Nick Grant

This is a story about spectator sports...

Politics and protesting is a kind of hobby for the middle classes. In the absence of a football team to support and matches to attend, the middle classes engage in similar tribal behaviour with their political party affiliations and their favourite political causes. Instead of an irrational hatred of a geographically proximate football club to one's own preferred football club, the middle classes hate the political party on the opposite wing from their own chosen party. The reds hate the blues and the blues hate the reds, whether it's football teams or political parties.

The issues of the day have rather vague and nebulous non-threats. Terrorism and immigration do not affect us day to day. Climate change does not affect us day to day. Brexit does not affect us day to day. Very few of us will be victims of terrorism, man-made climate change or economic catastrophe due to leaving the European Union. Why get so worked up about these things?

Given that most of us are idle in our bulls**t jobs which needn't exist, we have plenty of time to read, listen and watch the news. We have plenty of time to engage with social media. We have plenty of time to partake in manufactured outrage and to work ourselves up about things which have no bearing on our day to day existence.

My mental health is fragile.

The constant media bombardment with nonstop news coverage of the political drama is something that affects me more than it should. I think I'm somebody who feels quite a lot of empathy - a lefty libertard snowflake - and I am often taken in by my perceived onslaught on the vulnerable members of society. I'm one of those bleeding-heart tree huggers. I feel a great outpouring of sympathy for refugees and asylum seekers, homeless people, alcoholics, drug addicts, neglected and abused children, neglected and abused animals, and indeed our ecosystem. I struggle to go through life with a "take are country back" (sic.) attitude, and to ignore the climate emergency, the refugee crisis and the misery inflicted by economic disaster and austerity. I struggle to distance myself emotionally from current affairs.

I'm acutely aware of how little I am contributing towards worthy ideals. My bulls**t job requires me to drive a car and otherwise pollute the planet, as well as robbing my labour from any efforts to build a better world. It would, in fact, be better if I just stayed at home; far less polluting. If I didn't have to go to my bulls**t job then I would have all the time in the world to knit my own yoghurt and wipe my bum with a chinchilla, or whatever it is that tree-huggers are doing these days in order to save the planet.

It's highly toxic to my mental health to be forced to spectate. It's awful that I have so little opportunity to be a productive member of a new, better society, helping to build a better world. It's really crappy that the coercive demands of unrestrained free-market capitalism dictate that I have to choose between homeless destitution, or selling my soul and being part of a society which is destroying the planet, in pursuit of endless profit and growth, with no regard for sustainability.

I feel as though I'm an aerial, a satellite dish, receiving an incomprehensible and unprocessable torrent of information at all times. I feel tuned in to so many things, and those things all cause me pain.

I can't do anything about the pain.

I see something about climate change and I want to alter my lifestyle completely, to reduce my carbon footprint, but then I remember that I'm trapped by capitalism.

I see something about homelessness and I want to build social housing, but then I remember that I'm trapped by capitalism.

I see something about asylum seekers, refugees, drug addicts, alcoholics, mental health problems, suicide, youth unemployment, bullying, child abuse, animal cruelty... and I want to quit my bulls**t job and to build a better world, but I can't because I'm trapped by capitalism.

Instead, I'm trapped on the sidelines, watching with horror. Instead, I plough my intellectual energy into social media, writing and worrying; thinking about what the solutions are to the world's problems, and arguing with people who want to "take are country back" (sic.) and otherwise perpetuate the situation ad nauseam.

It makes me unwell, hoovering up all this information - all these world events - all day long, and thinking about the problems, and worrying, and using my rational brain to think about solutions... solutions that I'll never be allowed to put into practice, because I'm trapped making profit for billionaires; trapped by capitalism.

I hate being this sensitive. I hate being tuned into everything. I hate being powerless. I hate being sidelined. I hate spectating.

I'm a productive busy thoughtful person. I'm also very sensitive.

It's agony right now, being forced to spectate while everything burns.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about happy hedging...

Frightening numbers of racists feel emboldened by Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Brexit and the alt-right, such that "immigration control" has turned into outright xenophobia, Islamophobia and generally abhorrent views that any non-white should be deported. It seems OK to say openly in an office to a work colleague that you're against the idea of an asylum seeker fleeing a warzone - fleeing persecution, torture, murder - shouldn't be allowed to receive the assistance which we should offer to the unfortunate victims of conflicts which the UK illegally started.

Frightening numbers of these racists are turning out en masse to vote for political parties which don't even have manifestos - their manifestos are unwritten, because if they wrote down the values that they really stood for then they would become proscribed organisations and their leaders and members would be prosecuted for hate crimes.

Tonight, there's a chance that The Brexit Party will gain its first member of parliament. We should remind ourselves that the leader of The Brexit Party stood proudly in front of a giant billboard showing Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives, proclaiming that the UK is at "breaking point" with the amount of asylum seekers in the country. This is pure unadulterated racism. The UK has processed fewer than 30,000 asylum applications, while Germany has processed far in excess of a million. How can the UK be at "breaking point" when Germany has taken at least 40 times as many asylum seekers? Why is immigration even considered to be an issue in the UK, when we're the 5th largest economy in the world? It's pure racism: hatred of people because of their race.

I placed a bet in 2016 that the UK would vote to leave the EU. I received extremely favourable odds.

I placed a bet in 2016 the USA would vote to elect Donald Trump as their president. I received very favourable odds.

I placed a bet in 2017 that the Conservatives would get the most votes in the UK general election. I received favourable odds.

I placed a bet on May 23rd that The Brexit Party would get the most votes. I received reasonable odds.

I placed a bet today that The Brexit Party's candidate for Peterborough would be elected as MP. I received acceptable odds.

Each of my bets has been a simple bet: that most people are racists and most people are dishonest. If you ask a person "are you a racist?" they will invariably answer "no", but if you ask a person if an asylum seeker deserves to find safe haven in the UK, or whether they should drown in the sea, most people will think that they should drown in the sea, or die in the warzone they're fleeing.

Each time I place a bet, I take the winnings from the previous bet and place those winnings onto the next bet. My winnings have substantially accumulated.

I'm getting rich from racists.

I shouldn't thank the racists for being racist, because I would much prefer it if my fellow citizens would stop being racists, but I have little ability to influence their abhorrent views. I have very little ability to stop racists from being racist, so I am vocally outspoken against racists like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and the whole shower of sh*ts who support them. I also bet as much money as I can afford to lose on the outcome that I least want to see: that the racists continue to thrive in this climate where the condemnation of racists and racism seems to have been replaced with outright unashamed undisguised blatant racism; where people are openly racist in every part of UK life.

I have to suffer a dreadful racist at work, but at least I'm being financially compensated.

Does it seem immoral to profit in this way?

Perhaps I will take my substantial winnings and use them to fund anything I can do to stop the rise of racism. I can spend the money going to anti-fascism protests, anti-Trump protests, and anything I can do to promote progressive, inclusive politics, which condemns racism and introduces laws to prosecute those people who would gladly see asylum seekers drown in the sea, rather than offer them safe haven. The UK is very much not at "breaking point" unless we are referring to the emboldenment of racists.

I will be bitterly disappointed to see The Brexit Party gain an MP in parliament, but I will also be significantly richer, which will not make me any less sad about the sorry state of the United Kingdom, and its vast hordes of horrible disgusting contemptible racists.

Perhaps you think I should be spending my money directly on supporting the political parties who oppose racism and have the resources to fight men like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, but it seems like a rational economic decision to me, to enrich myself... hopefully to the point where I can afford to dedicate my time and effort to fighting against these horrible people and their horrible supporters.

Rejoice with me tomorrow, if The Brexit Party is defeated, even though I will have lost a very large sum of money. I don't care about the money. I just want the racists to stop being racist and f**k off.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about living out of a suitcase...

This is my life now. Spreading mustard and mayonaise onto long-life bread with a shoehorn, placing sweaty pre-cut cheese squares in-between the slices and chowing down on a hotel-room made sandwich, while swigging from a can of strong European lager. This is the life of a business traveller who can't really afford the expenses - I'm faking it until I make it. I'd be sleeping in my car... if I had a car.

It'd be fairly easy to look back on the journey that started with near-certainty that I was going to get sued for non-payment of rent, whilst also being evicted... of course, I had no money. I still don't have any money. I have negative money. I have negative negative LOTS OF DEBT MONEY. When I get paid, things won't be so bad. When I've been paid for a few months, things will look positively rosy. "That wasn't so bad" you'll say. You're wrong. It was bad.

Things are often a lot easier said than done.

A lot of the experiences in my life have been awful at the time, but later on I've been able to laugh about the dire straits I was in. In fact, the only way I've been able to come to terms with some ridiculous stuff I've been through is to tell my hair-raising tales of near-death experiences and destruction to the world. You might think that I glorify events of the past, or wear bad stuff as a badge of honour. That's not true, but what am I supposed to do with all those negative experiences? Am I supposed to walk around with a glum face and tell everybody how terrible I am? Am I only alive to serve as a living reminder to people that they shouldn't make bad choices like I did?

Choices.

Yes. Do you really believe in free will? I imagine that you believe in Santa Claus too. There's no free will. Our choices are always heavily biased. We're cornered and coerced. Would I have gone back to IT consulting for an investment bank in London if I wasn't flat broke? Am I making free will choices, or am I just doing what I've got to do to survive?

Survival.

My version of survival probably looks pretty ridiculous to you. The kind of money that's going to be coming my way soon is pretty obscene - banks pay very well. So, does that mean that I'm not surviving? Am I actually completely fine and dandy? I'm just making a fuss about nothing, right? In fact, if you saw the numbers, you might be angered; you might conclude that I've been fine all along... nothing to worry about and never in any danger.

A friend often challenges me on why I would keep myself on the endangered species list. Why would I continue to advertise my distress? Surely I'm safe and secure now. Well, how long ago was it that I was made homeless, jobless, having some dealings with the police, locked up on a psych ward and facing certain bankruptcy with mountainous debts?

So, I got a job. I worked that job. I did a good job. Money is on the way now. Case closed?

Actually, can you imagine how stressful it was to have to hit the ground running and pretend like I've got my shit together all of a sudden? Just because I'm pretty damn good at acting like I'm a cool customer and I can handle anything that life throws at me, the reality is that my inner monologue goes pretty much like this: "shit! shit! shit! everything's on fire! everything's too hard! it'll never work! everything's ruined and it'll never be fixed! it's too hard! I can't do it!".

Of course, a lot of people find new countries, new cities, new jobs, new work colleagues, new offices, new challenges, new accommodation and the stress of the unfamiliarity of circumstances, to make them very anxious. I'm not the only one who feels stressed and anxious when taken out of my comfort zone. I'm not the first person ever to have butterflies in their tummy about a new job.

Ha ha.

If only it was just a new job. Try plucking homeless unemployed bankrupt drug addicts who are known to the police, up from locked psych wards, giving them a scrub down, putting them in a suit and plonking them at a desk in another country. See how many times that works out for you.

To top it all off, there is the ever-present danger - and there still is - that I'll run out of money before that first payment lands in my bank account. If you think it's just a case of budgeting you're an idiot. You can't budget if the numbers just don't add up - sometimes there just isn't enough money to pay for everything. Sometimes, you can't afford to go to work, because you can't afford to get there. Catch 22.

If you think that I'm not a representative example, you're right. Most people will fall at one of the many hurdles. Most people would find themselves marginalised and excluded and blacklisted and without a hope of ever recovering their poise; hope of ever returning to normal life. You're right. I'm not most people. I'm not special though. I'm not different.

I cashed in one of my "get out of jail free" cards. I don't have any aces left up my sleeve. I've called in pretty much every favour. I had help, of course. People don't survive without help.

Arguably I wasn't a very worthy cause to help. Arguably, I'm arrogant and ungrateful; I credit myself where no credit is due - surely the situation I find myself in today is entirely thanks to other people, and I'm just a passenger... I've been gifted everything I've got from generous people; I haven't worked a day in my life.

To a large extent, I agree that luck and other people's generosity are the main factors in my life. So what? Would you prefer me dead?

Of course, I question my utility; I question the value of my productive output. I'm not rescuing children from burning orphanages after all, am I? Isn't it about time that I built a school in Africa or distributed food and clean water in some war-torn area flooded with refugees? With all my software development expertise, why haven't I created an app that cures cancer, or programmed a supercomputer to find the solution to world hunger? Isn't it about time that I stopped being so pleased with myself and did something to help other people? Isn't it high time that I stopped being so selfish and self-centred?

Easier said than done.

Take a look around. OK so your friend Sharon did a fun run that raised a lot of money for spastics, but she went on and on about it A LOT, going on about how fucking amazing she is for having done that, didn't she? Those 30 minutes that she spent puffing and panting, running around the school sports field hasn't changed anything has it? Did that rock concert that you went to succeed in ending poverty? That's right... you were really philanthropic, by going to see those bands play. How wonderful of you.

So many of us say "I'd like to do more, but I'm struggling myself". It's true, people really are struggling to find the time and the money to get through ordinary life, let alone perform selfless self-sacrificing philanthropic amazing acts of charity. There isn't a culture of helping each other. We mainly eye each other up suspiciously: are our peers getting more money than us? Why does SHE have a bigger house than me? Why are THEY getting a new car this year?

It's pretty easy to take a superficial glance at a person and say "WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE? GET UP AND DO SOMETHING". We've got all the solutions to other people's problems, haven't we? Isn't it the easiest thing in the world, solving other people's problems? If only people would listen, right?

I am thinking about changing my alarmist "suicide note" blog title to simply read this: addict.

I want people to stigmatise me. I want people to jump to the wrong conclusions. I want everybody who thinks they've got an easy answer to come forward and 'save' me from myself. "Have you tried not taking drugs?" being one amazing suggestion that I'd never thought of before.

I've failed to wean myself off sleeping pills. I've failed to stay off the pregabalin - painkillers - that I worked so hard to quit. I started drinking again, and I've been drinking a whole bottle of wine every night. I'm an addict, even though you might take a lazy glance at my life and conclude that I'm perfectly fine.

As I journey back to Wales for a Christmas break, having completed a nervy few weeks back at work, you could be forgiven for thinking that my life's back on track. Talking to me, you'd think that I've overcome all those obstacles that would normally cause a person to stumble and trip - a mentally ill homeless junkie bankrupt known-to-the-police type person. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm normal. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'm just like you.

I am normal.

I am an addict.

Surely this is cognitive dissonance. Addicts aren't normal, right? Well, how's about this one: I don't even abuse substances. Why on earth would I label myself as an addict? Surely I've won? Surely I've broken free from everything that threatened to destroy me? Why would I want to publicly wear the most awful label that we can give to a person?

I'm not going to write a world-changing app. If apps had the capacity to change the world for the better, they'd have done it. I'm not going to start a world-changing charity. If charity had the capacity to change the world for the better, it'd have succeeded.

So am I giving up?

Am I putting on my oxygen mask before helping others?

The answer is neither. I'm not doing either of those things. I neither accept that the world's fucked and there's nothing I can do about it, nor do I believe that I have to help myself before helping others. It's true that my situation was unbearable, and it will continue to be unbearable for some time. I'm going through some awful stuff, even if you think my life is blessed and I live a charmed existence.

There's a family in Wales who've helped me. They've seen me during periods when it appears to them like I'm not helping myself. They've torn their hair out with frustration that I've been stubborn at times, when there's been obvious solutions that have been right there, just waiting for me to reach out and grab them. The whole world's problems could be solved overnight if only people would listen, right? Simple. Things are really simple, right?

The asceticism of my life - making my own sandwiches in a hotel room - seems like an obvious solution to a problem to you. No knife to spread the mayonaise on the bread? No worries, here's another solution for you...

However, if you have to actually live with a person while they go through the millions of trials and tribulations in their life, then you start to get a sense that things are not as simple as they appear at first. The case of getting my passport back from a bank in Manchester being a particularly illustrative example.

I'm about to spend Christmas in the bosom of a loving family, living on a gorgeous farm in the Welsh countryside. Of course, things aren't all about me. Christmas is about family; it's about giving, not receiving. How must this family feel though?: they've succeeded. They've nursed me back to health. Money is on the way. I'm back in the saddle, aren't I?

January.

January is my nemesis. Of course, I'm not the only person on planet earth to feel down in January. Of course, we all have winter blues and credit card bills hitting the doormat in January. Great. Let's just see how things go, shall we? I'll be back to living out of a suitcase in January.

Tags: #family #addiction #mentalhealth

This is a story about radicalisation...

One week before the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris, I did an experiment where I acted suspiciously and lost large items of luggage on public transport, during the evening rush hour. Within 30 minutes, I lost a bag at London Bridge, one at Oxford Circus and two at Westminster... which was co-incidental because it was Guy Fawkes Night. I undoubtably have mental health problems and protested against war in Iraq and Syria. Does that make me a terrorist sympathiser, and a possible suspect?

The point here is about how easy it is for anybody who's motivated to kill and maim, to slip through the net.

Relatively recently, 52 year old Thomas Mair - mentally ill - killed MP Jo Cox, while 53 year old Adrian Ajao - a teacher - killed four tourists and a police officer. One inspired by white supremacy, the other by radical Islam, but both acting alone.

"What's your point? We're sitting ducks?" asked my then-girlfriend - a BBC journalist - on that night I lost my bags.

Yes. Yes we are sitting ducks. As we cluster together at rock concerts, or on cramped public transport in overcrowded cities, we are certainly sitting ducks. As we assume that the police, army and military intelligence are working together to maintain our security. We are relaxed and feel safe.

Bombs kill indiscriminately, and if you're dropping them from 20,000ft then you're not around to see the devastation of the aftermath. If you're firing Hellfire missiles from a drone control centre in Nevada, you're 7,000 miles away from whoever you're being told to kill - you don't know whether there was any 'collateral damage'. Tomahawk missiles fired from a ship or submarine can travel over 1,000 miles, and none of those sailors pushing the "FIRE!" button will see their target explode, and the dead bodies when the dust has settled.

Hateful language about refugees being potential terrorists; phobia of Islam and of people with darker skin tones than your own - heard everywhere, even from the mouths of politicians. Influential people in positions of authority spread fear to try and increase their power. Seemingly inconsequential governmental changes, such as removing Britain from the union of European nations, have an emboldening effect on nationalists, patriots, racists, bigots and other extremists. A toxic stew of "us versus them" bubbles, threatening to over-boil at any moment. Festering resentments about the injustices of the world, are taken out on innocent targets, as some kind of bloodletting.

The Manchester Arena bombing is awful, but so was the Bataclan theatre attack; so were all the attacks. This Wikipedia page lists the suicide bombings in Iraq in a single year - there's at least one nearly every single day.

It's worth being reminded of this simple repeating cycle:

Am I being insensitive to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing, given how recent it is? Perhaps my words should be condolences and condemnations. Certainly, the death of innocent children is sad; certainly, I condemn bombing as an act of indiscriminate killing.

I hope every British and American citizen of voting age remembers the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was fought in your name and mine, and every drop of innocent blood that was spilled is on our hands. We cut of the head off the snake in the name of regime change and in the process we unleashed Hell. We toppled so-called tyrants, but created a wave of suicide bombings, internecine strife, civil wars and a refugee crisis bigger than any in history. This is what we should remember, in conjunction with innocent lives lost on our own soil.

I am sorry for the victims and their families, of the Manchester Arena bombing, but anybody who is looking to lay blame with the mentall ill, white supremacists or radical Islamists, should consider the foreign policy of their nation; our armed forces' conduct abroad; the dead Iraqi and Syrian children, killed by allied bombs, who far outnumber last night's dead.

The overused "thoughts and prayers" line is increasingly coupled with some claptrap about "our values" being under attack. It's utter bullshit. Jingoistic, nationalistic, patriotic rubbish is combined with false nostalgia for the glory of war and the bravery of soldiers. There's nothing brave or glorious about killing somebody with a Hellfire missile, 7,000 miles away from the target, sat in a comfortable office chair operating a joystick in an air-conditioned building.

If you really care about what happened last night, why don't you take in some refugees? - let them live with you; help them rebuild their shattered lives. If you hate the perpetrators of terrorism so much, why don't you go and join the Kurdish forces in Northern Syria, fighting Daesh (Islamic State)? - you can offer to fight with them on their Facebook page.

No? Didn't think so.

Tags: #terrorism

This is a story about conflict...

Israelis, are you fucking colour blind? The United Nations partitioned Palestine, to create the state of Israel in 1947. Stay behind your fucking border and stop killing Palestinian children with your American planes, bombs, guns, tanks, helicopters and every other piece of advanced military hardware that you have, to terrorise poor people who only have sticks and stones to defend themselves.

Israel, you have nuclear weapons, so the Arab countries that are in your proximity have a right to have them too, to defend themselves. You can't continue to bully and fuck over the poor nations in the region. You've got your territory. It's time to stop being such genocidal maniacs and total arseholes. You're the fucking reason why we have terrorists, along with your American sponsors.

Quit your fucking boo-hoo-hoo about the holocaust, and crying "ANTI SEMITE" whenever the international community criticises your atrocious violation of United Nation resolutions and your brutal assault on your impoverished neighbours. The Jews aren't the only group to have suffered a genocide. Check your fucking history books and have some fucking humility. Ever heard of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide? Quit your fucking self-pity and stay the fuck within your borders. Get the fuck out of Palestine and stop killing children.

Can you see lines on a map? Can you read? Does the name of that place you're bombing or invading have the name of your country on it, or somebody else's? Why do you think that these places have existed for long enough to have borders and names? Do you think it's because some kind of peace and stability in the region has been achieved: an uneasy truce?

So, Saddam probably gassed some Kurds. So fucking what? Boo fucking hoo. Sadam kept a lid on the Sunni vs. Shia bullshit, and kept the fucking Kurds at bay. The goddam Kurds are the thorn in everybody's side: just ask the Turkish. They're like those fucking nutjobs who think Cornwall should be independent from the UK. Bunch of nutters.

The Assads aren't exactly chuffed about American troops occupying the Middle East. How would you like it if some bunch of trigger-happy jumped up twats decided to live in part of your fucking house? Hafaz el-Assad was quite successful at getting the Americans to fuck off. Bashar al-Assad was doing quite a decent job of building a modern Syria, until neighbouring Iraq got illegally invaded and the whole fucking region was thrown into chaos, allowing 'rebels' to have a stab at trying to grab power through violence and coup attempts.

You can dig up dirt on any government, which is trying to maintain stability and control. The longer the region is left to stabilise, the less brutal the government has to be. I'm no fan of the Tory regime, with the evil dictator Theresa May. I would be locked up as a political prisoner - persecuted - for my right to rebel against the government by getting a gun and trying to take power by force. How can people be expected to live under such appalling conditions?

Afghanistan. Ever heard of this shitting place? I'm sure you've heard tales about how easy it's been for countries to take it over and control it. There's lots of history about how the British found it really easy there, and definitely didn't get totally massacred. Then the Russians were there and they had an absolutely wonderful time and didn't have any problems at all. Finally, the Americans decided that they'd have a go at this super soft target, because of the simplicity of the task of conquering this country with a long history of being easily dominated by massive military might. Yes, history has definitely shown that massive numbers of British, Russian and American troops, with all their military hardware, can easily control this strategically important country on the Silk Road. Nobody ever got their arses kicked... presumably. I'd need to check the history books, but I'm sure that it's written down somewhere that this is a totally cool place to invade.

You want to move goods from East to West, but there are only so many passes through the mountains where it's possible to get truckloads of whatever it is you're transporting, to be traded in the Middle East and Europe via Afghanistan. Maybe you've heard of the Khyber Pass and the Silk Road. It's pretty strategically important to have land-based supply chains.

Afghanistan looks innocuous enough on the map, but it's actually super important for anybody who doesn't want to be forced to deal with the Ruskies in the North.

You know sometimes you hear the name of a country and you think "I really want to bomb that country, just because I don't like the name". Sometimes you think "god damn, there's a country with some really nice infrastructure and a thriving economy... we really should bomb the shit out of some of their stuff". That's what Americans think when they hear Libya.

In 1986, three people were killed in a nightclub bombing in Berlin - which is in Germany by the way - so the obvious response was for the Americans, who live nearly 5,000 miles away from Germany and over 6,000 miles from Libya, was to bomb the shit out of the Libyans.

What about this poor bastard, Iran? The country that the US just won't leave the fuck alone. Oil rich and with a highly educated population, Iran has managed to get close to being able to defend itself, despite the US's attempt to use the monarchy to control the population for their own advantage. When the Shah started backing his Arab allies, especially as part of OPEC, the West had no more use for this puppet, and he was driven into exile. Ever since then, endless boo-hoo-hoo propaganda bullshit about how awful it is that now rich twats in Tehran have to act with some cultural sympathy, is fed to us in the West, while internally the country prospers as best as it can, despite bullshit sanctions designed to stop Iran from being able to stand up to the bullying imperialists, and be a strong Arab ally in the Middle East, to counter the disproportionate force of the genocidal Israelis.

In short: the world is a safer place if Iran gets nukes, because then the Israelis might have to stop acting like such utter cunts. If the Yanks and the Israelis stop pissing off the Arabs and destabilising the whole of the Middle East, then terrorism goes away and we all have a nice peaceful co-existence.

Basically, history since the end of World War II pretty much goes like this:

• State of Israel created so that persecuted jews have somewhere to call home
• Israelis start being right bunch of cunts, with American weapons, and pissing off all their fucking neighbours and threatening them with nukes and stuff
• Invasion of Middle East and illegal occupation of countries, pisses of some really poor people
• Americans and American-armed Israelis start killing Arab children and generally acting like fucking Nazis
• Americans jam their thumb up the arse of the Arabs and smear pooh all over their face, just to piss them off
• Israelis keep leaving human faeces on the doorstep of every Arab home
• Eventually, the incredibly poor people who don't have any weapons start chucking stones at the occupying forces, with their body armour and tanks.
• The Yanks and the Israelis start ethnic cleansing, blowing people and shit up and generally pursuing a policy of terrorism.
• A tiny handful of extremely pissed off Arabs blow up some planes, nightclubs, army barracks and other targets, in attempt to get the invading and occupying forces to fuck off out of their countries.
• The Israelis decide to invade and occupy parts of Egypt and Syria, just because they fucking can, because the Americans are backing them and they've got far superior weaponry. They even threaten to nuke the Egyptians.
• The Americans invade and blow everything to fucking pieces and completely destroy all peace and stability in the region.
• Some US government shit that shouldn't have even been in Libya gets attacked. Big deal. Get the fuck out of Benghazi - check the map... it's in Libya, not the United States.
• The Americans blow up a convoy allowing the Libyan leader to be lynched, after already destabilising the whole place by selling guns to both sides.
• "Regime change" is a synonym for "unleashing an unbelievably awful power struggle".
• All the fucking nutters that Gadaffi, Saddam and the Assads kept under control, start fucking up the peace and stability of the region.
• Iran is aggresively and relentlessly fucked over, because they're trying to defend themselves from American-sponsored Israeli aggression.
• The policy of supporting the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and Golem Heights in Syria, allowing the Israelis to threaten the Middle East with their nukes and generally act like total Nazis, and whinge about anti-Semitism, while committing atrocities, continues to aggravate the Arab world
• Even a white middle-class British man who was born in Wales and grew up in Oxford, can sympathise with how fucked over the whole Arab world is by the Americans and the Israelis, and can understand why they would fight back by throwing stones or even suicide bombing
• Every fucking nutjob thinks their particular ethnic region should be an independent country, even though they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone agree how to divide the land and self-govern. The Kurds attempt to fuck Turkey and Syria up. Various religious nutters try to enforce their bullshit patriarchy on whole developed countries, because they're not getting enough sex.

You could say it's all about oil, but in actual fact, all those petrodollars had built some amazing infrastructure and raised living standards exceptionally high in the Middle East. The middle classes were thriving. Educational standards were amazing. The 'developing' world was threatening to become a bit too developed. The Yanks decided to bomb and destabilise, invade and occupy, until the whole of North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf states were totally fucked, and collapsed into internecine conflict.

In 1973, the world got a very clear message from the Arab world: don't fuck with us, because we can turn off the oil taps. The Arab world asked to be treated with some fucking respect, because they wield some power too. The Yanks didn't like that very much.

The Brits had done a decent enough job of chopping up the Middle East and installing some rulers who would give the region some stability. OK, so it was stability achieved by machine-gunning large numbers of religious nutjobs, like the pesky Wahhabists. OK, so a few militant Kurds needed to be liquidated. Call it collateral damage. You can't argue with the fact that it was at least peaceful after World War II, thanks to the Brits understanding the history and culture of the region very well.

The Americans are a bit stupid when it comes to the definition of terrorism. When the IRA would blow up a pub or a hotel or something like that, that wasn't terrorism. When the Israelis would terrorise all the impoverished people in the Middle East using American high-tech weaponry, that wasn't terrorism.

Israel and the Americans got annoyed that somebody threw a rock at them that harmlessly bounced off their kevlar body armour, so they decided they'd better take over the management of the Middle East, by bombing the shit out of everybody, killing civilians without giving a fuck and getting rid of 'regimes' that kept the whole region stable.

Obviously, it pissed the Yanks off that they were asked nicely to respect other countries and treat them with decency. Obviously, it pissed the Yanks off that they couldn't just take everything they wanted, whenever they wanted it, while the whole world starves in squalor and they live in opulent luxury. After the indignity of having to pay slightly more for their petrol in the 1970s, they decided to destroy an entire continent's living standards and directly and indirectly kill millions of people, just because they wanted to feel like a "big guy".

More of the history of the Middle East and North Africa is about the Brits and the Americans being able to sell weapons and supply the Israeli military, than it is about oil. Oil only enters the equation, because the cartel of OPEC pisses off arrogant Americans, who think they're the boss of everything and need not show an ounce of respect or diplomacy towards anybody.

So, if you were wondering why we have to suffer Nazis like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and other truly deplorable twats who threaten to destroy the peaceful world we've been able to enjoy since the last world war, then the answer is: because America has totally screwed up the Middle East, with Britain tagging along for the ride, even though us Brits actually stabilised the region in the first place.

There's so much disproportionate revenge from the United States, using weapons of mass destruction. You kill one of their soldiers who's invaded your country and is occupying your land, and they'll drop an atomic bomb on hundreds of thousands of your civilians. That's the kind of bloodthirsty evil shit of a country that we're dealing with: a bully that's armed to the teeth, and will inflict horrible death and suffering using any excuse.

If you want to know why we can't all get along, why we have all those security checks at airports and we're scared of Arab-looking men, it's because we fucking deserve a good kicking. We've been part of America's global campaign to be an absolute dick to everybody with a brown face, kill mind-boggling numbers of innocent people and cause unimaginable suffering, in the interests of imperial arrogance.

How much, exactly, do you want to have? The 1950s sounded pretty awesome, and the 1960s too. Why not stop there? Why go marauding all over the globe, fucking up other people's shit? Why on earth does America need to flex its muscles and bully impoverished nations?

The Brits seemed to develop a smidgen of humility, and stop pissing the Irish off so much. Ireland is Ireland. The British invasion and occupation of Ireland is something we should apologise for and be ashamed of. You can see what a bad attitude the Brits had, when you look at the Argentinian Malvinas, which fucking arrogant Brits seem to think are somewhere off the coast of Cornwall and are called the Falkland Islands.

Empires are one thing, but fucking with the stability of a region is quite another. The American quest to fuck up Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and just about anywhere else that's peaceful and prosperous, but doesn't buy much Coca Cola and McDonalds, is the reason why we have these 'national security threats'.

So, 52% of the UK population are intent on fucking up the unity of a peaceful Europe, because they don't like immigrants and refugees, and they're fucking paranoid about terrorism. But think about why people might want to hurt us, or might want to come here: because their home countries got fucked up by us, as part of an American-led campaign to keep the poor in their place. Americans can't feel prosperous unless they're making somebody else suffer.

A billionaire reality-TV star, who's completely useless as a businessman, having been bankrupt many times, has now been elected leader of the 'free' world, by being a racist; a Nazi. How did this come about? What kind of world has resulted in building massive walls, revoking visas and banning visitors from certain countries? How on earth does any of this not sound like we're just repeating the mistakes that led to world wars?

This is not democracy in action. This is awful. The marginal Brexit victory, and the technical victory of Donald Trump - he got less votes overall - does not show the will of the people. It shows the disgusting attitude of the people. These weren't votes... this was an opinion poll that showed that there are a terrifying number of racist cunts in our midst.

Democracy and capitalism are not only failing, but they're giving credibility to awful things. There's no way I can respect a vote to abuse immigrants. There's no way I can respect the portion of the electorate who want to do awful things to their fellow human beings.

Try to remember that the Nazis didn't take their power by force. Try to remember that we all have an individual responsibility to vote with our conscience, not with malice, xenophobia and bigotry. It takes effort to be kind and humanitarian, but we have a responsibility to act with decency; both collectively and individually. It's a terrible thing when a gang of thugs starts throwing their weight around, and thinking it's OK because there's safety in numbers.

We may well find that democracy is completely flawed, when people turn nasty, because they're protected by the anonymity of the voting booth. Imagine if there was a permanent public record of how you voted: you could be held jointly responsible for the damage, suffering and deaths you caused through your nastiness, thinking that you could get away with it. Imagine being prosecuted for a crime against humanity, because you voted for something so evil and selfish, that was harmful to so many people.

It's our job as citizens of democratic countries to curb the warmongering ambitions of our political leaders. Every prime minister and president wants a war to call their own. It's our collective responsibility to muzzle these dangerous dogs. These wars should not be fought in our name, even if some of us are stupid enough to be swayed by the propaganda.

Take another look at recent history, and try to look at it without the Hollywood bullshit, that tells us the world is made up of good guys and bad guys. Why don't you find out what it was really like to live in Iraq under Saddam, Syria under Assad, or Libya under Gadaffi, before these places were torn to shreds by forces unleashed when America and a few allies - like us Brits - attacked, invaded, bombed, drone struck and generally destabilised.

Take another look at why the 'bad guys' - who are far fewer than you might imagine - want to 'kill us'. Think about motive. Think about what we might have done to other countries, that makes our own countries a target for retaliation. Think about what injustices we perpetuate, oppressing people. What can these unarmed victims do, in the face of these invading armies who have all the latest high-tech weaponry? 

Re-tell the story, without bleating on about the holocaust - it was a long time ago, by the way - and painting this demonic figure of 'radical islam'. Let's hear the story about illegal invasions, occupation, aggression of militarily superior nations against impoverished nations with limited ability to defend themselves. Let's hear the story about the bullies beating up anybody who's advancing and improving: keeping things unfair; unbalanced.

If having nukes means that you act with kindness, restraint and generosity, then maybe it's OK if only a few nations have them: countries that set a good example for the rest. However, having nukes seems to make a country act with aggression, arrogance, cruelty and a thirst for world domination. Therefore, the only solution is for everybody to have nukes, so nobody gets bullied. The other solution would be for every nation to give up all their nukes, but that ain't ever going to happen.

Anyway, everything looks like it's about to blow. Everywhere I look, things are fucked. Greece and Italy are in big economic trouble. Turkey is so strategically important, but also in the middle of a massive power struggle. Iran is exercising its rights as a sovereign country to develop weapons to defend itself, but America doesn't need much of an excuse to start wars and fuck countries up. Iran's probably one of the last stable proper Islamic republic democracies in the Middle East: the Iranians voted "Yankee go home". As the weather warms up, the huge movement of migrants will start again. The French are pissed off with having everybody trying to get to the UK, fucking up Calais. A wave of right-wing Nazism threatens a clean-sweep across the globe: Le Pen and Wilders joining the likes of Farage and Trump, in a world that thinks that racism is suddenly OK now. All it's going to take is one trigger event - a stock market slump, economic calamity or a major act of terrorism - and a massive domino effect will be triggered. Take a look in your history books and tell me what's happened before when people feel poor and insecure. Fuck the stats: the reality is that most families are just about managing, and it's fucking stressful. Something's gotta give.

Debt levels are unsustainable, suicides are soaring. All the omens are very bad. There's definitely a whiff of the 1930s about what's going on, with hints of another Great Depression and the rise of fucking insane nationalist Nazi parties. It all makes me feel rather nauseated.

I reckon we've probably got one chance to step back from the brink of disaster, but nobody seems to be capable of saying "ooops, I was wrong. I made a mistake". Nobody seems to want to say "look, I know that so-and-so won on a technicality, but really, I don't think our democracy should be run by a bunch of racist cunts".

Everybody's too busy just about managing to be able to understand what's really going on and act with some human decency, rather than having our emotional buttons pushed by the very people who have exploited us and pushed us to breaking point.

Why are you not more worried about history judging you to be one of the bad guys, than taking a clear stand and fighting for what's obviously the right humanitarian, compassionate thing to do?

Tags: #politics #history

This is a story about seeing the light...

Nobody preaches louder than the convert. I've been accused of speaking like a sanctimonious prick on several occasions, but let's just have a little think about a book I've never read, shall we? I had the good fortune of avoiding almost all religious indoctrination, despite attending Church of England schools, the occasional event at Easter, Christmas and observing a few other antiquated religious customs.

So, let's start with revenge.

I'm pretty sure that Jesus wasn't a "never forget" and "make those bastards pay for what they did to us" grudge holding kind of guy. In fact, despite my lack of bible study, I'm pretty sure there was something he said about turning the other cheek and forgiveness. Yes, now I think about it, all that "eye for an eye" stuff definitely wasn't attributable to Big J and his disciples. You could say that bloodthirsty acts of revenge and 'pre-emptive' strikes are definitely not Christian at all.

What kind of dude was Jesus anyway? Like I say, I never read the bible, went to Sunday school, went to church or got taught much about his life, but I know this: he didn't think being disgustingly wealthy was a great idea.

I probably can't name all 12 disciples, but if I had to guess I'd say: John, Paul, George, Ringo, Sleepy, Dopey, Dasher, Dancer, Thomas, Henry, Edward and Gordon. For some reason I think that Matthew and Luke should be on that list, but those names don't exactly sound like fishermen and farmers from the Middle East.

What I can tell you about Matthew and Luke, is that they both reckoned that Jesus used to say that we should stop building piles of treasure on Earth. Both those dudes said that Jesus was all about giving up your worldly possessions so you could donate to the poor. The upshot being, Jesus wasn't intent on being a billionaire, building big tower blocks with his name on and decorating everything with blinging gold.

The Bible - although I've never read it - comes in two parts and is translated from Aramaic. Basically, it's a Syrian book... you know, the place where Saint George the patron saint of England came from. The most popular English translation runs to some 750,000+ words. It's not all the disciples' account of Jesus' ramblings and crazy shit that happened to him. There are also some fairly simple commandments in there.

The first three of the famous ten commandments are all about God being a really jealous imaginary dude who demands your undivided attention. If the commandments were in order of importance, numero uno is that you're not allowed to so much as think about another God. In fact, it's not until commandment number 6 that we get onto trivial things like not killing other people. In fact, so many commandments are given over to not saying God is a stinky pooh-pooh head and other weird rules, that rape didn't even make the list. No to murder. No to adultery. No to theft. Rape... well, it's not as big of a deal as worshiping an idol is it?

In fact, most of The Bible is full of absolute garbage. Exodus 23:19 forbids us from eating cheeseburgers. Leviticus tells us we can't get tattoos, cut the hair on the side of our head, trim our beards and most bizarrely of all, you can't mix cotton and wool clothing.

"a garment mingled of linen and woollen [shall not] come upon thee"

So, basically, we know that to study The Bible is to study a laughably backwards culture and a book written by many authors, with many agendas, over several ancient periods of time. You simply can't use it as an instruction manual for modern life.

Now, back to the original question: what would Jesus do?

It's a fairly serious question. If the dude was alive today - walking around in his sandals and his dusty robes - what kind of shit would piss him off and how would he act?

I'm pretty sure he'd be straight into the temples of the money lenders, turning their tables over and kicking their arses for the sin of usury. We can be certain that Jesus was no fan of banks and financial services.

On the pro-life debate, Jesus seemed pretty sympathetic towards mothers and the choices they want to make with their own bodies. Basically, the bible's pretty clear that other people's unborn foetuses and fertilised eggs are none of your goddam business, as explained in this passage from the bible:

"As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything" -- Ecclesiastes 11:5

Most telling of all, the bible contains this passage:

"[an aborted foetus] does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an [abortion] is better than [an unwanted child]... [that] has not seen the sun or known anything" -- Ecclesiastes 6:3-5

Jesus would have one thing to say to those pro-life people who harass poor women who are trying to get into abortion clinics: "he who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her". In other words, who the fuck are you to judge? Who the fuck are you to intimidate a poor frightened woman who's faced with an incredibly difficult decision? Jesus would be pretty mad about supposedly Christian people, acting with so little compassion and forgiveness.

All this Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment would certainly piss Jesus right off. He would be angry as fuck about the way that the wealthy West is slamming the door in the face of refugees they created, through bombing and drone strikes. What part of "thou shalt not kill" didn't you understand? What part of "love your neighbour as you love yourself" got mangled into "look after your own"?

How dare Theresa May - an alleged Christian - and Donald Trump, leader of "God's own country" carry on in such an unchristian manner. There isn't an ounce of Christianity in these greedy megalomaniacs, who care nothing for the poor and needy.

I'm an atheist by default, because my scientific studies have answered questions and provided truth that makes all religious faith look like a mental illness, but the sentiment - the morality - of Jesus Christ is perfectly relevant, and a useful guide for us all when thinking about how we should treat one another.

I'm never going to become some born-again Christian, repent my sins and start banging on about The Bible, but when I weep at the cruel, callous, greedy, selfish and inhumane leadership demonstrated by British and US politicians and business leaders, I do sometimes think we need a decent human being as a moral beacon for us all. Aspiring to be like the fanny-grabbing billionaire bigot Donald Trump is going to be a rocket ride straight to a metaphorical hell.

Religion has been perverted by a clergy who've lined their own pockets and committed atrocious acts of paedophilia, as well as other abuses of power. We can reject religion, while also saying that Jesus Christ sounded like a pretty cool dude. The world would be a better place if we all tried to be a bit more like Jesus: a bit more Christian.

I really don't give a fuck what fictitious character we decide we love and want to emulate - perhaps Robin Hood? - but reality TV idols and wealth worship has taken us to a terrible, terrible place.

This is obviously written from my hospital bed, where I'm a bit loopy from kidney failure and painkillers, but I hope my writing is still reasonably cogent. All I can tell you is how I cry and cry and cry when I read the news right now, because the action of our leaders doesn't match their rhetoric about peace, compassion and care for the poor and vulnerable.

Tags: #religion #politics

This is a story about suffocation...

I was just watching a documentary about the burning oil wells in Kuwait, and I wondered how many barrels of oil we get through in any given day. Turns out it's about 95 million.

Here's where the maths part happens.

So, we're burning our way through 95,000,000 barrels of crude oil, every single day. But how much crude oil is there in a barrel?

In the USA, there are 42 US gallons in a barrel of oil. Given that most figures are stated in US measures, this will do as an equivalent figure for our maths, even though the actual volume of oil in a physical barrel can vary by country.

So, how much petrol or diesel is produced from a barrel of crude oil? Well, refineries generally produce 12 gallons of diesel and 19 gallons of petrol, as they 'crack' the crude oil. That is to say, the refinery does a fractional distillation of the crude oil, and different products will 'boil' off at different temperatures. 31 out of 42 gallons in one barrel of crude oil will go to produce petrol and diesel.

95 million barrels of crude oil multiplied by 12 gallons, produces 1,140,000,000 gallons of diesel.

95 million barrels of crude oil multiplied by 19 gallons, produces 1,805,000,000 gallons of petrol.

How much carbon dioxide - CO₂ - is released when you burn a gallon of petrol or diesel? Well, for petrol that's 19.24 pounds, and for diesel that's 19.91 pounds. Therefore, petrol is clearly the more polluting fossil fuel, because even though it releases slightly less CO₂ more of it can be produced from the crude oil.

So, the amount of CO₂ being belched out each day by petrol cars and motorbikes is 34,728,200,000 pounds. Let's convert that to kilograms, because I actually prefer metric. That's 15,752,446,543 kilograms of CO₂ being emitted by petrol alone, on one day.

The amount of CO₂ coming out of the exhaust pipes of diesel trucks, taxis, busses, trains, boats and everything else that runs on diesel, such as industrial plant, comes to 22,697,400,000 pounds. Again, let's convert that to kilograms. That's 10,295,367,459 kilograms of CO₂ from diesel engines, on any given day.

Right, now let's add those two figures together.

26,047,814,002 kilograms of CO₂ being chucked out into the atmosphere by internal combustion engines, every single day.

Obviously, we don't just use our cars and trucks on one day. Let's have a look at what happens when we do this for a whole year: 365 days.

9,507,452,110,730 kilograms of CO₂ is being produced per year. Ouch! That's 9.5 billion metric tons.

For comparison, The Empire State Building weighs just 331,000 tonnes. The Hoover Dam weighs 6 million tonnes. Therefore the CO₂ emitted in a single year weighs 1,583 times more than The Hoover Dam. Damn!

But what about a really heavy thing. How much does the entire atmosphere weigh? How much does all the air that we breathe weigh? Estimates are in the region of 5 quadrillion tonnes. About 21% of the atmosphere is the oxygen we need so that we don't suffocate. So, there's about a quadrillion tonnes of oxygen trapped by gravity around our planet. However, only 0.039% of the atmosphere is CO₂ which equates to 195 trillion tonnes.

Using these numbers, you can see that petrol and diesel are increasing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere by a small percentage each year. However, it's much, much worse than that.

I've just been talking about just the petrol and the diesel. There's also the CO₂ from all the coal, natural gas, propane, kerosene, paraffin and every other fossil fuel that gets burnt, that emits carbon dioxide. The amount of CO₂ being released each year is more than 40 billion tonnes.

There's a measure of CO₂ in the atmosphere called PPM - parts per million. Prior to the year 1750, which is considered the 'pre-industrial' baseline, the PPM count of CO₂ in the atmosphere never exceeded 300 ppm. In about 100 years, we've taken it to over 400 ppm: a rise of well over 30%. Might not sound like much, but look at what's happened to global temperatures.

I mean, just look at your goddam thermometer. Whether you're a climate skeptic or not, you're able to read the mercury, right? You can tell when it's a hot summer, even if you're not one of these 'corrupt' scientists, right?

We've just had 15 consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures. This isn't just an exceptional year, because this has been going on for years, decades... more than a century even!

"Oh well it can't be the cars then"

Wrong. Before the internal combustion engine - which was invented in 1876 - we used to have coal fired trains, coal fired steam engines and steamships, coal to heat our homes, coal to drive our steel industry and the industrialisation of the world.

You can't on one hand say that the scientists are making it up and climate change is a big hoax, and on the other say that everything's going to be OK because the scientists will come up with a way to save us. You can't enjoy the benefits of automotive transportation, global shipping and air travel, and with the same breath say that those scientists and engineers who gave you those things are a bunch of crooks who are cooking up a breathtakingly well orchestrated global conspiracy.

If you don't believe in climate change, presumably you don't believe that man can fly either, so go and live in a fucking cave and reject everything else that science has given you.

You are quite literally a public enemy if you perpetuate myths that man-made climate change isn't real. I can't believe the USA is potentially going to elect a climate change denier to be the leader of the free world. Donald Trump is actually doing work to protect one of his golf courses from rising sea levels. What reason was given for this? Climate change. The man is a lying lunatic who will take the human race to its grave.

The risk to low-lying countries, islands and coastal towns and cities is dire. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaks up and melts, sea levels will rise by over 3 metres. That means I'll have to use a canoe to get to work here in London. The water will be lapping at my front door. Worse still, if you live in Bangladesh or Holland, you'll be dead.

Obviously, it's not like it's going to be a sudden tidal wave that will come and drown people, but billions will be displaced. It will be a human catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. Even if it was only a 1% chance of happening, you'd still do something about it, wouldn't you? What would you do if your carbon monoxide detector went off? Ignore it, because it might be a false alarm?

The sea rise is just one component. The other is the inhospitable temperatures for countries in the Middle East. Alright so you might not like those "sand n****rs" and "towelheads" very much. You might believe that all Muslims are terrorists. However, these are people who are going to become climate refugees. Whether you like it or not, they're going to be displaced from their homelands, which have been made uninhabitable by reckless energy consumption in the West.

You can't even live on a boat anymore: the sea is littered with shipping containers that are like icebergs you can't even see before you hit them, because they float just below the surface. The sea is a brutal place, and weather is going to get more and more extreme as the planet gets hotter. Only the very best sailors are able to survive for months offshore, and everybody needs to put into port to make repairs and re-stock supplies. In the event of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, sea levels would rise by 60 metres, which would mean that the maps of the planet would need to be torn up. Every coast would be dramatically changed, and whole countries would disappear under the ocean waves.

This sounds like an unlikely doomsday scenario, but actually things can accelerate in ways that you haven't even considered. A warmer planet means warmer water. Warmer water actually takes more volume than colder water - thermal expansion - and of course warmer water can accelerate the effects of the melting of the ice caps. Additionally, with less ice on earth, less of the sun's energy is being reflected back into space, making the planet even hotter. Hot air can hold more moisture than colder air, so we will see more and more flooding and torrential rain, as much as we'll also have to contend with rising sea levels, and the expansion of inhospitably hot parts of the globe.

A sustained wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) exceeding 35 degrees Celsius is going to be fatal, because your body can no longer cool itself through the evaporation of your sweat. You'll die of hyperthermia. Heat and humidity will be too much for the body of even fit, healthy adults to survive. This scenario had been imagined as something far off and unlikely, but because of the component that humidity plays, we are likely to see the Persian Gulf become uninhabitable in our lifetimes. Ironically, the Arab nations that pumped a lot of the oil have sowed the seeds of their own destruction.

Of course, with hotter temperatures, higher humidity is to be expected because a hotter atmosphere can hold more moisture. Again, even conservative estimates seem to show that for many parts of the planet, they will quite literally be turned into a deadly sauna.

Even if we slashed our emissions to zero, it seems likely that there's a certain amount of momentum, that means things are going to get a lot worse before they might improve. Even if we mothballed every gas-guzzling vehicle overnight, that atmospheric CO₂ is still there, as well as the temperature gains that have been made during the modern era. It's not like the planet is just going to cool down because we're not emitting CO₂ any more. The greenhouse gasses are still there, creating their greenhouse-like effect. Until we actually scrub the atmosphere, the effects can't possibly be reversed.

The fact that Donald Trump is even in the running, suggests that we have a problem right from the very top. Why are we going to change our ways, when even the man at the top is perpetuating the lie that climate change is a hoax? If he gets elected, I'd better get saving up my money for my spacesuit and a ride on a rocket, like all the smart billionaires are doing.

I sense there is a policy of "don't scare the horses". Politicians don't want a panic on their hands. There is already a refugee crisis. There is already war and conflict because climate change has caused crops to fail. There are already heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and other natural disasters that have been more numerous and worse than anything seen before in history, because of climate change. Look how woefully the Americans protected their own people during Hurricane Katrina. The wealthy elites just don't care about the lives of ordinary people.

It's tough, because until somebody at the top mandates that we all have to make drastic lifestyle changes, who's going to be the first to do it? Why should I give up my car, if you're not going to give up yours? Multiply that attitude by 7.4 billion people, and you can see where the problem is.

You've probably got this whacky idea that you're going to be OK. You've probably got this sick fantasy of all those pesky Africans being wiped out, which is what needed to happen anyway because they were having too many babies. There isn't going to be some Malthusian catastrophe that will return everything to its rightful state. If immigration is your number one concern today - "Britain is full" and "send them home" - then you're woefully ill-prepared for the billions of people who are going to be displaced by this inevitable climate catastrophe. Families aren't just going to stick around to drown and die of heat exhaustion. A certain amount will die, but there will be unimaginable numbers of people coming to Europe and America because their own countries have been destroyed by heat and flood.

Of course, I'm still youngish, healthy and single. My parents treated me like a piece of shit, so they can rot in hell for all I care. I can easily up sticks and head for the hills. I haven't got to worry about any offspring that I unwisely fathered. I can move fast & light. I guess we're still 15 or 20 years away from armageddon, but I'm likely to still be healthy.

Anyway, screw saving for your pension. As is often said, if you think wealth is more important than the climate, try holding your breath while you count your money.

Tags: #climate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #politics #capitalism #career #depression

This is a story about being bored to death...

I've had enough of alienating people. I even bore myself with my repetitive themes, labouring the same points over & over again. I know I wrote once before about changing the scratched record, but I've struggled to do it yet.

If you've stuck with me this far, I'm amazed, and I'm grateful. I will try my hardest to make it worthwhile, as the narrative hopefully turns in a positive direction. I decided that I was going to blog for at least a year, every day if possible, and I've stuck pretty true to my original objective. I'm about 8 months into this whacky project.

When I think back to some of the weird and (not very) wonderful stuff that has spewed out, during some rather strung out periods, it's a bit cringeworthy. Having all this brain dump out there for all to see is quite embarrassing, shameful, but who cares? The genie is out of the bottle.

I'm far more self aware than you probably think I am. I'm aware how bitter & twisted I come across. I'm aware how much I'm grinding my axe, and refusing to bury the hatchet. I'm aware how stuck in the past I am. I'm aware how absolutely bat shit insane I've been at times.

It's going to take months before I have most of the pieces that build a stable life. I currently have a place to live and a couple of friends that I see regularly, so that's more than I had in July 2014, homeless on Hampstead Heath, but it's still a pretty incomplete picture. I don't have a lot of control over how long it's going to take to get another job, and rebuilding a social network is going to take ages. Who knows if I'll ever patch things up with my family?

I wrote before about compassion fatigue, and besides, don't my problems look self made anyway? Doesn't it look, to all intents and purposes, that I'm a spoiled little rich brat, wailing about first world problems, or things that I shouldn't have to fix up anyway? How can I talk about being fortunate at one time, and then talk about being down on luck another time?

When I'm starting a sentence, I notice how often I'm using a personal pronoun. It's all "I" and "me". This hasn't escaped my notice. As a proportion of the world that I inhabit, I'm alone with my thoughts far more than most. No job, no work colleagues, only one friend that I see regularly, apart from my one flatmate.

If you think I've become self absorbed... or maybe that I'm always self absorbed... that's perhaps a function of isolation, loneliness, being an only child up to the age of 10, being bullied & ostracised, being moved around the country away from friends, switching schools 6 times, isolated in a tiny village in France every school holiday.

I try and fight the self-absorption, but it's a fact of where I am right now. I'm broke, unemployed and I don't see anybody face-to-face on any kind of regular basis. I have no passion at the moment, nothing to live for, nor the money to pursue a passion.

There's a bird I photographed, when I was living up on Hampstead Heath. Perhaps I seem free as a bird to you, seeing as I don't have any kids to feed & clothe, seeing as I don't have a partner to buy handbags and shoes for, seeing as I don't have a mortgage to pay anymore.

Certainly, I felt free when I didn't have rent to pay, debts to service. It was exciting, an adventure, sleeping rough in London. But, I'm not stupid. Sleeping rough is no fun when the weather is bad. Sleeping rough is no fun when your luck turns, and you get robbed or in trouble with the police or park wardens.

Rejecting the rat race can only be done for so long, before you are unemployable and so far outside the system that you can never re-enter it. People and their neat little pigeon holes can't cope with a gap in a CV where you were a no-fixed-abode hobo. When you have no address to fill in your last 5 years of address history, the forms just aren't set up for that. Computer says no.

There's a very real lack of excitement and adventure in my life at the moment. The more that you play chicken with the grim reaper, the more the humdrum daily existence becomes anathema. My whole childhood and career was mostly boredom, so the chaos of even traumatic and stressful events holds more interest than yet more rat race game playing.

In a way, I want to fix up things in my life, only so that I can burn them down again. To chuck things away at the moment would be an insult to two people who've helped me not lose everything that we consider vitally important in the world of the rat race. It's a shame to admit how depressed I am at the moment though.

Am I supposed to be happy about the prospect of brown-nosing bosses and dressing up in a fancy suit every day, trying to make a good first impression with new work colleagues? Am I supposed to be excited about having the money to wipe out my debts, and to feather the nest of my landlord? Am I supposed to be pleased that while death rushes headlong towards me, I'm saving up towards some imagined future time when hopefully I have enough health & wealth left to fuck the whole thing off?

During periods of exhaustion and particularly poor mental health due to extreme stress and pressure, I've talked about wanting to teach deprived kids physics, write a book, solve the riddles of the Universe, set up a hostel for refugees... basically jack in the rat race and do something worthwhile. There's a social conscience and a curious mind that are completely unfulfilled, and 36 years of trying to keep it at bay is just as damaging as anything you can do to yourself with drink & drugs.

But, when I'm well, I'm a realist. I will choose the path of least resistance. I won't burn every bridge.

However, I do worry that the day has finally come when I've burnt every bridge. This website, where my entire psyche and darkest secrets are out on display for all to see... it could be the end of my professional reputation. It could derail my gravy train. If it does, I'll feel guilty for those who tried to protect me from myself, but I'll probably be happy, deep down. The rat race is a miserable existence.

There's a Lego gravy train. Adults like playing with kids toys. What does that tell you about how pointless and boring most jobs are?

Tags: #homeless #career #mentalhealth #depression #bipolar #parents #childhood

This is a story about two against one...

I'm fed up of being ignored and getting no respect from my Dad. This is a twofold problem. Now they don't take drugs anymore, they have  lost the only social bond to many freinds, and they don't know how to make new ones. They also live in a co-dependent abusive bubble, where my Mum has to agree with my Dad 0r else there will be arguing that my Dad always wins, because he puts ego ahead of relationships.

Growing up, I learned that making a reasoned argument, supported by evidence would get me nowhere. My most logical and intelligent statements would be put down with "smart arse" or "know-it-all", which is like an adult blowing a raspberry at a child because they can't think of a reply or they know they're wrong.

I'm writing two books, One on Bipolar Disorder and one on Legal Highs. I only have one literary agent at the moment, so if you know somebody who publishes non-fiction, please get in contact.

If you would like to read the first 12,000 words of my first book, please click this link and request access (I can't make it public, or else I can't sell it): https://drive.google.com/a/grant.gb.com/file/d/0B1Yzdy-TF4Z2WkczX28zVjRJNk0/view?usp=sharing

An advance would be really handy right now, because the thought of going back into a corporate environment again after 20 years of playing the game takes the saying 'deferred gratification' to an extreme level.

I would also like to borrow a vehicle of some sort, or be allowed to pitch my tent on your land. I'd like the option to change my environment. Marine Girl had offered her camper van but I guess she's away on half-term.

I'm going to keep my London base, because it's a gorgeous flat and my flatmate is such a great friend who really understands what I'm going through.

I have plans to keep a modest regular income, and I want a physical project too. I'm currently looking for derelict commercial property in London, that would be converted to house unaccompanied minors as part of Techfugees. If there's one thing I do well, it's the project that everybody else is too busy waiting for permission to do.

If anybody wants to 'buy' something from my company, I'm selling money-back guarantees. It also gives me an income of 4.5%. Also, if anybody wants to buy any 'nearly new' Macbooks etc off me, I'm offering a discount of up to 12.25%, but it'd be helpful if I could keep the whole 24.5%. Same goes for anything else that's VATable. Maybe you should buy that van (please lend it to me for a bit).

Also, I would like to sell some of my services, so I don't give the VAT man NO tax next quarter. Is there anything you have to do regularly on your computer, but the macro is just too hard? Do you want an ecommerce website or a forum or some graphic design work? Is there a data export/import task that takes you ages? See if you can get the purchase approval for the most IT experienced temp you've ever met in your life.

I do lecturing and pulic speaking too: London Business School, Bournemouth Business School and this little place called Cambridge.

If all else fails, I'm good at looking around a business, learning from your best people, and then shouting at everybody until things start going a bit better, if you're spending a lot but it all seems to be disappearing into a black hole. It's time for me to leave, which is normally when people return to their old habits or the management team think their failing project/company is just going to fix itself if everybody keeps the faith.

A leader should inspire confidence, the faith to follow them, but if that's up a dead-end then you're stuffed. Always remember this: leaders are promoted up to the level that they're no longer competent at their job.

So my parents will have a fantasy story about who I've 'become' and what I do with my time, and where my money goes. Why don't you get back in contact with me. I'll be pleased t0 hear fr0m you and I always appreciate advice and feedback. nick@manicgrant.com or @ManicGrant if you do that new-fangled Twitter thing.

If you hear something about me from my Mum or Dad, just say "with respect, you never email him, visit him and he ignores your calls after you only ever used them to guilt-trip him about his sister and niece, or say ignorant judgemental things". I need the family's help, not two ingnoramuses spreading inaccurate gossip about me.

I want my Mum & Dad in my life, but they need to grow up and learn that respect is a two-way-street. I'm still their son though, so if I'm in trouble and you've promised to help, then help, and help 100% not 50%, and certainly don't hinder by phoning all my relatives and telling them not to lend me any money because I became a drug addict devil overnight who complies with every stereotype.

Blame is a fruitless excercise. Just make good on your promises and help where you can, otherwise you inflict consequences which are not the same as blame.

I'm so exhasted, but I'm going to go look for buildings for unaccompnied minors. Guess where they mostly came from?

I always thought that drugs funded terrorism, but I feel so much safer already knowing that terrorism won't be getting any of its funds from pistachios and saffron.

Tags: #parents #childhood #politics #refugees