Reija Sillanpaa

Your alarm goes off at 6.15. As usual you press the snooze button, turn on your side and doze off for another ten minutes. You always had to have that ten minutes. When the alarm goes off again, you switch it off, turn on the bedside light and sit up.

It is easy to think that the efforts on an individual do not amount to much when trying to combat climate change and plastic pollution. However, if millions of people work together making small changes, the impact will be significant. Here are ten easy things you can do to help. 

Sleep deprivation occurs when a person gets less than a sufficient sleep over a long period. The amount of sufficient sleep varies from person to person: while some people can cope with 5-6 hours sleep per night, others need at least eight hours to feel alert and awake. The recommended amount of sleep is 8-9 hours for adults; teenagers and children need more. 

With TV schedules filling up with seasonal offerings, what are the most popular Christmas movies. I asked my readers to name their favourite Christmas movies and the answers ranged from the classics to surprising. Here are the ten movies that came on top.

Following a diagnosis of womb cancer in March 2019, I had a hysterectomy followed by six courses of chemotherapy (Paclitaxel and Carboplatin) and 25 sessions of radiotherapy. The diagnosis prompted me to make some lifestyle changes that helped me to maintain a positive outlook and feel good throughout the treatments. Here are the top ten changes.

Most teachers working in a state school are contracted to work 32.5 hours per week but that has never been the case in reality. A recent study by The UCL Institute of Education found that a quarter of teachers work more than 60 hours per week despite attempts to reduce teachers' working hours. That is almost double the hours stated in the contract. And this is not paid overtime. A research carried out by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) showed that this equals to 9 million hours of free labour each week. Primary teachers are guilty of working the most overtime - 13 hours per week - on average but secondary school teachers are not far behind with 12.8 hours.