As I was sitting digesting the news that the latest political insult involved using the ?very clever analogy that if you were a Government backbencher and didn’t support raising the GST to 15% then you were a political bedwetter. Now I have my views on either raising the GST rate or especially introducing it onto health which has been also been mooted (the health one an unmitigated disaster for preventative health in Australia). But I take exception to Scott Morrison or any other politician using bedwetting as an insult. Bedwetting is problematic for many children and their families and even for quite a few adults, both men and women, and should not be used flippantly for political point scoring. It’s such a putdown and these kids, teenagers and adults who are burdened with this condition suffer enough without being reminded of it over and over again as an insult by a politician (the repetition on every news report for days on end is nauseating).
Bedwetting is also called nocturnal enuresis and happens when the bladder empties as the child, adolescent or adult sleeps. Bed wetting is very common with approximately 1 in 5 children in Australia (1) wetting the bed and around 1 in 100 adolescents wetting the bed. Evidence has shown that bedwetting is hereditary.  One study has shown that someone with two bedwetting parents has a 77% chance of becoming a bedwetter. When one parent wet the bed as a child, his son or daughter was found to have a 40% chance of becoming a bedwetter. (2) Children who bed wet can experience feelings of embarrassment that can lead to low self-esteem; constant sleep disruption fatigues the sufferer and stresses relationships within the family.
So here we are – supposedly intelligent grown ups using it as the news byline for 3, 4, 5 days.
Stop it and stop it now!
When I have more time then I will write more about how to treat the problem but in the meantime Shut up!

(1) http://www.continence.org.au/pages/bedwetting.html
(2) http://www.nafc.org/adult-bedwetting/