This is a story about respecting your elders...

Who's the responsible one round here? Who's got to carry the can, at the end of the day? Who's got to live with the consequences of bad decisions, and clean up other people's mess?

There isn't a class war going on. There's a generation war.

The baby boomers drove around in gas-guzzling cars, burnt dolphins to stay warm, dynamited the glaciers, blew up nuclear weapons under the polar ice caps, and generally whizzed around the globe spraying deadly chemicals on everything and saying "FUCK YOU GRANDCHILDREN, HA! HA! HA!".

I remember at school, when I was 10 or 11 years old, me and my friend Ben used to write long rhymes about saving the environment, and read them out at school events. We basically urged a modicum of control over the unmitigated climate disaster we saw all around us.

Growing up in the Thames Valley, huge numbers of my friends were asthmatic. Particulate emissions from internal combustion engines, gathered in the river valley, and in central Oxford the percentage of kids suffering from respiratory conditions was at the highest level in the country.

My friend Ben's parents had responsibly given up smoking for the health of their children, but mine would not listen to my pleas to stop wasting a significant proportion of the family income on something that was destructive to the health of us all. It was selfishness, plain and simple.

I still vividly remember one time when I begged my Dad to stop taking drugs. "Do you expect me to be a boring old fart?" he asked, incredulously. The tragic thing is, that I didn't need him to take drugs to look 'cool'. It was his own insecurity and pathetic attempt to impress young family members like my cousin Sue, that meant that he thought he was some kind of counter-culture hero, just because he took addictive drugs.

My Dad was adamant that I should not get to go to University, nor my sister, even though him and my Mum both enjoyed a free University eduction. My sister and I were both educated in state schools, even though my parents enjoyed the option of private/selective schooling.

My parents had substantial financial help from my grandparents to purchase their first home. No such help has been forthcoming from our parents, and indeed I bought my house without any financial support from my parents, as well as paying for my wedding & honeymoon out of my own pocket. My sister has - as a percentage of her income - possibly been even more financially independent than me.

As kids and adults, my sister and I have certainly been very economical, responsible, mature, in ways that my parents don't even come close to. We've paid our own way in life. We've grafted harder than my parents could possibly imagine.

And for what? So that my parents' generation can tell us that we're profligate, reckless with money, irresponsible, lazy? My parents' generation tell us we should save money for a rainy day, when the pensions that they draw bear no relation to the actual amount of money that they've saved up. The baby boomers are hoping to have hefty final salary pensions that far outstrip the amount of money they've paid into the schemes, to the point of causing a massive black hole in the nation's finances.

The upper-class Victorians used to say "children should be seen and not heard" but those children were reared by wet-nurses, nannies and au pairs, plus all the other servants. If you don't have servants to rear your children, you don't get to say such obnoxious things, because you're the only person in your child's life.

Infant mortality used to be very high, so ordinary Victorians cherished their children. Having a healthy child was a blessing, and something to be celebrated. There wasn't this strange culture of worshipping people with old-fashioned ideas, who sat idle for 30, 40 years, just criticising everything. Yes, we'd all like to retire and just sit around in our favourite chair reading shit newspapers and being mean to everybody, but the retirement age was always supposed to be just 1 year more than the average life expectancy.

Our economy is structured around the 'grey pound'. After the banks, the most powerful institutions in the country are the pension funds. These massive piles of money, managed by asset managers and institutional investors, for the benefit of their pension-drawing clients, decide everything about how this country is run. When we talk about things being run for the benefit of shareholders, those shareholders are mostly pension funds.

If anybody ever says to me "what have you given back to your parents?" or  "be grateful your parents gave you the gift of life" I'm going to struggle not to scream in their face with rage.

My whole life has been generating value for shareholders. Every penny and pound of profit that I have generated for my masters has gone into dividends and higher stock prices, to inflate the asset value of a pension fund somewhere. My whole life has been toiling to allow the baby boomers to have a life of idle luxury, not that they're fucking grateful.

But you know what? Things have gone way too far.

The older generation has fucked up the environment, fucked up the economy and demanded that young people suffer austerity, University tuition fees, job insecurity, wage stagnation, eye-watering rent, impossibly over-inflated house prices and listen to a sneering arrogant bunch of lazy grey-haired cunts telling them they're lazy and stupid the whole fucking time.

They say you should be nice to your kids because they'll choose your nursing home. Damn fucking straight, but you don't get to have 20 years of idle luxury before you go so damn senile that you have to be put in a home, so that your hard-pressed children can continue working all hours to pay for your profligacy, laziness and arrogance.

Yes, it's true that a huge proportion of wealth has been diverted into the hands of a few eye-wateringly rich families. However, WHO THE FUCK WAS ASLEEP ON THE JOB WHEN THAT HAPPENED?

Why the hell is it me who has to go on political marches, to demand that wealth is more fairly redistributed? My parents were too busy sat on their fucking arse taking drugs and reading books and newspapers to actually get off their lazy backsides and engage in the political process, for the good of the country and the good of us kids and grandkids.

Don't pretend like voting to leave the EU is somehow in the best interests of the country and future generations. One lazy pencil cross in a box doesn't make up for the idle years spent enjoying a free University education, job security, high pay, reckless drug taking, low cost of living, great housing, foreign holidays, new cars, superb pension and lots and lots of disposable income. YOU HAD IT FUCKING EASY, YOU STUPID OLD CUNTS.

As you can tell, this is a fairly calm and measured response to being sold down the river, and having my future destroyed by a bunch of people who won't be around to suffer the global warming and economic depression.

Literally, almost everybody I know my age or younger suffers from depression and/or anxiety. What a legacy!

We used to sing "he's got the whole world in his hands" but where is your fucking God now?

Tags: #parents #childhood #oxford #family #politics #capitalism

This is a story about being a Francophile...

Vive la République! Having lived, worked and briefly been to school in France, I feel adequately placed to talk about some of the pros and cons of a different way of life that we aspire to.

Firstly, monarchy. I'm actually in favour of keeping the Royal Family. They're a great draw for tourists, and they give the UK a brilliant national identity. I like having the Royal Mail, Royal Mint and companies that are by Royal Appointment to various members of the aristocracy. Just as the USA has the stars and stripes, we have the Royal Crest and the Queen's head on everything. It's good branding.

The French might have cut off the heads of their aristocrats, but they still go nuts for all that royal shit. The palace of Versailles is still referred to as the Royal palace. The French still celebrate Bastille Day as if the monarchy were very much still in power: they ascribe a significance to royalty as if they had never actually become a republic.

What disadvantages do we have, remaining under divine rule? I can walk in the Royal Parks, enjoy looking at Buckingham Palace and seeing the changing of the guard, as well as all the other pomp and circumstance that accompanies the ceremonial head of state. It's better to sing God Save the Queen than some awful national anthem dreamt up by a committee, with its trite attempts to be inclusive.

Ok, so what about being a backwards agricultural nation of peasants, rednecks? Well, it's nice for a relaxing holiday. It's nice that the whole of France stops and downs tools for a proper lunch. It's nice there's still village life, with a butcher, a baker, a plumber, an electrician, a joiner and a builder, who are the mainstay of village life, under the Máire - the mayor - and people live a fairly old-fashioned life, where people shop locally and family life is at the centre of everything, along with good food & wine.

This is where I'm slightly divided. In the UK we have an 'always on' culture, where I can get 4G mobile broadband everywhere I go, and I'm constantly plugged into email, Twitter, Facebook. I eat my lunch at my keyboard and get crumbs from my sandwich all over my laptop. Village life in the UK has been destroyed as the commuter belts have moved further and further out into every pretty village with a railway station, within a few hours of London.

Sure, France has its cities, but over 50% of their working population work for the Government, and the spread of population density isn't quite as extreme as the UK, where the South-East is getting somewhat ridiculous, as London draws everything into its financial-services centric orbit.

While we're on the subject of financial services, would I rather be like France, which has had a relatively conservative approach to consumer debt and exotic financial instruments, or be like the UK where we're about as highly leveraged as we can possibly get? Well, apart from a few high profile cases like Société Générale, the French weathered la craque - the credit crunch - far better than the UK, which only survived because of the bailouts.

Basically, the UK is propped up on very shaky foundations. There is no underlying quality of life in the UK. Everything's on hire purchase, interest free credit, and the promise of work now, be rich later... screw spending time with your family or having anything other than work in your life.

Those who hanker after some kind of yesteryear could do worse than moving to France. However, you need to remember that a lot is lost in translation. Even with the best colloquial French, you're still not going to understand a lot of jokes, and pick up on the cultural subtleties. You're going to end up clustering together with ex-pats, swapping tea bags, Marmite and Heinz baked beans, and pining for England.

Certainly, if you have kids that have not been raised from birth in a bilingual environment, you're denying them the chance to really bond with their peers and get the most out of their education, and enjoy their childhood. They're always going to feel different. They're always going to be an outsider.

Gone are the years when France had significantly cheaper housing and cost of living. Gone are the days of cheaper food and fuel. Gone are the days of rustic farmhouse charm. Good riddance I say. Chopping firewood and fetching your water from the well, putting sawdust on your excrement in a freezing outhouse and burying your waste in the back yard... these are things that silly children like to do, because it's an adventure. It's not a way of life that we should aspire to.

Living without TV, Internet and high quality daily newspapers - ignoring current affairs and global issues - it's dumb. Just because France still manages to maintain a certain rustic charm and village idyll, doesn't mean that it's any way realistic in our globalised world.

In a way, the anti-EU sentiment stems from a history of mocking the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, who live some kind of hick outdated life. But there's also jealousy there. Wouldn't we dearly like to be as true to ourselves as the French?... protesting about every threat to our way of life, and insisting that our lingua franca is enshrined? The French are often unashamedly right wing and open about the divisions in their society. When we think of the Frenchman, we are likely to think of a farmer, rather than a Parisian, and hasn't our own culture been regrettably diluted by immigration, in a way that hasn't in France?

We look at the camps in Calais, and wonder why people don't just seek asylum there. Isn't France a safe country? There must be something desirable in our own country, but really, what we are saying is that we'd prefer it if people were just passing through the UK, rather than coming to settle. We'd rather be like France, where we have shipped our immigrants out to suburbs, camps, ghettos.

For me, a vote to remain in the EU is a vote of solidarity with Europe and with France. I want the UK to be more like France, and I want France to be more like the UK. I want to feel equally at home anywhere in Europe. I don't like these ridiculous notions of rolling back the clock to some unattainable yesteryear state, where we live in idyllic little villages and roll in the hay during an eternal summer.

For me the vote to leave the EU - Brexit - is clearly driven by this enemy at the gates idea that is epitomised in the Calais camps.

Frankly, I find the idea of building barriers between us and our nearest neighbour, most distasteful. Frankly I find the idea of rejecting our European identity to be complete madness, even if there is something emotionally appealing in the Union Jack and Her Majesty The Queen.

I feel a lot happier being a son of Europe than just a subject of The Queen. I like telling people I'm a European, just as a citizen of the United States of America would tell you that they're an American. I like the idea that I could live and work anywhere in Europe with no visa or work permit considerations.

Vive la France!

Tags: #politics #childhood #france #europe

This is a story about dirty tricks...

The Government and affluent Londoners have completely misread the public mood. There is a complete disjoint between the media, politics, and the concerns and struggles of the general population.

Youth unemployment, ballooning student debt, a lower minumum wage for people aged 18 to 24, unaffordable house prices, ridiculous cost of living... these things don't just affect young people, but also their parents. Parents are waking up to the fact that their kids aren't lazy & stupid, but in fact millennials are far better behaved than any previous generation. You just have to look at falling alcohol consumption, smoking and teenage pregnancy rates, to see that today's young people are far more responsible than their parents and grandparents ever were.

Meanwhile, there's a population bubble that is coming up to retirement age and hoping to collect a final salary pension - an income that is not at all linked to how much they have paid in and asset values - that is causing a massive deficit that nobody is talking about.

Everybody's dug into their trenches.

Students quite rightly demand the same standard of education that their parents received, but must get themselves tens of thousands of pounds into debt, and there isn't even the guarantee of a good job at the end of an expensive education.

Pensioners quite rightly demand the same retirement age as their parents, but are going to live much longer, healthier, lives in their retirement, and expect to continue an extremely high standard of living: 3 foreign holidays a year, new cars and large empty houses, with expensive luxury kitchens & bathrooms, lavishly decorated.

Parents quite rightly expect their kids to move out, live independently, get married, have some grandkids. But that's not going to happen unless parents share some of their wealth, and many parents are already worried about whether they have enough money to maintain their high standard of living. So, the reality is kids never leave home, never become financially independent, are never able to escape the demeanment of being dependent on their parents.

Driving this drop in living standards is the fact that the West has been exporting its inflation for years. The postwar boom years were achieved by abandoning the gold standard and printing money. The only way that the value of the Pound, Dollar, Euro and Yen have been propped up is by an agreement called Bretton Woods, which defined a basket of so-called "hard" currencies.

Now, the people of the developing nations are demanding payback. These people have worked far harder and saved far more money, than the arrogant West. These people are quite rightly dissatisfied with being economically enslaved by a culture that broadcasts its profligacy to the world. If Hollywood is to be believed, we all live in mansions, drive supercars, fly helicopters and know the President of the United States of America, personally.

People want everything they were promised, but reality is a real let-down.

Even in London, where the streets are paved with gold, we live in tiny damp flats, with paper-thin walls where you can hear every little noise your neighbours make and the din from passing traffic is incessant. We are like sweaty sardines on a dangerously overcrowded public transportation network, working the longest hours in Europe, in the hope of affording some ludicrously overpriced piece of real estate. Pollution and crime is all around us. Yet, we are high-brow Guardian newspaper readers, who deign to patronise the ordinary working people outside the M25.

Nobody in the provinces gives a shit about a few malnourished brown people. They just want the cushy life their parents had: with a free University education, a seat on an uncrowded train, a 9 to 5 job that has a big enough salary for one parent to work, buy a house, pay the bills and raise some kids. However, that dream is never going to come to fruition.

People have been disengaged with politics for years. The disillusionment with the instruments that maintain the status quo, has reached crisis point. The wealthy elite have been too greedy for too long, and they have completely misread the public mood, the will of the people.

We're going to have problems when even the middle classes become squeezed, because their kids are a massive drain on their finances. The middle classes are the ones who still wield some political clout, and can even become somewhat radicalised.

Finger-pointing at immigrants will fool some simple-minded folks who didn't pay attention at school and who fail to see the spine-chilling parallels with the rise of far-right fascism in 1930s and 1940s Europe. However, it's only going to buy a very small amount of time, before the UK descends into all out chaos and destruction.

While one generation goes on strike, to demand that their final salary pensions aren't touched, and the protection of jobs that have become unnecessary due to technological advancements, another generation will have their lives made ever more miserable. Young people have to suffer train strikes, on services that are already overcrowded and cost a significant proportion of their income, in order to get to a job where they're paid less simply because they're young, and their money disappears into the black hole of the pensions deficit, with no hope of ever owning a home and having the luxury of going on strike themselves, for fear of losing their job.

We are being turned against one another, and against minority groups like immigrants and Muslims, when the real culprits for our suffering are the public-schooled wealthy elite, who become career politicians and rule over us. The real culprits are those who take out more than they've paid in. The real culprits are those who expect us to work harder than they would work themselves.

The enemy here is inequality, not immigration. The thing that we should be correcting is the rich:poor divide, not dismantling the safety net of social welfare, and blaming people who suffer long-term disability, or immigrants.

We have been manipulated by the media and politicians into voting against our self-interests. We have elected politicians who have massively increased national debt, while at the same time making people more insecure in their jobs, less financially well-off.

Now, the politically inactive class have become radicalised, in voting for right-wing policies, and for relinquishing politically progressive ideals, which had given us greater protection for ordinary working people.

A vote to leave the EU is further playing into the hands of wealthy property owners, who want to see the clock rolled back to a time when there were no labour unions, worker rights and there was no job security or opportunity to better yourself. Brexit is vote to increase the power of a bunch of Eton-educated toffs, who have never done a hard day's work in their lives.

Yes, things need to change, and things need to change quickly, if we are not going to suffer a terrible rebellion by a hard-pressed working public, that could sweep away most of the advancements that our society has made, at great expense.

However, reversing the result of a referendum that was already held once before, is not the way forward. The House of Commons should be just that: representative of the common person. Getting rid of EU gravy-trainers simply hands more power to the wealthy elite, who have presided over a shameful decline in the British public's standard of living, for far too long.

Voting Brexit sends completely the wrong message to the elite, and to nasty bigots, like UKIP's Nigel Farage. Voting Brexit emboldens those who wish to divide and rule us.

Tags: #politics #capitalism

This is a story about jobs for the boys...

Do you feel like you earn your salary? What is it that makes you think you're worth your wages? How do you value your contribution?

If you work a physical job, you're likely to feel pretty exhausted at the end of the day. Maybe your feet hurt, your back, your muscles. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how much energy you've expended. Perhaps your job involves standing up, walking around, even running around. Perhaps your job involves lifting, stacking, moving, shifting. Can your value therefore be considered a function of how many things you physically move? For example: boxes of stuff from the storeroom, products on shelves, patients from beds, or children from perilous situations.

Maybe you work an academic job, or something you have to be highly qualified for. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how hard you worked in the past. You maybe had to really concentrate at school and do all your homework. Perhaps you had to go to University and at least turn up for some of the lectures. You're probably pretty pleased with yourself that you beat the competition to those limited places, and got the necessary grades. Can your value be considered a function of how stressful your exams were, and how hard it was to write your disseration, your thesis?

Maybe you work a high pressure job, something you really have to concentrate on. Perhaps you have no time to judge your day, because you're just so busy that you don't have time to think about it. You maybe have to take sales calls all day long to meet your targets. You're always talking to people. Or maybe you have to watch a computer screen all day, like a stock-market trader or an air-traffic controller. Can your value be considered a function of your ability to concentrate, and keep busy with the task in hand for the whole working day?

Maybe you work a caring job, or something that delivers service directly to people. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how many people you deliver satisfactory outcomes for. Perhaps you have had to work on a caring bedside manner. Perhaps you have had to develop diplomatic skills for dealing with people. Can your value be considered to be a function of how many smiles you get each day, how many thank yous?

Maybe you work a repetitive job, or something that requires very little problem solving. Perhaps you have plenty of time to think and it's quite clear what needs to be done, but there are only a limited number of hours in the day. Perhaps you enter data in spreadsheets. Perhaps you type the answers that are written down on forms. Perhaps you work on a factory production line. Perhaps you deliver widgets. Can your value be considered a function of how many of these repetitive functions you can perform in a fixed period of time? Do you take pride in the tiny efficiency gains you can make in a job that has been easily mastered?

Maybe your job is to educate, inform, inspire, entertain. Your job is to titillate the attentions of other people. Your job is to spoon feed culture to the masses. Perhaps you had wide-eyed ambitions about bringing song and dance to the people. Perhaps you thought you were going to be a war journalist. Perhaps you thought you were going to set the minds of young people alight. Can your value be considered a function of your reach, your influence? Do you know how many followers you have? How many viewers? How many readers? How many listeners?

But what happens when your purpose is cloudy, unclear? What happens when you can't see what difference you're making, either to other people or to yourself?

Why do you do what you do? Is it possible to work a job, just because it puts food on the table and shoes on the children? Is it possible to work a job just because?

Everybody needs to work, right? But what if your job is makework? What if your job is made up, just to justify the salary of your manager, who has to have a certain headcount in order to get their promotion? What if your whole industry can't justify its existence? What if everything that your company does, and companies like it, is completely superfluous to human existence?

What do we need? Food, water, shelter, warmth, social bonds. Where does insurance fit in that world? Where does a law firm fit? Where does a bank fit? Where do technology companies fit?

If you woke up tomorrow, and your company didn't exist, and neither did any of its competitors, would the human race keel over and die? If you work for an agricultural business, then quite possibly. We need grains, we need vegetables. If you work for an accountancy firm, I think we'll all be just fine.

I've got nothing against the people who work in the service sector per se but should we value those industries more than, say, fishing, farming, building & caring?

Do you think I give a shit about the protection of intellectual property rights of a wealthy corporation? Do you think that I respect the instruments of capitalism as an efficient means to do more with less?

Fundamentally, how many people are living miserably? We might point to increases in life expectancy as an indicator of progress, but what if those lives are filled with stress, anxiety, depression? What if those lives are miserable and isolated, unfulfilled, unhappy?

Official statistics say that more than 1 in 4 of us are battling mental health problems. In truth, the real number must be much higher, because there are so many people who have undiagnosed problems. We know from suicide rates and prescriptions of psychiatric medications - such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs - that problems are growing at an alarming rate.

There's a direct correlation between my lack of job satisfaction, and my poor mental health. When I've been happy in my job, I've been overworked. When I've stopped to think about what I've been doing, I've realised that I've been building systems that perpetuate human misery.

It's said that for every 1% that unemployment increases, over 40,000 people will commit suicide. I built a system for JPMorgan that processed the equivalent of $163,000 for every man, woman and child on the planet, in Credit Default Swaps. You think that money is better off locked up in the banking system rather than being in people's pockets?

If I'm building banking systems that process $37 million a second, why the hell are people living in poverty? Why the hell has the National Health Service got to be left underfunded? Why the hell is science underfunded? Why the hell have I got to work a crappy job that I hate, in order to make thousands of people redundant?

Rational self-interest, and the philosophy of Ayn Rand has led us down a very dark path. It's actually in our rational self-interest to smash the systems that take us on a race to the bottom.

Perhaps it's time to throw our clogs into the loom?

You think that you want an A-list celebrity life, with all the trimmings and bling. However, collectively wanting this is leading us all down a path that makes humanity miserable, depressed, stressed, anxious, lonely and isolated.

Tags: #depression #mentalhealth #suicide #career #banking #capitalism

This is a story about reproduction...

A flower is the sexual organ of a plant. A bunch of flowers is a bunch of genitals. They're a lot prettier than a man's meat & two veg though, admittedly.

Apparently, sending a picture of your manhood to the object of your affections is an accepted part of the new modern courtship ritual. A friend once told me she thought it was basically the same as "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" except completely unsolicited. I shudder to think what it must be like for girls on Tinder and Snapchat.

I guess I'm almost an ultra-conservative. I actually aspire to have a relatively old-fashioned relationship. I think gender roles are not actually a bad thing. The expectation for women to carry the unborn infant, give birth and be the primary caregiver, whilst also being expected to take the lead in maintaining domestic bliss, and have a career to boot, is too much to ask of somebody. Whore in the bedroom, chef in the kitchen, maid in the home, nanny to the kids and power-dressing bosswoman.

Men like to feel useful, needed, but frankly, once you've ponied up half a teaspoonful of baby batter, in order to impregnate somebody, your job's pretty much done in this society where women do it all. Is it any wonder that it's acceptable for men to be the butt of so many jokes: we're truly the weaker sex.

I feel like I might have offended a couple of my friends who are parents, with my bitter rants at my own parents. There's been plenty of times that I've written about the neurology of parenthood - the endorphins that are released in order to bond parent with child - and it has perhaps seemed like I've been attacking the 'magic' of parenthood by reducing it to its chemical nuts and bolts.

Believe me, I'm a sensation seeker, and just about the only thing left on my bucket list is to know what it's like to become a parent. I'd love to be so reckless and irresponsible as to just take a wild leap into the unknown, on the assumption that everything would be just fine. "You'll find a way" people say, and "there's never a right time".

Yes, that's right, there's never a right time. I've been thinking about population growth, and how much faster the human population has grown than anybody would have ever predicted. 60 years ago, the population was predicted to have grown to 3 billion by the year 2000. In actual fact, the population was over double that.

We now have over 7 billion mouths to feed on planet Earth. Not only that, but we all want to drive our little darlings around in gas-guzzling cars, have a pet doggie, take the whole family away on exotic holidays and fill our homes with cheap goods manufactured in the Far East. Something doesn't add up.

We talk about economic austerity, but the reality is much, much worse. The standard of living that we've all enjoyed, needs to take a massive nosedive, but nobody wants to hear it.

I desperately want to have some kids of my own, and a pet dog, and probably a cat too. I desperately want to return to the jet-set lifestyle I enjoyed a few years ago. I want to buy another car, another speedboat. However, just recycling a few bottles and buying a Toyota Prius is not going to offset the global impact of these selfish choices.

If there's one thing I know about experts, it's that they're usually conservative in their estimates. If the weatherman says to prepare for a gale, you should get ready for a hurricane. If the population experts say that the world population is going to be over 9 billion in 2050, we should assume that it's going to be 12 billion. If climate scientists say that global temperatures are going to increase by 2 degrees centigrade, we should assume they're going to increase by 4 degrees. If tide gauges show that sea levels have risen by a foot, we should expect them to rise another two feet in the coming years.

We have a culture where we're encouraged to think of our little nuclear families as little fortresses. We have double-locked front doors, and fences round our gardens. Our homes are our castles, and we view the world as vicious place, full of paedophiles, rapists, robbers and other things that are "out to get us". We are not only individually selfish - thinking about the immediate gratification of our reproduction and nurturing instincts - but we are collectively selfish, in that we put the needs of our family ahead of the needs of our species.

Yes, you're damn right, I would love to be a dad and to have a best friend in the form of a dog. I'm sure nothing could be more fulfilling than the feeling of adoration from the animals I feed. Many scientific studies have proven that it's nice to feel like the alpha, the leader of the pack, and nothing epitomises that more than the domestication of dogs. Dogs are pack animals, so they are genetically predisposed towards seeking approval of the 'alpha'.

However, dogs and babies are polluting. Disposable nappies are convenient, but make up a huge component of landfill. It's said that if an alien race were to come to Earth in a couple of hundred years time, when we've all died, they'll assume that we were a civilisation of incontinent midgets, because the mountains of nappies will still not have biodegraded.

I certainly wouldn't want to raise a kid without modern parenting aids. I certainly don't hanker for the days where we all died prematurely of preventable diseases and of starvation when the crops failed. However, where is the responsibility?

Dog ownership is the very pinnacle of irresponsibility. These are predatory carnivores. The meat we need to keep them means that huge swathes of arable land is used to grow animal feed, in order to keep our pets fed. Nobody can argue that keeping these animals as pets is a good use of finite resources. Having a dog is more polluting than having a car.

City living is responsible living: where we are entertained by culture rather than wiping up snot and vomit and spawning more mouths to feed. Where we are able to move around using mass transit systems that only work where there are economies of scale. Where we are able to be fed in massive refectories. We can have vast variety of food with relatively little wastage, because the population is so dense. Where the distances we have to travel are far less, because we build upwards, not outwards.

Yes, I feel unfulfilled, not having a nurturing outlet. I'd love to have some kids, a dog, a house in the country. However, it's irresponsible.

Just doing what your parents did, what other people do... that's sheep-like behaviour. Saying "well they did it too" is no defence, when you know you're acting recklessly, irresponsibly. We have birth control, we have planned parenthood, we know the problems we face as a species, as a planet. Do you want your kids and grandkids to starve to death on an infertile, polluted and inhospitable Earth?

Tags: #politics #climate

This is a story about the mistakes you're making and why your life is shit...

Good news! I hope you're taking notes, because I'm an expert in your life and how you should live it.

Although I hardly know you, or maybe I don't know you at all, I'm sure that I can judge you, and tell you everything that you're doing wrong. I have no idea about your history, what it was like for you growing up, what stresses and strains uniquely affect you, and what if feels like to be you. However, I feel completely qualified to be able to tell you how you should be living your life, and where you're failing.

Even though I'm not furnished with a complete and comprehensive knowledge of all areas of life, I feel that my advice is completely correct and is pricelessly valuable, even in areas that I know nothing about. I'm completely certain that I could do a better job than you at things that I've never done, even though I've never done them and have no idea what it's like to be in your situation. However, I feel sure that if you just follow my advice to the letter, it will work, although I can offer no evidence to back up this assertion.

Are you with me so far?

Even though all my past relationships have ended disastrously, I'm sure that I can tell you how to get along better with your partner, and have a closer and more loving and rewarding relationship with your other half.

Even though I've never been a parent, I'm sure it can't be that hard, and you're just doing it wrong. I'm sure it's probably pretty simple and you just need some really simple, obvious, patronising advice, in order to get it out of your head that it's exhausting and a struggle. I'm sure that you'll be able to see beyond the complexity in your own life, and with my help, you'll be able to adopt my simplistic worldview that is not based on an objective reality.

Even though I have nearly been bankrupt a couple of times, have recently struggled with debt and cashflow, and my career path has gotten increasingly erratic of late, I feel sure that I'm the best placed person to tell you how to get ahead in your job, get that promotion and achieve greater job satisfaction than ever before, even though I'm not happy in my own work and have instead decided to tell other people how to get something that I've never managed to get myself.

Even though I don't eat healthily, exercise enough and I engage in various activities that are potentially damaging to my body and mind, I feel sure that I am uniquely qualified to tell you what you should and shouldn't put in your mouth, and that you're fat and lazy. I'm quite comfortable with telling people to do as I say, not as I do, and I do not suffer with an ounce of self-doubt, despite the palpable irony.

Even though my sanity is clearly in question, and I have a chequered past of mental health issues, including many episodes of depression, overspending, risk taking and other pathological behaviour, I feel sure that advising other people will prop up my own sense of security and distract me from my own failings, as some form of over-compensation for the fact that my life is clearly a fuckup. By concentrating on the negative things in your life, we can gloss over the glaring problems in my life.

You should consider yourself lucky that I have decided to be your life coach, whether you wanted my advice or not. Probably not. No, you definitely didn't want my unsolicited advice, but you're getting it anyway, because of the aforementioned need to distract myself from the problems in my own life.

Look at the view from my balcony. LOOK AT IT. This is in no way me overcompensating for a crippling lack of self-esteem. I want you to think of me as successful and happy, even though I am clearly burning cash in order to maintain an outward image of having my shit together. THIS IS FOR ME ONLY. You need to stay living in your shitty place in the middle of nowhere with the view that looks right into your neighbour's windows, or onto an industrial wasteland, in order for me to feel superior, and us to maintain the superior-inferior relationship that allows me to inflate my fragile ego at your expense.

You should know that I earn a lot of money, and have almost but not quite been successful, hence writing this, but all the same you should treat me as if I was successful. The fact that successful people aren't the ones writing the self-help books, because they're too busy snorting pure cocaine off the tits of supermodels on their yachts in the Cote d'Azur, should not at all affect your misplaced respect for what I have to say.

Fundamentally, anything that's wrong with your life is your fault. You made bad choices in life and you need to blame yourself and feel guilty. Guilt and regret are the basis for the feeling you need to have that you're somehow inferior to me. You need to think of yourself as fallible and stupid, and think of me as someone who's never made the same mistakes as you.

Please imagine my life as being like this: I never made stupid, bad choices in my life, and that's why my life is perfect and I love it and it's amazing. You listen to me because my life is blemish free and I've never fucked up, and I'm so happy and fulfilled and what I'm doing with myself is so rewarding, and I've got everything I've ever wanted. You just have to try to be just like this too, and if you're not it's your fault for choosing not to be, and it must be because you're a bad person and you want bad stuff to happen.

Are you with me so far?

Ok, so think of something you're not happy with in your life. Got it? Right, the next part is going to blow your mind. All you've got to do, is decide that it's not going to be a problem anymore. I want you to think of me as not having any problems, because I decided not to have any. Because having problems in your life is due to your poor choices. You decided to have problems in your life, and all you've got to do is decide not to have them anymore. Problem solved.

Hurrah! I bet you're feeling better already. If you're not, it's because you've decided to be unhappy, and you're a bad person. Perhaps you're too stupid and lazy to decide not to have any problems, and just have a perfect life, like I want you to imagine that I do.

Are you getting it? If not, here are some passive-aggressive words on a pretty photo, in order to further hammer home just how stupid and shit you are:

Feel free to share that as much as you like on your Facebook wall, to make other people think that you're living a successful happy life, looking down on other people and that people should respect you as some kind of lifestyle guru. You should also feel a smug sense of satisfaction, that you have shared some useful nugget of information that will be transformative in the lives of others. Give yourself a pat on the back and go to bed tonight with a warm fuzzy glow inside.

Anyway, back to oversimplifying the complexity of your life and making you feel inadequate and a failure, so that I can pump up my own floundering ego...

So, have you hugged a dolphin today? Why not? You're neglecting your duty as a strong eco-warrior nature guardian woodland pixie member of the human global eco planet mesh network system synergy community tribe consortium of mega-love and self respect, by neglecting your duties to humanity and dolphinkind.

I know you have to get up at dawn to make packed lunches and hose down the vomit and snot from every surface of your home that's overbrimming with broken toys and childrearing equipment, neglected exercise aids and jam-smeared expensive trinketry that reminds you that your formerly ordered adult life has now been smashed to shit by the arrival of your unruly offspring. However, you're failing your children unless you set aside 3 hours a day for tribal chanting and other archaic rituals that serve no obvious purpose.

If you're struggling to juggle the demands of the school run, after school activities, getting nutritious food into the mouths of your picky eating kids, making sure your little darlings have a well-rounded childhood, including lots of social time with their friends as well as healthy wholesome outdoor playing and limiting their 'screen time' to a ridiculously unattainable number of dictated minutes. Just remember this: it's because you're a bad person. You made bad choices and it's all your fault.

If you ever need to know where you went wrong, look at my imagined version of my life that I project, through telling other people where they went wrong with their lives and pretending that my own is perfect, and you'll have all the more reason to loathe yourself and feel guilty and a failure. Just remember the handy phrase: "this is all my fault. I made bad choices and it's all my responsibility. I just have to choose to not have this complexity and these problems and then my life will be perfect. If my life is less than perfect, I have failed".

You should repeat some variation of the "I have failed" mantra to yourself, until you are sufficiently demotivated, depressed, overwhelmed and lacking in self-esteem, to get off your fat, lazy, unhealthy, selfish backside and choose to not have the problems which exist because of your choices and because you're a bad person, you monster.

Basically, you should assume that I'm a better person, and that I spend my life swanning around from amazing experience to amazing experience, and that you could have an amazing life too, except you are holding yourself back. You are denying you and your family the life that they deserve, with all this 'reality' bullshit, where you insist on including elements from your life that are complex and don't fit my fake worldview. Damn you to hell for insisting on living in reality, with all its wrinkles and niggles and imperfections... it's your fault, not mine! You should choose to live in the fantasy land that I imagine exists.

Any deviation from the oversimplified fantasy that I portray is all your fault and down to bad choices that you made.

Try to imagine me living the most perfect life you can imagine, without any of the stresses and complexities that you face in your everyday life. Now, try to imagine that your own history, circumstances and reality are completely controlled by the decision to allow or not allow reality to be real. In this fantasy world that I desperately want to be real, in order to compensate for my own failed life, the problems then disappear. Your failure to make all the problems disappear is a problem with your faith and commitment, not with my barking mad interpretation of reality as we all experience it.

I hope you're keeping up with this, because otherwise you're letting yourself down, you're letting your family down, and you're letting humanity down.

You're practically getting in the sea and raping dolphins, if you don't subscribe to this prescription for a perfect life that nobody has yet lived, but yet I preach with absolute confidence as an infallible template for bringing yourself happiness and contentment.

The evidence is that attempting to apply these unrealistic and impossible ideas to your day-to-day existence will only result in a sense of inadequacy and failure, and believing that people are better and less fallible than yourself and blaming yourself for things, will only lead you to feel depressed. However, try to put evidence from your mind, and just concentrate on the guilt.

Guilt is good. Please use it to help me avoid my own sense of failure, by listening to every word I say and sharing my motivational passive-aggressive images on social media to create a culture of comparison to an unattainable standard of living and an unrealistic set of guidelines for living a perfect life, which conforms to what we wish to be true rather than what can be objectively be observed to be the limitations that we must work with.

If your life is shit, listen to the failure who knows nothing about your life and the harsh reality that you face.

Ride your bike in the green and wild places. Don't just take photos to put on your stupid blog to make people feel like they're lazy and shit for wasting their pathetic lives with the mundane complexity of everyday life.

Tags: #depression #mentalhealth #career #london

This is a story about addictive personalities...

We all know what the root cause of addiction is, don't we? It's taking drugs. It's the chemicals that cause addiction, by getting their 'hooks' into us. We get hooked by these chemicals, and we're then going to be a filthy addict, until the day we die, right? Wrong.

Nobody would think that a sex addict injects prostitutes and pornographic DVDs. Nobody would think that a gambling addict would inject a pack of cards or casino chips. Nobody would think that an 'adrenalin junkie' would inject a snowboard or a mountain bike. Clearly, there's something else that's going on, apart from the chemicals that we put into our bodies.

In fact, none of us can survive without a whole chemical cocktail, of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and proteins. We put myriad chemicals into our bodies every day, and if we don't we are in some way deficient. I don't just mean in our diet that we consider 'food'.

Your morning cup of coffee is not food. If you were to have it black, with no milk or creamer, without any sugar, then you would find it very bitter. Espressos are very small. There is probably negligible calorific value in black coffee, so why would you drink it?

Similarly with tea, which is an infusion, very little nutritional value has passed from the tea leaves into the hot water. There is some value in drinking the water, but you'd be more hydrated if you just had it in unadulterated form.

Why do we put milk, creamer and sugar in our tea & coffee? To make it taste nicer. Why would you want to drink something that doesn't have any nutritional value, is less hydrating than water, doesn't taste very nice and needs something in it to mask the taste? Answer: because you have been habituated into drinking it.

Habituation is not the same as addiction.

I gave up all caffeine, and it was an incredibly hard thing to do. Once I had gotten over the headaches, I then had to suffer cognitive impairment, sluggishness, and tiredness. Then came the cravings. I used to fantasise about having hot drinks or an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

The combination of caffeine and sugar is certainly a nice thing to get habituated to, unlike cigarette smoking, and the chemical hooks definitely play a part in both - nicotine and caffeine - but it's the habituation that is the hard thing to break.

Are you bored? Have a cup of tea or coffee, or smoke a cigarette. Are you anxious? Have a cup of tea or coffee, or smoke a cigarette. Are you waiting around for somebody? Have a cup of tea or coffee, or smoke a cigarette. Are you trying to concentrate on some work? Have a cup of tea or coffee, or smoke a cigarette. Are you travelling somewhere? Have a cup of tea or coffee, or smoke a cigarette.

The habit-forming things that we do become the punctuation in our life. Our dirty little habits become a measure of time. We get through our days with a remarkably similar amount of cups of tea or coffee, diet cokes and cigarettes. We know we've had a super stressful day when we've ripped through a packet of smokes. We know we've had a super boring day when our bladder is full of tea. We know we were super exhausted, when we load up on coffee.

What about downers, sedatives, relaxants? Well, we need those to calm down from all those stimulants that get us through the day. If you've loaded up on caffeine - which is identical to amphetamine in the brain - then you're going to be full of nervous energy, and could even potentially suffer from insomnia if you've been having it late in the day.

Eventually though, you'll become tolerant of both your chosen uppers and your chosen downers. These habit-forming things will be woven seamlessly into your daily routine. Coffee with breakfast, tea breaks throughout the day, can of cola with your lunch, and wine, beer and spirits to relax after work.

All these things cost money and have either negligible nutritional value, or are actually bad for your health, so why don't you just quit? Well, you'll find it very hard to do if you try. You might think to yourself "there was that one time where I didn't have any coffee, so I can give up anytime I want" but actually, caffeine is everywhere in your life, and you're unwittingly topping yourself up, at least every couple of days. You probably didn't count the coffee you had after dinner at that restaurant at the weekend, or the can of cola that you had when you were out shopping.

Gamblers are notoriously bad at only remembering their wins, and forgetting about their losses. If you ask a gambler whether they've made money or lost money, over the course of the years they've been betting, they'll probably tell you they're "up" overall. This is nonsense. The more you play, the more you're down: it's a statistical inevitability. In much the same way, people just aren't able to admit to themselves how many cups of tea and coffee, cans of cola and cigarettes they consume. They have no idea how habituated they are.

But, is this addiction? No, it is not.

Addiction is the point where something becomes detrimental to your life but you're unable to stop. It's true that 50% of smokers will die as a result of complications associated with their habit, but at any one time, only a small percentage of smokers will actually be in immediate danger of dying of cancer, heart disease and other smoking-related diseases. It's easy - in the short term - to say that the bad stuff hasn't yet happened.

Most smokers, drinkers and consumers of caffeinated beverages, don't steal to support their habits. They are holding down jobs and providing for their families, even if they're spending a proportion of their income on their poisons. In this way, they're not actually addicts.

When we look at 'adrenalin junkies', many of them actually have toned and athletic physiques from a healthy outdoors lifestyle. What could be further from the life of a heroin junkie, who is pale and emaciated, than a surfer with their tanned and muscular body? A surfer wants to look after their body, because it provides the power to catch waves. An injecting heroin addict's body is ravaged by abscesses and collapsed veins, as the suffering individual places higher importance on intoxication, than on preserving their health.

So, language is failing to capture what exactly addiction really is. Loving your family or your pet is not an addiction. Enjoying sex is not an addiction. Playing poker is not an addiction. Being passionate about a hobby is not an addiction. Even drinking tea, coffee and smoking cigarettes is hard to call an addiction, until you develop a problem where you can't afford your habit or you have actually developed a disease.

I was once asked in rehab, where I was recovering from a binge on benzodiazepines and stimulants - whether I thought I was an addict. I replied that I didn't think I was an addict. I was going cold turkey from a horrible cocktail of about 5 different drugs, all of which I had paid for with money I had earned in my job. I had paid for the rehab out of money which I had saved up. When I got cleaned up, I went back to work as if nothing had happened. No lasting health damage. Nothing to suggest I had ever come off the rails.

It's stigma and ostracisation that creates 'addicts' in the conventional sense. For most people who struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism, we label them and make life extra hard for them to get ahead, get back on their feet. We put extra stresses and strains on them that other people don't have to face. We demonise and scapegoat them.

We are always asking how to free people from the chemicals; how to release them from the 'hooks', but we're asking the wrong questions. We should be asking what's so awful about a person's life that theft, prosititution and terrible health consequences are a preferable fate to whatever crappy alternative is seemingly offered.

Are there alternatives? We say that people should clean up, get a job, and live like 'normal' people. You mean the 'normal' people who drink poisonous bitter liquids in order to quench their thirst for something with no nutritious value? You mean the 'normal' people who inhale toxic smoke? You mean the 'normal' people who imbibe fermented fruit and grains in order to become intoxicated? Who the hell are these people to judge others who are merely less fortunate than them?

Would you employ an addict? Would you let them look after your kids, your money? No, I didn't think so. You've been indoctrinated into this culture of demonisation, where we're looking for convenient scapegoats, whether it's immigrants, blacks, Jews, the poor, the mentally ill, the sick or the needy. It's playground politics, where we pick on the weakest members of society, nothing more, nothing less.

My employers would shit a brick if they found out that I'd recently had my struggles with substance abuse, despite 30+ years of squeaky clean living. It doesn't seem to matter that I don't smoke, I don't take drugs, I quit boozing for the best part of 4 months. It doesn't seem to matter that I can start and stop at will. Nobody seems to take the blindest bit of notice of the obvious difference between me and a 'filthy junkie': it's the fact that I have opportunities that meant I was able to quit cold turkey and resume my normal life.

If I was to become labelled, and hamstrung by stigma, then I would without doubt just give up and while away my days in an intoxicated state. What would you do if you weren't able to get a job because you were no fixed abode, and the truthful answer to the question "what have you been doing with yourself recently?" was "getting ridiculously fucked up"? Try saying that at a job interview and see how it goes down.

I'm risking my entire career, my prospects, my future, by writing this so publicly, but why should I continue to prosper from my advantages when so many people are crushed underfoot for no more reason than because they're more honest and less fortunate?

What have I learned from my little trip to the bottom? I learned this: we're all the same under the skin. We all respond the same to stress, misfortune and every external circumstance that is beyond our control. Do people choose to get addicted to drugs? Only as much as they choose the colour of their skin, or the wealth and privilege of the family they're born into.

You'd probably choke on this giant pill. You wouldn't die because of the chemicals.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #homeless #career #caffeine

This is a story about my secret diary...

Now that my friends have responded so brilliantly to my distress, I feel quite bad. I feel like I've taken up people's time, worried them and been self-absorbed. However, I guess that's partly because I now see light at the end of the tunnel, so I feel less panicked and in danger of something pushing me over the edge, back into suicidal thoughts.

I was thinking to myself about my motivation for writing so much private and personal stuff. The fact is, I want people to like me. I want to feel understood, and that people can empathise with me.

Where do we draw the line between somebody with dangerously low self esteem, and somebody who is egotistical and self-centred? I centred in on one particular phrase:

"I think people like me"

Why should that be so controversial? Well, in lots of literature that deals with psychology, thinking of yourself as likeable is linked to pathological conditions, like narcissism. From things I've read, I'm actually supposed to think of myself as unlikeable, or else I'm a narcissist, I'm dangerously self centred and egotistical.

But, if you think you're unlikeable, worthless, not worth knowing, then this is the basis for low self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts. If you think that nobody likes you, then the world would be better off without you. We all consume a great deal of precious resources - food, energy - so why should I stick around wasting oxygen if I'm somehow unlikeable? This is how I arrive at the decision to kill myself.

Clearly there's a contradiction here. We're telling people not to like themselves and not to feel liked or loved, or else they're some kind of horribly self obsessed, preening egotistical narcissist. However, without feeling like you have some value in other people's lives, you think that you might as well be dead.

I look at the precocious children, the ones who were loved and popular, showered with praise from all quarters... the ones who had their egos polished every day... the ones whose parents told them that they were special, talented... the ones who felt loveable, and as if the world was interested in their talents and ideas. I look at those children, and instead of feeling envy, I simply see the glow, the smile, the cotton wool that surrounds them, and I think that it's a good thing.

Life is going to be brutal. How do we even know we're alive, unless there is sadness to help us appreciate the happiness? Without darkness, we could never appreciate the light. However, it makes no sense to me to add extra shit to the life of a child. Why tell them they're a bad person, worthless, selfish and stupid? The world is going to do that for their entire adult life. For god's sake let them have a childhood.

So, I've grown up with this ridiculous idea of 'original sin'. I've learned to feel guilty about feeling happy. I've learned to feel guilty when luck goes my way. I've learned to feel guilty when somebody shows me love or affection. I've learned to feel guilty for craving friendship, companionship. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting any kind of external validation that I'm alive. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting to feel that there's a reason for living.

Nothing crystallises the issue quite like selfies and Facebook/Instagram. Do you have friends who post endless pictures of themselves up on their social media accounts? What do you think about them?

For pretty girls, they must get an ego boost, putting on their selfie pout and photographing themselves, with lots of 'likes' from horny boys. But surely things can be a little more innocent than that, or even mask deep-seated psychological issues.

Parents like to see photos of their kids. Families like to see photos of their relatives. Friends like to see photos of their friends. With the collapse of local communities, the geographical scattering of families, the decline of villages, clans & tribes... we need photo and video services to have any social bonds over these unnatural distances. Human evolution hasn't caught up with the automobile, the train, the boat and the airplane yet.

Equally, we know that glossy magazines, advertising and hollywood, paint a picture of perfect glamour. The most attractive people on the planet are paraded in front of our eyes, throughout our waking hours. How can we avoid comparing them with ourselves, and feeling inadequate?

We just don't measure up, and we feel ugly. We dislike our mis-shapen noses, sticky out ears and unruly hair. We look in the mirror at our spots and birthmarks, our pockmarked skin, our crooked stained teeth, and we know we can never measure up to the airbrushed beauties who are shoved in our faces.

For me, selfie culture is like grass-roots activism. Publishing directly onto the web takes away all the power and control that the newspapers and book publishers have, and allows anybody to become a writer. Putting pictures of yourself onto Facebook and Instagram allows anybody to become a glamour model, a famous face. It's reclaiming your sense of self-worth, from powerful media forces that parade unrealistic body images in front of us.

I've obviously wrestled with the idea that only rich, famous and powerful people are allowed to publish memoirs and biographies. Who would want to read about the life of a thirtysomething white middle-class IT consultant who went to state school and doesn't know any celebrities? Who would want to read about the very ordinary trials and tribulations of trying not to run out of money, getting a job and finding a place to live?

Am I supposed to feel guilty about the fact that I've been clamouring for my friends, and strangers from the Internet, to engage with me and give me even the tiniest indications that I'm being heard? Should I feel bad, when I admit that it's had a profound psychological effect, having a flurry of people 'like' my content on Facebook and Twitter, and getting a load of comments on Reddit and in the comments section below?

I'm not coercing people to continue to read, and to give me more 'likes'. I kinda feel like writing this has achieved what I wanted, which was to feel noticed. When you're struggling with suicidal thoughts, a big component is that nobody seems to care whether you live or die. The more you wail in distress and get ignored, the more it reaffirms your belief that the world would be better off without you.

I had a big response when I told people I was in hospital, and that was super nice, but I've been wary of spamming Facebook. People are often accused of being attention seeking, when they share shocking stuff on Facebook. Is that fair, if they're genuinely in danger of committing suicide?

To be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the UK is not easy. You don't just turn up and say you need to be 'committed'. The number of places in hospital are very limited, and "care in the community" is always the preferred option. I had 4 or 5 section assessments, but I've never been 'sectioned'. It's really rare to have your liberty taken away, and be put into a secure facility for the protection of yourself and others.

My point is, that if mental health professionals thought that it was safest if I was admitted to hospital, then my life was in very real danger, and I have independent confirmation that I'm not just an attention whore. Surely it's OK to reach out to the world and say "I don't feel good. I feel alone. I feel unloved, unliked. I don't feel like I have any value. I feel worthless" no matter how you do that?

Personally, I think we should be paying attention to the drama queens, attention whores and people who seem self-obsessed. In actual fact, they probably have very fragile mental health, and are desperately trying to connect with the world and feel that they have some self-worth.

I'm not going to feel guilty about posting the occasional selfie.

I drew a big cock & balls on the beach, and nobody told me to "stop showing off" but I did hear those words in my head.

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

This is a story about how to lose friends and alienate people...

It's remarkable what we assume, and what we're unaware of. It's remarkable how our opinions can be coloured, and prejudices triggered, which completely change our impression of a person, and the way we treat them.

I had declared myself as "fighting mental health stigma" but in actual fact, things like Clinical Depression are so damn commonplace that nobody bats an eyelid if you say you're taking powerful psychiatric medication to stop you from killing yourself. In actual fact, I get more criticism for being medication free and letting my brain achieve its own homeostasis.

When I moved back to London, one of my oldest friends was incredibly sweet and understanding about the fact that I was struggling with my mental health. He took time out to read a bit about what Bipolar Disorder was, and was actively concerned with my wellbeing.

My friends are always playing catch up. By the time I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression, I was already having hypomanic episodes that were beyond the 'healthy' and 'normal' range of moods. Spending copious amounts of money, working ridiculously long hours, hypersexuality, risk taking... these things are not conducive to good health, wealth and stable relationships.

By the time I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, I was already trying various forms of self medication. Depressions had gotten so severe that suicide was a very real risk, and hypomania had reached the point where I was starting to get delusions of grandeur, and was at risk of getting into money problems.

By the time I got free from the horrible relationship that was stoking my mood disorder, substance abuse was a big threat. When my divorce sapped my energy and sucked me back into the nightmarish world that I was trying to escape, I gave up and just decided to be a total junkie.

By the time I got cleaned up and back on my feet, word had been spread by my unpleasant family, that I was somehow untrustworthy, a waste of space, a lost cause.

So, I'm pre-empting all of that. This is a pre-emptive strike. I'm telling the world my very worst things, so everybody can get all that prejudice out of the way. I'm putting my worst foot forward.

I'm still here.

My friends and family are still stuck in the position of trying to deal with their prejudice, even though I've already moved on. I'm dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts, while people think I'm probably scoring heroin on a street corner and injecting drugs in some crack den.

This 'lag' is extremely annoying. It means I have to deal with a shocked silence. It means I'm isolated, alone, with people who should know me better, thinking terrible things about me. The culture of fear that we've grown up in is powerful, and all those images that the media has put into your mind are suddenly applied to me... it wouldn't surprise me if my own family has imagined me stealing car stereos or mugging grannies.

There's a lag with me too. It messes with your mind, being homeless one minute, and then working for a massive bank on a really important project, all dressed up in your suit with people giving a shit about your opinion.

How can you go from being the lowest of the low, to the point where there are people who actually think that death's too good for you, to suddenly one of the highest paid people in one of the world's most profitable enterprises, because the market value for your skills and experience is so high?

Is it any wonder that it messes with your mind? Is it any wonder that your brain doesn't know whether you're a worthless piece of shit, and the world would be better off if you were dead, or if actually you deserve a 6-figure salary, and people are telling you that what you're doing is really important and you're a key figure in the delivery of a super important project. How are you supposed to reconcile that?

Just saying that I should remain "grounded" is ridiculous. I have no frame of reference. I have no evidence to suggest that any possible conclusion I could reach would be the right one. Everything that my experience has taught me has been counter-intuitive.

Working hard, being humble, keeping my head down has gotten me nowhere. It hasn't led to greater happiness, more stable mental health, nor has it repaired damaged friendships and improved my relationship with my family.

Equally, taking reckless risks with my health & wealth has brought surprising results. Instead of being dead or destitute, I actually ended up making a fantastic group of friends, as a result of winding up homeless on Hampstead Heath, just after my birthday in 2014. In actual fact, being chucked onto the street by Camden Council ushered in one of the happiest periods of my life in many recent years, probably since I was in Cambridge in 2011.

I don't see any of what I've done as wrong. I've not resorted to lying, cheating, stealing. I've not screwed people over, manipulated them or in any way committed any offensive act against anybody.

However, people seem to take it very personally, when I apparently screw up my opportunities. One of my closest friends was absolutely besides himself when I lost my contract one Christmas. He thought I had deliberately sabotaged it. He was angry that I had seemingly chucked away a golden opportunity.

Things aren't so clear-cut. I'm rarely in a fit state to work. Either I'm suffering from depression, hypomania, or the exhaustion and cognitive impairment of recovery from stimulant abuse. I just don't have the time and money to properly prepare my mind and body for work, so my colleagues and bosses get a rather fucked up version of me, with all the weird highs and lows associated with an extreme mood disorder.

It's not a moral choice, whether I work, whether I relapse, whether I just collapse in a heap and don't do anything.

I know that people like to judge, and I've given away so much ammunition that it's really easy to think you know my character, my morality. I'm very easy to label, to criticise, and to apply your prejudices to.

I'm fed up of feeling guilty, just because people are shocked and unable to see beyond their prejudice and preconceived notions. I'm fed up of having to carry the can for a load of blame and scapegoating that doesn't even apply to me.

In some ways, I'm tempted to rob, to steal, to lie, to cheat... I'm being treated as if I do those things already. If I'm already 'the bad guy' then I guess I should act the part?

People are more sympathetic to mental health problems like depression and bipolar than they are to substance abuse, even though the latter can be a feature of both of the former. I think the problem is the fact that people try and view it as a moral issue

Tags: #depression #bipolar #suicide #homeless #career #banking #friends #family

This is a story about seeking attention...

How many likes can I get? How many times will my content be shared? How many Twitter and Instagram followers do I have? It's easy to transfer an 'addictive personality' into the world of social media, although it's obviously a lot more physically healthy than drinking, smoking or drugging yourself to death.

I've actually been pushing people away. I've been writing the most gruesome gory details about my life, in an attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff. Who will disown me? Who will recoil in horror? Who will judge me and decide to distance themselves from me? It's a test.

But what is it about people who are seeking external validation? Why am I driven to reach for something outside of myself to feel a connection with the world, a reason for living? Clearly there's something missing in my life. I'm incomplete.

How long have I been bleating on about my distress for? Surely I should have rectified things by now? What about those lengthy periods where I was making things worse not better?

Well, what actually happened is that I was barely coping before Christmas, and I was perhaps being a bit un-subtle. I mean, I only spent a week in a locked psychiatric ward of a hospital. I only travelled 5,351 miles in order to make a point about how suicidal I was feeling. They were things that could clearly be misinterpreted. I mean, Christ, even my own sister thought I was having a jolly holiday.

Anyway, that's something you should know about me: when I reach the end of my rope, I don't run away from danger, I run towards it.

Why should I be risk-averse and act in some predictable way, when cold hard rational sums tell me that there's no way that things can get any better? If you're mentally unwell, completely unable to work and you've got no financial security, you're looking at bankruptcy and living on the streets. Bankruptcy means no more being a company director and an IT consultant working in banking, which is almost all I know in my career of nearly 20 years. Why on earth wouldn't I go out in a blaze of glory?

Loss of status is a big deal. I've lost my wife, loads of friends, my house, my cars, my boats... all that material shite that you don't really need, but is a hell of a millstone around your neck. Just getting rid of heaps of shite is stressful. I've only just emptied my self storage unit, but I needed it, as it's the only way that a homeless person can at least keep a few valuable things safe.

"What do you do?" is the middle-class dinner party cliché question. What do I do? Well, my family's impression is that I'm on a jolly fucking holiday/drug binge. Actually, if people were to extrapolate from the breadcrumbs that I've given them, they'd have to assume that I'm either dead, in hospital, or sleeping rough on the streets. How do you think I survive from day to day? How do you think I pay my bills and avoid addiction? The truth is, you don't really know, which means you don't care.

Perhaps I live in an airport terminal, like Tom Hanks in that movie? Perhaps I'm on benefits... how else would I survive for over 6 months with no income?

The fact is, that the only window you have into my life is what I tell you in this blog, and it doesn't make for pretty reading. According to my sister, my mum did try phoning a few London hospitals, when I said that I needed to be admitted because I was suicidal. Too little too late, I have to say.

Yes, this is an aggressive angry lecture, but it's also a goodbye in a way. Either it's goodbye because it's good riddance, or it's goodbye because I've reached the limit of what I can stand. Rebuilding my life is a major challenge, and I'm tired. I'm exhausted by being nickel & dimed, strung along, and let down by people.

What struck me was the interviews with the people who knew the suicide victims, when I watched the film The Bridge, which is about people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. What was most striking were the people who said that they got used to the person saying how unhappy they were, before they took their own life.

I have a friend who lost another friend to suicide, and he 'gets it': the fact that you don't get to influence the outcome anymore after somebody is gone. He realises that the time to act is now. Hand wringing and mumbling "but what shall we do?" to yourself in lame procrastination is just pathetic.

There's an arse-covering culture, and we are sure to give ourselves loads of excuses, most of which are victim-blaming. "I blame the drugs" or "he drank too much" or "he never told us what he needed until it was too late" look pretty silly when a person makes a big effort to try and show themselves as worthy.

You would have thought that 115 days abstinent from alcohol or 6 months abstinent from drugs would be applauded, but instead there is hostility that you're not more normal, that you're not suddenly the world's best son, brother, uncle, friend... whatever.

Abstinence is bullshit. Once an addict, always an addict, seems to be the bullshit attitude of people.

Quitting substances is meaningless anyway. It just proves that I have far more willpower than many people will ever know in their lives. Abstinence is just a lifetime penance for other people's guilt. Yes, I do want a fucking medal for what I've been through. Yes, I do want a fucking parade. Not a lot of people come back from the horrors of the war on drugs, and I'm a fucking veteran.

There's a clear frustration here, an impatience. That's because sobriety is not recovery. I've managed lengthy periods of abstinence - like the first 30+ years of my motherfucking life - and yet, it somehow isn't a life: breathing fresh air. We need food, shelter and social contact. In modern society, we need clothes and money too, which means we need a job. I've tried the fresh air only thing... it leads to starvation.

Currently I'm socially starved. It might seem unhealthy and strange to have this attachment to writing, and use it as a means to reach out to the world, but I'm so fearful of more knockbacks, more rejection. I feel enough rejection as it is, given that my family know how much distress and danger I'm in, but roundly ignore it.

You've got to ask yourself, do you really want a person to survive, to thrive, or do you just want them to shut up and die?

Maybe I live on a fucking train. Choo! Choo! You must be fucking loco.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #career #drugs #addiction #homeless