This is a story about Tower Hamlets...

Where I live, Muslims aren't 0.9% of the population like in the USA. Where I live, Muslims aren't 5% of the population, like in the whole of England. Where I live, the Muslim population is 46%. What do you think that's like?

Tower Hamlets is a place of huge socioeconomic divide. The council that governs this particular part of the UK, houses some of the poorest members of society, yet it is also the home to the headquarters of HSBC: the biggest bank in Europe, along with massive tower blocks for the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan, Barclays, Fitch & Moody's, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and giant accountancy & legal firms like KPMG and Clifford Chance.

While I sit on the banks of the River Thames penning essays like this one, slightly inland there are deprived council estates that are the modern equivalent of the Victorian slums. This is London. While I go to the dry cleaners to collect my freshly laundered shirts for the working week, or do some food shopping in Waitrose, my neighbours - certainly those who you would recognise as 'English' - are in the betting shops or buying lottery tickets at the convenience store.

If you think I've wandered into snobbery, you're wrong. I'm simply an observer. It's true that I occupy a priviledged position, but anybody is capable of making similar observations.

You know, I don't feel at all safe, boarding an underground train in a sea of white faces at 6pm on a weekday evening. Canary Wharf is crawling with rich middle-class people, and the station is packed to the rafters. Often times, the escalator is carrying so many office workers down to the packed concourse that people start to pile up at the bottom, in a rather comic way.

But when I head away from the glistening tower blocks filled with middle and back office drones, I start to feel safe again. London never feels like real London when it divides itself. The private estate of Canary Wharf, and the protected enclave of the City of London, with its 'Ring of Steel' are just crying out to be attacked, because they are sending out a message of "no poor people welcome here".

It feels like no atrocity is ever going to be committed in the markets of Brick Lane, where hipsters flock because of East London's famous Asian community. It feels like no atrocity is ever going to be committed on the Commercial Road or on Petticoat Lane, where large courtyards are filled with people praying towards Mecca.

London's great advantage is not integration, but tolerance. Everybody knows that the Edgware Road is somewhere to go and drink tea and smoke shisha. Everybody knows that all the Aussies and Kiwis have colonised Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush. Everybody knows that Clapham and North London are the places that young wealthy white professionals frequent, whilst Camden is for dope smokers and tourists. Curry on Brick Lane. Chinatown. Little Venice. The cultural divisions are manifest.

London is not in the least bit integrated, but that's its great strength. Rather than relegating the poor entirely into the undesirable suburbs, like with Paris, social housing has brought otherwise 'undesirable' people into the very heart of the city.

The scariest places are Canary Wharf and the City because they have no residential housing, so therefore, they are almost 100% white middle class, filled with guffawing hooray Henries who have absolutely zero idea about the life of an underpriviledged person.

I used to live a stone's throw from the UK's Foreign Secretary - Boris Johnson - but not in a multimillion pound Georgian town house. My landlady was illegally subletting her council flat while she lived a life of idle luxury in Spain. On the towpath of the canal that the back of my apartment used to overlook, I would be verbally abused by Islington and Hackney's less fortunate residents, for being a yuppie. That sort of shit keeps you humble.

Now, 'right to buy' has gifted wealth to a few social housing tenants, but the gentrification of London is a terrible thing.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, so it's right that I should live in a community where nearly 50% subscribe to the Islamic doctrine. My life is certainly none the poorer for being mindful of important religious events, like Ramadan.

Britain and London's great victory was in diplomacy and tolerance. Our American-style anti-immigration and anti-Islamic rhetoric is only going to fuel tensions that were entirely imperceptible, until the USA decided to involve itself in Gulf conflicts in the early 1990s. We are paying a greater and greater price for the 'special relationship' with the US that affects our long-standing good relations with our Middle Eastern friends and allies.

Citizens of the United Kingdom would be well advised to remind themselves that Iraq, Iran and Syria had a thriving middle class, before their countries were torn apart by war, sanctions and CIA destabilisation.

You reap what you sow, and this anti-Islamic sentiment is completely undermining everything that I stand for as a diplomatic British Londoner.

Tags: #politics #london

This is a story about ingratitude...

Why do I attack the industry that has suckled me? Why am I so angry and upset with the profession that has nurtured me? Why am I so ungrateful for my whopping big salary and cushy benefits?

Administration: the unnecessary bureaucratic headache that creates unwelcome red tape, adds no value to the real economy and is an overhead that limits the productivity, innovation and creativity of those who are truly useful. I don't work in the Information Technology business. I work in the business of administration.

The two most productive things that I do in any given week are filling in my timesheet and submitting my invoice for payment. The most important thing that I do each quarter is to pay my Value-Added Tax (VAT) down to the precise penny that I owe. If I'm not perfectly on top of my bureaucratic administration, the Government will stop me doing my 'real' job, which is creating software.

But what does the software I create do anyway? Most of it is just keeping score. It's bean-counting software. It's software that creates jobs for zillions of IT professionals like me, so that companies can get rid of zillions of administrators, that they immediately re-employ to make sure their IT professionals are filling in their timesheets correctly.

For every person who I put out of a job, by automating the processes they perform, the company will then invent some other pointless position. Our whole economy is based on bullshit jobs.

Should I be happy to have a job, and to count my blessings? Well, no. It's immoral to not consider whether you are having a positive or a negative impact on society, and on the planet. To count my blessings is an incitement to be wilfully ignorant of global issues, and the betterment of humanity.

So what am I doing instead, to align my values? How do I reconcile the rhetoric of what I preach with the obvious fact that I am enabling massive corporations to continue to ride roughshod over the human race and the fragile planet?

Well, I take the money, and with it I pay my rent & bills. And then, I spend 90% of my time thinking about issues and writing this blog. I'm not paid to create software - so little of my time is actually spent doing that - instead, I'm paid to bite the hand that feeds me. It's an inside job. I'm disruptive and cynical. I'm disillusioned and critical.

Does that mean my colleagues have to work harder to make up for me slacking? No. It doesn't work like that. If my boss asks me to do something, I won't do it. I'll wait to see if they ask me again. My boss isn't going to ask somebody else to do it, because they've already asked me to do it. 9 times out of 10, I'll never be asked again. The tenth time, I'll realise that whatever was asked of me actually was important, so I'll apologise and do the work.

So, am I idle? Absolutely not. With the time I could have spent doing those 9 things that were clearly unnecessary, I will conduct a kind of audit. I will go around, looking to see if there's anything more useful I could be doing. Invariably, there isn't. Everybody is just so locked into a hierarchical system of managers, administrators & clerks, that nobody has looked at the bigger picture and realised that what they're doing is absolute bullshit. Or if anybody has realised that their job is utter bullshit, they're not talking about it.

Now, I'm not talking about nurses, garbage collectors, train drivers, firemen. It's pretty obvious what the useful function of many front-line workers is. However, these people are working all hours for some of the lowest wages. No manager needs to tell a nurse to help a patient who is in pain & discomfort. No administrative drone needs to make sure that a garbage collector is hitting their Key Performance Indicators and is going to achieve their annual objectives at their appraisal. Either the important job is done, or it isn't.

There are functions that literally nobody would miss, except maybe not being harassed by an army of micromanagers and bureaucrats. Isn't it the case that you're propping up a sick and twisted system, by continuing to count your blessings and not rock the boat?

I frankly find it disgusting that I'm paid so many more times more than what a nurse gets paid. If I was to simply sit back and "think positive" and try to enjoy my ill-gotten gains, doesn't that make me a terrible, terrible person?

It's probably true that the world doesn't need any more bloggers, but what am I supposed to do? Impoverish myself and retrain as yet another disrespected front-line worker? It's hardly like they're being heard today, is it? How are the social wrongs ever going to be righted?

It seems to me that the right thing to do is to speak up. Yes, I jeopardise my lucrative career in doing so, but it's the right thing to do. People are more likely to listen to an IT consultant from the banking world, who is critical of the sector that pays me handsomely, than they are to somebody who could easily be dismissed as simply "jealous" or "not smart enough" to land themselves a similar job.

Truly, I do not think that front line workers are not smart enough to do my job. In actual fact, you have to be pretty dumb to be able to turn a blind eye to the social injustice of being highly paid to be an idle manager of hardworking people who do the real jobs.

I currently have no cash to put my money where my mouth is. Quitting my job would literally see me homeless and destitute again. However, I do anticipate a time when I will be faced with a true test of my morality: when I am able, will I quit the rat race and try to do something that is more in line with my values?

I have massively impoverished myself, trying to take an ethical stance, and I would do it again. It's the right thing to do.

Tags: #politics #banking #capitalism #career #computing

This is a story about having too much of a good thing...

Pills, pills, pills. A pill for every ill. We have so much faith in modern medicine at the moment, that we have medicalised boredom, depression, stress, when clearly these are as much a product of our environment, as they are a sign of anything pathological.

The very process of going to your doctor and getting sent away with some unnecessary pills, is well known to have a placebo effect. With the Internet and the possibility of self-diagnosis, we have turned into a society of hypochondriacs, who attribute every tiny discomfort to symptoms that require medical attention.

We have now overprescribed to the point that we have super-resistant strains of bacteria that can't be killed even with our last-line-of-defence antibiotics. Going running to your doctor because you've got a cough or a cold, and being fobbed off with magic beans that you believe can cure your viral infection, is just downright stupid, and now it's biting our arse.

It's the same thing with antidepressants. Because over 60% of us hate our boring stupid stressful crap jobs, we've been dishing our psychiatric medications like they're sweets. Over 60 million antidepressant prescriptions got written last year in the UK. That's enough for every man, woman and child in the whole country.

The number of people taking antidepressant medication for their clinical depression has doubled in a decade. There is a mental health epidemic that is driving so many other antisocial trends: alcoholism, drug abuse, isolation and loneliness, insecurity and anxiety, loss of productivity, loss of motivation, loss of drive to exercise and socialise.

What are you going to do if you work some dreadful zero hours contract for rock bottom wages and can barely make ends meet? What are you going to do if there's no hope of you getting on the housing ladder, or escaping from the financial situation you find yourself trapped in?

Of course people are going to turn to drink & drugs, to try to numb themselves from the painful monotony of working as hard as you can but never getting ahead. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for so many people. You just work, and then you die. None of your dreams will ever come to fruition. None of your hopes will ever be realised.

There's a disrespect for addicts and alcoholics, like they're taking the easy way out. Because there is supposed to be instant gratification in a pill, powder or liquid that contains psychoactive substances - uppers & downers - then it doesn't seem as worthy as those who physically toil for their fix of endorphins. However, how many 'legitimate' routes to happiness are there in the world, really?

There used to be a formula: get married, buy a house, have some kids, die. The first 3 you can't really do anymore, without cash handouts from the bank of Mum & Dad and/or the state. Who can really afford the lavish wedding that society expects us to have? Who can afford the deposit on some crappy tiny little flat, and afford the mortgage repayments, when you earn barely enough to survive? Who can afford childcare and all the other associated costs of childrearing, when you already don't have any disposable income?

All the hard work, industriousness, austerity, careful financial planning, saving, budgeting and diligent application of yourself to furthering your career, is likely to result in what? Maybe a few percentage points of a pay rise, if you're really lucky. Are you going to get promoted? Are you fuck. They're going to promote somebody incompetent and lazy, because they're older and they've been with the company for longer. Merit and hard work will get you nowhere.

So, pretty soon, you're going to get tired & depressed about it all. You tried hard at school. You turned up for your exams and gave it your best shot. You stressed yourself out and went to those interviews and got that job, and you worked your hardest, day after day, even though you could sense it was all utter bullshit by now. And for what? Where are you? What have you achieved? What are you ever going to achieve?

The enormity of it all hits you: you were sold a lie. You can't be anything you want to be. You're not special. You're not unique. You're not different. We're all just so much meat in the mincer. Turn the handle and out comes yet another drone just like you; prepared to do the shittest, most mind-numbingly boring and pointless work imaginable, for a salary that doesn't even buy you the basic essentials in life.

Why wouldn't you go running to the doctor, and ask them to dope you up to the eyeballs, so you don't have to live with the crushing realisation of the pointlessness of it all anymore? Why wouldn't you need happy pills, when you realise that the only way you're ever going to get the things that you were promised that hard work would bring, is by being given a council house or a cash lump sum from your parents. The only way you're going to ever be self sufficient is if Mum & Dad or the state top up your income... like you're some sort of fucking charity case... going around with your begging bowl.

How undignified. What an affront to human dignity it all is. Our parents and grandparents proudly tell us that they're "self made". They make loud proclamations that "nobody ever gave me a handout. I worked hard and I earned my keep". How shameful it is that we're twice as smart and work twice as hard, but we have nothing to show for it, except for a sneering generation telling us that exams are getting easier and that we're lazy and stupid.

Crippling debt and the crippling shame of not being able to live independently, not being able to be self sufficient and feel like we too are earning our money and contributing to the growth and wealth of the nation. It's all so crippling, so debilitating. Of course we need to turn to medications, drink and drugs.

You think it's about having a good time? Happy pills, and lashings of beer & wine? You think people wouldn't rather be happy by natural means, because they're fulfilled by normal things in their life: walking the dog, kissing their kids goodnight and paying the mortgage on their own home?

Antidepressants are a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. We have attempted to cover up the steady decline in the standard of living of young people, and mask the problem using happy pills, but the soaring suicide rates are just the tip of the iceberg.

Unless we face up to the reality that those who are suffering from many mental illnesses are the canary in the coal mine, we will reach a crisis point where most of the population are unable or unwilling to continue to maintain the status quo.

The mental health epidemic is the true breaking point, not immigration.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #politics #capitalism

This is a story about the debt spiral...

When the burden of debt in society is too great, and lenders are unwilling to forgive - to take a debt haircut or even write off debts - then there will be popular uprisings.

It's not that people don't want to repay their debts. In fact, most people accept that debt is a necessary evil in order to get the things they need when they need them, rather than towards the end of their life, in senile old age and infirmity.

And so, we become burdened with a mortgage, in order to give our family a stable roof over their heads. We become burdened with a car on hire purchase, so that we have a reliable and safe modern vehicle to be able to take the kids to school, and to get us to work without breaking down. We put our holidays and special occasions on credit cards, and pay back the debt when we get back, or after the festivities are over.

Most people diligently repay their debts.

In free-market economics, prices are able to fluctuate to find the point where affordability meets maximum profit. Do you think the cost price to the producer or supplier of the goods and services that you purchase, bears any relation to the retail price that you pay? Of course not. That's why a designer brand T-shirt costs at least 10 times as much as an unbranded garment, even though they come from the same sweatshop in the developing world.

In our consumer society, you are 'free' to select the goods and services that you want. However, in order to fit in with your buddies who are in a similar socioeconomic group to you, you will select the brands that they do. If you're rich, you'll do your supermarket shopping at Waitrose. If you're poor, you'll do your shopping at Asda/Walmart. However, the food you buy will have similar calorific content.

The brands become better and better at pricing their products so that you are just about able to buy everything you need, but won't have much spare cash left over. The brands know the income bracket that they're targeting, so they know the level where their consumers will become price insensitive. I literally don't care whether my coffee costs £2 or £4. If my coffee cost £5, then I'd think "blimey! that was expensive, I'm not going to go there again" but the £2 coffee shop could literally increase their prices 100% and I wouldn't even notice.

Once everybody has maxed out their budget, on the mortgage, the car finance, the credit cards, the overdraft, the store cards and some personal loans, where do you really go from there?

We demand that our corporations make increasing profits, but yet in order to do so they must hold down wage inflation and the cost of raw materials. We demand that our economy grows, but in order to do so, people must use increasing amounts of their limited pot of disposable income to drive consumption. What happens when everybody is just maxed out?

We're living in the age of low growth, high borrowing and low wage inflation. In order to sustain corporate profits, the cost of goods & services continues to increase. In order to prop up the capital growth of the pension funds, asset prices - such as house prices - have continued to be overvalued. However, the only way that the general population have been able to maintain their standard of living is through borrowing.

Ordinary people have not been profligate and stupid. People were promised pay rises and promotions, and instead they've been given job insecurity and wage cuts in real terms. If your wage increases just a few percent, but the cost of your housing, bills, food and transportation all increase in double-digit terms, then you're actually getting poorer.

If the headline rate of inflation - which is pretty much just concerned with wages - is low, then the value of your loans & mortgages is not getting inflated away. The baby boomers might complain about interest rates reaching over 15% in the late 1970s, but they forget that their wages were also increasing too. By the time the 1980s came around, people's mortgages were a tiny fraction of what they were earning.

What we see today is people's cost of living skyrocketing, but their wages are the same, which means they're earning less and less in real terms. If your wages stay the same, and your cost of living is increasing, that means you have less and less money to service your debts. So, you tighten your belt and cut back on your consumer spending, which in turn hurts an economy that is so dependent on spend, spend, spend!

What we see today is far worse than the Japanese stagflation that meant that the price of goods and services was getting cheaper, which encouraged people to become thrifty because they could buy things more cheaply if they waited. Instead, what we are seeing is people who have been promised growth, completely screwed over by a system that robs them of their wealth with no opportunity to do anything about it.

In a zero growth world, debts need to be forgiven or else ordinary people will become so unhappy that they will overthrow their idle creditors.

Tags: #banking #capitalism #politics

This is a story about a feeling at the pit of my stomach...

How often do we think "I want to help, but I've got so many of my own worries"? How often are we held back by the bystander effect... assuming that somebody else is going to step in first, so that we don't have to?

You'd hope that nobody would have to be in hospital alone, uncared for, while they're in pain and discomfort. You would think that even somebody who has been infected with Ebola, has loved ones who have come to wave through the protective plastic bubble.

Leaving aside my own obnoxious family, doesn't it set alarm bells ringing for you, the fact that we have a society that can so easily turn its back on undesirable members?

Whether it's the benefits cheat, disability scrounger, mental health basket case, junkie, alkie, hobo... whatever. There are plenty of people who have been demonised by the media. We have even descended to the depths of attacking our economy-boosting immigrant population, with terrorism as the brush with which we tar an entire Muslim community, for example.

This whole "look after number one" isolationism, along with "take our country back" and "look after our own" misguided silliness, is rather telling of a wider trend: everybody is just being selfish as fuck.

You might think it's in your family's best interests to hide behind your locked front door, and assume that the world is filled with rapists, paedophiles and murderers, but actually the whole of civilisation is coming to an end, because of the fear and mistrust, and reluctance to help one another.

That's a big statement, isn't it? "Civilisation is coming to an end".

Well, let's examine that a little more carefully. What even is civilisation? Surely, civilisation is not leaving anybody to die of starvation or exposure to the elements? Surely, civilisation is caring and sharing with one another? Surely, civilisation is working together, not acting like a bunch of individual animals, fighting with each other?

So, when I think about going back to work tomorrow after an excellent weekend of looking after number one, I can't help but have a heavy heart, thinking that my job is simply to make the rich richer. I might have a big paycheque but I certainly don't think that means I'm delivering good value to humanity. On the contrary: I know that I'm propping up a very broken system, and I hate it.

Yes, it makes sense for me to take the money, and to stuff my mattress full of filthy ill-gotten lucre, but it's painful. It actually makes me unwell, to know that I'm part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Once you get some skin in the game I guess it becomes a little bit easier to justify the unjustifiable. Little Hugo needs his ballet shoes, after all, so you'd better go off to work for the capitalists who are intent on destroying the world. How could you possibly help the homeless, when you need that money to get bright special little Alice into that slightly better primary school? Perfectly understandable.

Maybe our children will catch poverty. Maybe children will catch mental illness. Let's not take any refugees, and let's allow people to starve and go homeless, because surely we're living in a jungle where only the fittest will survive. Isn't that what life's about? Have as many children as possible and fuck everybody else?

Doesn't it seem a little primitive to you, this way of acting that is tribal, nationalistic, isolated, don't trust your neighbour, fuck the refugees, fuck the poor, fuck the sick, fuck everybody who isn't me?

I know that I could easily do a "fun run" or a sponsored "do something enjoyable that I was going to do anyway" in order to salve my conscience. Maybe I can get a partial lobotomy, so that I can forget that charity has completely failed to do anything about poverty and inequality, and it never will.

It's people's attitudes that suck. It's this whole "it must be somebody else's problem. It's certainly not my problem" thought pattern that sucks.

The point is: it's everybody's problem.

Tags: #politics #capitalism #career #depression

This is a story about terrorism...

Do we take stability for granted? In actual fact, I think we do a remarkable job of Keeping Calm and Carrying On, in the face of the threat of violence.

I often think about Britain's role in my lifetime, as a diplomatic and tolerant nation. We made great strides in the Northern Irish peace process, and IRA bombings and bomb scares had almost faded from memory. We managed to protect Salman Rushdie, when he published the The Satanic Verses, while at the same time maintaining a good relationship with the Islamic world. Acts of terrorism, like the Pan Am bombing, were committed on British soil, but yet our nation never stumbled as a respected statesman in foreign affairs.

However, perhaps our politicians took our position for granted.

Entering into an illegal war against Iraq was just downright arrogant and stupid, on the basis of supposed intelligence that was never questioned within the corridors of power, despite the fact that the public were obviously not convinced by the outlandish claims.

Surely nobody can deny the fact that Britain's recent foreign policy has made our nation a target, rather than a safer place for our citizens. The war in Iraq was cited by the 7/7 bombers, as the reason for their attack. Our MPs voted to bomb Syria, further compounding a refugee crisis, and angering the Arab world. Then we held a referendum on leaving the EU, which threatens to derail the Northern Irish peace process as well as unleashing a tidal wave of racist hatred & intolerance.

London needs to remember that Britain is a European nation, and Europe has land borders with the Middle East. We are not the USA, with a massive body of water - The Atlantic Ocean - that separates us from those who want to kill us.

It's OK for the USA to meddle in the affairs of Ireland, Europe and the Middle East, because they are the best part of 4,000 miles away. So long as the Arab parts of the Middle East don't get intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, they're more than happy for Britain to idiotically make itself unsafe in the process of protecting American interests.

Our Irish neighbours who believe in the re-unification of their island under a single republic, can quite easily take a short ride on a car ferry and come and blow us up. Have we forgotten that? I can't really tell you how my fellow Brits in Belfast feel, but I certainly don't want to offend my friends in The Republic of Ireland, by making them feel like Britain is yet again becoming a viciously violent imperialist, at the expense of European peace.

Britain has long had a tradition of multiculturalism, and offending our Muslim population seems unwise. We can't deport people based on their religion. Many Muslims are second or third generation. They're as British as you or I.

The USA can send Israel guns, bombs, tanks and warplanes, in order to illegally occupy Palestine and oppress the Arab people. The USA can do this, because they are thousands of miles away, across vast oceans, from the vast swathe of the planet that they are committing atrocities against. Muslims are just 0.9% of the population of the USA. However, in England, 5% of the population follow the Muslim faith.

Britain is in no position to act like the USA, in terms of foreign policy. Britain is in no position to make itself an enemy with its neighbours and its own citizens.

Horrible racists like Donald Trump might talk about "the ban" on people of the Muslim faith, and this might even be sadly workable, because of the popularity of the policies in a predominantly isolated nation. However, Britain is an island trading nation, a multicultural society, and close to the great landmass of Europe, which borders Asia and the Middle East. We don't have a Panama Canal to the south, and an Arctic wilderness to the North. People quite regularly swim across the English Channel.

To use the language of the USA is ridiculous. We can't talk of imposing our own brand of freedom on people, and riding around the world in war machines, blowing up whoever we like, and then acting all surprised and upset when a few people fight back.

The UK has increased and increased its reckless stupidity with foreign policy that threatens the safety of every peaceful law-abiding citizen. I don't want to live in a country where I have to be mistrustful of the Muslim community, the Irish community. I don't want to go back to the days of bomb scares and terrorist attacks.

Britain and London's great success has been in welcoming visitors to our shores. I feel safer in a multicultural London, than I would in a sea of angry white faces, all chanting jingoistic racist nationalistic tosh, at the expense of national security.

You can't use violence and aggression to bring peace. All that warmongering foreign policy, and racist domestic policy, will accomplish, is to alienate the many cultures who had previously felt at home in Britain, and turn ourselves into a proxy target for those who seek to hurt the imperialists that oppress them.

Having Tony Blair as Middle East peace envoy was a dreadful insult to the Arab world. What on earth is Britain doing, other than painting a big target on its back?

Tags: #terrorism #politics #london

This is a story about counterintuitive results...

Conventional wisdom tells us that sobriety is the route to salvation. If you're being treated for substance dependency, most approaches are abstinence-based. But what if these approaches are totally wrong?

I had 'too much' to drink last night, but yet this morning I was on time to work for the first time in ages. I was also on top form during a 2 hour meeting that was highly pressured and intense. Clearly my work performance, my productivity, was improved by alcohol, rather than hindered.

Alcohol works for me as a substance that I can titrate the dose of to control my mood fluctuations. When I quit drinking last year, my anxiety levels became unbearable after 30 days sober, and I had to go into hospital and be on suicide watch. I then went hypomanic and quit a well paid job, and did a bunch of other mad shit, before finally relapsing onto hard drugs and slashing my forearms with a razor blade, after 101 days sober. Hardly an encouraging result.

The fact of the matter is: my job is boring and shit. My life is empty, unfulfilling and stressful. Of course I need something to help me cope with an intolerable daily existence. How the hell am I supposed to get through the crap I'm going through without a chemical crutch.

Just about everybody you know has some kind of substance that they depend upon to cope with modern life. Maybe it's antidepressants, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, opiates. Maybe it's cigarettes, tea, coffee, coca-cola, Red Bull, beer, wine, spirits. Maybe it's cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, MDMA, GHB, M-CAT or any one of the myriad other legal and illegal drugs. Humans love drugs.

Clearly, I know what my 'drug of choice' is, and I know that there's no way that I can use it in moderation. Thankfully, alcohol is not something that I've struggled to live without, except where life choices that are forced upon me - such as having to work a shitty job - demand that I find some kind of coping mechanism.

I don't have any kids or pets, so I get no natural endorphins. I don't have any time or money to pursue sports or go to the gym, so I get no natural endorphins and adrenalin boosts. My job is dull as ditch water, so I don't even get any kind of thrill from my work.

But, good news! I've found a formula that worked for me for years & years & years & years: self-medication with alcohol.

Yes! Hurrah for alcohol. It kept the lid on my hypomanic episodes for years.

Basically, the reality that we must all face up to, is that modern life is so fucking shit that we've all got to be drugged up and drunk to get through it.

I could get my cat back from my parents, and get some plants to water and care for. I can soon get a car and some new kites, and go and get my adrenalin and endorphin fix at the beach. However, without those things, I'm forced into puting chemicals into my body, to allow me to keep my shitty job and keep functioning in this crazy society that values corporate profits more than mental health.

My life really sucks, but I'd rather drink a few bottles of wine and keep my highly lucrative contract, so I can escape the rat race at some point, rather than have another repeat of last year's failed experiment.

Tags: #alcohol #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #suicide #hospital

This is a story about getting rich quick...

Don't get high on your own supply, they say. It's good advice, because weed seems to dull the wits of my friends, and to curb their enthusiasm for anything more than the getting of more weed, and the consumption of shit food and crap TV.

When I meet young people who feel like they're part of a counter-culture revolution, because they smoke a bit of marijuana, I think how easily they have been duped. How foolish you are, to think that you're fighting the establishment, through your choice of intoxicant.

Governments and the police are mightily pleased to have a stoned population, who are too doped up to be bothered to get off their arses and do anything about social issues, or involve themselves in politics. Chuckling at low-brow humour that is designed to appeal to the stoner brain, is never going to change the world.

The energy and passion of youth has been quashed by the dreaded weed. You're not cool or "fighting the power" by smoking dope. You're actually playing into the hands of the establishment. The cannabis leaf - that ubiquitous emblem - sells tons of merchandise. Camden Market is London's second most popular tourist attraction, and it's mostly because of drug culture.

But what hopes have young people got? They're never going to be able to afford a house, pay for a wedding and be able to support a family, without topping up their income somehow. For those kids with wealthy parents, they might be able to go with their begging bowl to Mum & Dad, but it's hardly the independent self-sufficient life that we should all be entitled to live, is it?

You bust your balls all through school, get some grades, and now what? You can get a massive student loan that will only cover your tuition fees, and you still have to figure out how to pay for accommodation, food & books for your 3 years of undergraduate studies.

Maybe you can save up money before you go to University, but under-18s will be paid £3.87 per hour. Do you think a 17 year old is less capable of stacking a supermarket's shelves than a 64 year old? Why on earth should a young person be paid just 54% of what an old person earns, for doing the same job?

While you're at University, you'll be paid slightly more for your bar work, waitressing or whatever part-time job you can get. You'll get a whopping £5.30. That's still 26% less than somebody with arthritic joints and early-onset dementia. Who would you want working behind a bar? The young attractive, energetic student, or the miserable old codger who shuffles around?

So, what do the most enterprising individuals do, to cope with the crippling debt burden that they face, with little hope of elevating themselves from a position of poverty? Well, some of them will sell their bodies, and sell drugs.

If you deny people a legal route to pay for a quality of life that they're entitled to, they will turn to a life of 'crime'.

The two bestselling commodities, in the history of humanity, are sex & drugs. Ugly people need to fuck, and people want to get high and forget about their shitty lives. The drive to get intoxicated is not even a uniquely human thing. There are plenty of examples from the animal kingdom of non-human species that get off their faces, using various substances.

You might think that demanding plenty of interest on your life savings and wanting a nice fat pension, is OK, because you're entitled to a cushy retirement. However, your young, beautiful and fresh faced daughter or grand-daughter might have few options to live independently, other than being a stripper, escort or 'flatmate with benefits'.

If you browse the London property adverts, you will see a shocking number of offers of free accommodation in return for sex. This is the society that has been created, by structuring everything around the pension funds, instead of investing in young people.

Can't get the job without the experience, can't get the experience without the job. That's the Catch 22 that entraps most young people into minimum wage jobs and living in shared rooms in atrocious quality housing in big cities. It's no fucking picnic being young at the moment, and weed is probably the only thing that allows people to forget the hopelessness of their situation.

A pint of beer in London is £5 or more. That means I can buy two pints for £10. For the same amount of money, I can buy a gram of super-strong skunk weed, and get dribblingly intoxicated for at least a day. Two pints would make me slightly tipsy, and because I'm well-off, I could then easily afford to have 3 or 4 more pints and get violent, abusive and urinate and vomit in the street. However, it's more economical - as a young person - to get stoned out of your mind and not do anything.

The girls who have sugar daddies, hustle for tips as waitresses and strippers or even sell their bodies - these aren't fallen angels, forced to prostitute themselves because they have a drug habit. Often times, the drug habit is a result of having to use what mother nature gave them, as a means to make money. These girls have a plan. They're smart. They've figured out that no amount of shelf stacking for a supermarket will allow them to ever escape poverty.

Our prettiest daughters and grand-daughters are living in luxury apartments in the city centre, taking taxis, eating in expensive restaurants and ordering cocktails at the bar... but how is that lifestyle funded? Every gorgeous pouting selfie you see on Facebook or Instagram... doesn't that say something about the sexualisation of an entire generation, through economic necessity, to you?

The boys will grow weed, or cut coke. The girls will strip or fuck. This is what we've wished for. The olds sit idle in their big empty houses, while their sons, daughters and grandchildren have no option but to pursue the most economically profitable path they can: drugs & prostitution.

I'm painting a bleak picture, but I don't think it's inaccurate.

"It's only a bit of harmless dope" right? Wrong. Can't you see that people's eyes are dulled. The fire has gone out of people's hearts when they're just sitting around stoned. Where is the energy and enthusiasm to change society for the better?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #society #politics #capitalism #sex #police

This is a story about speaking to the audience...

Acknowledging the reader is not a great literary device, when overused. I think I have pushed most people away, by writing with a very lecturing tone. When I address my readers as "you" I normally have somebody in mind. I tend to be using this blog as a passive-aggressive device, to attack those who have wronged or offended me.

When I write about "get a job" idiots, it's because I'm highly offended, when I've had a 20 year career and been in full time education or employment since age 4. When my hackles are raised because somebody says "everybody has to work" it's because I've probably put up with more shitty boring jobs than most people, and racked up more hours. Investment Banking is not known as a career for slackers. IT projects always demand you to pull some epic hours to get things over the line.

When I write about the hypocrisy of my parents, it's because they epitomise everything I would never want to become: lazy, underachieving, highly critical and negative people, who have always put their own selfish wants ahead of their children's needs. When I look at the general decline in living standards of the younger generation, it triggers my deep sense of having had an enjoyable time as a child and young adult robbed from me. And for what? So I can now have a miserable boring job?

There's a Frank Zappa quote that I like, though:

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it

But, in the words of my Dad: "you've got to pay to play". Of course, he forgets that his Dad was a wealthy accountant who very much paid for him to play.

So, I'm working a job that I hate, because I needed money and I needed it fast. Here in London I can get an IT contract very quickly and easily, and earn 5 or 6 times more than the average wage. You might think it's ungrateful, spoilt, to take this for granted and to even be unhappy, but after 20 years of playing the same game, using the same tried-and-trusted formula, there is no novelty, no surprises.

When I was 20 years old, I was earning £400/day working for Lloyds TSB in Canary Wharf. I was doing exactly the same work that I do today. It might seem vulgar to talk about money, but maybe you need to know why I'm not exactly thrilled to get out of bed in the morning.

There's a high-water mark: an expectation, set by your experiences. I really don't live any kind of jet-set life. I shop in regular supermarkets, I rarely eat out, I drink wine that costs less than £10 a bottle. I don't pay for satellite television, luxury gym membership or in any way indulge expensive tastes. Even my suit is threadbare and worn out, and I wear cheap shoes.

Some people need the status symbols, the trappings of wealth. Sure, I could plough my income into having a Ferrari, a speedboat, but you're missing the point: I completely rejected the rat race, made myself destitute, and I loved it. The feeling of liberation from monthly downpayments on some material object, or mortgage payments on bricks & mortar, brought joy back to my soul.

The highlight of my week was talking to the guy who shone my shoes. Under the grand arches of Leadenhall Market, by the futuristic Lloyds building in the City, this chap told me that he had quit his job as an auditor for Ernst & Young, and had become an actor. Sure, he was poor - having to shine shoes for £5 a pop - but you could see he was clearly in love with his life again.

You might see pictures of my fancy apartment, with its river views and think "flash bastard" and "that must cost a pretty penny". However, you have simply been fooled by the image that I wish to project... in fact, I need to project. I get paid a lot of money because I'm successfully hiding the fact that I'm a desperate man on the ragged limit of control. Only the semicolon tattoo behind my ear slightly gives away the fact that I'm living a life of quiet desperation.

In actual fact, the rent on my apartment comes to roughly double what it cost me to live in a hostel. Instead of living in a 14-bed dormitory with people who are on the very bottom rung of society, and having to share a bathroom and protect my few possessions from theft and spoil, instead I have an ample sized ensuite bedroom, storage cupboard and expansive reception rooms in which to relax in comfort.

You would think that living in a hostel would be cheap, so paying twice as much does not sound unreasonable, correct? When you consider that I can safely keep my bicycle in my hallway, I have a central London parking space, and amazing views over the River Thames from my balcony, you must surely recognise the value for money that I'm getting.

My one threadbare suit I only use for interviews, and the rest of the time I wear £50 trousers from John Lewis, no jacket and no tie. Somebody complemented me on my sharp attire the other day, and asked if my clothes had been tailored to fit me. I could only chuckle to myself, knowing that my outfit is entirely cheap off the peg stuff.

My accountant must despair of me, as I always cut things mighty fine. There is no profligacy - every penny I spend is calculated, right down to the few bits of bling that are necessary to indicate that you have attained a certain social status. It's just going to look a bit weird if you're an IT professional with a cheap shit laptop.

The really frustrating thing is how easy it is to fool people. Everybody assumes that under the surface, everything is just fine. If you dress yourself up in the right clothes and pretend like everything is tickety-boo, people have no reason to suspect that you are one negative event away from killing yourself.

I have no idea how I'm going to sustain the charade. Just because you're settled into your little rut, and figured out a system to keep turning the pedals, doesn't mean that I can do it. Smile and take the money, right? But what if it's too easy? What if the formula has been so perfected, that life is a paint-by-numbers?

I tried to teach a friend how to blag and hustle. I tried to show him the magic formula. I busted my balls to transfer as much knowledge as possible about how to play the game. He's no fool, and knew a few of the tricks of the trade already. However, ultimately he let himself down, because of the subtle detail.

There must be something that sets people apart. What is it that shatters the illusion? It could be something as simple as not noticing that your suit has still got the slit in the back of the jacket held together by a stitch of thread that you are supposed to cut yourself. It could be as simple as a cheap pen, or umbrella. It could be a single moment of self-doubt, or an answer to a question that clearly betrays the fact you're blagging, because you fail to one-up the interviewer and blind them with things they don't understand.

It might sound like snobbery, but it's actually the very essence of how people get into positions of authority. Having a shirt monogrammed with your initials, wearing an expensive wristwatch, carrying a Moleskine notebook, writing with a Mont Blanc pen, wearing the correct style suit and shirt and shoes. It's all so shallow, but sadly it works.

I'm part of a boys club, and there's no way I can show my hand. There's no way that my colleagues would be able to process the fact that I'm barely coping with mental health problems, the threat of relapse into drug addiction, and a desire to return to a simpler life when I didn't have to grind just to pay taxes, rent and maintain a fake image of having my shit together.

If I address the audience, it's because I'm so lonely in the little stage-play of my daily life. From Monday to Friday, I'm putting on a poker face, and looking busy at my desk. I face the threat of being found out as a blagger, a hustler, at any moment. The homeless guy is not welcome in the club. There's no room for anybody with a weakness, in the corporate dog-eat-dog world.

My colleagues tell me I'm doing a good job, and they like working with me, but I feel like a fraud when I submit my invoice for the week, and I think about how much time I spent on Facebook, writing blog posts, tweeting, reading the news and hiding in the toilet. I look at my timesheet, and it doesn't reconcile with the amount of work I have actually done. Sure, I was present in the office. My bum was on the seat for the hours I declare, but I don't feel productive or even useful.

So, I cast out into the world, looking for a connection, desperate for somebody to acknowledge my existence. Even when I rub somebody up the wrong way, at least it means some of what I say is hitting home somewhere. Most of the time, I'm alone with my thoughts and lonely as hell.

Every time I address "you" it seems to fall on deaf ears. I quickly forget that people have reached out, gotten in contact, because the conversation is so sporadic, unpredictable. This is such an unusual mechanism of communication, but what would I do without it? Friends have literally threatened to unfriend me on Facebook, because of the disproportionate amount of space I have consumed on 'their' wall.

I'm rambling, but I don't want this to end. It feels like I'm talking to "you". It feels like "you're" listening. It feels like I have a human connection, an honest relationship, that I just don't get for all those lonely, lonely office hours, where my whole focus is on trying to hide my depression, anxiety, boredom and desperate lack of purpose.

Without this blog, I'd be stuffed. There's a temptation to adapt my writing to be more appealing again. There's a desire to drive up the number of readers, by writing things that I know will be like clickbait, and nice to read.

However, that's not my style, not my purpose. We're having an intimate conversation, you & I. You might not realise it, but I'm thinking about hundreds of different potential audience members, as I write... trying to engage you... trying to connect.

Even if this isn't being read by the people I intended, at least it's there. There's something comforting, knowing that a little piece of me has been captured somewhere, in my own words. It feels like I'm at least winning, in the battle to leave a true account of who I was, and not become a convenient dumping ground for those who seek to abstain from any blame, for the part they did, or did not play in somebody's life.

I live in London. I'm practically an expert in turning a blind eye: ignoring the Big Issue seller, the clipboard-wielding survey taker, the collection tin rattling charity worker, the beggar, the pavement evangelist, and every other undesirable member of society who has fallen on hard times. I know what it's like to have your head down because you're so wrapped up in your own struggle, and so fixated on the rat race.

I've considered the question many times: am I a melodramatic attention seeker? Are my cries for help completely unnecessary? Is my lot in life no worse than anybody else's?

Frankly, who gives a shit? I'm just about scraping through every day by the skin of my teeth. Not only walking out on a boring job, but potentially leaving this shitty life altogether. I know how decisive I am. I know how bold and brave I can be, once I have decided to do something. I know I could easily snuff out my life, in the blink of an eye.

Doth I protest too much? Why take the chance?

Isn't this somebody else's problem? Aren't there pills for this?

Yes, try clinging onto those pathetic get-out-of-jail-free cards, once the person has gone.

Perhaps I'm dredging up emotions that could be suppressed? Perhaps the very act of writing is prodding at raw nerves, and actually keeping feelings on the surface that could easily sink back into my subconscious. Am I, in the very act of writing this blog, talking myself into depression and suicide? Well, the journal charts my moods, so you have all the data you need for the postmortem.

I live for writing. I live for my browsing stats and my Twitter followers. I live for those few moments when somebody emails out of the blue, and acknowledges my existence. You would be surprised how few and far between those precious events are.

Moan, moan, moan, right? Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink?

Perhaps Alcoholics Anonymous is the place for this, even though I'm not an alcoholic? Dylan Thomas wrote that an alcoholic is somebody who drinks just as much as you, but you don't like them very much.

Why do we push people to the fringes, the periphery? Why do we want the people who wail in distress to just shut up and go away? Do you think it completely meaningless, when somebody goes to great effort to explain how they're feeling, and attempt to communicate with you, by whatever means they can?

How long have I been doing this for? Shut up! Give up! Go away! Right?

If something doesn't immediately work, just quit, right?

Hasn't the message been received from you, loud and clear? You don't care. You're busy with your own life.

Is it the bystander effect? Surely somebody else is going to do something? Not me, I'm not going to be first. I don't want to get involved!

What do you think's going to happen? Are you going to catch my mental illness? Are you going to be made responsible for my life? Are you going to be shackled to me, forced to live with me, with me stealing food from your children's mouths? Am I out to ruin you and your family?

I feel like a dirty leper. I feel contagious. I feel a huge amount of pressure to pretend like I'm capable of just conforming, complying... when the truth is that things are getting worse, not better. My patience is worn thin. My energy levels have been exhausted. I'm later and later getting to work. I can no longer even pretend to be busy, and keep up the charade.

Join a gym. Eat some kale. Go to a book club. Get a girlfriend.

Can I chase away the existential dread with trivial frivolities, when the bulk of my waking hours are filled with such utter bullshit? Having a taste of freedom has perhaps ruined me. Knowing how the game is rigged, and how to play the system has left me reeling, with the shocking revelation of the pointlessness of it all.

Even if - for the sake of argument - I'm a dimwitted fool, it still doesn't take away the fact that my brain is in overdrive. I'm bombarded with thoughts in the empty hours where I am so unchallenged, so bored.

You educate a person. You train them for a job. You stretch them and challenge them and titillate their interests, and then what? You put them into a corporate machine where independent thought is undesirable? You put them into a bland business environment where creativity is discouraged? You put them into the straightjacket of the working world, where innovation and ingenuity are unnecessary?

Yes, I'm compliant, because I had a tax bill to pay, and debts to pay down. But every day is a simple test of patience. What's going to win: am I going to commit suicide, run away from my pointless responsibilities, or simply sit mute in my chair trying not to scream for long enough that I have built up another nest egg to fritter away on more life-affirming pursuits?

Life's too fucking short for all this. The clock ticks down to the day I die, and what can I say I did with my life? I didn't tell the boss to go fuck himself? I didn't storm out of the office, yelling at the top of my voice that everyone is wasting their precious existence on pushing paper around their desk? I didn't let the bank, the landlord, repossess their precious property and go live somewhere off-grid, to get away from the constant pressure to run just to stand still.

I'm writing and writing, because there is no end until going home time. How do I fill these empty hours where I'm 'working'. Does anybody even care that I've churned out tens of thousands of words, at the expense of the companies I'm contracted to work for? Does anybody even notice, that it makes not a jot of difference, whether I'm fulfilling my job description or not?

You're going to look at the length of this essay and think "what the actual fuck, who has the time for this?". I could put a cork in my mouth. I could curtail this bout of verbal diarrhoea. But what else would I do with my time? At least this wall of words - this tidal wave - records for posterity, the angst that might drive me to my early grave. At least people can see the kind of torture that my soul was subjected to.

Suffer in silence? Fuck off.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #suicide #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about substance dependancy...

The daily grind. How do you get through the working day? What is your routine?

150 million Americans drink coffee every day. That's roughly 50% of the entire population. No matter where you are in the world, you have some kind of vice to help you limp along.

Coca leaves, coffee and tobacco in the Americas. Tea and opium in Asia. Betel nut and Khat in Africa. Alcohol just about everywhere across the globe.

The workforce will literally down tools and be unable to work, without the substances that they're dependent on to pep them up and chill them out. The world functions through substance dependency.

Presently, I'm under pressure to addict myself to anti-depressants and tranquillisers in order to be able to work. My chemical-free life is unbearable. How am I supposed to cope with the relentless pressure without something to calm my jangled nerves? How am I supposed to cope with the futility of my existence without something to artificially raise my spirits?

Caffeine will alter my concentration span, so that I can feel productive even though my day is largely pointless and boring. Alcohol will shut my brain down and dull my senses, at the end of the day, when all there is to do is worry about having to do the same shitty stuff all over again tomorrow.

Yes, I could fill my life with kids, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, so that I'm too busy mopping up shit and snot to even notice that all I'm doing is perpetuating human misery. The opiate endorphins that are released during childrearing or caring for pets will make my life more bearable, at the expense of the poor unfortunates that I have spawned. Defining my existence by the fruit of my loins is merely handing on the problem to the next generation.

Doing sports merely floods my body with opiate endorphins, as my body tries to manage the pain of the muscle and joint damage that I have inflicted on my body. Yes, it's a 'natural' high, but it's every bit as natural as putting a synthetic opiate into your body, and a hell of a lot more likely to lead to arthritis and injury.

Pursuing adrenalin, through kitesurfing or skydiving, will give my brain a jolt of 'fight or flight' chemicals that I could get by fighting a tiger, or putting amphetamines into my body. The relief of having survived an encounter with a wild animal trying to kill me, will make me feel happy to be alive, but sooner or later you're going to get mauled to death. The pursuit of adrenalin knows no bounds : you will always have to push the envelope a little further each time.

I have a deep moral objection, to having to medicate myself to function in modern society. Just because everybody I know needs their morning cup of coffee, their cigarette breaks, the glass of wine when they get home from work... it doesn't mean that we are living our lives correctly.

Things have gotten even worse in modern life. Now people need anti-depressants and tranquillisers just to hold a job down and not have a nervous breakdown. People are popping pills from their doctor just to hang onto what they've got. "I'll lose my job if I don't have these pills to help me hide my crippling mental health problems" people say. Where is the cause and effect?

What if your mental health problems are a result of your job, your lifestyle, your life? What if your mental health problems are a symptom of having to do shitty work that you hate, and compete in the rat race?

We have been indoctrinated, at school, to prepare ourselves for a world of work, but it's not a real world. We are not supposed to be away from our families. We are not supposed to live with such insecurity, and in such uncaring environments.

From the very first day at school, we are being set up to compete with one another. Only a small number of the kids can get the "A" grades. Only a small number of students will get a first class degree. This prepares us for work, where only a small number of us will get the good jobs. It's a pyramid scheme, so most people are losing.

You've been set up to fail. Your rent is always going to be a significant proportion of your income. Your household expenses are always going to leave very little disposable income. The cost of childrearing will always leave you with less than you really need, to not feel anxious, afraid, insecure.

We are living in a world that has been completely shaped by market economics. The very design of our economy is designed to separate fools from their money, in the most efficient way. If you get a pay rise, the cost of goods and services will automatically rise to compensate. Prices are fluid, dynamic. Freedom is always going to be just out of reach.

Wouldn't you like it if only one parent had to work? Wouldn't you like to see more of your kids than just kissing them goodnight, and stealing a glance in the morning before you have to rush off to work? Wouldn't you like to be close to home, in case there's something you need to take care of, or just to see more of your loved ones? Why do you have to do a shitty commute that takes up hours of your day, and deprives you of time with your family? Why do you have to leave the village where you grew up, and go to the big polluted crowded city, in order to seek your fortune?

But don't worry about such existential questions. Just dope yourself up with tea, coffee, alcohol, antidepressants, tranquillisers. Don't worry about it, just zap your brain with enough chemicals to kill an elephant. Don't worry about it, just keep putting toxic stuff into your body, because you need that job, you need to stay in the rat race, you need to stay competitive.

Students are even taking Modafinil and Ritalin in order to stay awake and concentrate on their studies, because it's so important that they get good exam grades.

Doesn't all this sound like a terrible arms race to you? Doesn't it sound like our efforts to compete with one another are destroying our mental health? Doesn't it sound like we're sacrificing so much of our existence, to do more homework, study harder, work harder, work longer hours, deny our aching heart that cries out to be at home, cuddling our kids and hugging our loved ones.

Aren't we denying our very humanity, and using chemicals to mask problems that we label as mental illness? Wouldn't we all be more mentally healthy if modern society allowed us to be more human than just some worker-drone in an anonymous big city somewhere, with a cruel boss who only cares about productivity and timekeeping?

The lives we lead are collective madness. We are killing one another, not with guns, but with our relentless drive for good exam grades, pay rises and promotions.

I'm in favour of a general strike, because the madness has to stop.

Let's get some new kind of society under construction, where we worship happiness, not money.

Tags: #politics #capitalism #career #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #addiction #drugs