Two Ministry of Justice workers are in hot water for describing a researcher as a “bitch” in an online conversation.
Academic and author Barbara Sumner made a number of Official Information Act requests as part of her PhD research into the systems around adoption. Then, in October last year, she asked for all correspondence mentioning her by name.
“Because I had felt all along that there was a resistance to everything I sent in and you know, just the sort of snottiness, I guess, of some of the responses that came in that request. I wanted to understand how they were treating me throughout the process.”
One page of the response stood out among more than 100 others. A November 2022 Teams conversation between two staffers, whose names were redacted, complained about Sumner’s latest request.
They described it as “a waste of time” and said it “should have been refused on the ground of substantial collation” or that the ministry should “charge her for it and get a contractor”.
“our ministerial services team sucks cuz they wouldnt let us refuse, and helen didnt push back hard [sic],” one worker wrote.
"but also shes a bitch for wanting everything. does she think govt just has unlimited resources for this type of crap lol.
“like theres no public interest in our emails back and forward.”
I mean I mentioned it because it’s working on me!
Wait why aren’t you going to be around in 50 years? Live to 100 go on I dare you.
I have no desire to live to 100! But maybe now I know about anticholinergic burden I might be able to be a sprightly 100 year old.
I used to know a sprightly 100 year old who still lived alone in their own home. Their longevity advice was “don’t eat too many takeaways”! Bet they had a low anticholinergic burden though 😃
You’ve got to be careful with single data points. There are also 100 years olds saying the secret to longevity is a whiskey before breakfast, and a pack of cigarettes a day to keep the bugs away.
Yeah I’m not going to let it get between me and takeaways ha ha.
Seriously though as well as being a single data point it was self-reported and I noticed it changed depending on the interlocuter - from memory they told the local paper that the secret is going to church.
I’m pretty sure the real secret behind living a really long time is some combination of genetics and statistics (as in, if you have a 0.0001% chance of living that long, if you apply this to 8B people then you get 8,000 of these people).