Too many people on planet earth for the Buntingsian one — she’s after a cull of us (well - those who don’t reside in Guardian Towers or the middle class Islington, Londinium shithole slum she most likely hangs out in). Anyway — blimey — she’s n’aarf afraid of the Soylent Green she is by most measures me old sparra.

Oh — hang on. What is this here I see before me?

Why it appears to be a piece from only last year where she states:

A seven-month pregnant woman - her belly vast - was at a supper with a friend. He, being of the family type, told her she was very lucky to be expecting a baby. He was the first person who had said such a thing, she told him.

It’s a jarring anecdote because it so sharply puts into focus how pregnancy has become the occasion not for congratulations, but for anxious questions about childcare, leave and work. Watch how the announcement of a pregnancy among women is followed within minutes by the “What are you going to do?” question. We’ve replaced the age-old anxiety around life-threatening childbirth with a new - and sometimes it appears just as vast - cargo of anxiety around who is going to care.

This anxiety is the backdrop to the 90,000 baby gap - the number of additional babies that women would like to have had - identified by a recent Institute of Public Policy Research report on how the birth rate is falling below replenishment levels. How is it that in cultures all over the world pregnancies prompt congratulations rather than anxious questions about childcare? How is it that in a culture equipped, materially and medically, to ease child-rearing, we are so reluctant to enjoy new life?

“The problem with Madeleine has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. The problem with Madeleine is that she thinks she is an intellectual when she is obviously just a vacuous twit.”

Seconded comrades!