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

This is a story about the seasons...

I'm not just a city slicker. I'm actually reasonably tuned in to nature. I have studied weather patterns and the seasons. I have studied tides and rivers. I'm pretty adept at spotting patterns, and I can be a good data scientist to prove it.

Tomorrow - Sunday - I'm going on a climate march in the capital of the UK, London. It will be the first ever political march I have ever taken part in. That's pretty shocking. I have been remiss in my duty as a citizen in keeping UK politics honest. I've been one of the silent 76%. I will be writing about the reasons for why I was so quiet during the last General Election in later blog posts.

I had the pleasure of taking a plane ride home chatting to a couple of millennials a couple of years ago, and oh my God do they work hard. They wanted to go to University, but they quite rightly saw it as a huge privilege to go, and were exceptionally grateful for the opportunity. They laughed at the idea of spending a precious penny of education money on frivolities like partying. They gawped at the idea that the baby boomers paid no tuition fees, got grants and had plenty of money for drugs, drinking and smoking.

Yes, there is a huge generation gap. One generation got to drive around in gas guzzling cars and have heaps of foreign holidays where they travelled all over the globe by jet aircraft. That generation guzzled all the profits, the equity of the nation.

Baby boomers have bankrupted the UK with an unsustainable pensions model based on passive asset management. These lazy people were asleep on the job... never attending any shareholder meetings, while blue chip companies paid huge salaries and bonuses to lazy executives, and the massive enterprises were asset stripped in order to keep paying dividends into pension funds that were managed for short term growth.

The next round of asset stripping is now taking place, with round after round of redundancies, with all the jobs going offshore to China and India, plus the multinationals are restructuring to make sure they hardly pay a penny in corporation tax.

This won't work. We are expecting the millennials to prop up the pension funds, like a ponzi scheme, but we are getting rid of their jobs at the same time. How are they supposed to work to support the baby boomers in their retirement, if the same baby boomers have offshored all the jobs? There won't be any tax receipts either, because everybody will be either retired or unemployed and the multinational corporations won't be paying a penny in tax to the UK.

We are governed - politically and in our jobs - using a top-down approach. A pyramid scheme. The problem with that model is that if the guys at the top are total psychopaths, megalomaniacs, myopic losers... then the whole world is screwed.

The only antidote is grass-roots activism. The power of the unions was destroyed by the Tories, but we thankfully still have the right to peacefully protest about our lives and planet being destroyed by greedy fat cats.

I don't really care whether you believe man made climate change is real or not. If you want to deny the existence of the overwhelming body of evidence that shows that things are probably way worse than we could possibly imagine... get to the back of the queue for the water tap when the drought hits. Why don't you move to the edge of the Sahara... that'd be lovely and warm for you?

Yes, why don't we do that? Instead of taxing a tiny bit more for people who drive polluting vehicles, why don't we suggest that them and their family are therefore put lower down the priority list for assistance, when climate catastrophe hits. When there's a flash-flood, wildfire or a hurricane, you'll be last to be saved. How's about that?

If you're putting yourself first and ignoring the wellbeing of humanity and the planet, that seems fair, doesn't it? If you're so busy watching TV and reading crappy newspapers that print lies and pandering to your spoilt children and teaching them the same ignorant crap that you've bought into, I don't see why you and your lot shouldn't drown in the rising sea levels that you've caused.

We are a nation of sailors in the UK, and we are an island nation with the 2nd biggest tides in the world. The English Channel is one of the windiest places on the planet. Also, the UK is only able to enjoy its mild climate because of the anomaly of the Gulf Stream. The sea might look tranquil at times, but it can rage and storm and smash everything to bits too.

If you are a sailor you must master the state of the sea (waves) the tides and the wind, which can gust and squall out of nowhere. You have to look at the clouds and the surface of the water to see what's happening in the invisible currents of the air. You have to look at any points of reference on any land that you can see to guess what's happening in the invisible currents of the sea. The tide can carry you far faster than the wind sometimes.

It's a similar thing with the planet. You have to get way up a mountain or look from the basket of a balloon or the window of an aeroplane, in order to gauge the state of the climate. If you can see melted glaciers, dry river beds, empty lakes, dust bowls, deserts... the planet might be trying to tell you something.

Everything might feel OK in your double or even triple glazed house with air conditioning and other refinements that are designed to shut nature out and maintain a degree of microclimate control. Everything might feel OK in your air-conditioned car with tinted windows. Believe me, things are not OK.

The oil/energy industry is bigger than you can possibly comprehend. Their lobbying power is immense. They have bought politicians and media outlets around the world. They have controlled almost everything that is printed and has been broadcast, for a very long time. It's only with the advent of technology like the Internet that these monopolies are being eroded, and honest people are allowed to be heard for once.

You see that hole in the cloud cover, which is like a lovely dappled blanket over most of the area you can see? That hole is caused by a power station. Its heat output has actually vaporised the cloud cover above it. That means that not only the energy output of the power station is being pumped into our greenhouse, but also less of the sun's energy is being reflected back into space.

Can you  see how nice and white the clouds are, when you look down on them from an aeroplane? That's because the sun's energy is bouncing back into space. Clouds are fantastic at keeping the planet cool.

You know what isn't good for keeping the planet cool? Water. Yes, as a sailor you learn about something called sea breeze. This is wind that is created because land heats and cools very rapidly, but water absorbs and stores the sun's energy. That means that when the land starts to cool when the sun goes down, you get a big rush of warm air out at sea, back towards cold land. You always get a nice on-shore breeze in the evening during the summer.

Imagine if much more of your planet is covered by water, and much less by snow and ice (which is white, so reflects sunlight) and you have way less cloud cover because the temperature is raised so high that water droplets are not forming. Imagine if what little land that remains has been covered by power stations, roads, airports, offices and houses, which pump out huge amounts of energy. Imagine that.

What I think would happen would be very extreme weather. Cataclysmic storms, bush fires, mudslides, expansion of the deserts, inhospitable temperatures, flash flooding. Yeah... pretty much what we're seeing.

The oil/energy men will say that it's not true. They won't refute it with good science. They'll just say it's not true, and tell you to keep buying their plastic crap and driving around in your gas guzzling car and having heaps of foreign holidays in aeroplanes.

Yes, it's true that I flew all the way to San Francisco to have my photo taken at the Golden Gate Bridge. It sounds like I'm the ultimate hypocrite. However, it wasn't a holiday. I was going to kill myself.

That's right, I have reached the point where I can no longer stand what I see in the world. I can no longer bear wars being fought in my name, people being oppressed in my name, the planet being destroyed in my name. Politicians need to stop using me - their citizen - as an excuse to perpetrate war and suffering.

There is talk of austerity. How's about this? We don't bomb Syria. I will take a 'cut' in the amount of bombs that I buy. I don't want to buy any bombs at all, let alone have them dropped on anybody's head. Zero bombs for me, please. That goes for bullets and shells too. Yes no bullets for anybody's guns and no shells for anybody's tanks and artillery. I don't want any. None, zero, zip, nada... I don't want any. Not for me no. Never.

So, I'm a member of the majority of people in the UK. I'm one of the 76% of people who didn't vote for the Tories. That means that no war should be waged in my name by an unelected minority. Unelected? Yes... 76% of people in the UK don't want the Tories.

So, don't let these unelected wankers, these Eton toffs, these psychopathic warmongering twats... don't let them commit war crimes and global destruction in your name. You didn't vote for these awful awful people. We need to get out into the streets and let the arrogant little shits know that we won't put up with their awful policies.

The Tories will try and bolster their power to subvert and oppress the UK citizens. They will try and keep the police and the armed forces on side with flag-waving nationalism and warmongering, plus ostracising the poor and underprivileged. They will try to divide and rule. It's so painfully obvious that they have all studied the 'success' of the Falklands war and the growth of the City and financial services, in terms of Tory popularity. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that they caused the recession and the Poll Tax Riots.

Please remember that I'm promoting civilised nonviolent protest. No vandalism, no abuse and please be mindful that the police are just doing their job, and doing it in really tough circumstances. We do need law and order. We just don't need the kinds of laws that the Tories would really like to sneak through Parliament using their plutocracy.

I think the Queen and the House of Lords are actually doing a reasonable job of keeping a muzzle on the dangerous dog that is the Tory party. I was reading today about what a bunch of bullies and psychopaths are at the very heart of a party that will gladly drive people to suicide to further their political agenda. These dangerous megalomaniacs need to be treated with the contempt that they deserve.

So I know that many people are turned off by politics and probably will not have even read as far down as this. I will try and dumb things down for people and keep my political message coated in sugar and generally hidden from sight, like peas hidden in mashed potato to get a fussy child to eat some green vegetables. I'm sorry that's a little patronising, but you're letting the country and the planet get ruined by people who are political... but they're horrible.

I seriously recommend that you get some people who are nice and honest and caring, into the political system. All the psychos are really making the whole nation, the whole planet, very sick indeed.

That is all.

It's time to make the call to action right now. Christmas is going to be a big distraction, but when the credit card bills start hitting people's doormats in January, the suicide rate is going to soar. It's also going to be a bitterly cold winter because of climate change (October 2015)

Tags: #politics #suicide #mentalhealth #civildisobedience #notanonymous

This is a story about my best friend...

The first 10 years of my life were pretty lonely. Then along came my best friend in the whole world.

Naturally, my parents were harshly critical of me for not being some male nanny, perfect parent type figure. I was, strangely, more of a brother to my sister. That was a disappointment to them. They thought that having more children meant more free time to get drunk and take drugs.

Anyway, let's ignore my parents. They were very much of the Victorian mindset that children should be not seen and not heard. Maybe it would have been better if children were not born, but I'm very glad that my sister was. Having a sister is the reason why I'm clinging onto life with my fingernails.

Having a 10 year age gap is a bit strange, but I think it's kinda got advantages. My parents can't be bothered to imagine how hard it is being a young person today, and they get a particularly warped view because I was always very independent and a high-earner from the age of 17. Sadly, the opportunities for the majority of young people are rather bleak.

Yes, the challenges faced by me and my sister in day to day life are really chalk and cheese. While I battle with my mental health, in order to be able to work, my sister also has to battle a highly competitive job market and low pay. While I have to ensure that I earn enough during my hypomania in order to survive during my depression, my sister has to stretch her budget beyond any feasible limit.

Yes, our parents generation really screwed things up, and life is very hard for my sister. I went through a horrible divorce that nearly killed me, but that was due to a single vicious and mean person who had not a care in the world for human life, and couldn't act with a single shred of decency. My sister not only has to deal with a horrible divorce, but her rent & bills as a proportion of her income are totally unmanageable. That's not her fault. She works 6 days a week.

So, tomorrow, during the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, tax credits and other benefits are going to be cut. People like my sister are going to be horribly affected, and there's no way she could possibly work any harder to fix her own finances. She rents a very modest property for her & my niece, she works 6 days a week, she's very dedicated to her job, there are no better paid jobs... she is being shafted by politicians and society.

As a working mum, who did nothing wrong and is doing everything right, why should she have even more financial woe and stress heaped on top of her? She's working her arse off but she is being destroyed through exhaustion and stress, by a government that just doesn't care about the wellbeing of its citizens.

The net result is pretty much what the Tories want. My parents will have to work for longer and have less money in retirement, in order to support their daughter and granddaughter, despite the fact that they've worked hard all their life and their daughter is already working 6 days a week. That's bullshit.

Our family has not racked up huge debts buying crap. Our family has saved money and bought property and done all the things we were supposed to do. We've played by the rules of society, and my parents and sister have ended up diddled by the system. They paid in, with their income tax and their national insurance and their council tax... they're not acting like they're entitled.

My parents just want to have their pension. My sister just wants to work. My niece just wants to be a toddler. It's outrageous that my parents' pension goes to pay my sister's bills. My sister's 6-day-a-week job is not enough to pay for her bills. My niece hardly gets to see my sister because she's working so hard. Is that the kind of society you want, Tories?

Throughout Britain we see examples of how people are being asked to fend for themselves. While the richest members of society contribute a pittance of their net wealth, so many are having to dip into their life savings, their pensions, just to survive. I actually phoned JPMorgan's pension scheme administrator to ask if I could have any money released for hospital treatment I desperately needed, when Camden council bungled my case yet again.

I've managed to limp through and get myself to the point where I have survived an ordeal that would have killed most people. However, I had to borrow money to do that. Why am I borrowing money to pay for lifesaving treatment, when I have paid staggering sums in tax and National Insurance? It's all been pissed away on tax breaks for the wealthy.

Why should the National Health Service be facing a funding crisis, because we wanted to line the pockets of the super-rich? Why should state schools suffer? Why should our brightest children be cutting short their eduction and looking for crap jobs because we wanted to make the rich richer?

We are asking each generation to work a lot harder than the last. Our grandparents lived through a war, so they knew about austerity. They knew about make do & mend. Unfortunately, too few of those people are in positions of authority now. Their kids - my parents generation - think that life is easy, because they lived through the post-war boom. They are wrong. Life is hard.

So, take a note of the date and remember that today was the day that the government went too far. They cut too deep and they hurt people who were already hurting. They scapegoated the wrong people.

Anger will rise up. It will start with the young people who have been frozen out of the job market, who are marginalised and demonised by the media. It will spread to the hard working mums who are struggling to balance the books already, struggling to stretch their budgets. Then it will hit the grannies who are providing free childcare and cash handouts from their pensions in order to keep their kids and grandkids afloat.

There will be a groundswell of public opinion against being told how to live our lives with more frugality from some vintage wine swilling toffs who like nothing more than to admire each other's art collections, and ponce around the country telling the great unwashed masses to stop complaining. Let them eat cake, right?

Things are a lot worse than you can see from within the echo-chamber. Get your head out of the statistics. Get your arse out of your Tory party circle of friends. You're out of touch with reality and it will come and bite your ass.

The problems in society are being masked and things will come crashing down quicker than you can say "Poll Tax Riots".

That is all.

Tags: #politics #childhood #parents #civildisobedience

This is a story about breaking point...

I don't believe in 'rock bottom'. Instead, I feel that I have either run out of fuel or suffered some kind of mechanical failure. You can't drive yourself at the absolute limit forever without some kind of blowout. I have melted my tyres by cornering at high speed.

When I was younger, I pushed myself very hard because I was bored and not at all challenged by what was asked of me. I needed to work many many times harder than my colleagues to prove that my age was no limit to what I could achieve. I've been programming since I was a little boy, so why shouldn't I be better at it than somebody who's been doing it for less years than me?

I had a couple of brilliant teachers growing up, one of whom taught me boolean algebra. If you can master boolean algebra, then there's not much you can't do with a computer. Else if, you're not cut out to be a programmer. End program.

So, I've been doing more or less the same thing in my full-time career for 19 years, because it's a skilled job and is very highly paid. However, there are so many asshats that I must endure in order to get on with my job, which is rather trying. Eventually, the pen-pushers grind me down and I lose my patience with them.

What's really heartbreaking is that I have worked so hard for so long in order to have some time & space to do some things which I actually love and I'm passionate about. However, just when things were seemingly working out for me, people came and picked my pocket.

Now, it's my own fault for being so open and trusting and generous. I have always refused to stop treating others the way I would like to be treated myself. Just because other people are mean and selfish and steal from each other, doesn't mean that I'm going to be like them too.

I imagine that they must feel pretty rotten about themselves, knowing that they have profited from other people's hard labour. I know that we all think of ourselves as relatively hard working. Just remember to look at the evidence. Think about how many 100+ hour weeks you have racked up in your life.

So this isn't about boastfulness, or oneupmanship. It's just about an attitude adjustment. I know that many baby boomers who are in the process of thinking about retirement feel pretty tired and that they have worked pretty hard. Well, I would advise you to look at some hard numbers about just how hard your sons, daughters and grandchildren are working and will have to continue working in order to fund your retirement.

There is a "screw it let's just drown our sorrows" attitude amongst the young, who have no hope of job security, not enough money to buy a house, not enough money to support a family without state support. This is a rational response to a world that has few opportunities left for them.

Underpaying people below the age of 25 is obscene. I was working as a contractor for Research Machines and Lloyds TSB at the age of 20 and they paid me top dollar because my skills and youthful energy got shit done.

It really depresses me, just how many layers of idle and out-of-touch management there are sitting uselessly on top of the toiling youth, while they wait to collect a pension that they didn't contribute enough towards to justify what they are going to withdraw from the system.

The future of children and grandchildren has been mortgaged by profligate baby boomers who were too busy getting stoned and taking LSD to actually ban the bomb and prevent British industry from being asset stripped and having our competitive edge completely destroyed by myopic idiots. Nuclear arms proliferation is not my legacy... it's yours, old people. The lack of jobs for young people is not my fault... it's yours, old people.

Ok, so you might be feeling rotten in your old age, but maybe your body wouldn't feel so bad if it wasn't full of cancer from all the radioactive particles floating around from your nuclear testing? Maybe you'd feel a lot better if the nation hadn't been totally bankrupted by you and your cronies, so we didn't have to cut medical research budgets?

My suggestion? Well, Soylent Green seems a little unpalatable, so perhaps we could just make sure that the burden of austerity falls on those who are responsible. It wasn't a debt binge by young people that caused the current crisis. It was a complete lack of political and social responsibility from the baby boom generation, that meant that the landed gentry had their hands in the safe, helping themselves to all the loot, while you sneering arrogant wannabe pensioners were drinking and smoking and taking drugs.

So, we have a very cold bitter winter ahead of ourselves. Everything is going to hell in a hand cart. Please please please remember not to blame your children for the implosion of the world and the collapse of society. Your pension is a privilege you get for leaving the world a better place than you found it, and I'm afraid you have no right to take something you didn't pay for.

I'm really reluctant to do another round of propping up a broken system, for the benefit of a bunch of ungrateful twats who show no appreciation. I think I'm going to stand back and watch the whole thing burn down.

That is all.

This is my sister's cat, Calcifer. He was catnapped. Us young people are struggling to look after our loved ones, because we are under too much pressure to work 6 or 7 days a week on hardly any money... baby boomers have no idea how hard it is being young (September 2014)

Tags: #career #parents #childhood

This is a story about the shoe being on the other foot...

There's a Madonna song called "What it Feels Like for a Girl" which talks about men secretly wondering what it's like, being a girl. Here are my raw, candid, thoughts and experiences.

Men can be domestic abuse victims too. I've had to go to work with black eyes and a broken nose and make up some story to try and cover up for my partner's aggression and violence. I've had to lie to friends and family members about my battered & bruised face.

You know that as a man you can't hit back, because then you're the bad guy. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You can't turn the other cheek forever though.

When it comes to dating, men have got it fairly hard. I'd much rather that loads of women just chatted me up... gave me complements and massaged my ego, and then I just picked the best of the bunch. Yes, that'd definitely be better than being one of the horde of horny guys fighting over the passive females.

Yes, being passive is nice. I've been to gay clubs, and it's super nice being eyed up and having people ask you for you phone number. It's nice to feel wanted. It's nice to know where you stand. It's nice to have choice, to have options and just pick the person who you're most attracted to. Sadly, I'm not attracted to men.

Being objectified, mentally undressed, groped and otherwise felt up, ass slapping and pinching... I'm sure that can be draining. I'm sure it's often unwelcome. I'm sure it's pretty horrible, as a girl just trying to travel on public transport. However, I'll admit that personally, when those things have happened to me, I've enjoyed it to some extent. I guess that could be novelty though.

I did have one guy being really forceful with me, right in front of his boyfriend. It did become annoying after a while. I also felt sorry for his boyfriend. Mostly, it made me feel pressured into doing something I didn't want to do (which I didn't do... that time) but it still inflated my fragile ego a bit. There is security, self-confidence, to be found in feeling sexually attractive.

Girls are expected to maintain an immaculate home, be a supernanny to the children, masterchef in the kitchen, powerdressing businesswoman and a whore in the bedroom. Sure there used to be a high expectation placed on women. However, men are modernising too. If you picked a knuckle-dragging caveman, more fool you: you can't really complain, can you?

Actually, I'm extremely neat and tidy and clean. I can cook a 7 course dinner and wash up as I go along. I can't imagine doing it while trying to round up children, of course, but I've always seen child rearing as a teamwork exercise. I've certainly always dreamt of working part-time when I have kids, so I can play an active role in their upbringing.

When it comes to bedroom antics, I've written before about my dislike of blow jobs. One of the big reasons is that it's hardly mutual gratification. Sure, women can derive satisfaction from knowing that they have pleased their partner, but it's still hardly the most pleasant of acts, is it? With a bit of practice, sex can be a thoroughly satisfying affair for both guy & girl.

I'm sure there are still neandertal men out there who haven't taken the time to practice their skills. They can't be bothered to satisfy their partner, because frankly, they're getting what they want. Again, it's down to choice: why did you pick such a selfish partner who doesn't get you off?

I'm a thoroughly modern man. In touch with my feelings and able to express myself and generally communicate very effectively. I don't really believe in traditional gender roles, and I have strong views about men's responsibility for contraception, household chores and childcare. However, that's not really gotten me anywhere so far.

I guess the battle of the sexes still rages, and the nice guys still finish last. Women believe that equal rights will be their salvation, but they still pick totally chauvinistic pigs as partners. They are still choosing DNA material donors based on animal instincts, despite the argument that women are equal.

Sadly, equality will never be achieved when we are breeding lazy, selfish, ignorant and sexist boys. You picked the man, and I'll show you the boy.

So, it's kind of up to you, ladies. Stop dating d1ckheads. Stop rewarding selfish chauvinists with the sex and easy life that they don't deserve, and then maybe we'll have a better world.

The alternative, which is to date kind and caring soft modern men, but then beat them up and abuse them... that's not really working.

As a metrosexual man, life was very hard at school. It's not that I wasn't fancied at school, but it would have been popularity suicide for a girl to date an outcast. The occasional tryst with a girl from another school, was all I had to keep me going through those years of puberty and early teens, along with the occasional secret note that was given to me saying "would you like to date... when we leave school?".

So, I skipped any childhood sweethearts. Getting girlfriends in later life when you're a bit of a late starter is very strange. I was cynical and mature enough not to declare undying love for anybody. I held off using the "L" word until the age of about 26. That's not to say that I didn't have crazy feelings for any girls though. I was just aware that it was probably lust and loneliness conspiring against me.

When things start getting serious, that's when you get seriously screwed. Because I always open my heart, take the chance... I laid myself wide open to be destroyed by a spiteful ex. I've actually managed to come out of it without being horribly twisted. I still insist on wearing my heart on my sleeve and acting with some common decency, and taking some risks.

So, on International Men's Day, I urge guys to remain honest & open, and keep on the trajectory of modernising themselves. I know that many women view men who talk about their feelings as "soft mummies boys" and potentially not good partner material. Well, if you don't like equality then that view is probably correct.

Personally, I'm still dreaming of being a house husband some of the time. I'd like to discuss my feelings openly and without fear of ridicule, with my partner. Partnership is about equality, mutual respect. That's what I want to see on this day, and every day going forward.

That is all.

I got custody of Frankie the cat, but my ex thought she should have it all, even though he was the reason why I kept myself alive when I was starving myself to death (May 2008)

Tags: #divorce #frankie

This is a story about the spread of lies and misinformation...

Wealth does not trickle down, but information does. If you pass off lies as if they were facts, they will spread and people will start to believe complete rubbish. Journalists need to check their facts. So should we, if we are going to broadcast things all over social media and to our friends and family.

I was disappointed by the number of my friends sharing a story about an ambulance "packed with explosives" at the Germany vs. Netherlands football game that was called off last night. I think it is little co-incidence that these were the same friends sharing stories about what a successful air strike the French had made against "ISIS" the day after the Paris attacks. From what I could see, it was an air strike against the sovereign nation of Syria. Strikes against a nation without declaring war on them is illegal, or so I thought? Perhaps it's me who is confused.

So, what the heck is going on in the world? My friends and family have been turned against me, with rumours being spread about my mental health, alcohol and drug issues. If you didn't see it with your own eyes, or see some evidence, why would you believe those who would seek to damage? What is the ulterior motive, when we are being told that a group of people or an individual is "evil" and needs to be excluded, wiped out... they are dehumanised.

What does this kind of infighting really achieve? Aren't we all the same, under our clothes? Don't we all bleed red? Don't we all feel pain when you hurt us? Don't we all have fear when you threaten us? Don't we all cry when you isolate and exclude us?

What's the point in spreading lies, misinformed rubbish that's based on complete ignorance? What are you hoping that it will do? It certainly won't make anybody think you're a better person. It certainly won't advance humanity, civilisation. It won't protect you and your children and your grandchildren.

Yes, I think that fundamentally, people are playing on the fears that you naturally have as a parent. You want to defend the genetic material that you have managed to replicate into another bag of DNA... your children and grandchildren. You will happily kill if it means that more copies of your DNA get to be reproduced. It's the selfish gene in action.

However, you have higher brain functions. Society and the advancement of the human race now means that we have written language and a body of historical literature that we can learn from. We can look at what has happened with countless empires and see that the same mistakes get repeated over & over again. Human nature includes animal nature, and that most basic nature is to fight and fuck and try and pass on your genes.

Do you think you could rise above the level of a mosquito, just for a minute?

Stop sucking blood and fighting and fucking. That's what animals do.

Yes, you're an animal, but you also have the gift of consciousness, which means that you're self aware, and you can self-direct your actions based on the evaluation of more than whether you are horny or hungry. Yes, you might still be horny and hungry, but you can also be considerate and kind and thoughtful. You can surely see the physical manifestation of immorality in the world? Does "thou shalt not kill" apply to you?

So, I'm not religious, but at least religion preaches a code of morality. I have morals even though I don't worship any god(s). I believe in certain things that have been attributed to a 2,000 year old man who was supposedly called Jesus Christ... but I'm not a Christian.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Does that ring any bells? Guns and bombs are like stones, that we are raining down on the heads of many of our fellow human beings fairly indiscriminately. That's immoral.

You cannot let things that are going on in the world sit comfortably on your conscience, unless you're some sort of psychopath. Look at the huge number of refugees fleeing illegal wars. You help to support the kind of horrific barbaric behaviour that is causing this human suffering. If you're thinking "what can I do?" or "it's nothing to do with me" you are an ignoramus. You are a horrible person.

Your kids and grandkids have got to grow up on this polluted war-torn rock. If you're teaching them that it's OK to sit idly by while people are killed, or worse, you are promoting killing and illegal war, you are immoral and you are destroying the world. You don't deserve to be teaching your children and grandkids vile views that will perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence.

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

That is all.

Frankie: "Why, daddy? Why do the horrible people do it? I just want to eat cat food and play with a ball of string and sleep in the sunshine" (June 2007)

Tags: #parents #politics #civildisobedience #frankie #terrorism

This is a story about being imprisoned...

You might think that bullying is OK. You might think that it toughens children up. You might think it's character forming. You might think that it's a fact of life. You'd be wrong about all those things.

Whether the bullying is taking place at school, at work, or at home, the victim becomes a prisoner in that place, and inside their own mind. The victim has tried all rational and diplomatic channels to try and stop the abuse. They might even have made emotional pleas for the abuse to stop. It hasn't stopped and they are out of ideas. The victim is trapped.

The consequence of these actions can be escapism and extremism. Escapism can take the form of daydreaming, fantasizing... quite often about taking your own life, so that the pain and sufffering is over. That's nice, isn't it? Your bullying victim is imagining killing themself... that's really "toughened them up". Well done.

The other alternative - extremism - is dangerous. Even small weak boys can grow up to be strong aggressive men, and if they're angry about years and years of abuse, they might be out for vengeance on a cruel world that allowed them to suffer. They might commit seemingly horrible crimes, as a reaction to the pain and suffering that they were put through during the formative years of their childhood.

Essentially, we are teaching children that it's OK to abuse children. We are teaching that there are no consequences for physical, verbal and mental torture, perpetrated against vulnerable members of society. That's pretty f**ked up.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, is Newton's third law of motion. If you bully or allow bullying to happen when you are in a position of responsibility for a child, then don't be surprised if there are consequences. You are clearly mentally unwell if you think that kind of barbaric behaviour is acceptable.

We are supposed to be living in an enlightened age, with morality and a code of law. If bullying is OK, then society is completely f**ked. We might as well regress to bashing each other over the head with clubs and just raping and pillaging as much as we want. We might as well go back to living in caves and eating raw meat. Why stop there? Why not resort to canibalism?

Can you see the continuum that the perpetuation of bullying takes us along? Can you see that by teaching children that bullying is OK, we are creating idiotic adults who think that abuse and violence is OK. It will also create repressed angry adults who have a grudge with the world, and may take out that grudge in extreme, violent ways.

Did you know that Einstein's theory of Special Relativity predicts that a compressed spring will be heavier than an uncompressed spring? Simpy by squashing a spring, it will store that energy, and because energy and mass (weight) are equivalent, the sping will therefore be heavier. You can apply that analogy to people. If you squash and subdue and repress a person with violence and abuse, they will become a coiled spring, full of gravity and energy... ready to uncoil in a sudden dangerous explosion at any moment.

Teachers who sympathise with bullies, not the bullied children, are not fit to do the job. We need to start with the right culture. We need cultural change if we are going to improve society. We need more enlightened minds if we are going to stop war and human suffering.

Do you want to live like an animal, fighting and f**king and smeared in your own excrement and with your hair matted with blood and other bodily fluids? Yes, I thought as much. Yes, you're definitely the kind of person I want teaching my children. Well done.

A more positive outcome of bullying is that we create some very intelligent, resourceful and resiliant individuals. You would literally have to kill me to stop me from fighting back against bullies and bigots and backwards animals. I'm so full of rage and I've been oppressed for so long. I'm a pretty dangerous person to pick a fight with, but luckily I'm not looking for a fight. I'm looking to make the world a better place.

You know, I could easily join a boxing club. I could easily go out 'happy slapping' or get involved with football hooliganism. I'm a good leader, and the passion that I exude is dangerously inspiring to angry young men. Plus, there are lot of people who are so cowardly that they like to pick on people who are weaker than them. They are absolutely obliterated when they come up against somebody who really hates that kind of bullying, from the nucleus of every atom of their entire body.

I feel super dangerous right now. Not particularly safe to be around. I've got no idea who's going to trigger my rage, by thinking they can act like they're king of the playground. I really don't want my rage to boil over into violence. I'm trying to rise above the base, animal instincts.

That's what is meant by consequences. That's what happens inside a person when you bully and abuse them.

That is all.

Tags: #bullying #childhood

This is a story about relativity...

So, there are children starving in Africa. That's sad.

There are lots of things that are sad in the world. It's sad that so many people are being shot. It's sad that so many people are being blown up. It's sad that most people have so little, while a handful of others have so much.

Sadness is not really relative. Neither is depression. Once you are suicidally depressed, you can't get any more depressed. You just kill yourself and then it's over. That's the limit. That's the maximum that you can be depressed.

 As a child, I wasn't allowed to cry at the sad parts in movies. This was apparently because I should have been more sad about starving African children. I was sad about them too, but there weren't many Disney movies about starving African children, made for kids.

My Dad was pretty determined that I should have a lot of stuff on my conscience, as a small child. I needed to be responsible for my part I played in the decadent lifestyle of the West, as a bourgeois infant. How thoughtless and irresponsible of me to not have martyred myself for the plight of the developing world, at birth.

So, if you don't believe I think about my blessings and how lucky I was to be born into a relatively wealthy advanced civilisation... you're wrong. It's been smashed into my skull for as long as I can remember. It's been rammed down my throat with menace.

Perhaps we should teach children about consequences, not that their feelings are wrong. If a child is genuinely selfish and unwilling to share, or even worse, if they steal and perpetrate violence against other children, then those are the antisocial traits that we would want to re-educate that child about. It's impossible to teach a child to not have feelings that they already have.

I don't think that education really needs to start with children. There are plenty of adults who are ignorant and are passing on their vile views to their children. Let's build good role models in the world.

If children see adults - who they look up to - killing each other and badmouthing each other and generally being vile, what are those children going to do? Monkey see, monkey do.

If you want the world to be a better place, stop glorifying soldiers and war, stop saying racist things, stop sitting in that chair reading crappy newspapers, watching dreadful television and ranting about a nonexistent past that never existed. Nostalgia is a lie.

You only perceive things from a totally ignorant, hypocritical standpoint. Put yourself through a little hardship so that you might empathise with the refugees, starving and marginalised people, who grew your food and made the mass produced goods that allow you to sit idle in comfort, while all the atrocities in the world are perpetrated.

If you say I'm the hypocrite, you're wrong. I'm prepared to go to jail or be locked up in hospital in support of my views. I'm not a criminal, but I am prepared to rock a boat full of fat lazy hypocrites, even if I'm going to get wet myself.

I've come from nothing, so I've got nothing to lose. I don't have the fear that you have.

This is not about me. It's not about the UK. It's about the world's suffering people who we should be sad about, because we are all responsible.

If you have children, then don't tell the developing world to stop having babies.

If you feed your children, then pay more for your groceries so that the developing world's farmers can work their way out of poverty.

If you drive your children around in a car, or take them on holiday in an aeroplane, then you might as well just drown them now, as that's what you are doing to the world with uncontrolled release of greenhouse gasses.

If you send your children to school, then don't complain about the cost of school uniforms, books and tuition fees. Education is the route to family planning. It's a gift that should be shared, not just kept for the elite.

If you give your children a roof over their heads, then don't expect refugees to live in a tent. Or maybe you'd like to live in a tent so that a bigger family than yours can make better use of the world's limited resources?

If you think that I have no sense of perspective, it's you who is totally mistaken. I would happily live in a tent or a large hostel dorm again. I feel that the world I live in is sterile and far removed from reality. It doesn't sit easily with me. I'm way more unhappy than I've been in a long time. The rich-poor divide is something I find very hard to live with.

I'm easy to discredit: I've given away all the ammunition. The tried and trusted ways of rubbishing an opponent are openly on display, here in this blog, and I plan to give you even more sticks and stones, with which to break my bones.

I've been bullied and abused so much, I'm fairly impervious to personal attacks and below-belt blows now.

I have died a thousand deaths, and I fear not one more.

That is all.

Here is a picture of Frankie, who is a happy cat wherever in the world he finds himself, provided there are no guns or bombs (December 2007)

Tags: #politics #parents #childhood #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie #homeless

This is a story about setting a good example...

If you take drugs in front of your children, you are a sh1t parent. Period. No ifs. No buts.

If you are high on drugs, drunk or otherwise intoxicated, stoned, coming down, craving drugs or generally in a f**ked up state because you are abusing drugs and alcohol, then you are an inconsistent parent, and this sends very mixed messages to your children, which affects the development of their personality.

Your children are like sponges. Little rabbits have big eyes and big ears. They can pick up on the variations in your mood. They can sense the instability caused by drink & drugs. It affects them.

If you smoke your drugs or cigarettes in a confined space with your children, even worse. Drugs are measured in the body using a unit called mg/kg. That's milligrams of drugs in the bloodstream per kilogram of body weight. I don't know if you've noticed this but children are a lot smaller than adults.

If two adults are smoking in a car, and there is a small child present, that child may be forced to smoke the equivalent of several boxes of cigarettes for even a short car ride. Nicotine is a horribly addictive drug. Imagine addicting that child and making them go through nicotine withdrawal over and over and over again, when the child doesn't have a clue what's happening to them or any ability to explain what they're going through.

My friend's parents used to call me Nicotine, as a nickname, because I used to stink like an ashtray. My parents were always driving somewhere, smoking. I was just part of the baggage being lugged around. I felt like a burden. My parents just wanted to get drunk and take drugs. I was an accident. Oops.

If you are a sh1t role model for your children, they will want to run away from home as soon as they can and never come back.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I don't think my parents are very responsible. I don't think they are very good role models.

It's unbelievable, but they actually think they are cool for taking drugs. That seems rather immature to me, but then I've always felt like I have to be more mature than them, because they're not very responsible.

I left home as soon as I had a job and enough money for a flat, age 17. I couldn't wait to get away from such bad role models. They are liars and hypocrites and they are lazy and project their inadequacies onto their children, who are hard working and mature and responsible.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I'm very disappointed with their behaviour.

Parents must try harder. All my friends in my generation are very responsible parents. I think the baby boomers could try taking a leaf out of our book. Don't try and roll it up and smoke it though, like you usually do.

Did you know my own father refused to read anything I write? Pretty p1ssed off about that.

"La la la, I'm not listening" I imagine him saying while putting his fingers in his ears. How childish.

And parents wonder why their kids run away from home and never want to come back. Tsk!

That is all.

Tags: #parents #childhood #bullying #drugs #oxford #london #homeless

This is a story about fear of death...

I grew up terrified of everything. Electricity, dogs, mealtimes, fairground rides... wait, what? Mealtimes?!?!

Yes, mealtimes were very stressful when I was a little boy. My parents had been to India and they thought it would be cool to give me very spicy food. It didn't taste that spicy to them because - I might have mentioned this - but they were my parents and they had been to India. If you are an adult, in India, eating spicy food, you get used to it.

Also, if you are parents, and you have been to India, that means you are past puberty, hopefully past teenage years, hopefully past school, hopefully you've been working, plus 9 months, plus 3 or so years for your son to start eating solid food. All that time, you are losing your taste buds... your mouth is getting less sensitive to capscicum, which means it hurts less when you eat it.

If you force feed chilli to a young child, they will be pretty anxious about meal times.

I ended up vomiting before every meal, because of anxiety.

I remember waking up in hospital, malnourished. I got to eat cornflakes, not chilli. Eating cornflakes is nice. Eating chilli isn't. They even had milk on them. Normally I wasn't allowed liquids with my meal. Milk is quite a nice thing to have if your mouth is burning hot from chilli. I wonder if that's why I wasn't allowed to drink it with my meal?

Anyway, I'm sure my parents meant well. I mean, they gave me food after all. It's not like I starved. Except when I did. Yes, there was that time that I ended up in hospital, because I was starving. We all make mistakes I guess. Like starving our children. Oops.

Guess I'm just a fussy eater.

Well, just about the only things I don't eat today are sprouts and grapefruit. I've had a test and apparently I'm a supertaster, which means I'm picky, but not fussy. I can force myself to eat almost anything now... I was well trained as a child. I have even learned to like the taste of some things I used to find revolting, like Badoit mineral water, Indian Tonic water and olives.

I'm trying my best to forgive, forget and move on. If this blog is getting a bit dark and bitter, I'm sorry.

It's also a bit weird, doing my private journal/diary in public. Weird, yes. I'm owning that as part of my identity. It's been a term that has been thrown at me abusively in the past. I own it now. It's mine. I'm weird. Yes me, I'm a weirdo, hello!

An anagram of weird is wired. I guess I'm just wired a little differently. I can taste things that other people can't. I don't see dead people, but perhaps I see things from a different perspective from you. Perhaps I see things from an equally valid, but distinct and unique perspective. Would that be possible? I hope so, because I like being me. I have tried to be the version of a person that somebody else imagines is possible to exist. It lands me in hospital every time. I'm not doing it again.

I refuse to be anybody other than me. No. I'm not doing it again. Go to hell. I've been there and I don't like it. It's your turn to go to hell.

Eternal damnation? Hell no, I won't go.

I fed Frankie the cat even when I was starving to death. Animals and children are innocent victims sometimes. We need to use our adult brains and protect them (October 2013)

Tags: #childhood #parents #weird #privacy