This is a story about squatters...

If you could find an empty house and get into it without damaging the windows or doors or anything, then you could legally live there until evicted - which was a lengthy legal process - and even get the gas and electricity reconnected to make the place more habitable. It was a kind of social justice: if rich people have more houses than they need, why shouldn't the homeless be able to take direct action and use that wasted real estate? Then the law was changed. Now, only commercial property can be squatted, and most empty buildings in big cities like London have people who are paid to live there, specifically to stop squatters.

UK law still favours those who are on the brink of homelessness, rather than the petit bourgeoisie; the rentier class. If I stop paying my rent, but refuse to leave the property voluntarily, it's a monumental pain in the arse for the landlord to force me out onto the streets, let alone recover their lost rent. The main threats wielded are bad references and county court judgements, which will ruin your credit rating and ability to rent another property or borrow money. Thankfully, only Her Majesty's Revenue Collectors have the power to force bankruptcy upon you, although debt collection agencies will add exorbitant fees and hound their poor victims to death - literally in many unfortunate cases.

Most people have a fallback option: a relative who has more property than exceeds their needs - spare bedroom(s) - and enough shared DNA that they feel some biological compulsion to not see some of their genes perish, freezing on the streets. I have no blood relatives on my mum's side, and my dad seems to have put in quite a lot of effort into my defamation, such that I've not got a fallback option. I've lived in parks, I've lived on heathland, I've lived in hostels. Most people have somewhere to go, so they don't get cold wet and risk being mugged or beaten up, sleeping rough. If you end up homeless, your family have let you down.

I'm now trying to figure out where I'm going to live on Saturday. I need to vacate this property. I'm occupying it, when there could be rent paying tenants here in my stead. I thought I had somewhere lined up - a kind offer from somebody on social media who could see that I needed a helping hand: a hand up not a handout - but it's entirely unclear whether that offer still stands or not. I have to assume it's not, otherwise I find myself with my bags and nowhere to go, on Saturday.

What do I do? Do I grab my tent and my sleeping bag and head for somewhere remote? Do I search nationwide for the cheapest hostels? Do I beg my friends for sofa space, although almost all of them have little kids who'll be up and about early, getting ready for school: I can't very well be lounging around when they want to eat their breakfast and get their packed lunches, can I?

It's not a problem beyond the wit of man. I've been homeless before. It's just... end of June... the homeless population explodes in city centres, as the good weather means sleeping rough isn't so bad, and the tourists make for better begging. I really don't want to be competing with other homeless people for the few safe places to sleep, and running the increased risk of the rampant homeless-on-homeless crimes that are committed.

There we go - that just about sets out my stall. It's a shit sandwich, innit?

Tags: #homeless

This is a story about reasons for living...

When you find yourself checking your life insurance, to make sure that it's adequate to cover your debts and leave a small legacy for your only sibling, and you bought the policy specifically because it covers suicide, that's a whole new dimension on 'financial planning'.

I've led a charmed existence. The only things left that I want to do are to visit Tokyo and New York. Everything else I ever wanted to do, I've done. Some of those things, I just did on a crazy spur-of-the-moment whim, like going to San Francisco - booking a flight so soon there was barely enough time to get to the airport, let alone pack a bag.

I could use my remaining creditworthiness to tick those last two boxes, or try to die of a heart attack from a final, unrestrained, orgy of hedonism. The latter probably not exactly being that great for whoever's joining in the drug-fuelled sex, suddenly having to deal with ambulances, police and whatnot.

I've written about it at length, but I'm going to quite considerable effort to rectify a situation that has been steadily deteriorating for 6 months... and it started pretty bad. Acute kidney failure and a hospital's high-dependency renal unit. Dialysis and a 25cm tube in my groin. A foot and ankle, numb and immobile. That's how it started. Followed by losing my employment and then just a financial tailspin; a nosedive. Somewhere in the mess, there was a breakup and in what felt like the blink of an eye, it didn't even seem worth bothering to try and rescue things anymore... they were too fucked up.

That's pretty much where my thoughts keep ending up. I think about all the effort involved, and the stress, of repairing what's broken and starting afresh where necessary... there will be doors open to me, if only I can find the energy and the will to go through the necessary suffering to get... to get... to get... where exactly? I'm only getting older and my health can only get worse. I have friends in their sixties who are still very fit & active - doing extreme sports - but they also have kids, which seems to be one of the main reasons for living.

I've been a rich bachelor. Why would I work my little socks off just to get back to being that person? Depression has struck even at times when I've seemingly had it all - the girl, the house, the cars, the boats, the bling, the stack of cash in the bank, the great job... whatever. The main things I miss in the world are my sister (who I hardly ever see), my niece (who I hardly know and wouldn't even recognise me) and my cat (who, sadly, can't be expected to live for many more years). Of course, I miss my friends, but most have left london and started families; they're busy people with busy lives.

I know people would like to have me around, so they've got the option to see me... not that many do see me, as they're raising children and working all hours. It was very touching to have a bunch of visitors when I was in hospital. I'm pretty sure I could count the number of people who made that trip on one hand though. Not a criticism of my friends: hospitals are not happy places, and living in central London makes me pretty inaccessible unless you happen to be in the capital anyway. However, staying alive, just so that people have the option is not really enough of a reason to live.

My increasingly scarred left arm is more indicative of the emotional pain I'm in, rather than serious suicidal intent. It's not a cry for help. It's not attention seeking. It's a physical manifestation of the severity of the depression, stress and desperation I've been dealing with.

I've still got at least 5.6 grams of tramadol. 8 grams would virtually guarantee my death. I can't really see me surviving with 5.6 grams, especially if I augmented it with codeine, dihydrocodeine and half a bottle of vodka. A gutful of benzos and sleeping pills, and death would be painless. The expression on my dead face would probably be one of peaceful tranqulity, not that I would want friends or family to have to see it. Remember me like I am in the image above, on my birthday some years ago. I seem to look fairly happy with life then.

I'm crying now, and I don't know why. I don't feel like I want to live. I'm not afraid to die. There's no realistic future that I can imagine, where things are not just getting worse and worse and worse. I've gathered enough data - the trend is obvious.

"Don't do it" they say. "You'd be missed" they say. Well, I'm alive, in these 750,000+ words and in hundreds of photos and videos. There's enough of a digital version of me to satisfy anybody's desire to know me. All we ever want to do is hear a little of what's going on in other people's lives, and then talk about our own life anyway.

I think I'm crying because I know I'm at the end of the road. I'm crying for myself, like the conceited twat that I am. I'm crying at my own funeral, because I feel so certain that death is the only option now: I don't have the strength, the energy or the reason to go on living, under this dark storm-cloud.

There's obviously some planning and preparation necessary, so don't dial 999 just yet, but it's remarkable how you can reach a point where you know all the reasons why suicide is a final solution for a non-final problem, but yet you want the peace, the tranquility, the escape, the end... you want it anyway, even if people are going to call you selfish; even if there's some trauma involved for people you care about.

Call it dying with dignity, if you want an analogy.

Tags: #suicide #depression

This is a story about pulling the wool over somebody's eyes...

Every day, between 6pm and 8pm, I get a visit from a different stranger. They all belong to Tower Hamlets' Community Mental Health Team, and specifically to the home treatment Crisis Team, but it must be a big team because I almost never see the same person more than once. Everybody's reaction is the same when I let them in: "wow! look at the view!".

The fact is, I have enough money to last me 2 more weeks, but then I'm not just skint... I'm actually insolvent. I have a lease that doesn't expire until September and I have to service various debts that I ran up, just trying to stay alive.

"Oh, you probably spent all your money on drugs" I hear you say.

Recently, I was on the dark web, looking for something for a friend - something to relieve pain that wasn't on offer on the NHS. Having located some vape oil, containing medical cannabis, I then couldn't resist the urge to continue window shopping. To my alarm, the worldwide supply of supercrack had dried up, due to the Chinese very effectively banning the production and sale of it.

There was one supplier - in the whole world - selling his remaining stock of supercrack. 10 grams. That amount of good quality cocaine might cost you £900. For 10 grams of supercrack, I paid the princely sum of $134.

How long do you think 10 grams of supercrack lasts? Well, we can work it out. A severe addiction might consume as much at 15 milligrams per day - that would be enough to not sleep for a whole day and night. So, easy maths then.... 10,000 divided by 15 = 667 days. One year and ten months, of daily drug abuse for $134. No. I did not spend my money on drugs.

So, back to the strangers in my home each evening. I sit them down on the sofa, next to the patio doors that lead onto the balcony.

Still somewhat wowed by the view, they can also see a number of expensive electronic trinkets lying around. The conclusion that is instantly drawn is that I'm not really in crisis, but in fact I'm wealthy, successful and totally in control of my life. They couldn't be more wrong.

I wrote about this the other day, but lurking behind the door into the kitchen, are a load of bottles for recycling. In theory, I've stopped drinking, but that's just a technicality. If you're in the grips of a mental health crisis or drug-induced behaviour, then you don't tend to have a glass of wine in front of the TV. Remarkably, I've had a bottle of white wine in the fridge, unopened, for over a week.

"Why don't you just have one glass and stop?" a psychiatrist asked me. I replied that oxygen would make the wine go off, so I needed to finish the bottle once it was open. She suggested a vacuum pump wine preserver, to which I replied that I bet I'd never be able to find one. The penny dropped, and she realised I was taking the piss. The reason why I don't stop is because I don't want to. Alcohol is an effective way of getting intoxicated, so you don't give a fuck about your problems... except I do seem to give a fuck in a strange way, because whenever I get ridiculously drunk, I punch my bathroom door so hard that it makes a hole in it. Then I wake up and think "why did I do that?" and I'm filled with regret.

Strangers who come in my house don't see my bedrooms. My main bedroom with the ensuite has got blood spots all over the floor from some accidental injury or something. There's lots of evidence that I imprisoned myself in that room, for some reason. In fact, there's lots of evidence outside the communal areas, that I've absolutely lost my mind at times.

Recently, being in possession of quite a good set of tools, as well as a box of screws, I set about attempting to screw a desk to the door of my spare bedroom, or something like that. The plan wasn't even clear to me. Once you lose more than about 3 nights of sleep, your priorities are quite corrupted. Instead of hydration, food and sleep, my focus switched to barricading the bedroom door. If you have a dark sense of humour, you may chuckle at the fact that as soon as I had completed my task, I then needed to undo my work because I needed to use the lavatory.

These are the kinds of things that are quite important if you want to understand just how sick I am, but the 'window dressing' which is my lounge, balcony and view, rather distracts from the piles and piles of dirty dishes, and overbrimming laundry baskets. The home visit team members walk away thinking "I must tell my colleagues about that awesome view", rather than "I must tell the doctor that the patient looked like he hadn't slept for days, or eaten much".

Can I fix things? I've pretty much given up hope. There just isn't time.

10 grams of supercrack certainly doesn't help, and I knew that a relapse would be one problem too many, on top of a giant shit sandwich. However, the things I've tried that are a sensible and realistic approach, have brought in way too little cash for way too much effort. I'd rather have my MacBook Air and iPad Pro, than a few pennies, even if they're surplus to requirements most of the time.

I could keep up appearances for friends and family, but I lived in fear of my work colleagues discovering that I suffered from mental illness for so long, that the exhaustion became unbearable. It was an open secret that I would be late to work during periods of depression, or not turn up at all. Everybody knew that I liked a drink, but I surrounded myself with other heavy drinkers. The problems worsened, and I had to run twice as fast to just to stand still. I came to London, knowing I could burn a bunch of bridges, and never exhaust all the options open to me, but it's bullshit, having to interview for jobs when you've got a 20 year career behind you and countless people who know you're good at what you do. Also, why shouldn't my friends know what's going on in my life. If they're true friends, they'll see that I'm still me, but I'm in crisis - they won't suddenly change their opinion of me, because of prejudice, although one close friend did and it broke my heart.

Don't lift up the rugs or look under anything: I've swept so many things under the carpet. Out of sight out of mind. I don't bear close scrutiny, but nobody looks very carefully anyway. First impressions count for everything.

After the insanity comes a further insanity - a paranoia that my flat is trashed and I'll never be able to bodge it up good enough to escape hefty bills for repairs that are completely over-inflated by the unscrupulous letting agents.

Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? The fact that you're asking those questions is the clue as to why I might wish to escape into alcoholic oblivion, or take supercrack. There are no easy answers. I know I keep going on about it, but the whole hospital/dialysis/job loss fiasco has left me questioning what the f**k I'm doing, working IT contracts in London, except for the staggering amount of money that it brings in. It doesn't compensate for the up-front stress, followed by the abject boredom and misery.

You'll probably find me sidling up to you in a bar in 20 years time - the known local drunk - and saying to you "I remember the time I lived by the River Thames and worked for the world's biggest companies" and you'll think that I'm some delusional twat.

I hope I just die before I suffer that indignity.

Tags: #mentalhealth #depression #alcohol #drugs #addiction

This is a story about irony...

So, I've had a busy week or so. Predictably, my rocket fuel sent me loopy - mixed state, to use the technical term, which is both high & low - which meant the sensible thing was to stop taking it. Me being me, that meant immediately, without the advice of my doctor. Pain is only temporary, right? You might say that this weird psychological state was the reason I made some pretty big life decisions; took extreme action; said some regrettable things. I have 3 big gashes down my forearm, I was seen by two Metropolitan police - who are always brilliant, even when they're arresting you (no arrest this time though) - and my psychiatrist, who wants to put me in hospital (i.e. section me) if I don't agree to daily home check-ups, but she's very nice about it.

The time was about right to get obsessive about something that's going to put pounds in my pocket. I was supposed to leverage a bit of hypomania to get the hell out of bed and either get a new contract, or work on a super cool project that might be really profitable. However, trying to harness the beast is crazy idea - when it works it works; when it doesn't, the destruction can be devastating. I did not harness the beast.

I've gone from 14 hours sleep a night to an average of 2. That can't be helping matters.

In 3 weeks time I hit zero: £0.00. No more money for rent next month, no more money for bills, no more money for anything that can't be put on a credit card, and even then, it's hardly a solution, is it? Also, I'm £6k short on my tax, due at the end of the month. Basically, I'm now insolvent.

So, what does one do in such a situation? If I could start back at work on Monday, or a week later, with the company I was contracted to in Jan/Feb, I could just about escape, by the skin of my teeth. What are the chances of them placing me with a client, within 9 working days? Slim to none, I'd say. Also, I'm sick again and I've got doctors hassling me for daily shit - dialysis & blood tests then, home visits from the Community Mental Health Team, this time. Doesn't this all sound rather like deja-vu?

My instincts tell me to box my stuff up, move out, preserve my cash and let the landlord keep my deposit. My instincts always tell me, that when shit goes bad, cut your financial commitments and retire to a safe distance. I would have done that in November 2015, when HSBC terminated my contract, but I felt responsible for a sofa-surfer and a flatmate. Big mistake. My instincts are usually correct.

My financial situation will continue to deteriorate, but at least I'm not careening headlong into a massive bankruptcy, provided I can borrow some (or all) of the £6k I need to pay my tax.

I'm now free to work anywhere in the country, if not the world. I had an offer of contract work in Poole in Dorset, from a friend. I have other friends in the area, who might be able to put a roof over my head while I find my feet again. It's one plan, at least.

What's the alternative? Go deeper in the hole and try and get a flatmate ASAP, to cut the speed with which my finances crumble to shit? I'm not sure I really want the pressure of the financial commitment; responsibility for an expensive central London flat. You know, I've ticked my "live by the River Thames" box, and I've even fallen out of love with London, or at least Canary Wharf and the touristy bits. The last time I felt wowed by my home city again, was when I interviewed for a government contract, on the first working day of the New Year. I would see Big Ben every day, and work in HMRC's impressive building, next door to the Churchill War Museum, St James Park and Horse Poo Parade. I've never worked in public services, let alone the posh bits, down the road from Bucky Pee and round the corner from the Palace of Westminster. That was 6 months ago, and I've been stressed and depressed the whole time since then.

Everything is probably going to come tumbling down - the landlord will sue me; I might not be able to borrow the £6k for my tax; who's to say that offer of work is still there? Should I just freeze, like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle?

Did I precipitate this, or was it destiny; fate? I've certainly been depressed for a long time - could that be to do with not wanting this life any more: the high rent, the pressure to get well paid contracts, the 'quick and painful' strategy, the limitation of how far you can realistically commute in London. It's depressing, feeling trapped. It's depressing, having so few options.

I have more options now, but less support. Was I too hasty? Yes, of course. Did I make bad decisions because I'm unwell? Yes, of course. On further analysis, am I freer now, more flexible, more able to consider almost any option? Yes, notwithstanding my dire finances and the fact I have far less assistance.

Perhaps it's time to admit defeat and prostrate myself at the feet of those who demand money with menaces. Sometimes, when the thing you fear most happens, it's liberating. I remember walking home from the police station once, in gym pumps they'd managed to find for me, having been led barefoot in handcuffs to a police van, in busy central London, then locked in a cell. As I walked along, looking like absolute shit, I thought "this has been literally the worst thing that could have ever happened to me". In actual fact, something about human nature means that we slowly deal with traumatic incidents, and they lose their venom; their potency.

You know, I worry about bankruptcy, but if it's only a barrier to jobs I don't want anyway - not in the sour grapes sense - then I get to do whatever I want anyway, unencumbered by the need to maintain a certain image & income. Maybe it'll suit me and I'll be happy. There are numerous successful entrepreneurs who've had bankruptcies in the past - it's part & parcel of taking risks.

I've always been financially responsible and met my obligations to my creditors. I've actually been very financially prudent, although you wouldn't think it from the last couple of years. I don't spend money before I've earned it, and I always kept money in reserve - I never overstretched myself. However, I'm now deep in the shit, and the stress has been there for so long, I think I'm worn down, and it's contributed to my ill health.

There was briefly discussed, potential salvation: a generous philanthropic liberator from my prison of financial misery and jobs that I detest and make me unwell. However, when it's personal, you feel differently than with a faceless bank that makes billions in profits. I've worked in banking a long time, so I know it's a victimless crime to take money that they just magicked out of thin air anyway: fractional reserves and the money multiplier. It's all just a game, and money isn't real... except when you borrow from friends & family. When you borrow from a partner who you're planning on spending the rest of your life with, it's a bit different: that's more like pooling your resources. However, your partner might have stipulations that are life-limiting: needing to or insisting on staying in one location, for example.

I do feel suddenly terribly alone, and that I need to act almost immediately; to take evasive action. I have a friend who's been a godsend; a guardian angel, but I am mindful that I've already ended up depending on her, far more than I am comfortable with or intended to do. I'm highly indebted to her, in so many ways - more than was ever supposed to happen between two friends. We perhaps share the same predisposition for trusting people and ending up pouring good money after bad. Where, for example, is my ex-flatmate who owes me thousands? Ironically, another friend who owes me a 4-figure sum, has mentioned his expertise in the field of, erm, debt recovery. But, that's a murky area I'd rather not get involved in.

Anyway, I have some new summer shoes, but it's absolutely lashing it down outside and I wanted to change the laces too. This might seem like the most ridiculously trivial thing to have elevated to a position of ultimate importance, but when the big stuff reaches incomprehensible proportions - squashing me like a giant boulder - having something that's shiny and new, improves my self-esteem, and feels like winning the lottery.

I seem to have been living life somewhat in reverse. Starting as a rich, responsible, reliable salaryman. Then around age 32, there was a veritable orgy of sin and debauchery; I cut loose from mainstream society and was homeless, in and out of hospital and in trouble with the police (although I escaped court and criminal charges). Now, I'm looking at my respectable life being shredded irreparably and who knows where that leads: flipping burgers? I can't see it. Selling the Big Issue? Quite possibly.

From where I'm sitting, I can see the river and the boats. But I can also see a top-of-the-range Vox valve guitar amp, with Korg effects head and Gibson Les Paul guitar. I can see a pro-grade racing simulator, with the seat, pedals, gear lever and an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, for a fully immersive experience, plus a very high-spec gaming PC. I can see my Macbook Air (core i7 processor and 512Gb SSD) unused while I tap away on my Macbook Pro (core i7 and 512Gb SSD) - both the best that money can buy. Next to me is my Panasonic Lumix camera, with Leica lens. Oh, and let's not forget my HD projector that can do 120" screen, in 3D. There's my iPhone, of course... almost the newest model. That's just what I can see. I could asset strip, but I'd be lucky to raise £4 or £5 thousand pounds, and I need £6 thousand for my tax alone. Second-hand electronic goods are worth very little.

What should I do? Bankruptcy and bailiffs seems like folly, but then so does staying where I am, racking up a huge chunk of debt while I search for a contract that I might be too unwell for anyway. Cut my main expense - rent - and head for guaranteed work, if it's still on offer in a cheaper part of the country; seems to make sense. I have more friends in Dorset than I do in London too. I could be stubborn - determined to make London work on the 4th attempt - and move back into a hostel, find work and then find a cheaper place to live. Certainly, I need to act now. Depression has taken me to the brink of ruin.

Ho hum. In a way, I like it when I'm forced into action, and I like it when I'm busy with a mission.

Other wild ideas I've considered are running away to France - my colloquial French was once close to fluency - or further afield: Poland, Czech Republic? I could actually just disappear right here in the UK: get a new identity off the Dark Web and abandon the old one. Then, either be a hobo for a bit, a vagrant, a native backpacker; or set up shop somewhere new, unencumbered by the vultures who circle over my current identity, and my prized plump carrion flesh they hope to feast upon... they know I'm rich pickings, and they eye me greedily.

Oh, I thought about buying a boat, but I might just as well buy a van, cross the channel and head south.

All of these options are infinitely more attractive and more realistic than landing a contract in London in the next 2 weeks, and getting paid by the end of the month. Besides, it was only Sunday that I sliced 3 deep cuts the length of my forearm, with blood running out from the capillaries, and tiny punctures in the veins. I stopped short of slicing any veins open - they're very hard to close if you do it lengthways... that's the point.

Choices, choices, so many choices, but not a one you'd want to take.

Fuck.

Tags: #career

This is a story about a better world...

On the topic of how the human race should divide labour & treasure - the products we manufacture and the food we harvest - a friend and former boss challenged me to come up with "something new and truly revolutionary" because I'm "a smart chap". Challenge accepted.

To my friend, the "constant drone of the right and the left is incredibly boring". Ok, fine. Let's set aside all political parties, their ideologies and their manifestos.

Right now, in the UK, we are a rudderless ship. Parliament was dissolved. All those constantly droning politicians are out campaigning, rather than doing what we elected them to do, which was to make new laws which we thought would make our lives better.

So, what the hell is going on? Why isn't there rioting in the streets? Why do I still have power in my apartment and water coming out of the taps? Why haven't a revolutionary group stormed the gates of the Palace of Westminster, and forcibly taken up residence in the House of Commons, declaring themselves as our new rulers?

In our day-to-day lives, we're quite familiar with parts of our national heritage. You picked up the letters off the doormat, with The Queen's head on a stamp. The jolly postman drove off in his red Royal Mail van. The train you travelled on to get to work, ran on tracks that are maintained by Network Rail. The road you drove on to get the kids to school is maintained by the Highways Agency. If you crash, the police and ambulance service will get you to a National Health Service hospital. When you eat any food, DEFRA will make sure that it's fit for human consumption. The electricity that boils your kettle was transmitted through the National Grid. Your house was built to national building regulations, the electrical system conforms to the national wiring regulations, the gas supply conforms to national standards. The Met Office warned you of any bad weather and made sure that various flood gates were opened to protect residential areas. When you got home, you watched British Broadcasting Corporation television programmes. Let's not forget the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who will look after you if there's trouble abroad, and of course the Passport Office who issued you with valid travel documents in the first place. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will make sure that the nation's roads are free from unsafe drivers, and the Department for Transport will make sure that every vehicle is inspected and tested to meet national standards. Her Majesty's Land Registry makes sure that nobody steals your house and the police make sure nobody steals your possessions.

Then, there are parts of our national heritage which are quite unseen. As a maritime nation, Britain imports and exports a lot of goods. UK Export Finance will lend to private companies who are exporting British goods, so that cashflow isn't held up while the container ship makes way for whichever port it's destined for. The Ministry of Defence is busy dreaming up new ways to kill people in nasty ways, while also forming part of the United Nations permanent peacekeeping forces, which keep a lid on pockets of unrest in faraway lands, which hopefully maintains a degree of global stability, although this is a controversial point. The MoD also have at least one Vanguard class submarine at sea, hidden underwater from the prying eyes of satellites, containing 16 Trident thermonuclear missiles, which in theory stops anybody from nuking us. Although not really acknowledged as existing, MI6 is busy gathering intelligence - i.e. spying - to protect us from foreign threats, which at the moment is mainly radical Islamists and the IRA.

All of those droning politicians haven't done a single thing except drone, since parliament was dissolved, so why is the UK still continuing to function perfectly well?

One might argue, why do you really care whether your electricity came from a state-owned monopoly power station, or a privately owned and operated one? In terms of the benefit to us all, the question is always the same: where did the money go, and how was it distributed?

In an unrestrained system of free-market capitalism, a foreign company will build their power station here in the UK using foreign labour and foreign materials. They will then sell us the electricity. Obviously, the foreign power company now has some pounds that they don't really want, so they sell them for another currency. This drives down the value of the pound, as well as creating a net currency outflow: more pounds leaving the UK than coming in. This attracts asset strippers and other vultures, who buy up valuable assets at a price that seems cheap to them, but expensive to anybody who lives in the UK. Look at the soaring value of London property prices: most of the transactions have been foreign investors; many of whom won't even live in the houses and apartments they've bought.

Eventually, if privatisation is allowed to continue, everything we need in daily life - housing, energy, food, clothes, water - will profit a foreign investor and our pounds will be virtually worthless, so things will be really expensive. The idea of competition works well when you're buying something you don't really need off the Internet, but are you going to move house every time the landlord puts the rent up, because the place next door is more competitively priced? Efficient markets only work when there's liquidity. Have you ever tried changing your bank or your energy supplier? It's a massive ball-ache.

I like living in a country where buildings don't fall down, I don't get electrocuted, the roads are safe and if I am unfortunate enough to have an accident, then I'll be sewn back together by world-class surgeons and looked after in a super well-equipped hospital.

My utopian ideas revolve around self-sufficiency. My utopia is probably a steel-hulled self-righting sailboat, with wind and solar electricity generation, big batteries, water purification and desalination. For food, the main boat would tow a super-tough floating greenhouse containing some kind of gimballed field to stabilise it in the waves. I would grow genetically-engineered beefburgers and other high-yield crops, and tow my floating greenhouse along with me in calm weather. In an unexpected storm, I could cut away the greenhouse-boat, and then retrieve it later using radio transmitter tracking. Most of the time I'd be moored up in some cove that's sheltered from the prevailing winds. Line-caught fish and squid would be a large part of my diet, but underneath the field-boat would be lots and lots of ropes growing mussels. I think a family of 5 could live a fairly decent life until the next generation were old enough and experienced enough to take to the seas on their own vessel.

Obviously, utopia doesn't scale, so most political discussions unfortunately, revolve around questions of ownership and wealth inequality; plus there's the important point about people who steal from the UK, by not paying their taxes and moving their money offshore.

As for revolution; that's just foolish. We need political reform: proportional representation and preferential voting. We need to abolish wealthy donors buying peerages from political parties. In fact, I'm in favour of abolishing political parties altogether. We need very low caps on how much money you can spend on political campaigning.

I'm less of a Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist/Maoist/Trotskyist than you think (well, maybe the latter a little bit) and I'm most concerned with the staggering amount of wealth that's hidden in tax havens, and tax that's avoided using accounting scams like Vodafone and their ilk. I'm also concerned by CEOs and politicians who don't "eat their own dog food" - if you run a bank, you should keep all your money in a bank account with the bank you run (hint, hint, Stuart Gulliver) and if you're a Member of Parliament, you should send your kids to state school and have regular NHS healthcare: no private options for those who seek to govern.

There isn't really an -ist that describes me, nor can I be pigeon holed as left, right or centre. My views and opinions are influenced by some ideas, but to say that I think that there's some autocrat, political party or ideology that works perfectly, is quite wrong. The world is a messy place, and there are plenty of people who'd like to poop your party just to show you up, even if you ever conceived the perfect system for society to conform to.

Summing up what I want from our society: social justice, income spread of no more than 100% from the lowest paid to the best paid, state-owned monopolies on essentials like health, energy, transport, education and housing, investment in science and technology, investment in massive infrastructure projects that are a source of national pride, minimum income (as opposed to full employment), 100% inheritance tax and your house/apartment reverts to state ownership after death, beefed up Competition and Markets Authority with a mandate to attack any area that has become a significant part of ordinary people's monthly expenditure, halve spending on defence and spend that budget on the UK Space Agency, decriminalise all drugs, regulate and tax sales of Cannabis for medicinal use, drug law enforcement budget to be spent on addiction treatment and education instead, the creation of a state-owned national investment bank and laws to restrict the use of financial instruments, make charging interest illegal.

That's quite a lot, isn't it? Implementing it all would be a pigging pain without treading on a lot of toes; hence the boat idea.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about a life philosophy...

Here I am stood taking photographs at the summit of the highest mountain in the Hawaiian Islands - an altitude of 13,796 feet above sea level. Sea level is where I started that morning. Any mountain above 12,000 feet will affect susceptible people with dizziness, shortness of breath, weakness and could even present a life-threatening situation for somebody with pre-existing heart or breathing problems. So, dangerous, but not that dangerous. Nobody gets a pulmonary oedema up here, in this cold thin air, but very few can thrive in this oxygen-depleted environment.

There are ostensibly two ways to get up a mountain: you can walk, or you can use some kind of mechanised assistance (e.g. helicopter, cable car or even drive if somebody has made a road to the summit). I used to scoff at the idea of taking 'the easy way out'. I used to think that using cable cars and funicular railways in the Alps was cheating... you hadn't really conquered the mountain at all. However, after my first summer season in Chamonix valley, I realised there's no point nitpicking over a pile of rocks: most climbers who attempt the North face of The Eiger will use the railway to the summit, which stops halfway to let anybody out who wants to tackle its vertical wall of death. Tourists watch as men and women laden with ropes and other equipment, venture out of a hole that was made to clear the railway tunnel of snow. Are they less brave? Many have lost their lives attempting this 'easy' route up the mountain.

There you are, see. 13,796 feet. You can see this elevation post in the bottom left hand corner of the previous photo. But how did I get up there, more importantly?

In 2008 through to 2011, I was bootstrapping. That is to say, I was building profitable business(es) using my own money and with very little outside help. Then, I got out of my depth and I phoned a friend. I begged him to come on board with my latest venture, which promised to have the most growth potential of anything I'd done before, plus it had an overlap - in the education space - with some of my friend's expertise.

My friend told me he was a mentor on a technology accelerator program, affiliated to TechStars, which was based in Cambridge and was taking place that coming summer. I have to admit, I'd never heard of Y-Combinator, SeedCamp, 500-Startups, TechStars or any of the other myriad accelerators that were springing up. The idea was simple though: take a bunch of promising teams, incubate them and connect them with the best minds in the world of tech, have a demo day and help them to raise angel investment or venture capital (VC).

I was enthused and given a new direction. There was hope and relief that I might no longer suffer the isolation and loneliness of being 'the boss'. I really wanted to be part of this ecosystem.

I applied for TechStars Boulder, in Colorado, USA, as well as the TechStars affiliate program that my friend was going to be a mentor on, in Cambridge, UK. My company was shortlisted for Boulder, so I flew out to Denver, drove to Boulder and met with David Cohen - one of the co-founders of TechStars. My company just missed the cut for Boulder, but was offered a place on the Cambridge program, which I accepted. On demo day, Brad Feld - the other founder of TechStars - watched my pitch and I got to meet him. I was rubbing shoulders with people who had achieved, or were about to achieve, greatness.

For example: you know that robot that's in the new Star Wars movies? The one that's a ball that rolls around and makes bleeping noises a bit like R2-D2? BB-8, it's called. Anyway, the toy version of that is based on the Sphero, and Sphero were one of the teams to go through the TechStars program. I got to meet those guys in Boulder. Now they have one of the best selling children's toys, thanks to a Star Wars brand licensing deal, which was undoubtably in part due to the TechStars program... that's how it works.

Once the TechStars program was done, I had two role models to choose between. Both had pregnant girlfriends, but they had very different aspirations and priorities.

David, co-founder of my business, was intent on making life comfortable for him and his family. He'd made a big sacrifice, living away from home while we were doing the accelerator program. He'd made a risky commitment, ploughing money into a company that - at that time - didn't really have any protectable intellectual property or reliable and significant income stream. Although I talked him into the idea of taking our company BIG and getting half a million pounds worth of investment to allow us to grow, I think he really wanted to take things a lot slower and more carefully, and more importantly, get back home to his pregnant girlfriend.

Jakub, who I had been sharing a house with for months along with his co-founder Jan, seemed to be fixated on Silicon Valley and being a BIG success. I hope he wouldn't be angry with me for spilling the beans that he really regretted coming to Cambridge, UK, when their company could easily have gotten onto one of the Silicon Valley based accelerators, which is where, ultimately, he wanted to end up. Jakub had been obsessed by the trials and tribulations of Apple Corporation, and was 100% a Mac man, not a PC. Whether or not he wanted/wants to follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs... one only need to look at his professionally taken photograph for his online profile: holding his chin in just the same way as the man who resurrected the struggling Apple Corp, and built it to be the world's biggest company, by market capitalisation.

Schopenhauer thought that the best thing in life would be to not be born at all, and the second best thing was simply to keep suffering to a minimum. Nietzsche realised that without suffering, how can we really experience elation? If you take the helicopter to the top of the mountain, you don't get the same feeling of achievement and success as you do if you walk up there. Nietzsche said that the world needs people like Steve Jobs, who was a millionaire by the age of 23, in 1978, and was worth $19 billion at the time of his death. Nietsche talks about supermen (übermensch) and the last men. Nietsche reviled these "last men" as he called them: men who were comfortable and content with mediocrity; men who would look at the stars and blink, in his words, rather than strive to achieve the very maximum they could in life - becoming superstars themselves.

I'm now in an uncomfortable in-between place. I neither achieved the übermensch nor the life of comfortable mediocrity.

Did I give up, because I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that lay ahead? Did I simply make mistakes, in choosing business partners who weren't as ambitious as me; as gung-ho, committed and fearless? Was the lack of support I received from my now ex-wife, my undoing?

Or, am I - as Nietzsche feared - one of the last men. The ones who are prepared to slave along in miserable existence because I'm not brave enough; bold enough to reach for the stars; to follow in the footsteps of those who've reached the top.

I'm torn, because I believe in socialist & humanist values: I believe in wealth redistribution, state monopolies, free education, free healthcare, free housing and a whole host of other things that would see me labelled as "Marxist", "Stalinist", "Leninist", "Maoist" or some other -ist, meant in the pejorative. Sometimes, I do wonder if people would work as hard, if they didn't want big mansions, swimming pools, helicopters, private jets, superyachts and all the other trimmings of exorbitant wealth. However, I know enough successful people to know that they just wanted to see a dream realised; a goal achieved: they didn't know how to stop working so hard, and they couldn't if they tried.

Strangely, although I've been shown the way and my eyes have been opened to the possibility of achieving great wealth in my lifetime, I've been left with nothing but depression. I'm depressed because I can see that hard work is required in life, whichever path you choose, but I'm also depressed because I opened the Pandora's Box of yachts and supercars and other prized possessions of those who followed their difficult task to completion: they reached the summit of the mountain.

I used to play a psychological trick when climbing mountains, which is to imagine every summit that you see is a false one, and that behind it will be an even higher summit, so your anticipation of your reward never turns into disappointment, which could lead you to giving up and turning back.

Another psychological trick I played in life, was never to dream and aspire to own things that were well out of reach. I bought a house, a yacht, a speedboat and a fast car... but these were all modest items that I was able to save up my wages and purchase. I never dreamt of owning a mansion or a brand-new Ferrari, for example, although the latter was achievable if that was my one dream in life, which it wasn't. I played a psychological trick, of forcing myself to be modest with my aspirations and rein in my ambitions, and to make incremental improvements rather than shoot for the top prize.

Now, I take short-cuts. I cheat. I know how high I can get, but I don't want to make the effort again. It hurt too much to be on the express elevator to the top, and to start to dream about all the wonderful things I could do with that wealth, only to crash to earth and be devastated. I'd like to be comfortable, but even that hurts, because it still requires effort as well as denying that I'd really like to own a nice big yacht, a supercar and a big house.

Do I begrudge my friends their success? Of course not, but it doesn't inspire me. Maybe it does inspire others, but when I look around, most people are fighting to just hang onto what little they've got. Would I tax my friend heavily because I'm a failure and I want to grab a piece of the wealth he created? Would I expect him to be humble and give credit to the society that helped him get to the top, even though we shouldn't try to drag everybody down to an equal level - equally mediocre and comfortable, according to Nietzsche? Yes, in a way I do still stand by my politics: I prefer flat structures to pyramids. I like it when everyone gets rich because of co-operation in society, rather than just a tiny handful who get rich at the expense of everybody else. We must remember that we're playing a zero-sum game - for every billionaire, there are millions of starving mouths and people without clean drinking water.

My friend was 9 years old when communism ended in his home country. He has been deeply affected. I'm not sure what makes me so certain that wealth should be redistributed, and the vulnerable protected, but I'm certainly going to tip-toe around the subject when I see my friend Jakub tomorrow, which will be the first time I will have had to offer face-to-face congratulations on him reaching the summit: he's rich now, by most ordinary people's standards, but I will attest that he build that wealth, with his team: it wasn't gifted to him by inheritance; it wasn't stolen or conned; it wasn't embezzled. He earned it and he deserves congratulating.

I'm still torn up about that question though: is it better to have 7 billion contented, comfortable people, or 100 or so obscenely wealthy ones, and half the world in desperate poverty.

In fact, no, scratch that. I go for comfortable. I go for "the last men" even if Nietzsche so hated them. Fuck him, that pompous German twat.

Tags: #philosophy #startups #career #friends

This is a story about leading an insulated life...

Just in case you think I've been sniffing solvent-based glue, I'm not advocating giving booze or fags to newborn babies. I am - however - suggesting that our academically gifted, with their busy lives of music practice, homework, extracurricular studies, cultural, museum & historical sight visits, mock exams pretending to give a shit about charity & community service and being dragged off to France or Germany in the interests of practising for their exams: all in the interests of an immaculate university application... this has created vast numbers of insulated children who know little about narcotics except one lesson they did where they wrote names of drugs on a blackboard, when they were 13.

Let me disabuse you of a myth. There has not yet been a drug invented that is instantly addictive. If a doctor was to give a child an intravenous injection of diamorphine (heroin) - as many paediatrics will do in hospital - then it's certain to be an experience that the child will vividly remember with reverence. Ok, so the dose is selected carefully, but this is mainly so that the child doesn't vomit, experience unpleasant itching or suffer a respiratory arrest.

Now, let's disabuse you of another myth. Cannabis is harmless. The most insulated child's first opportunity to try drugs will be at university. I was so insulated that I thought "spliff" was a drug. It's spliffs - cannabis cigarettes - that are so dangerous, because they are often mixed with tobacco, leading to nicotine addiction and death through smoking-related diseases. Nicotine addiction is widely regarded as more addictive than heroin addiction.

Now, let's study two drugs, and compare why their chemical similarity is the polar opposite of their potential for addiction. Crystal meth, known more correctly as methamphetamine, should be well known to you as a highly (but not instantly) addictive drug. Ecstasy, known more correctly as 3,4-Methylinedioxymethamphetamine (a.k.a. Molly, Mandy, Adam) is taken by millions of party-going young people throughout the UK, especially at university where a night of drinking could cost £20 to £40 and upwards, but a dose of Ecstasy will cost around £3. You would have thought that the drug's low cost would create an addiction epidemic, but taking a drug with friends on a Friday or Saturday night, to attend a nightclub for little more than the price of the entry fee, is a far more enjoyable experience than living homeless smoking a meth pipe. There is also a peer group at school and university, who identity problem drug users and try to help them in a peer-to-peer manner.

The most dangerous group of drugs in the world are prescribed medications: benzodiazepines. Prescribed for acute stress or anxiety disorders, within 3 months, the body is physically dependent on the medication and stopping taking it will cause seizures and even death. If we're educating our children properly, we need to teach them that medicines are just as dangerous - if not more so - than street drugs.

While we're on the subject of prescribed medications, Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed to children for ADHD. Ritalin is more addictive than cocaine. Adderall is amphetamines.

Furthermore, Oxycontin and Oxycodone are prescribed for pain management, but these are powerful opiate medications - like heroin, morphine and opium - and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has not given a license for these medications to be prescribed on the NHS. NICE's decision saved the UK from a widespread disaster. Just because you get nicely packaged pills from your pharmacy, doesn't mean they're safe to eat like candies. Americans who became hooked on Oxy quickly figured out that heroin is far cheaper, which has given rise to the tragic opiate epidemic in the USA, which knows no class boundaries. Honour roll students are dying in similar proportions to suburban hoodlums.

What about cocaine? There's a reason why dealers market cocaine as "social" or "sociable". Cocaine tickles the reward centre of your brain, but it still needs external stimulus. On a night out on cocaine, every attractive girl/guy is looking at you, everybody thinks you're witty and funny, you're controlling the room with pure charisma. In fact, in a room full of people on cocaine, everybody is talking over each other but they only hear what they want. That drug-induced self-confidence might sweep somebody off their feet, or it could even stray into the realm of sexual harassment because your brain converts "no" into "yes". Taking cocaine in isolation is insanity... it's not a solo drug.

But what about crack cocaine? School kids should definitely learn about crack so they don't at least waste it. Cocaine is water soluble, so it can be drunk, swallowed, snorted, plugged (look it up) or injected. Crack can only be smoked and doing any of the aforementioned will have no effect. But seriously though, crack is one of only a handful of drugs that can lead to isolated drug-taking, which I explain the dangers of later on.

Of the mind-altering trippy drugs, ketamine is the main one to avoid, given that it's addictive and gives you bladder ulcers. LSD, mushrooms (psilocybin), DMT, Salvia and Peyote (mescaline) have very limited addictive potential.

The drugs that kids should be quite rightly scared of are the ones that can be quickly habit forming and are enjoyable in a non-social context. These are:

• Nicotine (inc. cannabis as gateway drug in spliffs)
• Heroin (inc. Oxycodone/Oxycontin as gateway drugs)
• Crystal meth (inc. Adderall & amphetamines as gateway drug)
• Benzodiazepines (when procured on the black market in large quantities)
• Ketamine
• Crack cocaine
• Supercrack

That's not a very big list, is it? You would have thought that drug addiction would be much less of a problem if that list was correct, but the story goes like this:

Good little Oscar went to a top university, fluent in French, Grade 8 piano and having given up every Saturday to helping little old ladies cross the road. Being able to name any piece of chamber music within 2 notes, and having memorised every placard of every museum, National Trust and English Heritage sight, plus recite the kings & queens of England backwards while holding his breath, he failed to make Oxford or Cambridge who don't want rote-learned fact regurgitators with mild speech impediments where their natural accent has been beaten out of them by a home environment so sterile that it could be used as an operating theatre. With 30 GCSEs (all A-stars) and 10 A-levels (all As) Oscar went through clearing in order to study underwater basket weaving at Luton former polytechnic, where he nearly choked on his own vomit when he saw a fellow student with tattoos, piercings, an ironic T-shirt and smoking a cigarette. She was female, and he later realised he had ejaculated in his underwear, having been forbidden from talking to girls, watching TV or unsupervised Internet browsing.

Finding his shyness and good manners endearing, and slightly out of pity, Oscar received an invitation to a party that evening.

Providing much merriment for the partygoers as he spluttered on a spliff. He then started giving everyone hugs in his deeply unfashionable clothes, when he was seduced into taking Ecstasy by a girl. The ejaculation retarding effect of the drug helped him to lose his virginity in an not-unrespectable time of 80 seconds, having penetrated the girl who he felt certain - at that moment in time - was the most beautiful in the world, and he would marry at the first opportunity. When the drugs wore off, he was surprised to discover she was 18 stone and missing several teeth.

By the end of his 3-year degree course, Oscar no longer had a healthy respect for drugs and died young, because of blood-borne diseases, transmitted through shared needles. His family did not attend his funeral, feeling they had given him the best possible start in life.

"Drugs are bad", "just say no" and other messages that suggest that sudden death or addiction may occur from drug experimentation, are pedalled in our 'better' schools, which has created generation upon generation of politicians who perpetuate the "punishment, not treatment or education" policies. Now with the advent of the Dark Web, a curious person like myself can find themselves with an addiction that never would have happened, had I been allowed to experiment with drugs in a peer group who were not equally insulated.

If we really wanted to curtail the tragedy of young lives cut short by drugs, we would end the two-tier strategy, where some children are streetwise while others receive an education that has limited use except to further an insulated academic career.

My [then] closest male friend who I've known since 2001, been on holiday with 3 times and even rubbed sun cream on his back, treated me like a completely different person - as if we had never even met and I'd spat in his soup & tipped his drink on his head - when I admitted I had a drug problem. This is what the private/independent/public/grammar schools and the league tables are producing: dangerously insulated and prejudiced children.

It's a pipe dream, to introduce schoolkids to the first-hand effect of drugs in a controlled environment - but the rate of psychoactive medications and drugs we consume shows no sign of abating.

Who do you trust? The doctors dishing out the pills that have created a heroin epidemic in the USA, the guy who's 10 years older than your 15 year old daughter who says "this won't hurt a bit" as he injects her with heroin, or the education system that can empower your children to make their own informed decisions?

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about decisive weapons....

Would I rather have the pilot of my plane, the driver of my bus, taxi or train, as a completely drug-free 'clean' individual, or would I rather that they had taken 5mg of dextroamphetamine before our journey? The answer is the latter, obviously, because they will be more alert, have improved ability to concentrate and faster reaction times.

US fighter jet pilots routinely use 'go' pills before a mission, which confer the abilities above, as well as allowing them to fly longer missions with less risk of dangerous sleepiness. Many road accidents are caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. Coffee will only give you a tiny fraction of the benefits of a 'go' pill.

Do you find that after a really important day at work, where you had to be at the top of your game, and you were firing on all cylinders; perhaps you had a bunch of coffee to keep you sharp.... do you find that you're still buzzing when you get home, and you have trouble switching off and going to sleep?

Coffee - especially the super-strong stuff we seem to drink in London and New York - can contain up to 300 to 400mg of caffeine, in for example a Pret-a-Manger strong cappuccino.

The problem with caffeine is that it's a bit of a crude stimulant with lots of extrapyramidal side effects. That is to say, as you increase the dose of caffeine, most people can't tolerate the way it makes them feel. Interestingly, intravenously, amphetamine addicts can't tell the difference between amphetamine and caffeine. Also, most intravenous amphetamine users believe they are being chased by 'them' - the police, men in black, shadow people, ninjas, whatever - but these side effects are just part of the fun.

So, the beauty of the 'go' pill is that it seems that I get all those desirable effects, with no side effects. You would be completely unable to tell that I was under the influence of 5mg of dextroamphetamine. Recreational use of amphetamines is normally quite obvious to spot: talking too fast, sweating, dilated pupils, restlessness, jerky unnatural movement. No side effects? Well, not quite.

US fighter jet pilots use 'no-go' pills at the end of a mission. Having been kept awake and alert for hours, it's now time to go to sleep or at least chill the fuck out. Sleep can be difficult without a 'no-go' pill.

My personal 'no-go' cocktail allegedly contains Xanax (alprazolam) and zopiclone, which have hypnotic, sedative, muscle relaxant and anxiolytic properties. To be honest, you could probably get to sleep naturally if you took your 'go' pill as soon as you got up, but it's pretty exhausting spending a full day in a highly alert state.

Isn't it madness, me taking all these pills? Shouldn't I just go 'clean'? Isn't it best that I'm completely drug-free?

Do you remember when you quit smoking? You chewed a lot of gum, ate a lot more, drank more tea and coffee. Do you remember when the kids were little and life was really stressful? You drank a lot more gin. Do you remember when there was that project with a really tight deadline and you were working really hard; drinking lots of coffee? You were drinking lots of wine in the evenings to relax. Basically, humans will compensate to make sure things remain balanced. If you hurt your foot, you might find your back is aching, because you've shifted your body weight to one side, to put less pressure on your injury.

My injury's a brain injury and the best thing you can do for the brain is to allow it to find its own equilibrium. However, life must go on. My brain's telling me to go to sleep in a dark room for a month or two, but I need to attend hospital appointments, do the administration for my company, line up my next IT contract, find a new flatmate, move money around and make sure the cash keeps flowing and doesn't run out.

A bit of dextroamphetamine is an effective antidepressant and helps fight any supercrack cravings. It's like methadone for a supercrack addict.

I'm on a mission to get back to coffee and wine as my 'go' and 'no-go' substances. I actually worked really hard to break my caffeine addiction, and now I only drink caffeinated drinks on extremely rare occasions. I'm certainly not habituated into having my morning coffee or cups of tea throughout the day, like the majority of adults are. This is how addiction works: you don't cure the addiction, you just replace it with something else. There was a time when I loved playing with toy cars. I had hundreds of them, and I played with them all the time. Then, I got a computer, and I loved playing computer games... and the process of swapping one addiction for another continued. I'll be just fine and dandy with some tasty food, wine to wash it down with, TV and film to distract me and a girl to put my arm around and take to bed for some rumpy-pumpy later on. That ought to just about tick all my boxes.

In the last two weeks, I broke my addiction to two opiates - tramadol & codeine - and I've obviously been off the supercrack for the best part of a week now. That's fairly impressive. Please forgive me for having the occasional G&T, glass of wine and my little 'go' and 'no-go' pills, just to keep the pedals turning.

I've got a torn muscle and ligament, damaged nerve and fractured ulna (bone in my arm) but I spend most of the day with no pain relief at all. It's only at night that for some reason all these injuries start feeling super painful and I might take a couple of co-codamol.

Interestingly, amongst the opiates, heroin was named because it was thought it would have military applications, making soldiers more heroic. Heroin addicts certainly do seem to be prepared to do almost anything to get their fix and not get junk sick. I guess the idea was perhaps to addict the soldiers, and then deny them their heroin until they had done their mission. I can't really imagine it'd be a great idea to have a platoon of men who are pretty much just dribbling and half-asleep. The Nazis had the better idea, giving their soldiers crystal meth. The nickname "marching powder" for cocaine is literally what it sounds like: cocaine was given to soldiers so that they could go on longer marches. You might think of the pharmaceutical industry as concerned only with the treatment of disease, but they have profited handsomely from military concoctions.

Adding fluoride to the water supply has made a major impact on the rates of tooth decay. Drug evangelists have touted LSD and MDMA as other candidate chemicals to be added to our drinking water. The idea being that criminal and aggressive behaviour might be replaced with love and empathy, or the 'sheeple' might have their consciousness expanded. For clarity: I do not endorse such ideas.

"Go to the doctor" is now a synonym for "go get some pills". People are extremely disappointed if they don't come away from a doctor's appointment with a prescription for some lotion or potion. The reflexive response of people if you ever say you are in pain, is to offer you aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen or preparations containing codeine (e.g. co-codamol and Solpadeine). People have looked at me in shock and horror, when I tell them that I don't take any medication for the incurable mutative virus: the common cold. What part of incurable didn't you understand?

Many people with mental health issues are asked "did you take your pills today?" or told "maybe you should up your dose" by people with no medical training or expertise, who they simply encounter in their day to day life, such as family members, friends and work colleagues.

We should be mindful that psychopharmacology is only 60 or 70 years old at most, as a fairly advanced field with the accompanying branch of medicine: psychiatry. Before psychiatry, chemists could offer preparations containing opium, cocaine, cannabis; all of which treat symptoms, not underlying issues. We will look back 50 or 100 years from now, and laugh at how primitive our medicine was... especially when it comes to addiction, mental health and the psychoactive compounds.

One final thought: if the majority of us are taking medication for depression, stress and anxiety, are we sick or are we actually victims of a sick society?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #medication #mentalhealth

This is a story about whether it's right to stay with an alcoholic and/or an addict...

Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. Like every alcoholic and/or addict I have a million and one reasons why I had one too many bottles of wine, or why I lapsed or relapsed into drug addiction.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that I rearranged the furniture in a hotel room in Bournemouth, right at the very worst most moment of my divorce. If you think that "worst moment of my divorce" caveat is me getting my excuses in early, then you're wrong. Let's get this straight: I didn't break anything or chuck a telly out of the window, but I made a lot of extra work for housekeeping.

I was actually so concerned that I was in such a bad frame of mind that I was actually going to throw a telly out of the window, so I phoned the duty solicitor. The duty solicitor gets phoned after you've been arrested, if you don't have your own solicitor.  I had not been arrested, but I didn't like the way things were going.

The duty solicitor was rather bemused by a person ringing up to chat about things before they're arrested.... in anticipation. He said that he didn't think the police would arrest me, and I should probably just ring friends and family. I was loathe to involve friends & family in a mess that I had made.

Eventually, having tried several other local solicitors, I rang the family solicitor, who phoned my Mum, who told my Dad to phone me. He was exceedingly unhappy that one of his longest friends had suggested that I might be in the need of a bit of support during a messy divorce.

I rang my friend Tim, who texted an ex police constable, who confirmed that the police would not press charges given the circumstances. Tim came to the hotel, and said it wasn't bad at all and we could fix it up in 5 or 10 minutes, but I just wanted to get home.

Despite a couple of offers of financial compensation for any inconvenience or damage the hotel manager laughed, being rather experiences with the wrecked hotel rooms due to the large amount of stag dos who visit Bournemouth. His housekeeping staff had not even commented. However, I still feel guilty about that today.

That was December 2013.

Let's make one thing really clear before we go on. My ex wife did not addict me to drugs. She's not responsible for any of my addiction: then or now.

My startup company fell to bits because I was under unbearable pressure to deliver Investment Banker lifestyle on startup wages, and base my company in Bournemouth, where there are no angel investors, no venture capitalists, no startup scene, no customers, it was over 2 hours away from my co-founder and his new baby girl. It was an irreconcilable problem, with my ex-wife being least willing to compromise despite having a job she could work anywhere in the country. But, that's not her fault. It's my fault. It's my fault that I made myself CEO instead of my co-founder. It's my fault I couldn't handle the pressure. It's my fault I wasn't strong enough to leave a toxic unsupportive relationship.

Drugs - legal highs - appeared on the scene in the autumn, as I sat at home, desperately depressed about the situation. I had already tried about 5 different antidepressants by this point, and had even moved on to trying over 10 extremely rare antidepressants that are extremely rarely prescribed, even in treatment-resistant depression cases.

It's not like I didn't recognise the problem. I accessed local drug & alcohol drop in centres, where I sat listening to teenaged alcoholic prostitutes talking about their children being taken into care, knowing that I owned my own home, cars, boats, hot tub, summer houses and had tens of thousands of pounds in the bank. I left, because it feel like sheer selfishness to deprive the time that could be given to somebody more needy.

I spent a day in a residential rehab as a day patient. By the end of the day, I had brushed up all the leaves, done all the washing up, hoovered, mopped and done just about everybody's weekly chores. The people's lives were fascinating, but most of the day was drinking tea & coffee and sitting around.

I don't know if I was successfully hiding my habit, but I gave a talk to a bunch of startup founders in London, and a few came over and said they'd heard me speak in Cambridge, and they thought my public speaking had improved a lot. Go figure.

The only real problem for hiding my habit was school holidays - my ex being an educator - when I wouldn't have the daytime to take drugs. Christmas holiday was unspeakably awful, with me sneaking off in the middle of the night to take drugs.

Getting clean and staying clean is my sole responsibility, but I found it telling that the only book on addiction my ex read parts of was called "Nag your loved one sober".

After Christmas, my ex demanded that my parents take me away. Naturally, they resisted and I resisted. My dad came down, and my ex had been nagging our mutual GP about how hard it was on her to deal with my addiction. Deal with my addiction? She didn't even know about it until a week earlier, when I struggled to hide it during the school holidays.

I was completely spooked by the sudden appearance of my dad and my GP, through no request of my own. The idea of leaving my home, my friends and everything else I'd spent years building around myself, to go live in a house I'd never lived in, trapped in a village where I didn't know anybody. That's fucking offensive.

Anyway, the psychiatrist I saw just before I left Bournemouth told me to taper off the legal highs gradually - over the course of 6 to 8 weeks - because nobody knew what withdrawal would be like.

Having gotten rid of me to my parents' house, my ex then refused to take my phone-calls and generally treated me like dog dirt.

I would say, that if it turns out you're dating an addict and/or alcoholic, you should make a decision - based on how long you've been together - as to whether they're the type who's going to bleed you dry and move onto the next unwitting victim, whether you're prepared to help them - and trust me, it's really fucking hard - or whether it's your moral duty to help them because they became unwell while they were your husband, wife or long term partner.

Anyway, my ex continued to be a right ***** until someone who isn't me hacked her email account and found out that no sooner had I left MY house, she had been dating other people. I confronted her with her infidelity, and she started treating me like a human again. Unfortunately, I thought a leopard could change its spots, so I spent £4,000 on flights to Hawaii to get married and £3,000 on an engagement ring. As you can tell, I'm the kind of junkie who spends all their money on themselves.

I struggled with sobriety, but held down a couple of good jobs and continued to be a good provider. My ex could have called off the wedding at any point.

The wedding, which was supposed to be stress-free with no guests, somehow became one of the most stressful things I've ever had to deal with. The whole holiday was ruined by my bridezilla. In the end, I threw a tantrum and said I could no longer deal with teepees and camper vans that break down and other eclectic but stressful shit that I had to organise, and booked us into the $800 a night Hilton. I had cocktails by the pool and it was bliss, but there were two days until we had to go home.

I relapsed as soon as we got home. It didn't help that my then-wife had booked a taxi online, specifying the wrong year. We could have stayed at Heathrow and waited for 4 hours, but having been on a plane for most of a day, I wanted to get home: unexpected £180 taxi ride in a black cab that I managed to negotiate.

My then-wife must have ordered my parents to come and 'deal' with me, because my dad marched into my house and said "you're an addict. you're an addict. Can't you see you're a dirty addict?" which was rich coming from a man with a history of drug use. That's not the kind of treatment you should ever receive in your own home, nor did it take account of the fact that I'd been in a lot of correspondence with several specialist psychiatrists who could deal with my specific condition: dual diagnosis. I was bipolar before I was a junkie, and the two do not complement each other well.

My mum had decided that she could 'smell' drugs on me. Unless she has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for a nose, she is wrong. You can smell smoke and cannabis on somebody's clothes, but drugs that you snort, swallow and inject are excreted through kidneys and faeces. It's a completely disproven hypothesis. Anyway, My then-wife did nothing to vouch for my sobriety when my mum had a go at me on my sister's wedding day (I was clean).

I'd gone back to working at JPMorgan, and they coughed up £12k for me to go to The Priory for 28 days, without a single qualm. My general psychiatrist had said I needed treatment in a therapeutic environment, which clearly my home was not. My then-wife said that she'd divorce me if I followed his advice and got treatment, and that she'd rather be a widow than a divorcee.

On my first day at The Priory, I phoned the local florist near our home, and asked them to leave a different flower each day under the windscreen wiper of my then-wife's car, before she left for work. She however, joined the dating sites again and decided not to visit or phone me.

During my stay at The Priory, we established that I was not well supported at home, and indeed, perhaps my relationship did not contain the prerequisite levels of respect, love, care, compassion etc. etc.

I panicked on day 27 of rehab, realising I had to divorce my wife, sell our house and decide what I was going to do next with my life. I spent the day talking to a few friends about different ideas, and returned for my final day a lot happier.

Straight after that was the birth of my niece. My loving then-wife did not attend. In fact. I remember her once being extremely put out that my grandmother had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. I think my friends had been right all along: she really was "the poison dwarf".

Anyway, after being under virtual house arrest, where I must admit I abused a lot of drugs as I tried to grapple with the magnitude of selling a house and downsizing. Probably moving to London. The friends who would take sides. Having to get a new job. I got fed up with my then-wife making me feel absolutely terrified by her unjustified rage and abuse, so I took to cocooning myself into a single room of our ample 3-bedroomed house, and even built myself a man cave in our summer house. She was never content to leave me be, and would hammer and scream all the time at whichever door I cowered behind.

Then, I sent an SOS email to our parents, to come and force our separation. I was starving. I had no toilet, no shower. Do you think that's the way that people get clean & sober?

My friend Posh Will kindly offered his spare bedroom to get back into London life. I was clean & sober, riding my bike all over London, incorporating a new company and touting for consultancy work. I was entrepreneur-in-residence at PlayFair capital and I was loving the London startup scene. I was making new friends and I quickly got a beautiful new girlfriend. I know I wasn't the first to commit adultery, because someone who isn't me hacked my then-wife's email and found out she was fucking a married man with kids.

Then, divorce turned nasty. A six week house sale turned into a six month sale, simply because my then wife wanted to drag it out, knowing I had no income yet in London. She kept making me do the 4 hour round trip to Bournemouth to do trivial things she could do herself, like get estate agent valuations. Finally, we arrive in December 2013, where I went to a hotel because our house was sold but I was so angry and frustrated by my wife dragging out the sale to the point I almost ran out of money, I was going to trash the place.

Sure, I then did a 5 days of a 10 day detox, at a place where they didn't know what a detox was, or how to deal with somebody with a benzo habit. I then did 7 weeks at a proper residential rehab. My parents were on my no-contact banned list, but my mum still wrote to me with Louise's divorce demands. I told her from the start I wanted to rent out the house, defer the divorce and deal with it all when I had my health. When she refused, I said take whatever you want, but just don't drag it out. If I wasn't the kind of person who assumes that everybody's OK deep down, I'd say that it was all because she's a vindictive, abusive, greedy, *****.

Anyway, after a mix-up at my parents about what day of the week it was, my dad demanded that I get dressed in front of him and leave immediately. I agreed to leaving immediately, but I refused to get dressed in front of him, on the grounds that it would be one of the most degrading things you could ever ask a person to do. He manhandled me and a mirror got knocked off the wall, slicing my shin muscle in half along with 4 tendons and 2 nerves. Only then did he allow me to get dressed in privacy.

After my operation, I was taking fentanyl and tramadol - both strong opiate painkillers - for the pain, and yet I managed to avoid becoming addicted to these drugs. Having to wear a plaster cast kinda means you're going to have to destroy a nice business suit, and who wants to hire somebody who's sick?

My friends said it was time for me to get a place of my own, although I was still on crutches. I rented a room nearby. I went for dinner with Posh Will, and I was honest with him about my addiction struggles, and his attitude towards me changed visibly immediately. Our friendship was almost ruined, because he had such strong preconceived notions about what drug addiction is. He virtually accused me of being at risk of coming round to his house to steal stuff to feed my habit. I had the money from the sale of my house and some successful Bitcoin investments. I didn't need to steal from my friends. I cried myself to sleep and then tried to commit suicide.

Hospital discharged me, but I'd lost my flat, so I was homeless. I lived in hostels and Kensington Gardens. I guarantee you that not many people get clean from drugs when they're homeless.

Anyway, I finally got a great group of friends at a hostel in Camden, and a beautiful girlfriend. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I also got an IT contract for Barclays and a room in a student house in Swiss Cottage.

I did have a couple of 'lapses' on mild drugs, but I was clean and I was happy. Then Barclays terminated my contract and I was evicted (the landlord was selling the apartment).

I tried to put a brave face on things and have a happy family Christmas, but I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost half my friends, lost my contract, was homeless again. A lovely family in Ireland saved my life, looking after me at one of the most depressing and vulnerable times of my life.

At the suggestion of Posh Will - ironically - I stayed in a hostel in Shoreditch. Initially I had a whole dorm to myself, but when they realised I had an OK personality and was a long-term resident, they moved me to the infamous 'Ward P'. The drink and the drugs were off the scale in that place. I had to leave because I was off my face around the clock, but it seemed normal because everybody was.

I started staying in AirBnB places, because they were homely and I could do short [but expensive] lets. I'd recently reconnected with an old friend, so it was nice to live near him, in the East End.

I was running out of money again, so I stayed in a really awful hotel that's covered quite extensively in the blog post called Finsbury Park Fun Run.

That got me back to the Camden Hostel, but I was still hopelessly re-addicted to drugs. Trust me, it's hard to hide a drug habit in a 'regular' tourist hostel, and the tourists don't really love it if you're acting all weird because you're so strung out you can't even see straight.

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

I ran out of money. Working for HSBC while living in a hostel is just not possible either. More drugs - whole week AWOL from work. Got away with it.

Stayed clean all the way to Christmas pretty much. I was a wreck on Christmas Day. I hadn't eaten for days. My Kiwi sofa surfer had kindly cooked the turkey but he'd pretty much cremated it, and it'd taken him hours to coax me out of my bedroom. Still, it was super kind of him to cook the world's most depressing Christmas lunch.

Then drugs, drugs, drugs to March 21st. I had a bag that could quite easily have kept me supplied for 3 years. That's the problem with being rich and choosing a cheap and powerful drug - you're never going to run out.

Are you spotting a theme yet?

January, February and March are my nightmare months. If I'm off kitesurfing at some exotic location, no problem. If I'm working a contract, no problem.

This year, I've had acute kidney failure and severe and ongoing leg/foot trauma AND the loss of my contract at Lloyds to deal with. However, I had the best Christmas ever and I'm also dating the world's most amazing girlfriend, so perhaps these things should cancel each other out?

I have to think about drugs at the moment, because my leg is so damaged that I need a cocktail of strong opiate painkilllers, nerve blockers and a sleep aid, just to be able to partially function. I wake up every 4 hours in the night in excruciating agony.

Through the urgent need to re-stock on painkillers, I found myself back on the Dark Web. It was a stupid move. I kinda knew I'd never be able to resist the urge to go window shopping. I tried to order weaker drugs that might satisfy the craving that was instigated by nothing more than buying other products, but lapse and relapse were inevitable.

My most amazing girlfriend in the whole wide world is somebody I could spend 100% of my time with, and never get tired of her company. We like the same trashy TV. We enjoy the same high-brow movies. We both have an insatiable appetite for feature-length documentaries. We love London. We love the same things and we love each other.

Why then would I relapse onto incredibly dangerous and destructive drugs?

The watchword you need to look for here is trigger. When I was with my ex-wife, if she ever went on holiday on her own - which is something she did regularly during the death throes of our relationship - it built a Pavlovian association with an opportunity to take drugs without having an aggressive abusive ***** attempting to kick my prison door in and screaming horrible things at me.

I found a black market seller who would supply just enough for me to have a moment of fun, but not enough for me to end up in a destructive binge. Then that supplier disappeared, and I ended up buying the next smallest bag I could find: 100 to 200 mild to medium strength doses.

The net result is that I spent all yesterday evening and all last night trying to jam my locked bathroom door closed with a pair of nail tweezers, because I was convinced that angry neighbours had phoned the police, and even a mob had formed outside my apartment, ready to heckle me when the police led me from the building, cuffed in shame.

That's a net result of two things:

1. Having more than you need of a highly addictive drug is bound to lead to a binge
2. It's impossible to measure milligram doses of drugs without excellent scales. The difference between no effect, and psychotic overdose, can not be seen by the human eye

I sold my scales because I've successfully been having long periods of abstinence, and it makes sense to get rid of drug paraphernalia that could 'trigger' a craving.

Of course, I should have controlled my craving. Of course, I knew what the worst-case scenario would be. Of course, it seems to suggest that the love of my beautiful girlfriend is not enough.

All I can say in my defence is that my life is pretty depressing right now. I'm on such strong pain relief that I can barely even concentrate on writing. I'm not well enough to go back to work. I've been stressed about running out of money and being evicted.

Life is also awesome right now, because me and my incredibly fetching and intelligent and knowledgeable girlfriend both have riverside apartments, and we take turns to spend nights watching sunrises and sunsets.

She has a really difficult decision to make right now. My longest period of abstinence from drugs is what? 9 months, since becoming addicted. My longest period of sobriety was 121 days. All my money has been frittered away on private healthcare, periods where I was too unwell to work, and yes - perhaps as much a 5% - has been spent on drugs. Would you choose somebody like that for your boyfriend?

Alright, so my drug habit isn't going to lead me to a life of crime. I've been cautioned by the police 4 times, but there's not much point in wrecking my career because I'm an addict is there, when I'm not shoplifting, dealing drugs, robbing, doing fraud or committing any other crime.

However, this weekend has shown that I still have the capacity to get myself in a life threatening mess. I was ready to stab myself in the carotid artery this morning, rather than have my life ruined by a criminal record and have all that shame on top of what has already been a pretty awful February and March.

Of course, nobody can deny that I brought this on myself and that the behaviour is just the same as it was over the last few years. Is my addiction getting better? It's certainly not cured.

If you want to know if my addiction is getting better, you could look at my medical records for 2014. I was an inpatient for 14 weeks. You could consider the fact that the longest period I had without my drug of choice was 2 weeks, for the first couple of years. You could consider the fact that I'm in a meaningful relationship with a kind, caring and compassionate girlfriend who's sympathetic and well informed. I'm not lying to her to have a drug habit behind her back. I've lied to her twice when she went away on holiday, both times shortly after I had lost a contract and was a bit depressed.

Ask yourself, am I worth knowing as a friend? I could drop a dirty HIV or hepatitis infected syringe in your kid's playpen. I might replace your salt with cocaine for a prank. I'll probably take money out of the purse and wallet of everybody in your house. I'll nick anything that isn't nailed down. All I want to talk about is drugs drugs drugs and my life story's not interesting because it just goes addiction addiction addiction. I'll bring shame on your family and you'll get in trouble just because you're friends with me. Not worth it, is it?

What about dating a junkie? Well, everything they say is a lie, and you won't like having sex with them all the time because you know they're probably thinking about a syringe of heroin while they're doing it to you. They'll take all your money and ask for more. Nobody ever got cured of drink & drugs. Death's too good for 'em.

I do feel terrible about the lies [two] and the betrayal of trust. Also, she knows that a binge could easily hospitalise or kill me. She's also trying to have a relaxing holiday break, but she knows I'm sick, haven't had any sleep and haven't had anything to eat.

She can't watch me like a hawk all the time. She can't spy on me using webcams when she's on holiday. She doesn't know what I get up to at home when she's at work.

Why take a risk on a loser with such a poor track record?

I've told her if she wants to break up with me, I'll fight to save the relationship, but I won't just say anything to talk her out of it. I actually advised her to break up with me, because I'm a month or two away from earning money again, I've got depression, bipolar and maybe even borderline personality disorder, along with the death sentence of dual diagnosis. Would you want your kids to have those faulty genes? Would you want your family to find out one day that you've been dating a loser?

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

No amount of stick will stop anybody from taking drink or drugs. I need to find a social group to regularly attend. I need to get out of the house more. Through socialising will come enjoyment of even more people's company, as well as routine. There will be new opportunities. Maybe a new hobby? I'll get a new contract and throw myself into work. Once the money starts rolling in, me and her can have holidays and plan adventures.

Could I replace everything and everybody in my life with supercrack? Almost. It is pretty fucking good. Still, how much money would you need? Even if you lived in a tent, I still reckon food & drink would cost you £150-200k over your shortened lifespan. I do however think you get sick of it after a while, but the bastard thing is so fucking good when you go back to it after a little break.

What can I tell you? That's the truth?

So am I honestly comparing a night with the love of my life, with a sniff of supercrack? No. The comparison is facile. If you choose the tent dwelling supercrack life, there's no coming back from that. Also, I've never been in such a good relationship in my life: it just keeps getting better and better.

One final question to ask yourself? Even if you think you have the perfect partner, perfect friends, perfect job and generally perfect life... do you still occasionally do something that looks totally insane in the context of your amazing life, like get too drunk, or take a recreational drug even though you never do drugs? Do you think the fact that you do that, means you love your partner any less?

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about the right to bear arms...

Defence budgets are soaring. The UK is spending £205 billion to upgrade the nuclear deterrent. The annual NHS budget is half that amount. We could give the NHS an extra £350 million per week, for over 11 years, instead of spending our money on weapons of mass destruction.

There are two vans full of armed police parked outside Canary Wharf station, every single working day. I pass them on my way to work. Now, there are also mounted police.

Our foreign policies are abhorrent. The rhetoric used by politicians and the media has whipped up a frenzy of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism. I used to be proud that Britain was a diverse and inclusive nation, but now I'm embarrassed to discover that there is a marginal majority who have this crazy idea about raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis: fortress England.

I saw a meme the other day that asked what the hell is wrong with you if you're so afraid of ISIS that you're not prepared to grant asylum to women & children who are fleeing ISIS. It's a damn good point well made.

The great success that is hidden in the decline of the British empire, is that we managed to leave things in relatively good order. The partition of India and Pakistan was mostly successful, except for one stupid idiot who had no idea about the Kashmir region, but drew the border anyway. Britain is still on good terms with both India and Pakistan and I have no problem getting a visa to visit either country. I've been to India many times and they've embraced English as an official language. The railway system and a lot of other bureaucratic systems are run exactly as they were under British rule.

Again, when Britain left the Middle East, Gulf States and North Africa, after World War II, it was a masterclass in diplomacy and how to divide and rule areas that would otherwise be torn apart by internecine strife. Yes, it's true that dictators were installed. However, before the Gulf War, there was a thriving middle class and excellent infrastructure, not only in Iraq but throughout the whole Middle East. The standard of living in Libya was amazing. Bashar al-Assad brought the Internet to Syria in the mid-nineties, and Assad was somebody who the British had excellent diplomatic ties with: he was one of our best friends in the region.

Britain's policy had always been to rule through diplomacy and bureaucracy. Britain's policy was not one of invasion, conquest, occupation, arms races and domination through sheer military might. The reason Britain had a huge empire is because we are a mercantile nation, who negotiated many trade deals and established much of the flow of goods over land and sea that we see today. Britain didn't want war. Britain wanted to be friends with everybody, so they could trade with the world.

Now, with the American 'shock and awe' tactics, with SCUD missiles raining down on innocent civilians from hundreds of miles away, with no warning, we're fucking hated. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not even hearing the approach of an aircraft, seeing the falling bomb and having a second to duck and cover? Can you imagine you're sitting there watching TV, and the next thing you know your house is rubble and your whole family have been killed or maimed?

The American occupation, or simply their military presence, in the Middle East was highly offensive and threatening. America likes to flex its military muscle. America likes to boast about its cutting-edge 'defence' technology... which we all know means offensive weapons.

Where's the fucking bravery of warfare, if you're controlling a drone from some air-conditioned office type place, in a building in America, blowing up people in a country thousands of miles away? How that fuck is that being a brave soldier?

And so, we saw the birth of asymmetrical and guerrilla warfare. What we call insurgency is simply the only way that the occupied nations stand any chance of fighting back against the invading forces. The people who we call insurgents are really freedom fighters: fighting for the freedom from invasion and occupation by the country with the world's largest 'defence' budget - America.

I'm going to keep putting 'defence' inside inverted commas like that, because it's not fucking defence. Those weapons get used for offensive purposes far more than for defensive purposes.

The top selling guns in America are hand guns. The top gun retailer is Walmart... we know them as ASDA supermarket in the UK. The top selling bullets are rounds that go in hand guns. What the actual fuck? Surely 1 bullet equals 1 dead person, if you're using a hand gun. I can't imagine that anybody goes hunting deer with a hand gun, can you?

This culture of fetishising deadly weapons - brandishing them and carrying them on the public streets - has become ubiquitous. Giving guns to every ordinary policemen and women. Encouraging people to own a gun at home and introducing laws like stand-your-ground have caused a massive spike in the number of guns and bullets sold, and the number of people who are killed in shootings.

My fear is that Britain moves closer and closer to the American model of foreign and domestic policy.

I would hate it if our police were all armed with guns. No policeman should be judge, jury and executioner. I would hate it if private citizens were allowed to own handguns, which serve no purpose other than to shoot people. The self defence argument crumbles to dust if you can keep guns out of everybody's hands. I would bet you that 99 out of 100 burglaries in the UK are committed by people who are not carrying guns.

The more the rhetoric and the hate ramps up, and the more our strong historical positive diplomatic relationships with many leaders in the Middle East deteriorate, as well as the whole region descending into a chaotic power struggle, the more that Britain becomes a proxy target for the many many people who hate America, because America killed their children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, friends and countless other innocent victims of cowardly missile, bomb and drone strikes.

"Don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes" they used to say. Soldiers used to have to live with the horror of knowing they'd taken the life of another human being. Now, your drone controller hops in his car and drives home to his family, at the end of his shift. He has no idea what kind of carnage and destruction was unleashed in the aftermath of his drone strike. He has no idea whether the intelligence was correct, or if he just murdered a bunch of innocent people.

The American way of doing things is not making me feel safe. Donald Trump does not make me feel safe. Border controls and slamming the door in the face of people fleeing persecution and war, does not make me feel safe. Dropping bombs on Syria does not make me feel safe. The 'special relationship' with America does not make me feel safe.

We belong to Europe, and we owe it to our former colonies to maintain peace and stability. We are fucking up two of our greatest postwar achievements, and letting America ruin world peace.

I don't feel safe.

Tags: #terrorism #london