The unspoken agony of vaginal dryness: ‘I had to give up four jobs in four years’

Recently, there has been much more discussion of menopause. But one debilitating condition, experienced by 80% of women, remains shrouded in secrecy and misunderstandingWhen Lorraine Kelly shared her experience of menopause on her daytime TV show in 2017, she was her own last resort. Initially, she set out to interview a famous woman about her story, but everyone she approached refused.“I thought, nobody else will talk about it so I’ll do it. It was a breakthrough moment,” said Kelly

‘Fight for every penny’: the over-70s battling to achieve Scottish cohousing dream

The first fully rented cohousing project in Scotland is “shovel ready” thanks to a group of people in their 70s who have spent six years fighting to turn their dream community into a reality.Cohousing communities are developments of new-build or retrofitted homes created and run by those living there. Each development comprises self-contained residences as well as community spaces, where activities and most meals are shared.“We’ve got further than any other fully rented cohousing project ever has in Scotland,” said Jenny Rambridge, one of the six members of the Hope Cohousing group in Orkney. “The fact that we’ll be fully rented is vital

NHS faces £5.7bn bill for patching up hospitals before demolishing them

The repairs bill at 18 crumbling hospitals is set to soar to £5.7bn because replacing them will take so long, new analysis shows.Reconstruction of 18 of the 40 new hospitals in England first promised by Boris Johnson in 2019 will not start until at least 2030 – the date by which all 40 were originally meant to open – to help spread the cost, amid stretched public finances.NHS trust bosses have warned that some of the 18 hospitals hit by the delays, such as St Mary’s in London, will collapse before work starts because they are already in such an advanced state of disrepair.The revised rebuilding time­table could see the cost of tackling the backlog of repairs at those hospitals spiral from £2

Betting giants spared regulatory action after secret deals with watchdog

Betting firms have been reaching secret deals with Britain’s gambling watchdog, including surrendering revenues for failings that are kept out of the public domain, the Observer can reveal.The Gambling Commission has been placing some betting firms into special measures, enabling them to avoid formal action, which can include fines or the revoking of a licence. If a company agrees to implement an action plan and “divest any profit” from regulatory failures, the regulator typically does not make its failings public.Campaigners say the regime has been a “protective bubble” for firms that may put gamblers at risk of harm.The watchdog’s supervision of betting brands is under scrutiny as it faces a legal claim filed in the high court last week by Annie Ashton, whose husband, Luke, took his life after becoming addicted to gambling

Why are women still being sent to prison as ‘a place of safety’? | Eva Wiseman

Every now and then I learn something about the world today that sticks into me like a fish hook and I find myself asking friends, colleagues, “Wait, did you know this? Did you know this was happening?” The most recent felt like a horror-movie trope. It’s the part of the film, about a third of the way in, where a woman is locked up with the lie that the incarceration is for her own good.It’s not just films, of course, not just fiction – countless women were institutionalised in the 19th century for “abnormal” behaviours, like disagreeing with their husbands, or following “unnatural” sexual impulses. Some were locked up for postnatal depression, some alcoholism, some “moral insanity”, which meant, somehow, infidelity. But what shocked me even more than historical reports on women like Elizabeth Packard, who was incarcerated by her husband in 1860 (the doctor’s reasons included her refusal to shake his hand and the fact that she was above the age of 40), what got me asking, saying wait, was the knowledge that something similar is still happening daily, in prisons across the country