It’s Bollocks With Beeps

Hey Tesco, don’t get all annoyed at me because I forgot to scan something. You literally gave me no training before making me a cashier.

The audacity of a company giving you zero training, plonking you on a till, and then acting shocked — shocked! — when a human being makes a mistake. Honestly, it’s peak corporate behaviour: “We won’t teach you anything, but we will absolutely tut at you when you don’t magically know everything.”

And let’s be real: those tills are temperamental. Half the time they’re screaming “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA” because you dared to breathe near them.

If Tesco wanted flawless scanning, they could try the radical concept of proper training or maybe supportive management instead of the passive‑aggressive beeps.

You forgetting to scan something isn’t a crime — it’s a Tuesday. And you’re a human, not a barcode‑detecting cyborg.

Good old‑fashioned cashiers didn’t disappear — they were strategically “phased out” in the same way your favourite chocolate bar gets “slightly smaller” every year. Bit by bit, quietly, and with a corporate grin.

Because self‑service machines were cheaper than hiring and training humans, and shops realised customers would do the labour for free if you gave them a touchscreen and a robotic voice.

Management decided that “customer experience” is optional, but “cost‑cutting” is sacred, and suddenly the humble cashier — the one who could hold a conversation, spot a dodgy barcode, and tell you which biscuits are on offer — became an “operational inefficiency”.

And the reason why people miss them: A cashier can actually help when something goes wrong. They don’t shout “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA” every time you blink. They make the place feel human — a bit of warmth in the weekly shop. And they don’t passive‑aggressively imply you’re a criminal because you forgot to scan a carrot.

Shops want the efficiency of robots but the accountability of humans. So they remove cashiers, shove people onto tills with no training, and then act shocked when mistakes happen. It’s corporate theatre.

Self‑checkout tills behave like Victorian children: seen, heard, and constantly on the verge of a meltdown. You place anything literally down, and it shrieks “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA” as if you’ve dropped a live ferret instead of a loaf of bread.

And the weight sensors? They’re calibrated by someone who has clearly never met a real human. A packet of ham is apparently too heavy. A multipack of crisps is too light. Your soul is too irregular.

You miss one barcode, and suddenly the machine thinks you’re the mastermind behind the Great Tesco Heist of 2026.

It flashes red, summons a staff member, and announces your shame to the entire shop like a town crier.

Meanwhile, someone else is walking out with a trolley full of shopping because the gates are basically decorative.

There’s always one poor worker running between twelve machines, trying to override errors, check IDs, and stop the tills from having existential crises. You stand there helpless, holding your broccoli like it’s evidence in a crime scene.

The corporate logic

“Let’s replace cashiers with machines that:

  • don’t recognise fruit,
  • panic at carrier bags,
  • accuse customers of theft,
  • and require three staff to keep them functioning.”

Genius.

The human element

Cashiers could:

  • chat,
  • help,
  • fix things,
  • and not scream at you for existing. Self‑checkout gives you a beeping rectangle with trust issues.

Oh for God’s sake, these bloody self‑checkout machines. Who designed them — a committee of lobotomised pigeons? You put a banana down, and suddenly it’s having a nervous breakdown. ‘Unexpected item in bagging area.

Unexpected? It’s a banana, darling. What did you expect — the Crown Jewels?

And then it flashes red like you’ve detonated a bomb. The whole shop staring at you as if you’ve tried to nick a leg of lamb. I’m standing there thinking, I’m sixty‑something years old, I’ve lived through governments, pandemics, and men who don’t wash properly — and THIS is what finally defeats me? A machine with the emotional stability of a wet sock?

Meanwhile, the poor staff member — one person for twelve machines — is sprinting around like they’re in the bloody Olympics. You wave at them, they wave back, but the machine is still shrieking like a banshee. And you know what? I miss cashiers. Real people. Someone who can look at a courgette and not have an existential crisis.

These machines don’t save time. They don’t save money. They just make everyone feel like a criminal for buying a loaf of bread. It’s corporate nonsense. Utter, unfiltered bollocks.

Jeremy Clarkson – Fame’s gone to his head so badly he’s strutting about like he’s the mayor of his own imaginary kingdom — crown, cape, and absolutely no self‑awareness

Jeremy Clarkson whipped up a digital dust‑up by declaring that benefit claimants should send weekly thank‑you notes to taxpayers, because apparently even his dogs manage better manners.

He kicked off a full‑blown fury by bragging that his dogs “always show their appreciation” and then proposing a weekly national lottery of taxpayers’ email addresses so benefit claimants can send thank‑you notes like some government‑mandated gratitude mail‑out.

He suggested they should be made to send a heartfelt message of thanks before receiving their next payment.

Clarkson wrote: “I want fulsomeness. I want to hear what they’ve done with the £194 I gave them that week. And I want effusiveness as well. I want to feel their gratitude.”

The TV star said recipients should explain how the money had helped them, joking he wanted to receive messages saying: “It is SO kind of you to go to work every day so that I don’t have to.”

He also suggested that some people might well decide that getting a job was preferable to writing lengthy thank‑you letters every week, and the way he said it carried that dry, eyebrow‑raised tone that made the whole room smirk.

In his view, the sheer labour of constant gratitude — the careful phrasing, the polite flourishes, the endless obligation to appear appreciative — could start to feel more exhausting than honest employment.

It was a jab at the sort of social circles where niceties become a full‑time occupation, and you could almost picture someone throwing down their fountain pen, marching out the door, and announcing they’d rather stack shelves than compose another overwrought note of thanks.

However, his remarks provoked significant public anger online, with many accusing him of displaying insensitivity toward individuals who depend on state benefits.

One person wrote: “What an evil bloke! There were nights when we couldn’t even afford to eat, never mind have a TV.”

“Another commenter wrote: ‘The level of hostility directed at sick or low‑income individuals in this country is astonishing. The government already exerts substantial pressure on people to return to work, even when they are medically unfit to do so.“

They added: “The idea that there is mass fraud is disproved again and again. What’s the desired alternative? Let them die?”

A third said: “This is out of touch. Most people on benefits want to work. I am a high-skilled worker; the company I worked for went under.

“With the state of the job market, it took five months to find work. I applied for hundreds of jobs, every waking hour, desperate to work. It was crushing.” But others said it was a “good idea” and “might encourage people to find work”.

Jeremy Clarkson has a habit of saying things so unpleasant they practically come with a warning label.

He behaves like a big kid who’s just discovered the ‘on’ switch for all his favourite toys — and he’s absolutely thrilled with himself.

All that fame’s puffed him up so much he’s practically floating — someone ought to tie him down before he drifts off.

Disability Justice Means Dignity — Not Gatekeeping

The system meant to protect disabled people has instead become a maze of waitlists, denials, and outdated rules that punish them simply for trying to survive.

Politicians often promise to stand up for struggling families and vulnerable people, yet the disabled community is still consistently overlooked and left to fall through the cracks.

Programs meant to support disabled people have become inaccessible through excessive gatekeeping, outdated eligibility rules, and years‑long waitlists, turning the very systems designed to help into barriers that leave disabled individuals and their families without the services they urgently need.

When families turn to organisations or state agencies for help, they’re often dismissed with “this is how the programme is run,” and even complaints sent are simply redirected back to the same organisations that already failed them, leaving families with nowhere to turn.

It’s no surprise that many disabled people and their caregivers eventually become discouraged and stop seeking help, because no one should have to fight this hard just to access essential services.

Meaningful change is long overdue, and our disability service system needs comprehensive reform—not minor fixes—because disabled people deserve a transparent, accountable system that provides timely services, fair treatment, and real support instead of endless barriers, and it’s time to build a dedicated group of advocates to fight for disability rights.

People tell you to look on the sunny side of life even when the shit is literally falling on your head.

I’m not sure what’s worse — the lack of funding itself or the endless excuses for why we’re expected to wait for it.

If the government had to live off what we get a month on Social Security, they would see how hard it is. People are struggling to try to find a flat, groceries, utilities, et cetera, and it’s all buried under lies, manipulation, and avoidance of responsibility.

Disabled people deserve far better than the lies, manipulation, and neglect they’re forced to endure, because no one should suffer or live in poverty simply for being born with a disability, and people who become disabled deserve just as much support and dignity as those born disabled, because no one should lose their stability, health, or livelihood simply because life changed in a way they never asked for.

Disability justice means recognising that disabled people — whether born disabled or becoming disabled later in life — deserve full dignity, real support, and equal access to the resources that allow a person to live, work, and thrive.

It demands an end to the gatekeeping, neglect, and systemic barriers that force disabled individuals into poverty, pain, and isolation, and insists on a society where essential services are timely, income support is fair, housing is safe, and no one is punished for needing help.

Disability justice is the belief that every disabled person has the right to safety, stability, opportunity, and respect — not breadcrumbs, not excuses, but genuine equity.

Don’t Chain Someone To Their Past — Give Them A Future Worth Walking Toward

A man with addiction, trauma and no stable home has been pushed through a maze of disconnected services for over a decade, punished instead of supported, until the system itself became the thing keeping him homeless.

Fragmented services mean Paul is passed from police to courts to hostels, with no one ever responsible for helping him recover.

Punitive fines pile up despite him having no ability to pay, dragging him back into court again and again.

Addiction is treated as misbehaviour, so he’s punished instead of offered long‑term treatment.

Unsafe hostels push him back onto the streets, where at least he knows the rules. And trauma keeps him returning to the one area where he feels some sense of familiarity after being assaulted.

The painful truth is that Paul’s story isn’t an anomaly — it’s the logical outcome of a system that was never designed to solve homelessness or addiction, only to process people who fall into it.

This is absolutely heartbreaking. How can someone be failed for this long and nobody steps in?

This isn’t the life he chose, and he’s drowning, and the system keeps handing him bricks instead of a lifeline.

We talk about ‘help’ like it actually exists, but where was it for him? Ten years of suffering and still no way out, and it’s devastating. He’s punished for being vulnerable, fined for being poor, and abandoned when he needs care.

How can anyone read this and not feel ashamed of how we treat people who fall through the cracks?

This man needed stability, love, and safety. Instead, he got fines, fear, and the same cold pavement every night.

We’ve created a world where suffering is seen as a nuisance instead of a cry for help. Paul deserves better. They all deserve better!

That could be one of your family members — your brother, your son, your uncle — and if it were, you’d be begging the system to help instead of watching it punish him over and over again.

Whatever someone has done in the past should never be dragged into their future — because if this were your brother, your son, or someone you love, you’d want them to be given a chance to heal, not chained forever to the worst moments of their life.

Everyone deserves a clean slate. You can’t rebuild a life if the world keeps reminding you of the rubble.

People grow, people change — but the system refuses to let them. It keeps punishing yesterday instead of helping today, and if we want people to move forward, we have to stop holding their past like a weapon against them.

A mistake shouldn’t become a life sentence. Compassion is how futures are built.

Sutton’s Got Flies, Mice, And Mayhem — And One Woman Left Climbing 14 Steps To Hell

A 45-year-old former cleaner says she is trapped in her own home after her flat became overrun with thousands of flies and mice.

The Sutton resident suffers from severe spinal problems and bulging discs.

It presently takes her 40 minutes just to climb the 14 steps up to her first-floor flat.

But the physical pain of accessing her home is only part of what she is dealing with inside.

Over the last year, a severe environmental crisis at a neighbouring property has totally disrupted her life.

She came home one day to discover thousands of flies swarming out of her letterbox and hundreds more covering her windows.

The subsequent mouse infestation was so severe she had to throw out 65 bin bags filled with her ruined clothes and personal items.

Another resident on the block said the ammonia smell coming from the neighbouring property was like a “dead body.”

Inside her own flat, her bathroom is considered too small for the disability adaptations she desperately requires.

She says she sometimes wets the bed because she cannot reach the toilet fast enough.

Despite providing a GP report describing her deteriorating health, she has been told she faces a 10-year waiting list to be rehoused.

Sutton Housing Partnership says the resident does not presently meet the criteria to be transferred, but they will continue to review her case based on medical recommendations.

Meet the criteria? In this country, you need a PhD in hoop‑jumping — unless you’re invisible on the system.

Ignoring a disabled tenant’s needs is unlawful — the Care Act demands dignity, and the missing social worker and absent OT report make this a clear failure in duty.

A neighbouring flat became a full environmental health crisis, with rotting waste and animal contamination creating the perfect breeding ground for the mice and thousands of flies that infested her home. Mice can climb stairs easily, using their claws and light bodies to run straight up almost any surface.

Mice can carry fleas, and it’s one of the reasons infestations get dangerous so quickly, and the council absolutely should have intervened, and not in a “we’ll send someone next week” way. In cases where a neighbouring flat has flies, mice, rotting waste, or animal contamination, the law treats it as an environmental health hazard, not a private housekeeping issue.

Flies and mice can carry dangerous diseases such as salmonella, E. coli, leptospirosis, hantavirus, and parasites that spread to humans through contaminated surfaces, bites, or food, and prolonged exposure to mice, flies, waste contamination, and airborne bacteria puts her at genuine risk of illness, especially with her existing health conditions.

Prolonged exposure to mice, flies, waste contamination and airborne bacteria puts the lady at genuine risk of illness, especially with her existing health conditions.

Jeremy Clarkson’s National Grovel Service

Clarkson basically wants Britain to run a national chain‑email pyramid scheme where people on benefits must send weekly gratitude updates to random strangers, turning Universal Credit into the world’s saddest newsletter.

I should say first that he was aiming this at young people he imagines are sitting at home doing nothing — which is adorable, considering most people on benefits are either working, caring for someone, or desperately trying to survive our economy.

But he wrote it as a blanket rule applying to everyone whose benefits are paid — even though he was clearly aiming it at the imaginary young people he thinks are sitting at home doing nothing.

That includes more than thirteen million pensioners, millions of people who receive benefits while working — who might end up being ordered to thank another benefit claimant — and me.

I receive PIP, and that money goes towards my Motability wheelchair I use to travel — so under his blanket rule, I’d apparently have to send weekly thank‑you emails for the privilege of getting myself out and about.

It is not a free wheelchair, and it’s not even my wheelchair—I exchange the mobility component of my PIP to lease it.

The wheelchair takes a lot, which is awkward, because that same payment is also meant to cover the additional costs of being disabled — including a wheelchair that’s actually usable.

Those programmes have helped thousands of people overcome anxiety, return to their lives and, in many cases, return to work.

It is funny how public support and clever tax arrangements are treated as perfectly respectable when they benefit wealthy people, yet when a disabled person receives help to leave the house, go to work and participate in society, he thinks they should be made to perform gratitude.

So thank you for your concern, Jezza — truly touching stuff.

So let me get this straight: pensioners, disabled workers, carers and half the country are meant to send weekly thank‑you notes, but MPs get to claim a duck house and call it ‘essential’.

Imagine thinking disabled people should perform gratitude for going to work while billionaires get tax relief for owning a yacht.

So I’d be thanking someone who also gets benefits, who’d be thanking someone else who gets benefits, until eventually we’re all just emailing each other like a national chain letter.

Clarkson obviously wants Britain to become LinkedIn, but for poverty.

Bones By The Bypass

“Well, honestly, darling, the M67 has absolutely lost the plot. Human remains by the roadside — it’s like something out of a bloody Dickens novel, only with more traffic cones and fewer orphans.

I mean, imagine you’re tootling along, minding your own business, probably late for work, probably desperate for a wee, and suddenly the motorway’s shut because someone’s found a femur. A femur. Not a crisp packet. Not a stray shoe. A bone.

And of course the police are there, all very serious, bless them, poking about with little brushes like they’re dusting a scone. Meanwhile the drivers are sat there thinking, ‘Well this is just marvellous, isn’t it? I’ve got a meeting at nine, and now I’m trapped behind a lorry full of cabbages.’

Honestly, Britain is wild. You can’t even go for a drive without stumbling into a crime scene. I’d be furious — but also a bit fascinated. I love a mystery. Preferably one that doesn’t ruin my commute.”

People online are reacting with a mix of shock, frustration over the closure, sadness for the victim, and the usual bit of cheeky British commentary about the M67 being “cursed.”

Organised crime groups have historically used remote motorway spots to dispose of bodies, though such cases are uncommon and always treated with serious police scrutiny.

Given the location and the circumstances, the remains might be very old, though only forensic specialists can determine the actual age, and it must have been an awful shock for the road workers who stumbled across the remains, a moment no one ever expects during a routine shift.

The discovery naturally makes you wonder who the person was and what circumstances — possibly violent ones — led to their death, though only forensic investigators can uncover the truth.

I’m sure that in time the investigators will piece together who the person was and what happened to them, but for now all anyone can do is wait and wonder.

The saddest thing is knowing there may be a family out there who never got answers, because whatever happened to this person was likely shelved as a cold case years ago, leaving their loved ones without any chance of closure.

On the flip side, it could turn out that the remains aren’t human at all, and the whole situation might simply be an animal carcass that initially looked suspicious.

“Tell Me I’m Too Ugly — I’ll Give You Front‑Row Seats.”

Thousands of strangers told her she was too ugly to be seen. They said she should be banned from posting pictures of her own face online.

So she made a decision that turned their cruelty completely on its head.

She would post a picture of her face. Every single day. For anyone who didn’t want to look.

Her name is Melissa Blake, a writer and disability activist from DeKalb, Illinois. In August of 2019, she published an opinion piece for CNN. It was the sort of thing writers do all the time — she made an argument, put it out into the world, and waited for the response.

The response, when it came, had virtually nothing to do with her argument.

Instead, thousands of online commenters went after the one thing that had nothing to do with what she’d written: her appearance. Melissa was born with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that affects the bones and muscles, including those of the face, hands, and feet, and gives her a unique appearance. She has lived with it her entire life and has undergone more than twenty-six surgeries on her knees, hands, hips, and spine.

The commenters seized on how she looked. They called her nasty names. They mocked her face. And then came the comment that, as Melissa later said, she just couldn’t shake — someone said that she was so ugly she should be banned from posting photos of herself at all.

Think about the sheer meanness of that. Not “I disagree with you.” Not even a plain insult. But a demand that she make herself invisible — that a disabled woman had no right to let the world see her face.

For a lot of people, that would have been the moment to log off, to go silent, to let the mob win and vanish for a while. And no one would have blamed her.

Melissa did the opposite.

“I’m just the type of person,” she later explained, “where if you tell me not to do something, I’m going to do just the opposite.”

In September of 2019, she posted three photographs of herself — three selfies, looking straight into the camera — with a message aimed squarely at the people trying to shame her into hiding. She said, in effect: you told me I was too ugly to post pictures of myself, so I’d like to commemorate the occasion with these three selfies.

It was defiance, plain and gorgeous. And the internet, which had just been so mean to her, unexpectedly swung the other way. The post went viral. It was shared and praised by people all over the world, who saw in it precisely what it was: a woman refusing to let strangers determine whether she was allowed to exist in public.

But here’s the part that turned a viral moment into something lasting. Melissa didn’t stop at three.

She kept going. She started posting a selfie of herself every single day — a quiet, daily act of showing up, of taking up space, of being visible on her own terms. What started as a single act of defiance stretched on. A week. A month. And finally, a full year of daily selfies, each one a small refusal to vanish.

And something happened to Melissa along the way. The project she’d started to spite the trolls started to transform her from the inside. “With each selfie,” she said, “I felt more comfortable in my own body and discovered a freedom I’d never really felt before as a disabled woman.” The very act she’d been told to be ashamed of became the thing that set her free.

Then it grew beyond her completely.

Melissa created a hashtag, #MyBestSelfie, and invited other people to do what she was doing — to post their own pictures and celebrate precisely who they were. And they came. Disabled people from all over began joining her, sharing their own faces and their own stories, claiming their own space in a world that too frequently looks away from them.

What had started as one woman’s response to her own bullies had become a movement. Melissa said as much herself: the project had grown bigger than her. It had become a way for disabled people to reclaim their own narratives, to demand to be seen, and — in her words — to “take up space” in a society that so often pushes them to the margins.

That phrase is worth sitting with. Take up space. Because that is exactly what the mean comments had been trying to deny her: the right to occupy a little bit of the visible world, to be looked at, to be present, to matter. The entire point of “you’re too ugly, you should be banned from posting” is to make a person shrink, and disappear, and take up less room.

And Melissa Blake’s answer to all of it was to take up more.

Here’s what makes her response so powerful, and it’s worth being straightforward about. It wasn’t powerful because she rose above the cruelty and pretended it didn’t hurt. She’s been open that some of those words cut enormously — the one she couldn’t shake stayed with her. It was powerful for a different reason: because she looked at a mass of outsiders who had appointed themselves the judges of whether her face belonged in public, and she calmly, stubbornly, daily, refused to let them be the judge of that.

They wanted her to hide. She showed her face instead — and then gave that same fearlessness to numerous other people who’d been made to feel they should hide, too.

The trolls, in the end, gave Melissa Blake the one thing they least intended to: a platform, a movement, and a freedom she says she’d never quite felt before. They told her to disappear. She became more visible than ever.

Real attractiveness isn’t built in the mirror; it’s built in the marrow.

It’s the way someone carries themselves after being knocked flat. It’s the courage to show up anyway. It’s the spark in a person’s voice when they talk about something they love. It’s kindness that isn’t performative, humour that isn’t cruel, and confidence that isn’t borrowed from filters or strangers’ approval.

It’s the stuff trolls can’t touch.

The people who tore into Melissa weren’t Elizabeth Taylor or Robert Redford. They weren’t icons of beauty, grace, or charisma. They were just ordinary, wounded people lashing out from places they refused to look at. Their cruelty wasn’t about Melissa’s face; it was about their own reflection — the one they couldn’t bear to confront.

Melissa, on the other hand, had something they didn’t: an inner beauty that didn’t depend on symmetry, filters, or strangers’ approval. She had courage. She had self-respect. She had the kind of resilience that makes a person glow from the inside out.

Melissa coming in like Tigger isn’t just cute; it’s symbolic. Tigger doesn’t tiptoe. He doesn’t ask permission to exist. He doesn’t shrink because someone else is uncomfortable with his joy. He boings in — full-hearted, full-volume, full-self — and that’s what Melissa did after all that cruelty.

Courage, grit, and just enough snark to make the whole thing sting in the right direction. The kind of snark that isn’t petty, isn’t cruel, but is pure, righteous backbone. The kind that says:

“Up yours, naysayers — I’m not going anywhere.”

Melissa didn’t fight them with venom. She fought them with visibility. With joy. With that Tigger‑bounce — the kind of entrance that makes bullies look even smaller than they already are.

Their cruelty came from a hollow place. Her response came from a whole one.

Women have spent decades being told they’re too much of one thing and not enough of another. Too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet, too bold, too meek — basically too human for a world that insists on judging them like produce at a market stall. It emotionally crippled so many. It carved deep wounds that some never fully healed.

So when Melissa stands up, shows her face, and refuses to be shamed into silence? That’s not just confidence — that’s public service. That’s social repair work. That’s her saying:

“I’m not here to be graded. I’m here to exist.”

And the best part? The “self‑voted judges” — the ones who appointed themselves as beauty police — don’t get to look away. They don’t get to hide behind anonymity and cruelty. They get front‑row seats to every single photo she posts.

I hope she pulls the most gloriously disturbing faces imaginable. The kind that make the trolls choke on their own nastiness. The kind that say:

“You don’t get to decide how I show up.”

Most people fold under that kind of pressure, and understandably so. But Melissa didn’t. She took the negativity, wrung it out, and turned it into something that actually helps people.

That’s rare. That’s powerful. And that’s beautiful in a way no troll could ever understand.

Glue‑Gate: Because Even A Tiny Cut Can Turn Into A Full‑Blown Drama

Four-year-old Saoirse Feeney had to be rushed to a second hospital after a doctor accidentally glued her eyelids shut.

Saoirse was initially taken to A&E by her mum after hitting her head on a wooden table at home, leaving her with a gash above her eye.

Her mum, who is a paediatric nurse, had applied butterfly stitches to control the bleeding before taking her in.

When doctors at Crumlin Hospital in Dublin tried to treat the cut using adhesive, “copious glue use” resulted in the glue spilling straight into the young girl’s left eye.

Her eyelids were left totally glued shut, sparking fears about possible long-term damage to her eyesight.

The four-year-old was rushed to Temple Street Children’s Hospital so specialists could separate her eyelids.

Treating the injury required four separate rounds of irrigation using three litres of fluid to wash away the adhesive.

Barrister Anita Finucane told the court that “the irrigation procedure was an extremely distressing event.”

The chemical process and irrigation caused some of the young girl’s bottom eyelashes to fall out and turned others inward, causing further pain.

She was also left with a considerable amount of glue stuck to her eyebrows and needed antibiotic eye drops four times a day for six weeks.

Her family took legal action against Children’s Health Ireland over the August 2022 incident.

An Irish court has now agreed a €15,000 (£12,000) settlement for the family.

Judge Sinead Ní Chúlachain noted that Saoirse was fortunate to avoid permanent eye damage, stating the payout sat at the top end of guidance for transient eye injuries.

Glue anywhere near a child’s eye is a high‑risk manoeuvre, and this case is exactly the sort of nightmare scenario clinicians dread.

If steristrips won’t hold, it’s usually because the wound edges are under tension, the location is awkward, or the child can’t keep still. And if that’s the situation, then glue is rarely the safer upgrade — it’s just a faster one. Suturing is fiddly, yes, but it’s controlled. Glue is fast, but it’s also unforgiving.

Seems like the NHS is now offering free eyelid welding. Imagine going in for a cut and coming out like a budget action figure whose eyes don’t open.

That doctor must’ve been using Gorilla Glue because that stuff bonds your soul. Someone needs to take his Pritt Stick privileges away.

Glue near a kid’s eye? Bold strategy. Next time, maybe try not turning the child into a human eyelid origami project.

Woman, 32, ‘Cut Up Ribs’

A woman has been accused of killing her dad and carving out his heart.

Serena Dolnics, 32, has been charged with murder after police say they found her covered in blood near her father’s corpse in Valparaiso, Indiana. Cops allegedly responded to a 911 call made by relatives of 69-year-old Gregory Dolnics after they became concerned about his well-being on Sunday evening, with the police dispatcher reportedly being told someone had seen Desiree ‘covered in blood’ at the home.

Arriving at the property, cops say that they found the property locked, but noticed a body lying on the ground surrounded by dried blood. Forcing entry, they discovered that the corpse belonged to Gregory, who had allegedly suffered slash wounds to the head, face, neck and hands, while his heart had been cut out from his body, as per local news outlet NWI.

According to a postmortem, all of these injuries had been executed with knives, including incisions made to the ribs to allow the removal of the heart.

Dolnics, who was discovered at the property covered in blood, was arrested and taken into custody after being treated at the hospital due to injuries to her hands.

According to court documents, Dolnics claimed she suffered the cuts to her hands while gardening, although cops maintain that these injuries were consistent with a knife slipping through.

She told detectives that she and her father “get along really well” despite having the occasional “small tiff” that they would quickly move past. She also insisted she had not seen Gregory injured.

Court records show Dolnics has a record of drug and drink-driving offences. She pleaded guilty to having methamphetamine in Jasper County in 2024, and has prior convictions for operating while drunk in Porter County in 2017 and 2014. She was also convicted of public intoxication in neighbouring LaPorte County in 2016.

Dolnics made an initial court appearance on Thursday (July 30), where she wore a blue suicide-prevention smock and reportedly spoke hesitantly via a video chat link.

She has reportedly pleaded not guilty, although she is not yet thought to have arranged an attorney, and when questioned in court about this, she said: “I’ll figure it out.”

A further hearing has been scheduled for August 11.

The very idea of a daughter killing a parent where excessive brutality was involved is beyond comprehension.

This is excessive overkill, and she must have been extremely mentally ill, and she will certainly need detention in a secure psychiatric hospital.

Perhaps her attorney will declare an insanity defence, although at present she doesn’t have an attorney, which indicates she has no guilt or she has no understanding that what she did was wrong.

Cases like this leave a kind of hollow ache because you can see all the points where something should have happened earlier, and yet it didn’t. And when someone is spiralling into severe mental illness, the gap between what should happen and what actually happens can be devastating.

When someone is becoming extremely mentally unwell, the warning signs are usually subtle, sporadic, dismissed as stress or “odd behaviour”, concealed from family, not enough to trigger emergency services, and misunderstood by professionals. And unless the person is already known to mental health services, the system tends to respond only after a crisis, not before.

This is sad because it’s not one life lost. It’s two. One through death, and one through the collapse of their mind, and the sadness comes from knowing that, with earlier intervention, both lives might have been saved.

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