Rather than taking a taxi, it's much more ethical having mother-to-be and Ethical Man walk to the hospital with EM's "mother follow[ing] in the car, hugging the kerb at walking pace." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
That makes sense; I missed that when I skimmed through the first time around. A couple of friends of mine in junior high - brothers - were born at home for similar ethical, but not as far as I could tell self-important, reasons.
Makes me glad to have Zipcar around. Not that I've used it for such, but their testimonials usually have at least one "time to go around the corner to pick up the car to go to the hospital" story in them. Car sharing set ups can really rock - and having a car only when you need one saves a lot of resources - I think the estimate is that one shared car replaces about 8-10 private cars. I frequently see human and grocery-packed zipcars at the larger suburban stores.
Sometimes when I see all the religious whackos here in the U.S., I take solace in the fact that the UK seems to have a lot more animal rights screwballs.
I can't believe he made her walk to the hospital. Zipcar would suck in this situation, since he'd probably have her walking a great distance away from the hospital to get to the parked zipcar. Or else, he'd have to fly to Boston or Washington which just wouldn't do at all.
It would be the worst advertisement for Zipcar evah.
No-one seems to be reading the article. He didn't make her walk to the hospital. She chose to walk to the hospital because she hoped the walking would speed up the labour process and bring on the contractions.
Ethical Man might be a smug git but he doesn't actually seem to be guilty of the thing he is being accused of. She wanted to walk, but they had the mother-in-law standing by with a car, just in case. Emphatically not the same as her being made to walk.
If this ethical man's wife needed to get a taxi in London they would have first to apply for a mortgage to afford the cab fare. This probably would not leave enough time given she had already gone into labour.
Sorry Lizardbreath, but London ain't Manhattan. If they live south of the river, getting a taxi is pretty much an impossibility any time of the day.
Though if he does live south, he's passed up an opportunity for the standard "no taxis around here" joke, which no real journalist would ever do, as it allows you to get closer to your word count without having to do any extra thinking.
Hello, I'd like to order a taxi to East London Maternity Hospital. ...Right away, please - my wife's just gone into labour.
Hello? Hello?
Gosh, that's funny. That's the seventeenth taxi firm that hung up on me as soon as they heard they would be transporting a woman in labour. Must be a busy day...
19, 20: Seriously? (A) you can't get a taxi in a couple of minutes by phoning them (I wouldn't try to flag a cab on the street in labor either -- you might get one but you might not) and (B) you'd expect a taxi company to leave you hanging if they knew the passenger was in labor? (Of course, why would you tell them over the phone.)
It seemed self-importantly whiny because, you know, lots of people don't have cars and they manage (e.g. me, with my first. Not particularly broke, but didn't need a car.). Mr. Ethical isn't doing anything that lots of people don't do just because they're poor. So, taxi, ambulance, whatever, but it's not like you're venturing into uncharted territory.
And, just as we regularly wonder with the Times style section, the question is whether the journalists live in a bubble, think their readers do, or both.
Yeah, the last paragraph of 22 makes a good point.
There was no car in my family when either my sister, my brother, or myself was born. I think my sister may have had a car for her second, but not for her first.
I don't know about London but certainly in central Scotland if birth is imminent you can ring for an ambulance.
No car when any of us were born either. I wonder what happens in our rural areas. I get into our countryside (Northern midwest) quite often. Plenty of really poor people — esp. Hmong and Mexican migrants — I'll have to enquire about this.
No car when any of us were born either. I wonder what happens in our rural areas. I get into our countryside (Northern midwest) quite often. Plenty of really poor people — esp. Hmong and Mexican migrants — I'll have to enquire about this.
You're right Lizardbreath, it is self-importantly whiney (the London-based papers are full of this attitude from middle class 30-something journalists), and if this guy lives near me, and I can figure out who he is, I'll make sure to give him the stinkeye next time I see him at the bus stop.
But as for taxis, my experience is that the average waiting time when I call a minicab is something like 45 minutes, and, if it's late at night, it can be even longer, if you can get one at all. (I've been told "no dice" more than once.) When friends are over, the working rule is that except when they get particularly lucky, they'll have time for another drink between calling the cab and it showing up. Sad but true. (Perhaps we should get a burro.)
Just to be clear in case the terminology doesn't translate: minicabs are the type you call on the phone, as opposed to the traditional London black cab, which, as far as I know, are only hailed. (And they don't come down here anyway, so even if I'm wrong it doesnt' matter.)
And this lack of taxis isn't because we're out in the sticks. I live in zone two, only about a 12 minute car ride south of the river, so it's still central london. In New York terms, it's euqivalent to williamsburgh or something similar, I'd guess.
Fair enough, and that may be truer in most of NY than I think -- I happen to live in a neighborhood that's a car-service hub, so if I call a car, it's there in three minutes. I've never really used car service from other neighborhoods (barring from work, which is another matter entirely), and it mightn't usefully fast. But the journo is still a twerp.
(And I don't believe that the assignment was non-voluntary. "We're going to fire you unless you agree to participate in a project that involves rearranging your home life and requires the active participation of your spouse who doesn't work here." It's possible, but I just can't hear anyone saying that to a journalist.)
19, 20: Seriously? (A) you can't get a taxi in a couple of minutes by phoning them (I wouldn't try to flag a cab on the street in labor either -- you might get one but you might not) and (B) you'd expect a taxi company to leave you hanging if they knew the passenger was in labor? (Of course, why would you tell them over the phone.)
A sounds completely plausible. I've never been able to call for a cab in Pittsburgh and have it come in less than an hour, even if I was downtown. And if it's the night/weekend, it can be three hours, or "don't bother waiting".
As for B, it seems like the taxi company might say "We've heard that one before..." - they don't have any responsibility to pick up a pregnant woman.
I think I saw more taxis during the two days I've spent in New York than I've seen in my six years in Pittsburgh. New York is odd in many ways.
It's what Reuben called a minicab, a taxi you phone rather than one that cruises the streets. And I didn't mean that I'd expect the car service necessarily to make extra efforts for a woman in labor, just not to affirmatively avoid her as a passenger as ajay implied in 20.
But in any case, then call an ambulance. People without cars get to the hospital somehow -- it can't be that big a problem.
Yeah, basically, the poor woman's married to a twat. No wonder the kid looks disgruntled: dad's probably wearing socks with sandals, too.
And you're right, he'd have volunteered for this assignment. It's very plum: not only do you get guaranteed articles, but since it covers a period of time and has an in-built narrative of sorts (this guy will probably see it as more of a Hero's Journey), it'll be a very easy project to turn into a book. Some guy from the Guardian has done the same thing (though he seems less of an ass).
LB has it right. Twat is used very commonly, and generally for men. Interestingly, "cunt" is also very common, whereas in the US it's almost verboten. Brits cuss like sailors, and British women give no quarter in this regard (they also drink like fish). Eg, my friend Tanya: "I'm absolutely cunted."
In Pittsburgh and other places I've lived, you can only call for taxis; there aren't any that cruise around. (Maybe Pittsburgh has a few in recent years, downtown.) A friend of mine who lived in New York for a while had an embarrassing moment when she stormed out of a club, went to hail a cab, realized you can't do that there, and had to go back in and call and wait inside for twenty minutes.
I usually didn't have to wait an hour, though, even before one of my friends became a cabdriver.
OTOH in Lubbock I was almost unable to get a cab from the freakin' airport. This was a day of maximum air travel fubarity—there had been a thunderstorm in Houston in the morning, in Dallas the air traffic computers had crashed or something, and there were damn high winds in Lubbock that day—so that my (5 hours delayed) flight from Houston may have been the only flight to land that day. All but one of the cabdrivers had gone home, and I had to share my cab with a little old lady who'd been unable to fly out that day.
Cryptic Ned in 31 and Weiner in 39 are both basically right about the lack of cabs in a lot of places. Boston's not great either. There are parts of downtown Boston where there are taxi ranks (or whatever we're supposed to call a line of taxis in this country), but it's nearly impossible to hail a moving cab. In Brookline you must call, and Cambridge is not much better.
New York is nirvana for anyone who wants to get a cab. Washington, D.C. is another great city for cabs, although you have to figure out the zone system to minimize your fare. There are a ton of independent cab drivers there, and they don't have a medallion system, so there are no artificial guild limits. There are lots of them available. They are not as good as London cab drivers, and many of them do not know the city as well as they should; but they are easily hailed in most parts of town*, not just the business district. It's pretty easy to get one after you've gone to the supermarket.
*I'm quite sure that this is not true in Ward 8, i.e. Southeast D.C. on the other side of the Anacostia river. But then, they don't have any supermarket at all.
many of them do not know the city as well as they should
In 1998 I arrived in DC at Union Station, found a cab that would go to Virginia, and told the driver where I was going. When we got into Virginia he pulled up alongside a row of cabs in front of a hotel and asked for directions.
He should have had a hand cart ready to take her organically to the hospital.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 7:59 PM
You do have taxis, right?
Rather than taking a taxi, it's much more ethical having mother-to-be and Ethical Man walk to the hospital with EM's "mother follow[ing] in the car, hugging the kerb at walking pace." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:01 PM
If not taxis, then catapults surely.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:02 PM
Hospitals use up resources. Why not deliver at home?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:10 PM
This "ethical man" should write for "the Ethicist."
Ethics = a feeling of moral superiority, gained without having to actually give up anything.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:19 PM
4: I thought that too, but apparently she'd had complications with her second child.
Then again, of course, three children use up resources.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:20 PM
That makes sense; I missed that when I skimmed through the first time around. A couple of friends of mine in junior high - brothers - were born at home for similar ethical, but not as far as I could tell self-important, reasons.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:26 PM
Makes me glad to have Zipcar around. Not that I've used it for such, but their testimonials usually have at least one "time to go around the corner to pick up the car to go to the hospital" story in them. Car sharing set ups can really rock - and having a car only when you need one saves a lot of resources - I think the estimate is that one shared car replaces about 8-10 private cars. I frequently see human and grocery-packed zipcars at the larger suburban stores.
Posted by Ms Kate | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 9:07 PM
Sometimes when I see all the religious whackos here in the U.S., I take solace in the fact that the UK seems to have a lot more animal rights screwballs.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 9:31 PM
I can't believe he made her walk to the hospital. Zipcar would suck in this situation, since he'd probably have her walking a great distance away from the hospital to get to the parked zipcar. Or else, he'd have to fly to Boston or Washington which just wouldn't do at all.
It would be the worst advertisement for Zipcar evah.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 9:33 PM
I can't believe he made her walk to the hospital
Shoulda ridden their bicycle built for two.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 9:39 PM
That is an ugly baby.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 11:11 PM
You've got a stutter, bg bg.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 11:35 PM
re: 10
No-one seems to be reading the article. He didn't make her walk to the hospital. She chose to walk to the hospital because she hoped the walking would speed up the labour process and bring on the contractions.
Ethical Man might be a smug git but he doesn't actually seem to be guilty of the thing he is being accused of. She wanted to walk, but they had the mother-in-law standing by with a car, just in case. Emphatically not the same as her being made to walk.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 12:16 AM
Aaaah.
[Hangs head in shame]
Does seem like the 2nd visit to the hospital was all on foot with no backup.
[slaps head]
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 12:18 AM
Well, to be fair, he didn't really want to be ethical man--it was forced on him.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 12:21 AM
If this ethical man's wife needed to get a taxi in London they would have first to apply for a mortgage to afford the cab fare. This probably would not leave enough time given she had already gone into labour.
Posted by Herr Torquewrench | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 12:40 AM
Some are born ethical; others have ethics thrust upon them.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 1:15 AM
Sorry Lizardbreath, but London ain't Manhattan. If they live south of the river, getting a taxi is pretty much an impossibility any time of the day.
Though if he does live south, he's passed up an opportunity for the standard "no taxis around here" joke, which no real journalist would ever do, as it allows you to get closer to your word count without having to do any extra thinking.
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 2:13 AM
Let me put it this way:
Hello, I'd like to order a taxi to East London Maternity Hospital. ...Right away, please - my wife's just gone into labour.
Hello? Hello?
Gosh, that's funny. That's the seventeenth taxi firm that hung up on me as soon as they heard they would be transporting a woman in labour. Must be a busy day...
Posted by ajay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 3:46 AM
There is always the ambulance option.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 4:02 AM
19, 20: Seriously? (A) you can't get a taxi in a couple of minutes by phoning them (I wouldn't try to flag a cab on the street in labor either -- you might get one but you might not) and (B) you'd expect a taxi company to leave you hanging if they knew the passenger was in labor? (Of course, why would you tell them over the phone.)
It seemed self-importantly whiny because, you know, lots of people don't have cars and they manage (e.g. me, with my first. Not particularly broke, but didn't need a car.). Mr. Ethical isn't doing anything that lots of people don't do just because they're poor. So, taxi, ambulance, whatever, but it's not like you're venturing into uncharted territory.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 5:40 AM
I have to admit, I didn't really understand your point on this post until just now. I agree completely with your last paragraph especially.
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 6:12 AM
And, just as we regularly wonder with the Times style section, the question is whether the journalists live in a bubble, think their readers do, or both.
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 6:14 AM
Yeah, the last paragraph of 22 makes a good point.
There was no car in my family when either my sister, my brother, or myself was born. I think my sister may have had a car for her second, but not for her first.
I don't know about London but certainly in central Scotland if birth is imminent you can ring for an ambulance.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 6:21 AM
No car when any of us were born either. I wonder what happens in our rural areas. I get into our countryside (Northern midwest) quite often. Plenty of really poor people — esp. Hmong and Mexican migrants — I'll have to enquire about this.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 6:27 AM
No car when any of us were born either. I wonder what happens in our rural areas. I get into our countryside (Northern midwest) quite often. Plenty of really poor people — esp. Hmong and Mexican migrants — I'll have to enquire about this.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 6:28 AM
You're right Lizardbreath, it is self-importantly whiney (the London-based papers are full of this attitude from middle class 30-something journalists), and if this guy lives near me, and I can figure out who he is, I'll make sure to give him the stinkeye next time I see him at the bus stop.
But as for taxis, my experience is that the average waiting time when I call a minicab is something like 45 minutes, and, if it's late at night, it can be even longer, if you can get one at all. (I've been told "no dice" more than once.) When friends are over, the working rule is that except when they get particularly lucky, they'll have time for another drink between calling the cab and it showing up. Sad but true. (Perhaps we should get a burro.)
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 7:52 AM
Just to be clear in case the terminology doesn't translate: minicabs are the type you call on the phone, as opposed to the traditional London black cab, which, as far as I know, are only hailed. (And they don't come down here anyway, so even if I'm wrong it doesnt' matter.)
And this lack of taxis isn't because we're out in the sticks. I live in zone two, only about a 12 minute car ride south of the river, so it's still central london. In New York terms, it's euqivalent to williamsburgh or something similar, I'd guess.
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 7:58 AM
Fair enough, and that may be truer in most of NY than I think -- I happen to live in a neighborhood that's a car-service hub, so if I call a car, it's there in three minutes. I've never really used car service from other neighborhoods (barring from work, which is another matter entirely), and it mightn't usefully fast. But the journo is still a twerp.
(And I don't believe that the assignment was non-voluntary. "We're going to fire you unless you agree to participate in a project that involves rearranging your home life and requires the active participation of your spouse who doesn't work here." It's possible, but I just can't hear anyone saying that to a journalist.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:03 AM
19, 20: Seriously? (A) you can't get a taxi in a couple of minutes by phoning them (I wouldn't try to flag a cab on the street in labor either -- you might get one but you might not) and (B) you'd expect a taxi company to leave you hanging if they knew the passenger was in labor? (Of course, why would you tell them over the phone.)
A sounds completely plausible. I've never been able to call for a cab in Pittsburgh and have it come in less than an hour, even if I was downtown. And if it's the night/weekend, it can be three hours, or "don't bother waiting".
As for B, it seems like the taxi company might say "We've heard that one before..." - they don't have any responsibility to pick up a pregnant woman.
I think I saw more taxis during the two days I've spent in New York than I've seen in my six years in Pittsburgh. New York is odd in many ways.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:04 AM
#30, what is "car service"? Is it the same thing as a taxi company?
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:05 AM
It's what Reuben called a minicab, a taxi you phone rather than one that cruises the streets. And I didn't mean that I'd expect the car service necessarily to make extra efforts for a woman in labor, just not to affirmatively avoid her as a passenger as ajay implied in 20.
But in any case, then call an ambulance. People without cars get to the hospital somehow -- it can't be that big a problem.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:12 AM
Yeah, basically, the poor woman's married to a twat. No wonder the kid looks disgruntled: dad's probably wearing socks with sandals, too.
And you're right, he'd have volunteered for this assignment. It's very plum: not only do you get guaranteed articles, but since it covers a period of time and has an in-built narrative of sorts (this guy will probably see it as more of a Hero's Journey), it'll be a very easy project to turn into a book. Some guy from the Guardian has done the same thing (though he seems less of an ass).
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:21 AM
Is twat not a gendered term in Britain?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:25 AM
So's pussy in the US, but it's mostly an insult applied to men.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:31 AM
IDP, I here men called "twat" here in the US. I think I hear that more frequently than any other use of the term.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:32 AM
LB has it right. Twat is used very commonly, and generally for men. Interestingly, "cunt" is also very common, whereas in the US it's almost verboten. Brits cuss like sailors, and British women give no quarter in this regard (they also drink like fish). Eg, my friend Tanya: "I'm absolutely cunted."
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 8:38 AM
In Pittsburgh and other places I've lived, you can only call for taxis; there aren't any that cruise around. (Maybe Pittsburgh has a few in recent years, downtown.) A friend of mine who lived in New York for a while had an embarrassing moment when she stormed out of a club, went to hail a cab, realized you can't do that there, and had to go back in and call and wait inside for twenty minutes.
I usually didn't have to wait an hour, though, even before one of my friends became a cabdriver.
OTOH in Lubbock I was almost unable to get a cab from the freakin' airport. This was a day of maximum air travel fubarity—there had been a thunderstorm in Houston in the morning, in Dallas the air traffic computers had crashed or something, and there were damn high winds in Lubbock that day—so that my (5 hours delayed) flight from Houston may have been the only flight to land that day. All but one of the cabdrivers had gone home, and I had to share my cab with a little old lady who'd been unable to fly out that day.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 6-06 9:17 AM
[insert segue here]
At long last, there are new posts at Fafblog.
Posted by oceanic | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:50 AM
Cryptic Ned in 31 and Weiner in 39 are both basically right about the lack of cabs in a lot of places. Boston's not great either. There are parts of downtown Boston where there are taxi ranks (or whatever we're supposed to call a line of taxis in this country), but it's nearly impossible to hail a moving cab. In Brookline you must call, and Cambridge is not much better.
New York is nirvana for anyone who wants to get a cab. Washington, D.C. is another great city for cabs, although you have to figure out the zone system to minimize your fare. There are a ton of independent cab drivers there, and they don't have a medallion system, so there are no artificial guild limits. There are lots of them available. They are not as good as London cab drivers, and many of them do not know the city as well as they should; but they are easily hailed in most parts of town*, not just the business district. It's pretty easy to get one after you've gone to the supermarket.
*I'm quite sure that this is not true in Ward 8, i.e. Southeast D.C. on the other side of the Anacostia river. But then, they don't have any supermarket at all.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:36 AM
many of them do not know the city as well as they should
In 1998 I arrived in DC at Union Station, found a cab that would go to Virginia, and told the driver where I was going. When we got into Virginia he pulled up alongside a row of cabs in front of a hotel and asked for directions.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:48 AM