is another way of looking at it.  Among the younger groups men and women are indeed seen as socially equal now.  Well, it’s a straw to cling to, isn’t it?

(The Mail) 25 April 2008:

Naturally conceived identical triplets are very rare; 200 million to one, actually. Carmela Testa of the U.K and her three new babies have beat the odds. She has three adorable baby girls  that were born a bit early but are fine now.

Testa said: “I found out at my 12-week scan I was having triplets.

“I knew they would be identical because there was just one placenta, so they were from the same egg.

“I was very shocked. They weren’t planned. I’m quite small – only 5ft tall – so at the unit they joked that out of all the midwives it would have to be me that gave birth to triplets.”

(DAILY MAIL) 15 April 2008:

A top UK obstetrician has upset some with his views on childbirth. Dr. Michael Odent has been delivering babies for 50 years and has been present at 15,000 births. He doesn’t believe that men should be present at the delivery of their children. He thinks that not only do they hinder the women for getting at the task at hand, namely giving birth, but that the whole thing could cause the man to become emotionally disturbed.  He said,
“A woman in labor needs to be in a private world where she doesn’t have to think or talk. Yet, motivated by the desire to ’share the experience,’ the man asks questions and offers words of reassurance and advice.” He says he has watched women struggle to give birth and the minute their partners left the room, the baby came right out. The man’s anxiety can rub off on the laboring woman. He also points out that in the rest of the animal kingdom, no other male watches his sex partner give birth.

(THE REGISTER) 5 March 2008:

A man in the UK is set to stand trial for harassment using the social networking site Facebook. He is accused of breaking the Harassment Act of 1997 when he used Facebook to contact an ex-girlfriend.

A police spokesperson said, “We have prosecuted harassment cases before where people have sent letters, made phone calls, and even text messages in recent years, but to my knowledge this is the first case where a Web site like Facebook has been involved.”

(NEWS.COM.AU) 4 February 2008:

“Some brides want bridesmaids to sign contracts promising not to put on weight or get pregnant before the big day, a survey has found. More than one in five women planning weddings would ask their maid-of-honour to sign a written bridal ‘pre-nuptial agreement’.

Almost half of those questioned said they would sack a bridesmaid who broke the contract.

The survey, commissioned by the UK magazine You & Your Wedding asked 1000 women what clauses they sought in a contract.”

(THE GUARDIAN) 28 January 2008:

One of the age old questions is why the gender pay gap persists. One of the reasons may be apparent in the UK health service. A trend in the past 20 years: A majority of new doctors have been women. This group of first generation female docs is now rising to the top of the profession.

What is being found is that the female consultants treat 20% fewer patients than their male counterparts. It might be to do with working hours, with child care responsibilities, or it might be to do with methods of treatment. It could also have to do with the fact that female doctors actually take the time needed to fully consider the patient in front of them.

Unfortunately, whatever the case, some may use this as yet another excuse to pay female physicians less in the UK.

(THE TIMES) 6 January 2008:

There’s one area where we might not be all that happy at increasing gender equality: in the number of men and women who drink and drive. It isn’t just the well known brushes with the law of the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan: it’s women in general.

Figures from the UK show that the number of female drunk drivers rose by 60% between 1995 and 2005. It is true that this still means that women make up only 12% of all drink drivers, but this really isn’t an area where we would welcome greater gender equality (unless the numbers were zero for both sexes).

(BBC NEWS) 2 January 2008:

Jenny Marsey’s granny panties were a lifesaver when they were grabbed to cover a frying pan fire at her home in the U.K.

Her son and nephew were trying to fry some bread when the blaze broke out.

But the quick-thinking pair used the impressive knickers from a pile of washing, doused them in water, and threw them over the fire.

Mrs Marsey, 53, said: “My £4.99 parachute knickers have come in handy for something. We’ve had a good laugh that they were a bit like a fire blanket.”

(ALL HUNGARY) 4 July 2007:

One of the things we’ve seen in the US in recent decades is that the traditional ratios of men and women going to college have reversed: somewhere between one half and two thirds of new students are female.

But this is not something restricted to the US: it’s well known in the UK as well and now we have the news that it is happening in Hungary. Perhaps more of a global than local matter.

Things aren’t changing all that much though: in all three countries very few men train for such jobs as kindergarten teacher, while very few women did so in electrical or electronic engineering.

(THE SCOTSMAN)  2 July 2007:

Something rather odd appears to be happening with telephone habits in the UK. Men are now greater users of telephones than women are.

The average man is now on the phone 32 minutes a day, up from 22 five years ago, while the average woman is down to 26 minutes from the previous 35. So the old stereotype of women nattering away seems to have disappeared. Other such has remained though, 70% of men spend most of their time talking about sport, women or money.

Women seem to have replaced many of their previous calls with texts or emails: perhaps this simply shows that women are more literate than men?