CLIVE SMITH: Why should the taxpayer fund Hayden's treatment?

He was born a female called Paige, but has lived as a man for the past three years after legally changing his name and gender.

The 20-year-old was apparently on the NHS gender transition process, which costs an average of £29,000, and had been taking male hormones ahead of an operation to remove his breasts and ovaries.

But now he has put on hold his treatment in order to have a baby.

Hayden reportedly says the reason he decided to become pregnant was because the NHS refused to pay the £4,000 cost of the procedure to have his/her eggs frozen to be used at later date.

Rightly so, in my view.

Why should taxpayers have to fund this treatment?

They’re already paying for Hayden to become a man, but he still wants them to fork out for him to have a baby. Someone wants their cake and eat it as well.

I say pay for it yourself if you’re that determined about it!

Hayden says he considered freezing his eggs at a private clinic, but couldn’t afford the £1,000 consultation fee and average £5,000 cost to freeze eggs per cycle.

Has he not heard of loans?

It seems that Hayden soon found a sperm donor via Facebook.

I reckon that’ll be an interesting conversation in the Cross household when the child is older and starts asking awkward questions.

‘If you’re my dad, then where’s my mum?’

Try to explain that one.

Hayden says he wants to be a single dad and didn’t ask for the name of the father of his child.

It seems to me that Hayden can’t really decide what he/she wants to be.

Gender reassignment seemed like a good idea at the time, but now reality is here he wants to hold on to a bit of his/her old self.

There’s so much around in the media at the moment about transgender that I fear it will lead others to end up in Hayden’s position. All very confusing.

MAYBE THE BOXING GODS WERE TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING

Sports reporter Jordan Cross wrote in The News recently that boxing in the city was on the up.

This coincided with my first time in a boxing gym.

I ordered some gloves, but they turned up with a split in them.

I ordered some hand wraps, but they were too small.

Then I had a bit of a nightmare with the mouthguard.

Maybe the boxing gods were trying to tell me this sport wasn’t for me.

Just a few minutes into the first session – rounds of skipping – I was scanning the hall for signs of a defibrillator and thinking those gods may well have been right!

I think it’s safe to say that any boxing success this city has will definitely not be due in any way to me lacing up some gloves and getting in the ring.

I THOUGHT JAYWICK WAS SOME SORT OF THIRD WORLD HELLHOLE

Every time I turned on the TV last week, there was a camera crew reporting on a possible snow apocalypse.

The kids were drawn into all the excitement and were planning their tobogganing trip to Portsdown Hill.

Unfortunately any snow down south looks remarkably like rain and the great blizzard of 2017 never materialised.

Then there were warnings about tidal surges. The army was called in to help with an evacuation of Essex town Jaywick.

Just imagine being a soldier and finding out that you’ve got to evacuate Jaywick. The first time I saw that place on Benefits By The Sea on TV, I thought it was a report on appalling conditions in some Third World hellhole.