'Girl With A One Track Mind' is an anonymous blog, concerning itself mainly with sex it has recently been turned into a book. The anonymous blogger behind it has since been 'outed' by the Press.

The 'Blogosphere' is built upon a number of things, reputation is one, conversation is another. It is also built on a form of respect, an 'honour amongst thieves' if you will.

I know 'Abby' in 'real life', she is a clever, funny and honest person. For quite some time she has been concerned that her real name would be found out. I know for sure that this outing is not a bid for more publicity.

She trusted in me to uphold the unspoken honour between bloggers. If I'd 'outed' her I would have increased the number of people reading my site, but I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. It is these unspoken rules that help bind us bloggers together into the community that we have. For many of us it would not have even crossed our minds to reveal something about another blogger that wasn't in the public interest.

It appears that the Press have forgotten this honour. There is no 'public interest' in discovering the true identity of an anonymous blogger who happens to write about sex. Yet the Press seem to feel that it is their 'right' in order to sell more newspapers to the important female 18-30 demographic to invade someone's privacy in this manner.

The Press Complaints Commission's Code of Conduct states,

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence. A publication will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual's private life without consent

I would be interested to see what reason the journalist who wrote this piece about her has to say about the justification of this intrusion.

We bloggers are not special, we have the same expectation of privacy as everyone else in the world, yet it seems that, at least for some journalists, we give up that right when we start writing. We bloggers examine every word on our blogs for their effect on our privacy, we edit what we write to reveal as much, or as little about our true selves as we desire. To start investigating those of us who want our privacy surely needs more of a reason than that of simple titillation.

So it seems ironic that when I am in a newspaper for all the right reasons, another is in the papers for no reason at all.

It is shameful and I hope that the journalist is disciplined for this breach of their code.

Hello,

If you have just come here from the Mail on Sunday you may be interested to know that you can reach over three years worth of writing from the archive links on the right of your screen. If you are looking to find a (very) cheap offer on my book then Amazon are doing a very good deal.

Despite the impression that the article may give, I have a whale of a time doing my job and I tend to write about it on an almost daily basis. East London is an interesting area and while I don't do anything 'heroic' I do try my best to help as many people as possible.

Feel free to explore this site, and the many more blogs that are even more interesting than mine.

-Tom Reynolds

I often go to people who have attempted suicide. I've learnt that I shouldn't really push to find out why they have attempted to kill themselves, either the cause is the typical, 'I've had a fight with my boyfriend/girlfriend' or, 'I'm depressed'. Sometimes though the cause is something unusual and reliving the thought processes that led them to their decision only serves to upset them.

So my standard way of handling such patients is to be a nice as possible, let them know what is happening and their likely treatment when we reach the hospital and then to keep them calm and as happy as possible.

Poon has written about his parasuicide and the alcoholism that led to it. He is a brave soul to write about something that still has a large stigma attached to it.

While I'm always interested to read about the other side of the patient/ambulance divide, it's not something that I can often get a handle on because of the acute nature of my work.