This is a story about national identity...

I will never be accepted in my place of birth, because I can't speak Welsh, I only lived in Wales for the first few months of my life, and I have English parents. I will never be accepted as a Yorkshireman like my Dad, or a Lancashire lass like my Mum, because I've never lived in the North of England, and I have a posh Home Counties accent. I will always be a Grockle (tourist) in Dorset, because I wasn't born there, just as I will always be a 'blow-in' in London, because I wasn't born within the sound of the Bow Bells.

So, I find all this talk of British national identity a bit laughable. This talk of a UK Independence Day, and "take our country back" is a joke. If you were to look at my passport, you might think I'm descended from Gauls, given that I was born in Wales where some of the oldest ethnic inhabitants lived... who perhaps escaped genetic mixing with Vikings, Saxons, Romans, Normans... but we know that's ridiculous.

The thing I like about London is that most people don't care who you are or where you've come from. It's a fairly meritocratic place where you can seek your fortune without being too held back by too many prejudices. It's a big enough place that any mishaps and misdemeanours can be overlooked.

I hate small-minded localism. I hate that "you're not from round these parts, are you?" idiocy... like it really matters where the hell you're from. I hate people who aspire towards some kind of backwards step, to a time when we lived in tiny villages and hamlets, in pockets of blissful ignorance. It's a nice fantasy, but it's never going to be a reality.

I've been that immigrant kid, bulking up a classroom that's already full. I've been in the minority, with a different skin tone from all the others in the classroom. I've been in the family that talks in their mother tongue, whilst living in a community that doesn't speak our language, and not observing local customs.

I know that while things are economically prosperous, there is joy in welcoming people of other cultures into our communities. There is novelty in observing and interacting with the outsider, and exploring the interesting differences between each other.

But when things turn sour and you're afraid for your job and you can't afford a house, and you start feeling pretty hard-done-by, it's natural to start picking on the odd-one-out. We're programmed to weed out the members of a herd that are different. As predators we look for the weak, the elderly, the young. As asexual beasts, we look for those who are most genetically normal, and reject the oddballs who might have undesirable mutations. We want those who share our genetic material - those who look the same as us - to survive at the expense of those who look different, who probably aren't part of our extended family, and therefore share our genes.

I get it. I understand this "look after our own" thing from the point of view of the selfish genes. There is no altruism, when push comes to shove and we feel threatened. And we feel really threatened at the moment. Housing, education, jobs, transport, healthcare, the economy... everything is screwed.

But you know what? You know who's really pushing you around? You know why you really feel threatened? It's because London is disproportionately represented. There's this little microcosm of politicians, lawyers, accountants, consultants and other highly paid professionals, who pretty much decide the fate of the rest of the country... not some bureaucrats in Brussels. You think the EU is why we have such a ridiculously financial-services centric economy? Is it fuck.

I know that in London I'm going to have the best of everything. All the tax breaks are going to go in my favour. All the infrastructure investment is going to be for me. All the political attention is going to be focussed on my concerns.

Yes, housing is a massive issue in London, but it's going to get addressed. Nobody dare let the concern of the City worker go overlooked, lest our precious position as a major centre for floatations, international litigation and the headquartering of some of the world's largest enterprises, be threatened.

However, 5 out of 6 people in the UK are not well represented, because we are so London centric. Do you think anybody much cares about the NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) on some God-awful sinkhole estate on the outskirts of a depressed Northern town, who is pissed off about their lot in life? Of course not, because they're neither economically nor politically active.

In actual fact, the tracksuit-clad pasty white housing estate resident, who drinks too much, smokes too much and abuses drugs, whilst having too many children that they can't afford to raise, is perhaps far more representative of the average citizen of the United Kingdom, than the suit-wearing, briefcase carrying City worker, with their well remunerated job in the service sector.

Yes, it's a liberal cliché to wring my hands with worry about the great unwashed masses. The voiceless angry mob outside London, who are in socioeconomic groups that mean that not even the advertisers care much about them, let alone the policy makers. However, something has captured the imagination of a much broader spectrum of British society, in this EU referendum.

Just as the killing of Mark Duggan was the catalyst for rioting in Tottenham, then in Croydon, and indeed all over the UK, it's clear to see that the motive for the vast majority of the rioting and looting was not to do with police action and race issues at all. It only took a trigger, for a wave of violence, vandalism, looting and rioting to be unleashed. People who would never think of running for Parliament or lobbying their local MP were literally voting with their feet, as they kicked in the windows of their local consumer goods vendor, and helped themselves to the merchandise.

I want London to feel as close to Berlin or Paris, as it is to Newcastle or Swansea. I want Europe to be united, but we are ignoring the fact that London feels very different from depressed towns and cities across the United Kingdom that are severely economically distressed, and politically ignored.

London cares more what the leaders of fellow European nations have to say, than what the mayors of other major cities do. What, for example, is the position of Liverpool in the whole Brexit/Remain debate? Nobody cares, in the newspapers that are written by London-dwelling journalists, nor in the benches of a parliament that sits in Westminster.

Distancing ourselves from Europe is the wrong thing to do. Bringing the rest of the UK into the decision-making that centres almost exclusively on London and financial services, is the right thing to do.

Tags: #europe #politics

This is a story about being a civilised adult...

Now that we have the Internet and social media, as a platform - a soapbox - for every vile, uncultured, ill-educated, nasty little specimen of humanity, people are throwing caution to the wind and broadcasting opinions that they would have never dreamt of publicly sharing, before the days that like-minded fools were allowed to cluster together, bonded by their mutually unpleasant views.

We are not at school anymore. You are a grown up. Try to behave as such.

With freedom comes responsibility. Just because you're not immediately dragged off to jail for detestably fascist remarks, it doesn't mean it's OK. Just because you're getting "likes" and "shares" of your social media posts, in the echo chamber of your hate group, doesn't mean that your views are acceptable.

Freedom of speech comes at a cost, and that cost is that individuals must self-censor and control their primitive animal-like behaviour. Public hangings, stonings, witch burnings, fights... these things will always draw a crowd. However, it's our collective and individual responsibility to condemn barbaric behaviour.

So, here's a 10-step guide to preventing the human race destroying itself, by exercising its freedom without regard for responsibility and consequences:

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1. Should you really say that?

There's a reason why hate crime has been written into the statute book. You are breaking the law if you incite violence and hatred with your words. Just being subtle about it doesn't excuse you.

If Nigel Farage can stand in front of a billboard with a bunch of people with dark skin tones, and suggest that these people are the enemy at the gate, that's a hate crime, to my mind. Every demand to "deport" the people you don't like very much because of their race, religion or skin colour, is perpetuating hate and divisions in society.

2. It's not just about you

Occupying a position of global dominance and wealth means that our nation has additional responsibilities. While you might think that we should "look after our own" in actual fact, what you are saying is that subjugated nations should continue to toil as our slaves.

If you don't share the wealth, you deserve to have your empire toppled. Do you really want to sit back and enjoy the spoils of war, torture and human suffering? Have you considered the price - in human lives - of the luxuries that you enjoy, or are you simply demanding to be wilfully ignorant?

3. Since when did conflict become desirable?

Why do things have to be "us" and "them"? Making things into an adversarial situation feels good, if you're on the winning side, but it's not the civilised thing to do. Of course, I'd love to get a big stick and a gang of thugs, and go and rob my weak neighbour, but that's not the way to conduct yourself.

If you're digging into your trenches, and thinking of ways to defend your argument and promote your cause, you're looking at things in the wrong way. Try to empathise with your 'enemy'. We all bleed red and we're all pink on the inside. You probably have more in common with the group that you're baring your teeth at, than you even realise.

4. Ad hominem attacks are not acceptable

Ok, you want to have some debate? You want to have a rational discussion? Well, personal attacks are not allowed. They're below-the-belt blows, not valid arguments. Differences of opinion cannot be settled by bringing somebody's character into question.

You might not like my views, but they could be the right ones, even if you don't like who I am as a person. Anybody can put the correct argument forward: they're just a spokesperson, a messenger for rational ideas.

5. Your defence is paper-thin

By grouping together with people who share your vile views, you share tips on how to defend yourself from the onslaught of a world intent on civilising you. You have developed a set of standard replies to the obvious criticisms of your unpleasant opinions.

Saying "I'm not racist, because Islam is not a race" is a straw-man argument. You're being discriminatory over a group of people. You're attempting to use some pathetic words to excuse your disgusting behaviour.

If you follow the same logic, you could end up being a Nazi apologist "because Judaism is not a race". I don't really care what the basis for your hatred is... it's wrong to discriminate.

6. What are you striving for?

If your goal for humanity is to go back to some time that you're nostalgic for, you are a being a fool. Today, we have medicine, safety standards, leisure time, vast quantities of high quality food, global communication and the ability to protect ourselves from many forces of nature.

You can't "close the door" on some advancing horde of brown people that you don't like very much, just the same as you can't abolish the poor either. You can't wave a magic wand and we'll all be transported back to some kind of bygone era, where we all live in a land of plenty. There are 7.1 billion mouths to feed on the planet, and they all have equal rights. I hope you're not arguing for some kind of race supremacy!

7. Do your research

There's no excuse for ignorance. Education is a privilege that you have enjoyed, and if you're sharing your nasty opinions on the Internet, then you're obviously able to read. I expect you might even be dimly aware that there were a couple of World Wars, and millions of people died. What did they die for? So that you can perpetrate another genocide?

Why do you not automatically recoil in horror from things that are echoes of an undesirable past? Why do you not associate the camps in Calais with prisoner of war camps and forced labour camps? Why do you not associate the refugee processing centres with ghettos, where undesirable members of society were forced to live, during previous atrocities?

8. What are your motives?

What does "take our country back" really mean? Is it true that really, deep down, you feel cheated? You're getting a raw deal. This isn't the life that you were promised. You've been let down. The system has failed you.

Your anger and frustration isn't with immigrants, it's with the politicians who gave tax breaks to the wealthy and allowed monopolies to dominate the world. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and sadly, you're in the bucket with all the other poor people. The landed gentry don't care about you any more than they care about the hungry brown person trying to get into our country for a bowlful of rice.

9. What are your values?

Do you strive for equality? Do you strive for greater knowledge? Do you believe in freedom? How would you like to improve the human condition? Do you have empathy, sympathy, compassion?

If your goal in life is to simply have more for you and your family, have you really considered the bigger picture? Do you really not give a shit, that for you to have Sky TV and a new car, perhaps hundreds and thousands of people are going to starve to death?

10. No man is an island

Yes, it's a nice fantasy, to think of yourself marooned on a desert island with everything you need. You're going to drink coconut milk, eat wild boar and civilise the natives. Bullshit.

What are you going to do without your smartphone, built in a factory in China or Korea? What are you going to do without your fresh fruit, that you can get even in the middle of winter, because it's flown into the country from Kenya? Who's going to clean your toilet and wash your car?

Building walls, or saying that your borders end at the seashore is total rubbish. Are you going to stop going abroad to all those countries that you want to send those brown people back to? Have you even looked at a map, and figured out where your all-inclusive package holiday is on the planet?

---

Why does it not chill you to the core, the thought of a world of divisions? Why does the idea of dismantling unions, co-operative pacts, systems of teamwork and collaboration, not make you upset and feel like we're going backwards? Why does the idea that a brown person has fewer rights than you, with your white skin, not seem abhorrent, wrong?

Seeing a young, fit, healthy man who wants to come and work, pay taxes and grow the economy, should be a welcome sight. The sight of a family fleeing war and conflict, should instill a nurturing instinct - we should be welcoming people, comforting them, accommodating them, not slamming the door in their face.

Yes, it's true that infrastructure is at breaking point. Yes it's true that traditional ways of life are under threat. Yes it's true that society is not well integrated, and people have clustered together in ethnic groups. However that's not a cost, that's a benefit of progress. I love that I'm able to hear nearly 300 different languages spoken in my home town of London. I love that I'm able to travel between different areas and experience different cultures. My life is enriched and improved, by embracing the very best that the world has to offer.

The people who uproot their families and embark upon perilous journeys in order to make a better life for themselves, are making a better life for everybody. The people who you want to exclude from society are motivated, hard working, industrious, resourceful, humble, worldly and bring energy and enthusiasm, that is completely lacking in a population that wants to rest on its laurels.

Our grandparents and great grandparents fought for our freedom, not so that we could horde it for ourselves, but so that we can share it. Our way of life doesn't need protecting, it needs to be distributed globally.

Freedom is not a commodity that's just for us. Everybody should have freedom. But the price of freedom is being responsible, and acting with restraint and human decency. Those who are free must be kind and compassionate, and share more. Those who are free must set an example. Those who are free must try harder, reach further, think deeper, consider the implications of everything they do.

If we don't act with responsibility that extends beyond our own selfish wants and immediate gratification, everything's going to crumble before our very eyes, and finger-pointing at immigrants is going to be the catalyst. While we wail about brown people and lament the loss of a bygone era that never existed, we will throw away the beautiful things we have constructed.

All this infighting and tribal, regressive, aggressive behaviour deeply saddens me, and reminds me of nasty kids in the playground. Aren't we supposed to have grown up?

Tags: #politics #socialmedia

This is a story about ingratitude...

Give me liberty, or give me death!

How do you like living in the free world? Freedom of speech, not that anybody's even listening and you'll never get into print. Freedom to work, if you can get a job, and you'll have to pay exorbitant taxes. Freedom to do what you want, if you're not dead and have any spare time and energy after working a job until you're nearly 70 years old. Freedom to buy what you want, except you probably can't afford it.

There: that's the ingratitude part out of the way. Do I actually think like that? Some people think I do. You'll have to read between the lines to see where I am being self-mocking, humorous, sarcastic and even a little farsical in the interests of courting controversy.

This talk of death and suicide sounds a little flippant, a little melodramatic, but in actual fact, it's shaped my mindset.

I was always impossible to manage, and fearless talking to people of all ranks and status. I refuse to be cowed by credentials and hierarchy. I refuse to know my place.

If you were to just dip into part of my story, and try to make a knee-jerk assumption about me, you might assume that I think I'm better than other people. You might think I'm an entitled snob, a spoiled little brat. You would have misjudged me, and instead you've failed to understand that I'm coming at things from a totally different end of the spectrum.

I'm not claiming that I'm hard done by and that I've made my own luck and worked my way up from the bottom. On closer examination, these claims always prove to be horse-shit. When we look at people who claim to be self-made success stories, the tale is always ridiculous. For starters, many of the ones I've encountered came from loving homes in middle-class families, with parents who had a profession, a job for life. There has been financial security and a good education, even if they paint themselves as some sort of working class hero.

My tale is slightly different. I'm judging things based on the experiences I had when I had nothing. No roof over my head, and no money. I'm judging life based on how close I came to death. I literally made a life-or-death decision... actually on a couple of occasions.

So, I write from a position of knowing how it feels to have nothing. I write from a position of knowing how it feels to have to choose to act to stay alive, or else inaction would lead to death.

Based on this standpoint, I judge things very differently. You might think I'm ungrateful to have a "good" job. You might think I'm ungrateful for my opportunities. In actual fact though, I'm just judging things relatively. I think to myself "am I more or less happy than when I had nothing" and "am I more or less inclined to die, than the time that I nearly died before".

There's a cold hard rational core within me, that could quite easily slice my veins open, in a sudden brutally decisive act, if I decided that the effort of maintaining myself in a state of perpetual unhappiness and struggle would be ridiculous.

As a subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England, I was indoctrinated in the state schools of the United Kingdom, to become a loyal wage-slave, contributing to stability, increase and ornament of British commerce. Does it give me any pleasure or pride to say that? No, not really.

My very first job was for a Ministry of Defence subcontractor, and I actively contributed to Great Britain's military capability, as a naval power, to further their imperialist ambitions. Should that give me a lump in my throat when I see the Union Jack and hear the national anthem? Actually, no, it makes me think about the high price that is paid by the nations we have subjugated, in order to pay for the lifestyle I enjoyed.

Do people enjoy their lifestyle? Huge numbers of ordinary working age people can't afford a house, a family, a wedding. Most ordinary working folks hate their shitty jobs and their long commutes. Most ordinary working folks fret about getting ahead in the work rat race, or getting their kids good exam grades so that they can die an early death due to stress-related illness. But the good news is that you're not going to have to die in poverty if you drop dead at your desk, given that the pensions are in a meltdown.

It looks so hypocritical. The Westeners sit there in their sedentary jobs, comfort-eating themselves to death through obesity-related illness and giving themselves repetitive strain injury from their mouse and keyboard, cataracts from their computer screen and a bad back from slouching in a chair all day. Our short life expectancy is a function of stress, depression and poor lifestyle 'choices'. Meanwhile, the developing world slaves away, with the dream of attaining a western-style lifestyle. Supposedly, the West is the model the world should follow.

However, maybe we got it wrong. In other cultures, the smartest member of the family gets sent away to study and work, so that they can send money back to their family to support them. Isn't that something to get out of bed in the morning? Being the breadwinner for your family.

Instead of the young, fit and active people being the economic providers, we have instead tipped our society on its head, where we worship the 'grey pound'. Since the pension funds became the biggest investors in all our companies, and all the wealth pooled in the accounts and property portfolios of the baby boomers, we now have an impoverished youth, who have a much lower quality of life than their mothers and fathers, and far fewer opportunities to provide for even themselves and their own offspring, let alone feathering the nest still further of their elderly relatives.

I went to the Southampton Boat Show last year, and instead of successful young businessmen treating themself to a toy, as a reward for their hard work, ambition and ingenuity, it was baby-boomers who were spending their kids and grandkids inheritance, as a reward for having created an asset bubble that has meant crashes in both the stock market and the housing market.

I know that all the pounds of economic output that I generate will simply disappear into a pensions black hole, to pay out final-salary schemes for a generation who have nothing but contempt for their kids and grandkids.

Would you toil and toil, if you had no prospect of ever being self sufficient? If you were simply working for ungrateful masters who called you lazy and stupid? If the wealth that you generated simply inflated asset prices further out of reach, concentrated in the hands of the idle coffin-dodgers who didn't work to create the very assets that they own?

Since when did it become a bad thing to be motivated to work? Why should we be so fearful of immigrants, who are young, fit and economically active? The very language smacks of greedy hoarders who are like a dog in a manger.

Every year we have more students than ever before achieving the top exam grades, yet we print headlines and stories asking if exams are getting easier. Homework and the pressure to succeed is driving ever increasing numbers of young people to suicide, but yet it isn't good enough.

The prospects for young people are awful. The minimum wage is lower, and they'll never be able to get married, have kids and buy a house like their parents did. Why do we label them as 'gangs', 'hoodlums' and 'thugs' and mock them for their materialistic attachments to modestly priced bling, like gold cellphones and other trinkets that cost a fraction of the homes and cars that their parents had as their status-symbols?

Why do we not see the link between demanding endless dividends on our shares and ever-increasing capital gains, and the need for corporations to suppress wage inflation, which impoverishes our working-age people?

There are many people who would say that I'm not entitled to ask these questions, given my six-figure income. There are many people who think I should just shut up and take the money, because it's there.

In actual fact, I'm going further than just asking difficult questions. I'm actually putting my job on the line.

I lost two big money contracts because I refuse to be bought. I refuse to stay my tongue, just because I'm being paid a lot of money. Is it unprofessional, arrogant, reckless, stupid? Actually, it's none of those things.

I struggled a lot with middle-class guilt, but predictably, I did very little about it. I used to wring my hands and say "but what can I do?" while reading the Observer and The Guardian newspapers, and having passionate discussions about putting the world to rights, while quaffing expensive wine in fine restaurants in North London. This was hypocrisy. The final straw would have been going on a sponsored run and doing some kind of gift-aid contribution out of my salary every month, to salve my conscience and give me some kind of sense of smug satisfaction that I'd played my part.

Instead, I went on a journey. I've been to the bottom and back again. You might think that my risk was underwritten by my middle-class family, but they actually turned their back on me, when I had apparently left my social rank and become 'untouchable'. I was disowned, disinherited.

I can never claim to know what it was like growing up in abject poverty. My parents might claim that they never had any money, what with my mum being a student and my dad working behind a bar in a caravan site, when I was born. However, my granddads were both professional men with good pension provisions, who were able to bail out my drug-addled hopeless parents whenever they really hit hard times. The same privilege was never extended to me. Perhaps I should have recklessly sowed my wild oats, and then pled poverty when there were extra mouths to feed, like they did.

A parent's relief that their child is alive and physically healthy has no bearing on whether a person feels grateful to be alive. I didn't choose to be born and I don't want to go on living, if life is just endless misery and suffering. If you expect your kids to love you unconditionally, you're just plain wrong. It totally depends on how you treat them, and there's a real generational problem.

Handing over a planet and an economy that's absolutely fucked, and then retiring, is pretty ridiculous if the generation who are going to have to clean up the mess, accept austerity measures and live a lifestyle that is unimaginably frugal, in order to allow pollution to return to safe levels. It's a bad deal, by anybody's reckoning.

It's in my nature to question everything and anything. There are no taboos for me. There is no 'respect your elders' bullshit, because the first question is "why?". Why should I respect the generation that proliferated nuclear armaments, caused global warming, deforestation, pollution of the water table, an asset bubble that's priced ordinary working people out of the market, an unprecedented increase in the rich:poor gap and widespread economic calamity and didn't think about how they were going to afford their retirement, except by mortgaging the future of their children and grandchildren.

Why do I work? I can't tell you, but I can tell you what damage working does to humanity.

The wealth that I generate goes to corporations, who pay it out in the form of dividends or use it to inflate asset prices, to generate growth for their majority shareholders, who are institutional investors - asset managers - whose job it is to generate yet more wealth for an idle elite who expect to receive final salary pensions and an amazing lifestyle, in return for having wrecked the world.

And you wonder why I struggle to get out of bed in the morning and get excited about going to work?

People that I've worked with throughout my career have read what I've written, and I'm slowly making myself unemployable. How could you employ me, knowing that I don't subscribe to the groupthink? How could you employ me, knowing that I speak my mind, and have no respect for the instruments of power? How could you employ me, knowing that I'm not cowed by fear and insecurity?

I'm impossible to control, using the millstone of debt and the threat of destitution. For me, destitution is freedom. Freedom from the oppression of working a job that only serves to line the pockets of an ungrateful elite who have no respect for the workers of the world, and are only interested in a comfortable retirement at the expense of over 50% of the world's people.

Obviously, I think to myself "I must take this down" or "I must cover this up" or "I must keep my mouth shut". There's a part of me that just wants to take the king's shilling and let him call the tune, no matter how maddened I am by degrading myself as the court jester.

There is so much false promise. Work today and be happy tomorrow. Fritter away my cash on good times to forget about the soul-less day-to-day existence and futility of it all, is what I could so easily do. I've done it before.

I sometimes laugh at myself, so full of middle-class angst, but there's a deep seriousness here. It's just bullying groupthink to call somebody a hypocrite or a champagne socialist. The fact of the matter is, somebody has to do something, because we're sleepwalking towards disaster. The middle classes are just about comfortable enough to write letters and furrow their brows with concern, but not enough to actually risk their jobs or their reputations and good social standing.

Every day I sit at my desk, unable to not think about the bigger picture, unable to put the futility of it all out of my mind. I think "what the hell am I doing here?" and even though I'm good at my job and I am perfectly capable of toeing the line and keeping my bosses happy, I inevitably start to rock the boat, just because I have so much barely concealed contempt for a system that so obviously fails to serve the bulk of humanity.

I've let a genie out of the bottle, by considering the wider questions that we face as a species. I've gone down a rabbit-hole of thought, and I can't stop chasing that rabbit, even though I'm throwing away golden opportunities that people would love to have themselves.

Please try not to get caught in the trap of thinking this is a simple case of ingratitude.

My values and my work are really not at all aligned, and it grates with me, to the point where I really don't give a shit if I lose my job, but I'm not stupid... I know that I only have to play by the rules for a short amount of time, and then I can let the world know what I really think and who I really am, before my horrified bosses get rid of me. Please just kill me.

Tags: #career #capitalism #banking #suicide #depression #parents #family #childhood

This is a story about being strung along...

How much does it cost to make a difference to somebody's life? How much time? How much money? How much effort?

By the time you end up homeless, far more stuff is broken than just needing a job and a place to live. Not only is your self-esteem destroyed, but also your squeaky clean credentials, which are required by the gatekeepers in the world of wage slavery.

I was asked to provide details of where I've been living for the last 5 years. If I was truthful, it would read like this:

• Current address
• Hospital
• Hotel
• Hospital
• Hostel
• Hampstead Heath (under some trees)
• Hostel
• Shitty student flat
• Hostel
• Hospital
• Girl's flat
• Kensington Park Gardens (under a bush)
• Hostel
• Crisis house
• Hospital
• Hostel
• Hospital
• Rehab
• Friend's guest bedroom
• Garden shed
• Own home

How the hell are the drones who process paperwork at my new job supposed to deal with that?

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful events that can happen in our lives. It's so disruptive. It's so hard to function, without a base, without somewhere settled to call home.

I used to drag tons of bags all over the city. It was worse when I was working, because I obviously needed smart clothes and my work laptop too. Can you imagine going from being homeless, to living in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but having to get suited and booted and go to work, with one tiny little locker and heaps of baggage? Can you imagine having to pack all your stuff up every morning, in case you got moved to a different dorm, and then going to work?

I've never claimed benefits, because I can see that they're just enough to do nothing but not enough to do something. For all the effort involved in filling in the forms, it's not worth it. No wonder people beg and steal... you really don't need that much money to support yourself in some kind of miserable existence, with no hope of escape. Benefits are the very worst option: maximum effort with minimum opportunity.

Anybody who thinks that cutting people off financially is some kind of motivatory strategy is simply an idiot. Here in the UK we have squats, soup kitchens and there is enough wealth to get by, hustling, scamming, stealing, panhandling and generally opting out of society. By raising the barrier to getting benefits, and offering so little assistance, people either find their way into antisocial behaviour, or get trapped into poverty.

Is it right that I should be trapped into a pool of people who can never work again, because we don't have a nice clean address history and we're stressed out as hell from being passed from pillar to post, as nobody wants to invest in our lives?

It takes time and it takes money, but there is a net benefit for everybody if you invest in the potential of people. There is no way that you can deny that the government, various councils and social workers decided that I was worthless, and not even deserving of a hostel bed, despite the fact that I contribute massive amounts of taxes. In the commercial world, it's the complete opposite: companies have shown that I'm worth huge amounts of money, despite the fact they'd shit a brick if they knew the truth about my past.

The obvious thing to do would have been to support me, so I could have gotten back to work sooner and started paying buttloads of tax again, but instead, Camden Council wasted months of my life before finally sending me a one-line email saying that they were making me homeless.

I wonder how many other 'lost causes' are actually capable people who just need a little investment. Stringing people along is not a good strategy. Shortchanging people, giving them less than they need, is a false economy.

Tags: #homeless #frank #career

This is a story about getting out of practice...

My friend Ben taught me how to program a computer when we were kids. I floundered on my own for a while when our family moved away from Oxford, to Dorset, but eventually I had managed to write a couple of computer games before I even had any proper lessons at school and college.

I've been a professional programmer for the best part of 20 years, but my recent ups and downs really hurt my confidence, and also meant that my skills got a bit rusty. It is a little bit like riding a bike, but the jargon changes and the syntax of what you have to type looks subtly different, but it's all still the same binary ones and zeros underneath the covers.

I nearly had a meltdown today, when I was set a programming test that's the sort of thing that you'd give to a first year Computer Science student. I feel a little insulted that I'm being asked to do things like that, when I've got such a strong CV. However, IT is riddled with managers, architects and other people who haven't touched code for years and years. I guess it's a test to see if you can roll your sleeves up and get hands on or not.

I'm getting really worried that there's a tech bubble that's going to burst, and bring down the whole economy. When I think that there are so many jobs that are centred around social media marketing, digital campaigns and mining the vast amounts of data that are gathered about website users and their browsing habits... it's all a lot of bullshit. At the end of the day, people have lost sight of the fundamental principle of creating products and services that add value to the real economy.

Why is it that a company can have a massive valuation and raise loads of money, just because the number of people using their website is growing exponentially? Why is it that a bank, or other financial services company, can be one of the most profitable enterprises in the world, when they don't actually produce anything of tangible value? The markets are just supposed to route money efficiently around the real economy, to grease the wheels of commerce.

I started to get panicky all of a sudden, and worry that I won't be able to get myself into a position to weather the storm before it hits. But then, when you think about it, it doesn't matter unless you're just coming up to retirement and hoping to cash in your casino chips and sit on your arse for the rest of your days until you die.

I don't begrudge people their retirement, but considering the huge population growth, the massively extended life expectancy, plus the low birth rates, retiring at the same age as the previous generation is just not feasible.

It is really sad when somebody retires, and they're so burnt out that they hardly get to enjoy it. It seems that life is very much lived backwards. When we are young, fit, healthy, energetic and full of life, we are also heavily indebted and have to work as many hours as we can just to pay the rent and try to keep a car on the road so we can get to work. Then, when we retire, we have heaps of time and money (hopefully) but our health is failing and death is stalking us.

But I'm only talking in abstract terms, because something different happened to me. I didn't quite catch the ultimate wave, but I caught the tail end of a pretty wild ride. For those lucky enough to get into IT at some point from the 1960s to the 1990s, we have enjoyed boom times that seem to have kept rolling.

Perversely, I was a little disappointed when the millenium bug didn't cause every computer in the entire world to explode, as the clock struck midnight and we rolled into Y2K. By the year 2000, I was already bored and disillusioned with programming, and I had even applied to University to retrain as a Clinical Psychologist.

It seems churlish, to be dissatisfied in my position. At the age of 20 I was an IT contractor, taking advantage of the fact that there was a huge brain drain, as most of the best programmers were working on fixing the millenium bug. I had a 20 minute phone interview, and then started work a few days later... doubling my salary in the blink of an eye.

In a way though, you have to consider the bigger picture. How many years of my life were spent locked away indoors, hunched over a keyboard, because I was unpopular and ostracised at school? The bullying I endured was pretty relentless until I finally got to college, so in a way, I have always felt some entitlement to the wealth that compensated those miserable years.

Money doesn't buy you maturity though, and it doesn't repair low self-esteem. It does, however, broaden your horizons. As the year 2000 rolled into 2001, I was taking 5-star luxury holidays around the world. I didn't rub people's noses in it, but I hadn't yet begun to feel that the debt of karma that the Universe owed me had started to balance out.

I bought a yacht and moored it in an expensive marina in Hampshire, age 21, but this still didn't seem exceptional to me. I still felt that I had somehow missed out on a lot of what other people had done: to feel popular, to feel fashionable, to feel loved, and have girlfriends that you really fancied. I still had crushing inadequacies and a poor self-image.

Getting into kitesurfing gave me work:life balance and brought me a social group that finally meant I started to feel like I had friends I'd chosen, rather than just the group of geeks, thrust together for strength in numbers, against a world hostile to us outcasts.

The dead time at work, when I had previously just been struggling with boredom, was now filled with planning kitesurfing trips and chatting with my friends on the kiteboarder forum. My bosses were still happy that the work was getting done, but I was spending 80% of my time and energy looking at wind and tide forecasts, reading and writing forum posts.

Moving to the coast meant access to the beach every day, and eliminated the need to experience kitesurfing vicariously midweek, through an internet discussion forum. However, it also meant I no longer had anything entertaining during the boredom.

Eventually, the boredom led to me obsessing about my job, and pushing hard for promotion, and then to burnout. Work:life balance is important.

I've been trying to piece everything back together again in a way that's not simply hopelessly nostalgic for bygone years. If I can get on an even keel again financially, of course I can start going on kitesurfing trips again, but the really important thing that I lost was the social aspect, and having another passion as well as work, that could keep me busy midweek.

A lot of my fear of getting back into the working routine is that I know that simply living to work is not healthy or sustainable, and I really have very little passion for IT anymore... it's just a job, and a job that I can do blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.

I am sorry if I come across as ungrateful for my opportunities, but there's more to life than a well paid job, and I have so few of the other elements that make up a happy little life.

Would you believe that some of my happiest times in recent years have been when living in the park or the hostel? There was at least a group of other no-fixed-abode bums like me, and we formed strong social bonds. Having a group of friends turns out to be a lot more important than a healthy bank balance.

So, getting back to work is a necessary evil, but it won't stabilise me and give me any quality of life, you might be surprised to learn.

I overcame that fear, and did that technical test, and I impressed myself that I can still apply myself when I need to. However, it seems a shame that our modern lives drive us to live to work, rather than work to live. I feel certain that this must be behind the mental health epidemic that is sadly getting worse and worse.

I'm going to grow carrots, come the revolution

Tags: #computing #career #bullying #childhood

This is a story about self destruction...

This little machine has allowed me to rise to a level of mastery of a profession where I could command in excess of £200k (gross) per annum for my skills, walk out of one job and into another, and generally enjoy a period where I didn't have to know my bank balance or save up for anything. This statement is vulgar, I hope people don't think boastful, but it's certainly distasteful.

I now live in an apartment with panoramic views of the Thames. I can see Heron Tower, The Gherkin, Tower 42, The Cheese-grater, The Mobile Phone, Tower Bridge, The Shard, The London Eye and a number of iconic London skyline icons.

This would be sustainable, but since the age of 19 or so, I figured out that it doesn't matter if it's torpedos fired from a submarine, or Credit Default Swaps, traded in the front office of an investment bank... it's all the same fucking 1's and 0's.

Some pudgy, piggy-eyed, adenoidal little pricks have carved themselves out little fiefdoms where they have constructed such impenetrable balls of mud, that no sane programmer would venture in.  They take pleasure in having made themselves key-person dependencies.

I like to think I'm ethical, and it's only because I was being whipped so hard by my bossess to deliver DTCC that I didn't think of the ethical impact of Credit Default Swaps and Collateralised Debt Obligations on the world economy. JPMorgan processed 70% of that toxic waste, and that equates to $1.16qn of money that was circulated, while the real collateralised securities and precious metals were moved into the accounts of those who knew what was really going on.

I wrote the system that confirmed those trades. I saw the data flow through. I saw live production data, and I couldn't believe the notional values that were being traded.

I feel like I could have stopped $1.6m of 'fake' money, for every man woman and child on the planet, from being pumped into an economy that was only ever supposed to last as long as the 'smart' money moved their assets. There just isn't enough precious metal, fiat currency, property and securities to collateralise all the derivatives that have been printed. The paper is worthless.

I can't see how it can be propped up. As it starts to crumble, I'm going to feel more & more responsible.

I feel like ground zero.

I don't want to wake up tomorrow.

Tags: #banking #suicide #career #london

This is a story about modern life...

I missed 5 blog posts. 3 people were worried on Facebook, plus my flatmate. My sofa-surfing Kiwi has gone back to NZ.

2 of those people, I met at a hackathon, back in October. When I had to go into hospital a few weeks later, one of these new friends brought me a backpack that contained a set of hand-picked items from around my room, each thoughtfully chosen as something that I would probably need during a week or two in hospital. It felt like Christmas.

When I got really sick over the Xmas/New Year period, my other new friend came and sat on my bed and gave me a hug. He also did loads of my washing, cooked for me, and generally nursed me back to health. The most important thing he did though, was to just be thoroughly lovely. It makes a difference, somebody asking how you are and giving you a hug.

I was in a pretty bad way with muscle wastage and weight loss, having stopped eating for about 2 and a half weeks. Obviously I couldn't impose on my poor friend, with additional burdens, such as extra shopping to carry home, when he was already doing so much that was well above and beyond what any flatmate and friend would do.

Another new friend had become concerned by my lack of blog posts, and had actually come over to my flat on her own initiative. She's a very active person, with a busy life, but it so happened that she was off work... although I doubt that she pictured herself nipping to the Tesco Local for protein shakes, isotonic fluids and anything that had high calorie content. It was so kind and helpful of her that she did.

So, I just received an email from my sister. Apparently she's been getting shit from my parents, because they've read my blog and being the horribly abusive people that they are, they are taking it out their frustration with semi-illiteracy and their almost total exclusion from my life, on my poor sister.

Let's recap what wonderful parents they are, because apparently I've forgotten all the great stuff they did for me:

• Born to a couple of junkies. My mum was a student and my dad was failing to make enough money to support a family by buying and selling junk.
• Grandparents took pity on 3-year-old grandchild and bought them a house. Dad still doesn't have a proper job... too busy taking drugs.
• I spend all my time when I'm not at school in the pub, because my parents still can't afford to support a family, a drug addiction and alcoholism. Alcohol comes first.
• My Dad decides to scale up the junk buying/selling that didn't work before, so I have to leave all my playgroup and primary school friends to move to Oxford
• Between eye patches that I don't need and a yet another girl's bike with a fucking basket on it, I pretty much become the most bullied kid at school. I remember picking gravel out of my back whenever I was 'clotheslined' on the hard play area.
• My mum did take me to London a bunch of times, which was nice. We went to the Science Museum, which got me interested in science.
• Move to a school with a uniform. Turnups and the school blazer (optional) plus carry-over from previous school means the bullying continues. My mum sympathises with the bullies.
• I get a goldfish. He's called Fred. You can't stroke a goldfish. It's a shit pet, but I cry when he dies and make a little gravestone for him.
• Finally get a home computer. Not the Apple Mac like Julian and Joe have, or the PC like Barnaby, Ben, Marcus etc. etc. No... this is the last of the ZX Spectrums ever made
• Have to move school again. Great school. Bullying not quite so bad as there is an unpopular Russian boy and I'm in all the top sets and a good form group... so my parents decide we should move to France
• Some accountant friend of the family takes pity on me and gives me the oldest PC you've ever seen in your life. No software works on it, but that doesn't matter because the monitor is black and white anyway. This is my parents main gift to me: giving me something that's so unbelievably unfit for purpose that I try and try in desperation to make things work.
• Learn to speak French in France. Also didn't make any friends in the UK, and was away from all my other friends. Given the choice, I'd rather have friends than be able to speak French.
• Another new school. Bullying atrocious. Teachers are nice though. One of them takes me sailing after school... like a dad.
• Rather than leave me in a town where I can cycle everywhere and remain with my friends during puberty, we move to the middle of fucking nowhere. I write letters to my friends on floppy disks and post them to them. One friend comes to visit. One. That's it. One.
• Sailing club is good... thanks again to that teacher
• Another start at a new school ruined by the only bike that was capable of tackling the steep hills being a proper mountain bike. One that my dad stole. It was a girls bike. I had to ride past over 1,000 children all congregating on a big long pavement, before going up the steps to the school. My few sailing club friends disowned me.
• I was supposed to be saving up for another new computer, but £10 a week from a paper round doesn't leave a lot of spare money to buy replacement parts for my mountain bike, which gets used at least twice a day on very steep hills
• With a small contribution from me in cash, but absolutely huge in terms of the number of miles I cycled every day on my paper round, my Dad got me my new computer, well after its processor became obsolete. It doesn't have a co-processor or enough memory, but I figure I can upgrade those parts when I get a better job than a paper round.
• My dad bought the shittest, most rotten, neglected boat that looked totally not water-worthy. I restored it, then sold it for a big profit. Can't remember if I paid him back.
• I had a small financial contribution when I bought my 4th and 7th cars. The 7th car was brilliant, but I could have paid for it myself. I think I was only short a few hundred quid, and I was IT contracting so I was raking it in. I can't believe how my parents still say they "bought" me that car. I shall have to dig out the bank statements.
• That's it!

Oh, here are a few things that my parents like to misremember:

• They gave me one of their cars. My mum had crashed it and it had been repaired by a blind man. The thing is, it wasn't a gift. My granny had been saving money since I was really little so that I could get a car and insurance, and I would have easily been able to buy a small engined petrol car, in a low insurance group, with cheap parts... like everybody else my age. Instead, ALL the money had to go on insurance, and the shitty car broke down all the time, and because it was a complicated diesel with expensive parts, it was the world's shittest car for a broke 17 year old.
• Holidays: well, actually these were conferences for my mum, or the shitty dilapidated house in France where I was away from all my friends in the UK. My parents were always pulling me out of school, and sure it was an education and experience, but it was just what my parents wanted to do, with me along in tow. If you were going to do it anyway, it doesn't count as something you did for your kid. The fact we drove past Alton Towers so many times but never went illustrates their mindset perfectly.
• I've cost them a lot of money. Horseshit. I read books from the library or was playing round at friend's houses or somewhere I shouldn't have been. My parents never bought me the correct shoes to not get beaten up. Once I saved up the money from my granny and bought a pair of Nikes. I remember everybody commenting at school for days. I remember wanting to fall asleep just looking at them.
• They lent me money when I was in London. Nope. What they did was not lend me money when I was in London. I needed it in October 2013. Two years late is too late.

Ok, so there are myriad little things, mainly to do with cooking with my mum. My mum is really great. She did try her very best to give me a nice life. She worked hard, paid the mortgage and bankrolled my dad.

I'm trying to think of a nice memory with my dad, but it's all so practical. I was always watching him do DIY or cook but the only thing I think we learned together was when he taught me to read & write. Later, we would change the oil on a car and suchandsuch, but we never did something together, although I was allowed to come along to car boot sales, for example.

My only memory of him really taking an interest in something in my life was when I wanted to do a sponsored mountain bike ride, and I hadn't been doing the big hills for long enough to really travel all the way to the town where the event was being held, and then have much remaining energy to race.

It wasn't much more than a completely lumpy field, with a savagely steep climb, long traverse, descent and then back on the flat to the bottom of the climb again. I had no bottle cage on my bike and I was dressed in jeans, and it was a pretty hot day. People were laughing at this kid in jeans with a touring helmet, no other safety gear, on a girls bike.

When the race started, I left everybody who had "all the gear but no idea" behind. The traverse was quite tricky, especially without toeclips. The descent was suicidal on a fully rigid bike, but I started to lap quite fast.

The more the laps went by, the more of the skilled but unfit riders fell away. The ascent really was a killer in that heat. Anyway, I decided I'd better stop after quite a few laps, because I was feeling really badly dehydrated, and I was sick of getting flies in my eyes.

My dad was gobsmacked. I can't remember where I finished, but from his point of view, I was just lapping everybody over and over and over again. He took me to the bike shop in the nearby town and bought me a pair of clear cycling glasses for the flies, mud and stones, plus a bottle cage and bottle so I could carry a drink with me.

Perhaps if I racked my brains I could think of something else, but getting complemented on my riding, and then him making a further investment - unprompted - to allow me to take my hobby further, was a special moment.

So, my sister's pretty pissed off with me, but I can't understand why. My dad conspired with my wife and my GP to drag me away from my home, my life was dismantled, and the one time in my adult life when I did actually need and want their help - and it had been offered - they reneged on their promise in October 2013, and bang went my best chance to put my life back together in London, thanks to their lies.

I've not really altered the formula, and it's really quite simple:

• Place to live (not a hostel, tent, or shop doorway)
• Job (I'm an IT contractor. Thanks for your offer of [insert low wage job] but it would be uneconomical of me to not focus my search on highly paid contracts)
• Enough money for any cashflow shortfall until the 60+ days it takes before I get paid are done, plus I've absorbed the hit of the 6 weeks deposit, 1 month rent & agent fees
• I'm afraid that I'm so profligate that I replace my suit every 5 years, and my overcoat every 12 yeas. Shoes, I'm afraid I throw away when the shoe repair man laughs in my face. Shirts, I replace when the collar is worn through and it's horribly yellow under the arms.

There are certain things that people in London don't do either:

• They don't walk for 2 or 3 hours. They get the tube. That costs over £5 a day
• They don't bring a thermos flask of coffee into the office. Coffee is a £6 a day habit, but a necessary social visit
• They don't bring a picnic basket, get the blanket out, lay it down on the office floor, sit down and start getting foil-wrapped cucumber sandwiches out. Lunch is a £5 a day habit
• They don't drink much water. Sometimes they drink fizzy drinks. Sometimes they drink a kale, ginger and apple smoothie. Drinks are a £3 a day habit
• They don't have home-brew kegs hidden under their desks. When a Londoner goes for an after work drink, which is pretty much a social necessity, they will spend £5 a pint or more
• They don't work the longest hours in Europe and travel on a packed tube train to then get home, travel back in time, and start making fresh pasta and picking basil leaves in the garden they don't have. Your economy Londoners will buy fresh pasta and pesto, and will even push the boat out for a bit of parmesan: cost £7. Some days, you're at work so late that you might even get a luxury stonebaked pizza sent to the office, or failing that, you'll probably pick up a takeaway on the way home, because you're just going to fall asleep as soon as you've eaten: cost £15.
• They don't live in Zone 99. The zones go 1-2-middle-of-fucking-nowhere-99-100. Yes, it's true that you can save 50p a year on rent by living in Zone 99, but it will cost you over a million pounds for a travel card that goes out that far. It would also be quicker to just get a jet or a helicopter to City Airport if you're that far out.
• They don't all take loads of coke. Yes, it's true that there is some drug taking in the capital, but I bet there are good statistics to show that a far greater percentage of people are on drugs in the provinces, because it's so fucking dull out there.
• They don't fret about saving 7 pence on a loaf of mouldy bread, or consider it profligate to buy popcorn at the cinema, because wages are so much higher and you'll be working too hard to do all the stuff that you have to do to entertain yourself in the provinces on your meagre wage

So, anyway, I've shown my magic formula works. I know what I need to get back into work, routine, friendships and get on an even keel financially, so that I never ever have to explain to a dimwitted out-of-towner why the cost of living initially looks quite high.

However, my sister has a shit job, got pregnant with kid they couldn't afford, went through a divorce, lives in midlands suburbia and generally acts with incredulity that I could maybe have found it a bit stressful trying to re-enter London life on a credit card, living in a hostel.

I had said that my sister & niece were the only thing keeping me alive when I was in hospital. My life is fucked, the cashflow doesn't work, I'm not very well, I still haven't got a contract and there are now further delays. I know what'll happen... I'll get a nice big money contract, but after a month I'll be bankrupt, and my money will still be 30 days away at least. If I take it all out as soon as I can, then it means I'm not maximising my dividends, and it means I have to live on 33% of my income, instead of 100%. That means the stress carries on, month after month after month. But, apparently everybody's an expert in accountancy and cashflow forecasting now.

Apparently one of my sister's friends has it so much harder than me or something. Anyway, they're dead now. I'm just being a martyr or something. According to my sister and parents it's really easy to blag your way into a mental hospital, and slicing lengthways down my forearms with a razor blade was some kind of emotional blackmail, or maybe it was melodramatic... I don't give a shit anymore.

I literally think that you are a grade-A douchecanoe if you have no idea just how hard it has been to survive in London with no parental or state support, when I was completely fucked.

A big part of me says "fuck it". I was a homeless bankrupt drug addict in a park one day, and then you expect it to be all fixed in 5 months because I managed to get a flat, and a job. Then you only choose to help me when I'm hospitalised, suicidal. And then after it's already too late you say it's blackmail.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Can't be bothered.

Why bother?

You have absolutely no idea how hard it's been to work my way back from the brink and just how carefully I've had to budget, and how cleverly I've done my accounting.

I really didn't want to write another thing about my parents. They're dead to me. But to hear my sister echoing their lies is heartbreaking, and to receive a lengthy message telling me things that are just total bullshit, and saying "I'm sorry, but I don't want to be anywhere near you".

That's just fucking awful. OK, so I've poured out my anger at my parents for forcefully removing me from my own home so my ex could cheat on me, generally backing her up, and then totally fucking me over when they had their chance to make good on something helpful. It's something I have been trying forgive and forget but they're never going to re-enter my life. They have no interest in it anyway. My dad didn't even want to come in my London house and meet my London friends, despite being parked right outside.

My sister says I should ask if I need help. My parents don't do anything until it's too late: I'll either be dead or in hospital.

That's not emotional blackmail. That's getting rid of some worthless cunts from your life.

I'm absolutely heartbroken that my sister has been taken in by their bullshit. We had been talking about her visiting London and her getting a matching semicolon tattoo.

Fuck life

Tags: #parents #childhood #sister #career #london #suicide #depression

This is a story about telling the truth...

I apologise for the lengthy 87,000 word preamble, but it has been in preparation for the revelation of some really shocking truths.

I'm actually still trying to psych myself up to tell some parts of the story, because I know that I'm going to be burning bridges big time, but I don't feel like they're places I'd want to go back to anyway. Those places need to be shut down with extreme prejudice. Those bridges need to be burnt.

I've effectively had an 'access all areas' back-stage pass to a lot of stuff that the public barely know exists. I've worked on gold bullion vault projects, nuclear submarine projects, cryptographic encryption projects and on the number one projects in the world's biggest banks. I've single handedly produced number one iPhone apps and been invited to speak about what I do at top academic institutions. These are my credentials.

So, I'm puffing myself up, like a blowfish. I'm like the scared cat, with its fur all stood on end and its back arched. I'm like the pompous twat, with his chest pushed out and his fake voice booming out, disturbing everybody's peace and quiet. Am I a narcissist? No, I'm just trying not to be eaten by predators.

Am I trying to make you like me? Do I think I'm likeable? Do I think I'm charming, charismatic? Do I think I'm special? Well, I have done the maths. I'm one of 7 billion people on planet earth and I'm 99.5% genetically identical to every single one of them. So I'm half a percent different from 7,000,000,000, which means I'm roughly the same as 35 million people, statistically speaking.

There are - for arguments sake - about 70 million people in the UK. I've used a higher number than the official figures for convenient maths, and because the government doesn't count the huge number of 'illegal' immigrants who live here. So I represent about half the population of the U.K: 35,000,000. I'm literally 1 in 2. There's a 50:50 chance you might meet another me, here in the UK.

So I'm really Mr Average. There you have it. I'm a straight down the middle regular Joe Bloggs. Anything I can do, you can do too. I'm not special. I'm not unique. I'm not different.

I've done a paper round, just like you. I've done washing up in a pub and a hotel, just like you. I've worked in a shop on a Saturday, just like you. I went to state comprehensive school, just like you. I went to 6th form college, just like you. I did an apprenticeship, just like you. I worked 9 to 5, just like you. I learned a skilled trade, just like you. I had a mortgage, just like you. I had a current account and a savings account, just like you. I used to mow the lawn on a Sunday, just like you. I used to spend a considerable proportion of my income on DIY and home improvements, just like you. I was making a little nest, ready to spawn some clones of myself, just like you.

Only, one day, I threw down my tools and said I'd had enough.

At first, I couldn't actually carry on working even though I wanted to. I had gotten myself a new job, and it was quite exciting, interesting and challenging. I was working with some cool people on a cool project. But for some reason I couldn't get out of bed. Maybe I was lazy? Maybe I was a spoiled brat? Maybe I was too posh and rich, and too arrogant and stuff to be bothered to go to work like everybody else?

Well, as I remember it, I just couldn't take it any more. I broke down. The machine had been pushed beyond its design tolerance, beyond its threshold, beyond its capabilities, beyond its rev limiter, and it had shaken itself to pieces. You should know that at this point, the machine was only powered by food, water, alcohol and caffeine... just like everybody else.

Was I a functional alcoholic? Well, we've explored this already, so I'm not going to go over it again, but let's just say this: I never drank alone. I always drank with colleagues and friends. I always had drinking buddies, and I never drank more than anybody else in my social sphere.

Alcohol is more than a social lubricant though. They say that money is the lubricant for capitalism, but I think that alcohol is the lubricant for capitalism. The more money, the more alcohol. It was limitless. As long as your work got done, nobody cared how pissed you were.

The thing about doing the same job for 19 years is that it gets pretty easy. It gets very monotonous and boring and paint-by-numbers. Even when you're building a banking system to process a quadrillion dollars, it looks like the same 1's and 0's in binary. All computer code looks the same, whether it's launching Tomahawk missiles or processing Credit Default Swaps.

We used to say "nobody dies if our code f**ks up" on the non-mission-critical projects. That's not strictly true though.

When a massive beast like a giant multinational corporation starts to die, rich people get pretty trigger happy. Yes, people are prepared to kill other people in order to protect their dollars. My own parents were prepared to kill me in order to protect their pot of gold, so I've seen it first hand.

The thing you don't realise, when you're watching all that 'free' TV is that you're a TV addict. If you didn't pay for something, then you are the product. Your mind is being sold to the highest bidder. Even when you do pay for something, you might still be being marketed to... you wanna be James Bond, right? Better go and buy that expensive watch you saw him wearing then.

But this conquest of your heart and mind is more subtle than just being sold a product. You are also being sold a lie. You are being told simplistic stories about good vs. evil. You are told stories about cowboy & indians, cops & robbers, earthlings & aliens, superheros & bad guys, black & white. You are being dumbed down. You are being put into a childish mindset.

Barely a few months after this photo was taken, my parents marched into my house, that I bought with my money that I earned, and called me a drug addict. They are total fucking idiots.

One of my earliest memories is waking up in a hospital bed at Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital. There were two scared looking drug addicts, going through withdrawal there looking at me. They had really dumb expressions on their faces. They had no idea what was going on in their drug addled lives. They were my parents, and they had hospitalised me because they're irresponsible cunts.

My parents have not got a clue how hard modern life is. They were gifted the deposit money to get a house, because they had failed to plan properly how to support their child. They needed their parents money, because they were too busy taking drugs and getting fucked up to act responsibly.

Do you know what I'd do if I got a girl pregnant? I'd get a fucking job.

My parents think they're special and different. They think they are entitled to not have to work hard. They think they're entitled to sit in judgement over the world, despite having achieved nothing other than to inflict misery on innocent human lives. Being the child of a pair of junkies is miserable work, I can tell you. It's hard work having to be the responsible one, because you are chaperoning a pair of losers who are too fucked up to put food on the table and a roof over the family's head.

When we come to talk about bail-outs in the coming months. We should remember that my parents had a free University education and they spent their parents money fucking about. They went travelling and had a lovely time swanning around spending other people's money. They sat around taking cocaine and doing jigsaws with their adult friends, rather than taking their kid on an outing. They took me to the pub and left me with alcoholics who worked on the US Air Force base, who told me all about nuclear war. Little boys don't really want to know about nuclear war. It kind of fucks them up.

Yes, I remember this guy Wayne, used to boast all the time about nuclear weapons destroying every living thing on the planet of the Earth. That's a lovely bedtime story for a 3 year old, isn't it? Well done mum & dad. Great parenting. Gold star. Cunts.

So, if I'm against the proliferation of nuclear armamants and I'm a vociferous supporter of nuclear disarmament... that's the reason. We should ban the bomb, because being bombed to shit by nuclear weapons is terrifying for your children. You shouldn't be sitting around taking drugs and getting drunk with your friends. If you give a shit about your kids you should be protesting about the proliferation of nukes.

Yes, my parent's were caught napping. They were asleep on the cunting job. While they were putting flowers in each others hair and taking heroin, magic mushrooms and LSD, snorting loads of cocaine and wandering round in a stoned fucked up daze, alcoholic stupor and generally dribbling like cross-eyed imbeciles, and occasionally spawning an unloved child, the world went to rack & ruin. You total cunts.

My parents never gave a shit about saving for a proper pension. Their parents had been prudent, and had put money into index-linked pensions that provided for a reasonable retirement. My parents plan was to put all their money into drugs and not give two fucks about the future, or even the present. Yes, the present was a pretty miserable time, because if there's one thing we know about drugs, it's that there's a comedown.

My parents like to boast that they were never really addicted. What absolute horse shit. If you have an expensive habit that's damaging to the entire family's health and wealth, to the point where my grandparents had to bail you the fuck out, and buy you a house, then you fucked up, you total addict fucking losers.

My mum still smokes, and has a major alcohol problem. She's self-medicating for anxiety issues. Yes... being a shit parent is supposed to make you anxious. That's called guilt. That thing you're trying to numb... that's your guilty conscience for being a shit parent.

If you don't adjust your lifestyle according to the needs of your dependents, then you're a fucking selfish cunt. If you can't even see what's going on in reality because you're too messed up by all the drink and drug abuse... you are a really sorry messed up individual.

My parents live in a kind of co-dependency, where they support each others warped worldview. The only person who's friends with them is a guy with learning difficulties, and even that is co-dependent. That poor guy is just lonely, and he likes to have a drink... my parents drink with him, because he makes them feel like they're superior. They don't like normal friends, because they remind them that they're alcoholic junkie shit parents who never adjusted their disgusting lifestyle for their kids.

My Dad's really horrible and abusive to my Mum, but she defends him, so it's hard to do anything. It's important to defend somebody's character, but don't defend the indefensible. Don't defend an abuser. Don't defend somebody who gets sent to the supermarket to buy food and comes back with drugs. Don't defend somebody who's supposed to put a roof over the family's heads but can't be bothered because they're too fucked up on drugs.

I'm supposed to support these cunts in their happy retirement, am I? Why?

This is the legacy. This is the lunacy of mortgaging your children in order to pay for your disgusting lifestyle. This is the smoking gun. This is the whodunnit for a generation that got screwed over. This is a pointed finger, that shows where the blame really lies.

So, I'm being disruptive. I'm laying the foundations. I'm laying out my stall. I'm setting out my case. I'm taking on the establishment. I'm taking on the status quo.

I live and work in glass palaces, but I'm going to throw stones, because these places need to be smashed down. People have been kept below glass ceilings for too long. People have been oppressed by a generation who have achieved nothing, for far too long. Widening the rich-poor gap and fucking over your grandchildren's future, through pollution and completely screwing the global economy is nothing to be proud of. You've got no authority and you've got no credentials.

I suggest you start giving away your hoarded wealth as fast as you can, if you want to help your family. Give it away, share, spread the wealth if you want to retain even a fraction of your standard of living.

Soon, it's not going to matter who's got the most. It's going to matter who gave the most, when you are put on trial.

Yes, the newest generations are going to put you on trial for crimes against humanity. You're all as guilty as each other, so the only way to judge people's character is based on their generosity. My parents are tight-fisted cunts.

You're economically enslaving your children. You are chaining them up. You're doing nothing, sitting on that couch watching brain-washing TV and reading rubbish newspapers. Get off your lazy arses you cunts (October 2013)

Tags: #politics #childhood #parents #capitalism #addiction

This is a story about the doors of perception...

So I radically altered my appearance for over a month. I went from being the suit wearing IT Consultant working on the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe (HSBC) to being the crazy suicidal mental patient guy with a moustache and a tattoo. That how I roll [on the floor laughing].

Self sabotage and self mutilation are strange things to do, but then so is suicide. They are symptoms of a very sick society. It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a broken system. There can be no pride or honour in being able to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.

I knew what I was doing. I could have held back. I could have buried my feelings and kept my mouth shut. I could have bitten my tongue. However, things have been eating away inside of me, like acid dissolving the container it's kept in. It was time to vent some toxic gas.

This is all a rather extreme form of bridge burning. I'm really pretty sickened by what global banking and corporate culture is doing to the world and I want to do the right thing. I want to whistleblow on all the life-wrecking and economy destroying corrupt bullshit that I have had to endure.

It's not going to do me any favours, it's not going to make me any friends, it's not going to make me rich, famous or popular, but it has to be done. Somebody has to stand up, be counted, and do the damn right thing. It's going to hurt me, a lot.

Is this some personal grievance? Well I wouldn't be so passionate if it wasn't personal, but it's not personal in the way that you probably assume that it is. I was a Griffin Saver with Midland Bank since I was a little boy, and I've always loved HSBC and I was so proud to start work for them, age 21. Later, in 2003, I was amongst the first 8,000 people to work in the prestigious 8 Canada Square... headquarters of the HSBC Group Plc, which employs 245,000 people worldwide.

If you look after me, I will look after you. Actually I tend to do things the other way around. I will look after you on the assumption that once I have proven to you - beyond all reasonable doubt - that I am adding value to your organisation, you will look after me, to some extent. Sadly, the way the system works is to try and get blood out of the proverbial stone.

Yes, the employees of global banks are driven very hard indeed, but they share so little of the reward, in terms of the wealth that they generate for their masters. The customers of global banking pay huge sums of money for financial services, but it's them who still toil all hours to service their debts, rather than being enriched by the products they are sold.

Consumers are being sold a lie. They are being told that products and services will make them happier, richer, more attractive, more successful. The truth is that the only people who will get rich are those who own and operate the pyramid schemes. There simply aren't enough pay rises and promotions for you to be able to reach the rungs on the ladder where you will be able to see your kids and sleep at night... you're going to be stuck on that treadmill for the rest of your life, sorry.

It's not market economics that is broken. The markets really are efficient. However, they are not free from political influence. They are also not immune from manipulation by exceedingly wealthy individuals and institutions. Here's how it works...

Imagine if I were to buy all the insulin producing factories. Building a factory takes quite a long time. During the time that I own and operate a monopoly on insulin production, and the time that a competitor could enter the market that I have monopolised, the demand for insulin is going to remain constant, because diabetics don't want to die. So, if I am in control of the supply, and I know that demand is constant, then I can demand practically whatever price I want. That's market economics.

We see artificial scarcity created through cartels in many industries. Diamonds are only worth as much as they are on the markets because the De Beers family has such a large monopoly that they can control the amount of diamonds supplied to the market. Oil is only worth as much as it is because the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) can artificially control supply in order to maintain high prices. They are quite open about their monopoly, their cartel.

So you can't eat diamonds or money, but we do need energy. Money is the way that energy is swapped for goods and services, like food. It's easier to grow more food or make more goods, using energy that has been generated from a power station, rather than by manpower. Welcome to the industrial revolution.

Technology has made vast efficiency gains in terms of being able to move money around to get it to where it can work most effectively, but it doesn't mean that the system can't be gamed. In fact the whole financial system is a giant game. We need to remember that it's simply a way of keeping score and deciding who - as a person - is somehow 'worth' more than another, using some arbitrary measure.

That's right isn't it? The people in the West are 'worth' a lot more than the people in the developing world. Because they have more zeros on the end of a computer system that is keeping score, they get to have all the food, shelter, medicine, education, transport etc. and everybody else is a worthless slave. The human lives in the developing world are clearly not worth anything because their electronic bank balance is as good as zero, if not negative.

You can quite clearly see from the image above, who the superior being is. Yes, it's the one with the biggest bank balance in the global casino. They're the winner. Gold medal for them, hurrah!

Actually, huge numbers of people in the developing world have been saddled with debt that they didn't even agree to. Their nation's leaders signed away their natural resources, signed huge loan agreements to pay for some multinational to come and bleed the wealth, and then mortgaged every man, woman and child to pay for it all. That's really not acceptable.

When the people inside that country get a bit p1ssed off that their leaders have sold them down the river, then the developed nations can sell a bunch of guns, tanks, artillery and warplanes to keep their people in check. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Oh, and when the people have really had enough, then it's time to bomb all the roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, power stations, sewerage plants, factories etc. etc. so that they have to have the developed nations come and rebuild it all again using yet more lovely lovely loans.

Yes, economic slavery is the New World Order. Yes, you might not see people in physical chains toiling in the plantations in your actual country, but somebody still has to grow your sugar, wheat, cotton, coffee etc. etc. Did you grow it yourself? Did you see where it was grown? Do you know anything about the life of the people who grew your food?

We're all rather busy in our wanky make-work jobs, feeling all high powered in a suit in a swanky glass & steel office, pressing buttons in the lift and doing the photocopying... great, but how many meals does it put on the table? Has it stopped war and human suffering? Has it stopped the spread of preventable disease? Has it saved the life of sick people?

I'm fed up of being shouted down by people with vested interests. I just wanted to do the right thing at HSBC and I got muscled out for escalating my concerns in line with my moral duty and legal responsibility to the shareholders and customers. I actually wanted to try and save jobs too.

So this is a call to action that is not some viral marketing, psychologically A-B tested, clickbait horseshit spam scam. This is not some pump and dump. This is not me grinding an axe because of a personal grievance. This is about the big picture and a sickness on all our souls, if you are part of the perpetration of the economic enslavement of the developing world.

In actual fact, the wrongdoing extends to your own doorstep. Somebody you know is in distress because of consumer lending. Their life and livelihood is under threat because they were told to borrow, borrow, borrow! Buy now, pay later! 12 months interest free credit! Low rates! Consume consume consume!

The whole ponzi scheme is set up to get people paid out by suckering other people in. Sure, my life looks fantastic with my riverside apartment, and of course I've had cars and boats and luxury holidays and hot tubs and flat screen TVs and Macbooks and iPhones and gadgets and technology galore. It doesn't make you happy, and eventually you realise the human cost. You wake up and smell the coffee.

So, as Nicholas "Mr Ethical" Wilson (@nw_nicholas) says:

I have been radicalised by HSBC/Tory fraud & corruption

Yup, I woke up one day and realised I couldn't carry on being part of something I knew was wrong, from the depths of my experience in my 19 year career as an IT consultant to global banks. It made me very sick to be living with such internal conflict. It made me upset to see talented professionals being completely ignored.

You can't buy me. You can pay for my opinion, but you don't get to choose what my opinion is. I will give you my opinion based on my experience and an objective analysis of all the evidence that I can gather. If you don't like that opinion, it's not up for debate, unless you are qualified to contest what I'm saying.

So my approach is very unorthodox, but the orthodoxy led us to the brink of economic armageddon, so why should I conduct myself in a manner which is clearly misconduct? Only an idiot expects to see different results each time they do the same thing. The only reason to play by the old rules is to protect the old system, but that system has failed.

Thankfully, there are all these motivational posters around HSBC telling you what to do if your manager isn't listening and the number one project is going down the shitter. If you're a consultant, you're specifically paid for your expert opinion... and very highly paid too. Lots and lots of shareholder money is being spent on the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe (HSBC) unsurprisingly.

So, what happens if you do speak up? Well, I'm not giving out any prizes for correct guesses.

But maybe my contribution just wasn't valued? Maybe I wasn't pulling my weight in the team? Maybe I have too much of a high opinion of my expertise?

The email from the HSBC CIO in charge of the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe reads as follows:

"I cannot thank you enough for the work you have put into this and for your commitment"

So, I'm a little bit confused. The Programme Director also told me, in front of loads of people, that he was really happy with my work... shortly before I was sacked. Curious, oh so very curious.

Anyway, I've got no mandate, no authority to communicate these things, so I'm just going to wait and see what happens. Let's see what happens with the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) and whether the US Department of Justice is satisfied with the naughty banks who have managed to allegedly commit crimes but not been prosecuted for them.

Good luck, I say to them. Like I say, I've been a Griffin Saver with Midland Bank/HSBC since I was a little boy. I'm very loyal.

Merry Christmas!

Tags: #banking #career #london #it #capitalism #politics #hsbc

This is a story about burying your head in the sand...

The gravy train has left the station. The party's over. The song has stopped. If you haven't got a place to sit you're out of the game of musical chairs.

The middle classes have been very busy playing musical chairs with their make-work jobs in bloated service industries that contribute nothing to the real economy. Meanwhile, in the real world, climate change and poverty have been largely ignored.

Sadly, a large swathe of older middle class people are very lazy. They sit at home in their big houses, watching TV, reading newspapers and criticising everything, but never lifting a finger to do anything. Many don't even vote or destroy their ballot paper.

Today, at the climate change march held in London, I saw many grandparents who are very concerned about the world that is going to be left for their grandkids. Sadly, my parents have no concern for their children or grandkids. You can't make a difference to the world by sitting around taking drugs, sorry Mum & Dad... the world doesn't work like that.

My parents have sucked a great deal of money out of the state to pay for illnesses relating to their abuse of alcohol, drugs and smoking, but they give so little back. It's really embarrassing. When they were contacted because I was in hospital with a 30% chance of surviving, they decided to wait for the call from the coroner... they decided it wasn't worth the 45 minutes or so to travel from Oxford to London Paddington.

Okay, so I'm not doing a great job of changing the direction of my writing yet. I'm trying to move it from the angry rants into some more positive stuff, and finishing my own story. However, I had to deal with my parents earlier in the week, and I just found it incredible that they would sit there and tell me that London is too far for them to visit a gravely ill son or daughter in hospital. Today I saw many thousands of pensioners who are far older and in much worse health than them, out in the wind & rain, protesting against man made climate change.

My parents live not far from David Cameron's constituency home, and I think that they epitomise the Conservative mindset of out of sight, out of mind. Because these ridiculously selfish people never actually see suffering and pain first hand, they can smugly sit there in their multi-million pound Cotswold houses and do nothing except criticise the victims of the world's cruelty.

That's an injury that was inflicted on me by my own father. He seemed to think that treating his own son like a human was somehow optional, and it was OK to perpetrate an act of savagery against me. I really don't think there could ever be any justification or reasonable explanation for somebody of sound body and mind doing something like that to a person, so I'm not even going to go into the circumstances surrounding it. I'm totally appalled by the way that my parents speak to me and treat me, and the things that they have done to me. I'm over it. They're pretty much dead to me.

There's a simple formula for looking after a human life: be kind. That's it. It's not hard. If you're hitting humans, abusing them, telling them they're bad, calling them names, criticising and undermining them, humiliating them and generally robbing them of self esteem, disrespecting them and treating them like utter shit... yeah, that's not good. That's probably going to fuck them up.

The National Health Service (NHS) was kind to me. After I bandaged up my leg with sanitary towels and a dressing gown cord, I came back to London. The Royal Free Hospital repaired 4 tendons and 2 nerves in my leg, so I could move it and have feeling again. God bless the NHS.

I've always looked after myself and it's ironic that the first time I needed an operation is because my own parent attacked me. My dad has actually had to have a few operations because of his poor lifestyle choices. Drinking and smoking and taking drugs f**ks up your body and it's the NHS who have to pick up the pieces.

It's better to build happy healthy children than to try and fix f**ked up adults. Surely it seems to make more sense to hug your kids and make them feel loved and cherished, to look after them, rather than just dump them on the state? I don't believe in this difficult child horse-shit. Kids respond to their upbringing. Be nice, and your kids will be nice too. It's that simple.

I've been trying to get all of my travelling and entrepreneurial ambitions out of my system, and I know that drug-taking in front of children is a complete no-go. I have even delayed fatherhood while I figure out what's going on with my mental health. I take the responsibility of parenthood very seriously. If you don't alter your lifestyle at all for your children, you're a terrible person.

So my friend Klaus keeps reminding me that "your wound is your gift" and I think he's right. I look at the huge scar on my leg, and I'm reminded just how toxic even my own parents could be, and that I need to be kind and compassionate and work hard for the benefit of humanity. I'm reminded just how irrelevant such terrible people are in my life, in the lives of the ordinary people of the world and in the future of the planet.

Such horrible selfish people need to be outed from their positions as moral authorities, and stopped from gaining any kind of political influence. If you don't have empathy, kindness, compassion... what the hell are you doing having any influence over children and grandchildren? You don't deserve anything more than to sit and rot in your home in lonely misery.

So where is my own empathy, compassion? Well, I'm very beaten down, but when my parents are eventually as weakened and old as the oldest and weakest member of the climate change march that I saw today, then perhaps I will approach them again with the olive branch of peace. Until then, they are far too vicious and cruel and ignorant and horrible to be approached. Let them stew in isolation for fear that their toxic ideas might permeate.

I'm very jealous of friends who have good relationships with their parents. I would like to have a loving, caring family with close ties between us all, but my parents are so toxic that they have poisoned many of the relationships between our family members. They spend a lot of time cultivating their woe betide me tales of their own suffering. Yes, it's called karma. If you drink and smoke and take drugs and treat your kids like shit, then you'll be sick and miserable and you'll deserve it.

Weirdly, I do still love my parents. I guess this recurrent feeling of feeling unconditional love for somebody who treats you like shit could be the basis for a mood disorder. Always trying hard to please a parent, and receiving an unpredictable response dependent on their state of intoxication with drugs or alcohol can create a lot of uncertainty in a child's life. It can shape a personality into one that has issues with boundaries and healthy forms of self-expression.

Communicating my distress via a blog looks like really strange behaviour, but believe me, I've tried all the other ways, and the above scar is my reminder that the result is never good. I had successfully managed to keep my parents at arms length for many years, much to the benefit of my health and happiness, but sadly my ex-wife managed to screw that up with some kind of bullshit story that brought my dad and his heavy-handed aggression, violence and woeful ignorance into play, with disastrous results for me.

When your back is against the wall, when you're cornered, when there is a lynching mob out for your blood, whipped into a frenzy with lies and ignorance... you have to resort to unusual tactics if you want to survive. I'm not really sure if I want to survive. I'm very exhausted by death by a thousand cuts, and everybody wants to put the boot in. However, unfortunately the survival instinct seems to prevail even though I'd love to just curl up and die.

So, I'm lashing out again. Sorry about that. Maybe you shouldn't corner and cruelly torture somebody who has been so badly beaten and bruised. They say that an injured animal is the most dangerous.

I'm trying to redirect my energy into more positive things though. I'm trying to be heard again, not in the hope of saving myself, but in the hope that somebody else who's in a similarly dark place can see that they're not alone. I'm hoping that somebody else who's going through hell might read my story and feel a little bit less alone in the world. I'm hoping that anybody who can relate, feels a little bit less like an unwanted freak.

I'm going to continue on my path of brutal honesty. I'm not out to name & shame anybody. This is my unedited story. There's a lot more to come, and a lot of it is going to be shameful and embarrassing for me, but I'm going to tell it anyway. I'm going to tell it because it needs to be told. People need to know what happens when you bully and abuse somebody. People need to know what happens when you repress and oppress and humiliate and exclude and destroy self-esteem and take away somebody's hope and reason for living.

I also want to try and keep going on a positive path of recovery, and discover if there's a path back to happiness and light. If the story has a message of hope in it that is emerging, that's a good thing. It might help somebody else who's going through hell, and then it was worthwhile me sharing and facing my fears of ridicule and shame.

I'm trying to do good deeds.

You can take the boy out of Oxford, but you can't take the Oxford out of the boy (November 2015)

Tags: #politics #parents #childhood #london #nhs #injury