This is a story about relativity...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is all.

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

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

This is a story about good vs. evil...

Ten days ago I made a video declaring my solidarity with my Parisian brothers & sisters. I never could have imagined what would happen next. We are all shocked and saddened by the barbarity of humanity, when pushed to extremes. It's hard to understand how or why people would act like that.

A week ago I conducted a kind of experiment, where I attempted to empathise (NOTE: not sympathise) with the mindset of a person who would be driven to extreme behaviour. I was disappointed with the response. People just didn't seem to share my concerns. An Evening Standard journalist rang me up for comment, and he actually thought it was funny.

I was moved to see thousands Parisians out on the street, ignoring the curfew, and united under a banner that read "Not Afraid". This kind of solidarity and non-violent protest against the rise and rise of terror shows that humans can collectively beat barbaric behaviour. I include war in this statement, as I don't believe that you can shoot and bomb people into submission, either as an act of terrorism OR an act of war. It just doesn't work.

As I have been urging in a series of blog posts, I beg people to act in nonviolent protest, and to demand that our politicians don't carry out acts of war in our name. War is the fuel for the fire of hatred, terrorism, extremism, pain, destruction.

I know that the French people are reeling from the attack, and it must be unimaginably hard to cope with something so horrible happening to your family, friends and fellow French people. I'm so sorry, as a human, that some of my fellow humans are so barbaric.

I don't think that warfare is the right response.

That is all.

Tags: #terrorism #france #europe

This is a story about protesting without violence or vandalism...

Holding a gun makes you feel powerful. You have the ability to be judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. Thankfully, we don't have that many guns in the UK, yet. I'd like to keep it that way.

Fighting fire with fire is never a good idea. "Offence is the best defence" is actually an offensive quote, and it breeds arms races. Who's going to have the bigger stick? An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

Guy Fawkes' plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament was not a good idea. But the fact that he failed meant that he got his point across, even if he was burnt alive. Becuase we killed a man, he lives on as an anti-government symbol that will rise up whenever people are disillusioned with the 'democratic' system we have in place. That's about the only positive spin we can take from that night, November 5th... a long long time ago.

Tonight, London is bracing itself for widespread disruption, around the Million Mask March and the work of Anonymous. I fear that more anger-prone outbursts will result in violent clashes with the Metropolitan Police. I love the police... they do a very difficult job under horrendously difficult circumstances, protecting the most vulnerable people in society, and trying to uphold laws that YOU supposedly voted for.

But the majority of people are not politically active. They are disillusioned with politics in this country. They will happily vote on X-Factor or Big Brother, and indeed they follow these programs with great interest. Do they watch Party Political Broadcasts and Prime Minister's Question Time? No way. They don't see any connection between what goes on in Westminster and their lives.

Sadly, the lives of too many people in this country are ruled by too few people who are far removed from the reality of ordinary living in the United Kingdom. That is causing bitterness and resentment. The 'have-nots' are very angry with the 'haves' and they have no way of expressing that anger in a constructive way that makes a difference.

I fear that things are going to turn ugly tonight, and I really implore anybody and everybody to keep a lid on their feelings and try and go about their business with some dignity and self-control. Yes, we all like letting off fireworks... but I implore angry young people to do it responsibly.

The thought of a policewoman or man being horribly burned, like earlier this week, is really inexcusable. That person has a family. That person is human too. It's not them and us... we're all in this together, even though that Gammon-Faced Cockwombling Spunkflute that is David Cameron uses that line, but doesn't mean a word of it, in his massive house in Chipping Norton.

So anyway, I'm #notanonymous. You know who I am. I'm making a dignified and nonviolent protest about the divisions in British society. I'm proud to be a subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England, and live, love and work in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Long live The Queen and God bless her and the United Kingdom.

I remain, Ma'am, your loyal subject.

I know you like Corgi dogs, your Highness, but I hope you like this picture of my cat, Frankie (June 2007)

Tags: #politics #frankie #notanonymous #civildisobedience

This is a story about manipulation...

My ex told her side of the story so much that our friends got sick of it. She then moved onto my parents. Sadly, my father was taken in by it.

Damsel in distress? I really think not. She spent a huge amount of time cultivating self-pity and a warped story that attempted to completely exonerate herself of any responsibility for our destructive relationship. I went quiet. I was slowly dying. I was self-harming and suicidal. Meanwhile, she vociferously attempted to turn friends and family against me. It didn't really work, as most people are mature enough to listen to both sides of the story before judging.

I certainly admit to my equal responsibility in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship based on hate sex. But I was the 'weaker' in this relationship, and I was beaten into submission. I think my friend Wiktor accurately summed up our marriage with the following image.

I should have walked away. I tried to walk away very early in our relationship, when it became clear to me that she wasn't ready for a committed relationship. I tried breaking it off loads of occasions, but she kept begging forgiveness for things like cheating, and I kept forgiving her. Fundamentally, I loved her and she didn't seem to love me.

That was a life lesson I couldn't really seem to learn, because she isolated me from my friends, from the activities that I loved and even from my GP and my family. The conflict of interest was appalling. I literally ended up with almost nobody fighting my corner. She cultivated such a convincing 'woe is me' story of her own suffering.

I was suffering in silence.

However, I'm a very forgiving person. She vindictively destroyed me, and I forgive her.

I'm struggling to forgive my parents. They should remember that it was me who eventually reached out to both sets of parents and got them to negotiate my release from captivity, and allow my life to be spared. I found her parents to be extremely supportive, understanding and kind. It's really upsetting how my own were so twisted by her manipulative and one-sided bullsh1t.

I also have a problem with the way that my GP acted. She took my wife on as a patient - which I believe was an unprofessional conflict of interest - and started to see my ex on a very regular basis, and began to become compromised, sympathetic to the patient who she saw more and more of. I honestly believe that my GP was convinced by my ex to act in a manner that was by no means in my best interests.

I have evidence for this. When it became clear that I had few human allies, I turned to technology. I installed a keylogger on my spare laptop, which I left in my house. When my ex eventually subdued me into being taken away by my gullible and manipulated idiot father, I was able to see what was typed on the keyboard of that laptop.

My horrible ex immediately joined a dating website and started messaging men. Supposedly she justified conspiring with my father and GP for my safety, health and wellbeing. In actual fact she showed her true colours straight away. The front door had barely closed behind me.

This 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' fake image of a person had her mask torn down. At first, I didn't even resort to looking at the keyboard transcripts. I just had great intuition that something was wrong. Naturally she played the "he's just paranoid... mentally ill" card. She bare-faced lied to the Crisis Teams in Bournemouth and Oxford when confronted by them about my concerns that she was not loving, supportive and faithful.

When I showed her the evidence, she backtracked with remarkable speed and started acting with some human decency. Foolishly, I forgave quickly. I married her. In sickness and in health and all that. I bought in to all that love and marriage vows crap. Strangely, I still do.

I don't think the end justifies the means. I wish I hadn't had to resort to snooping on the use of my own laptop (which is completely legal... it was my property, running my login account) in order to retain my own sanity. Can't people just be honest? Moral?

One of the moments that I clung to when my character was being assassinated, was when my ex recounted a tale of her trying to elicit yet more sympathy from our friends (I was not present, naturally). She was outraged that they were so dismissive of yet another here we go again tear-jerking tale of woe is me and pity party for the biggest martyr I have ever had the misfortune to meet, let alone date and foolishly marry.

Yes, fundamentally, this is a story of me growing up. This is a story of me finding out that relationships can be abusive, with cheating, lies, subterfuge and people are even prepared to take a life to perpetuate their disgustingly twisted image of self-righteous perfection. Whiter than white. Ha! I think not.

I accept now that I played my part in this. I should have taken responsibility for the safety of my own life much earlier, but so much of my support network was perverted by this manipulative character. Many of my friends went quiet, reserving judgement. They didn't reject me as a friend, but our relationship went cold.

I really hope she's OK. I don't think she's a bad person. I actually don't think anybody is 'bad' per se, Instead, we are all animals that respond to stimuli, to our environment, to factors outside of our control. I tried my best to make it work - that's what my parents taught me to do - but I didn't know how to walk away.

I didn't know how to walk away and it nearly killed me.

I got to keep our cat, but nothing else. My 'half' has been spent on putting this heartbroken chap back together again. I'm off to hospital again now. Hopefully I'm going to have an echocardiogram soon and see how bad the damage is.

This poor animal was the victim of a horrible divorce. Frankie the cat didn't have a great time either (October 2014)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #friends #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about burnout...

Here I am, back in Cambridge, after 4 years of ups & downs. What happened?

Well, I got hit by a perfect storm. I could see the storm coming - I'm a sailor after all - but I couldn't sail fast enough to get out of the way. Part of the reason for the sudden breakdown was uncontrolled self-medication with the GABA agonist, ethanol, which had suppressed my natural anxiety response until things were literally unbearable. The other reason is a lack of support from my parents. In fact, they actually undermined me and lied about supporting me.

Life is stressful. My sister is a single mum on a low income, working 6 days a week, going through a horrible divorce. That's stressful. I was a startup founder, in conflict with my co-founder and my girlfriend, who were both pulling me in different directions and away from my investors in Cambridge and my customers and talent pool in London. That's stressful too.

Our parents are always looking for the easy way out. They are not good at taking any responsibility, but I don't blame them. Whatever it is that causes them to be so slippery at accepting that they have 2 children who need their support, I want to find out and help them. My sister is a supermum to her daugher, my niece.

Even though our parents don't realise or appreciate it, we have been working so damn hard all our careers to make sure we don't place any financial burden on them. My sister and I have suffered in our adult lives as a result.

Something had to give.

You should give your children enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. It's as simple as that. If you don't give enough to allow your kids to do something then you're not a good parent. Simples.

My sister gives my niece a brilliant life.

So, I want to help my parents with their alcoholism. I want to help them see that projecting their inadequacies onto their kids is over-pressuring them. I want them to see that their kids are nice people who care about family and want to look after their parents in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but we are living in an age when the government has bankrupted the country.

Life is hard as a young person.

Baby boomers had it unbelievably easy versus the prospects that a young person faces today. The chance of a young person being debt free, owning their car, buying a house... these are pie in the sky dreams that will never come to fruition unless your parents are able to comprehend that their dreams of being idle pensioners are of lower priority than miserable deprived grandchildren and stressed anxious children, who have become parents themselves.

We have known about contraception and family planning for long enough, that there is no excuse for not thinking about the wellbeing of any children you might spawn. Having a baby does not make you clever. It means that your body did something that it was evolved to do... just the same as a slug, a pig, a fish, a bird. Reproduction just means that you failed to use your higher brain function, and acted instead, no differently than a fly laying eggs in putrid meat. Well done.

There are a great number of barely educated and underprivileged kids who are bored on housing estates and have no hope of escaping these sink holes. They are incentivised to perpetuate generations of welfare dependent and economically inactive families. These people have been robbed of the things that would enable them to work their way out of poverty and deprivation.

My parents both went to University, so they have no excuse.

I delayed starting a family until I had done more research into the genetic factors in Type II Bipolar Disorder, and had verified whether I could consistently manage my own illness in a stressful environment. Only when I know that I'm not going to pass on bad genes and I'm not going to have another stress-related burnout, will I consider stopping using contraception.

Condoms are a good thing.

My parents enjoy looking after my cat, Frankie, until I'm ready to be a good human to him again (August 2012)

Tags: #university #career #divorce #parents #depression #suicide #alcohol #addiction #bipolar #youth #sex #politics

This is a story about a sane response to an insane world...

We were told Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) could hit us within minutes, but it took me 13 hours to be admitted to hospital when my life was in danger. We have our priorities totally wrong.

Nuclear weapons, guns, bullets, bombs, tanks, warplanes, warships, submarines... can these things really come ahead of seeds, tractors, irrigation, clean water, reversing the spread of deserts, planting trees, immunising people against preventable diseases, treating illnesses that are seen as 'par for the course' in Western life - like diarrhoea - that kill in the developing nations, and the education of girls and young women; that data has shown to be the most effective route to good family planning,

Is it a lack of education that causes people to believe what they read in commercial newspapers, and what they see and hear on commercial radio and TV, which have a political and economic bias, to maintain plutocratic power and control over the struggling masses? Why are people so racist? Why are people so protectionist? Why are people so uneducated regarding repetition of the mistakes that history teaches us, that people have made time and time again?

Technology can save us, but it can save us in unusual ways. For example, microbial filters like the LifeStraw® from Vestegaard. Obviously, this drinking straw stops waterborne pathogens from being ingested, but - perhaps more significantly - it reduces the carbon footprint of people who use it, because they no longer have to boil water to make it safe to drink. This device makes profits through carbon credits claimed for every straw used.

That makes a lot more sense to me than trying to get the rich to put money in charity collection buckets. Keep your coins, I want change.

I would rather be at work, or looking at the river from my apartment. Anybody who says I engineered this situation must be mad (October 21st, 2015)

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #NHS #war #charity #media

This is a story about obvious consequences...

The Trek 820 mountain bike was excellent, and cost just over £300 in 1993. This was apparently too much for my Dad to pay, so he stole a girl's bike.

Having removed the family to the middle of a remote part of the UK, on very steep hills on the Devon/Dorset/Somerset borders, away from all my friends in Oxford, I was then expected to get to school and do my paper round on this bike, as well as making new friends at the school which was part of my 6 day a week gruelling punishment for being the son of a couple of lazy dope smokers.

Averaging about 50 miles a day on some of the UK's steepest gradients. I can tell you a lot about lactic acid burning in your legs. I can tell you a lot about gritting your teeth and grinding the pedals, through all seasons, through all weather.

One thing I can tell you about children, is that they are extremely good at spotting other children who are different. Usually bullying and social exclusion are based on these perceived differences. I can tell you a lot about both of those things.

I'm going to hospital now, because I'm suicidally depressed. It seems like the responsible thing to do, even though all I really want to do is run myself a hot bath and slice my arms open with a kitchen knife, to get at my radial arteries. The pain must flow out of me somehow. The thoughts are invasive. I can't block them out.

At least my parents got to save £300 (or maybe less if they actually bought me a bicycle second hand). Are they responsible?

Tags: #bullying #oxford #childhood #parents #cycling #addiction

This is a story of imitation...

I pitched the Cambridge Angels in flip flops. They didn't like this very much. It was a hot day in June though, so I thought it was appropriate. Perhaps I was a little over-inspired by The Social Network, but at least I wasn't wearing my dressing gown.

I also structured my company, so that my shares would be less diluted when the company received investment.

I was even so paranoid about anybody wrestling control of my company away from me, that when I wrote and signed a vesting agreement for my co-founder in a pub, on a napkin, during the first weeks of the Springboard Accelerator Program, in Cambridge, I deliberately held the pen upside down for the photo. Plausible deniability.

Anyway, so Hubflow is winding down operations, and that means I failed as CEO, despite the fact I stepped down a few years ago. Of course I wanted to give all my investors a big payday, so put a black mark against my name.

People should remember that I always had one eye on the sales pipeline and another eye on the bills, taxes, and wages. I would never bankrupt a company. However, it's all credit to my co-founder for getting things in order when I became unwell.

It's tough at the top, and I have nothing but respect for anybody who is in a CxO position. I'm not after anybody's job... I know how much of a kicking the executives get from investors, customers, and the sleepless nights thinking about everybody who is depending on them.

I'm also not so naïve as to believe that I should be telling anybody how to build a successful startup yet. I learned loads on the Springboard program, but those lessons have yet to express themselves in a useful and productive way for everybody who invested time & energy in me.

I'm wrestling with an unquenchable desire to research and develop stuff, to innovate, to explore ideas. I know that I can deliver a project as a solo founder, or build something from day one with the right co-founder(s). Bringing people in later in the life of a startup, is very difficult.

I also know that I can be a developer, or I can be a startup founder...  not both. Sure, I can write code, I can fix bugs, but the demands on a founder are so great that it's impossible to do the development as well. I was writing and maintaining code for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, web application, maintaining the database, doing sysadmin, operational support... it was too much, on top of raising money, meeting customers, pitching and meeting mentors.

On the Springboard Program, Jon and Jess did a great job of supporting the founders. I know that Jon also went by far the extra mile for the teams that were dealing with issues, and the safety net that was there for me could not be faulted. I had bitten off more than I could chew.

I was always torn between raising any kind of investment round (friends & family, seed) or bootstrapping. I also was conflicted about bringing anybody into my startup, except hired help. I didn't trust anybody. I also couldn't let go of control and empower anybody to help me.

When you are bootstrapping, you don't have any money. For anything. Making rent payments, wages, expenses... everything comes down to one thing and one thing only: how much runway have you got left for your burn rate? You run lean, but you also run stressed. That's not an excuse for me not being a team player though. Hubflow probably could have been a bigger success if I had learned the importance of Team, as well as Traction and Technology.

You live, you learn.

Photographic evidence that I did make people laugh as well as cry. I think we had great times in Cambridge. I know I did (May 2011)

Tags: #startup #entrepreneur #university #career #leadership #computing #apple

This is a story of a culture that is destroying people's mental health and lives...

Management by balance-sheet, bean counters, spreadsheet jockeys and "yes" men and women are joining a set of executives who do everything in their power to abstain from any of the hard work and responsibility that is necessary in the world.

We have all heard horror stories of people being sacked by text message. In fact, skilled workers, professionals, have been steadily robbed of their worth and self-esteem since powerful rich men, behind closed doors in gentleman's clubs were allowed to asset strip British industry. The practice continues today, as companies are allowed to be headquartered in the UK, but are offshoring all the jobs for cost reasons, and are draining the wealth of the nation.

Europe is fast becoming little more than a tax haven for global businesses, with billions, if not trillions of dollars of profits being pushed through legal entities that have little reason for existence other than to evade the taxes that these companies rightfully should pay to the countries that they have extracted the profits from.

Luxembourg is the most obvious example, but Ireland has recently jumped on the bandwagon. The amount of tax that is paid by Vodafone (group HQ is Luxembourg... funny that, considering that Newbury, UK is where I thought they were founded?) or Apple and Amazon (taxed via Irish legal entity... I know Apple Maps is rubbish but it's a long way from Silicon Valley?) is a pittance. The amount of profits that these companies make is disgusting, versus what they pay as percentage of their gross profits.

However, maybe there is a good reason for all of this?

When I became unwell, and asked good old UK government for support - as somebody who has always paid my full taxes, has no offshore bank accounts, has never tried to evade or avoid taxes - I found that there was worryingly little of a safety net there.

I went to my doctor (General Practitioner, or GP for short, here in the UK) and had a 30 second conversation about what was going on in my life.

"Have you heard of Fluoxetine"

Well, yes, I have heard of Fluoxetine. It's the generic name for Prozac, which is an antidepressant from the 1980s. What the hell is my doctor doing dishing out 25 year old pills to somebody who they have taken 30 seconds to get to know? Well, we know that the NHS is extremely cost pressured, given that we have to give such large tax breaks to profitable billion dollar companies and make sure that we don't take too much inheritance tax from dead multi-millionaires. Oh, and we need nuclear atomic bombs too. Yes, we need to make sure we can always annihilate every person on earth at the flick of a switch.

Luckily for me, I walked away from a course of powerful psychoactive medication, that has been proven in long-term studies to be less effective than placebo. It also takes 6 weeks to take effect. My episodes of depression tend to be about this long anyway. Also, SSRIs make you fat and destroy your sex life, as well as blunting your emotions and generally making your sh1t life even more sh1t, but you'll be too doped up to even realise, unless you ever emerge from the chemical haze.

I'm pretty upset about this, if you hadn't picked up on that.

Another thing that is very annoying is that, as anybody who takes a few more minutes to get to know me will tell you, I'm certainly not what you might term unipolar. My life is littered with examples of radical mood swings. Catch me at a certain time, and you will see my racing thoughts, pressured speech, lack of sleep, intolerance of dimwitted twits, and evidence of my wacky projects.

One day I whimsically decided to knock down my shed, order a load of wood from a sawmill and build a giant beach hut summer house thing in my back garden. Somebody suffering from unipolar depression does not normally do such a thing, according to the DSM-IV/V.

I had to learn all about Google Sketchup, so that I could design the thing, learn about different types of timber, wooden building construction techniques, roofing techniques, planning laws governing outbuildings, estimate how much I would need in terms of materials, locate a sawmill, find a roofing supplier, get a chop saw, nail gun and roofing blow torch (the most fun tool of all).

At no point did any of this seems slightly strange or beyond my capabilities, as a spotty IT nerd who did little more than turn coffee into software for a living, by pressing buttons on a computer, in a comfortable air-conditioned office.

Working around-the-clock seemed perfectly normal too. I remember one neighbour pointed out that the sound of nails being hammered at 9pm was not helping him to study for an English exam... but how are you supposed to hammer quietly? I did try and hammer more considerately, but it seemed more considerate to simply get the project done as fast as possible (I think I took 3 days to complete the structure) given that I didn't know the sleep patterns of everybody within earshot.

So "Mega Shed" as she was affectionately known, appeared at the bottom of my garden in under a week, at a cost of £700. An ordinary week in anybody's life? Well it's hard to judge from an internal point of view, as you can't step out of your own mind and view yourself as others would.

Naturally, friends, colleagues and family are always impressed by a person's industriousness and ingenuity, so I saw no real reason to back off the gas. When the world rewards you for efforts, this reinforces your belief that what you are doing is sustainable.

I then decided to sit in my garden and read a huge stack of books on Quantum Mechanics. This then progressed to me reading every paper that looked interesting in Cornell University's online archives. Naturally, I then started emailling a bunch of the authors, and getting engaged in particularly interesting email based discussions with people around the world about De Broglie's Matter Waves (Pilot Wave theory) which looked a hell of a lot more elegant than all that Standard Model crap that couldn't be unified with General Relativity.

Instead of being discouraged, I found academics to be kind, indulgent and generous with their time. I took things too far, of course, and wrote a paper on the measurement of collapsing Quantum States in an entangled system, spread over a physical space larger than the light-cones of the particles being measured. Standard Quantum Eraser type stuff. I even tried to get it published. Lolz.

At no point did anybody actually directly say to me "you seem to be as mad as a box of frogs on acid with lasers coming out of their nostrils" so I kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper thought hole until I sank into another depression, with no idea what had just happened to me.

The thing is, it's fairly entertaining, enthralling, to watch somebody who is hypomanic. In our age of Big Brother and myriad reality TV shows, we seem to think that it's OK to be a spectator in somebody's spectacular life.

We seem to think it's OK to sit back and watch somebody go absolutely bezerk. It's that person's fault, right? Or maybe it's not their fault, but it's not your responsibility... that would be somebody else? Maybe doctors? Maybe the police? Maybe the council? I don't know... I'm just going to watch - because this is just too horrible to miss a minute of - and I can't tear my eyes away this is just so awful, somebody should do something about it, but not me, and not yet because I'm really getting into this. Brilliant. Who needs TV anyway?

I don't think that I'm not personally responsible for getting unwell, but I don't think that people know how to help, really. I don't think that people are particularly incentivised to help either. We have a very isolated existence. We don't know our neighbours, we don't trust strangers, we ring the police to deal with things that we used to work out between ourselves, we expect our doctors to give us magic beans to cure all society's ills.

So, today is World Mental Health day and World Homeless Day. I can tell you, from personal experience, that mental health issues can lead to homelessness. When I was discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, I was given 2 weeks accommodation, and I was expected to use that time to arrange my own accommodation. I went to the council offices with a letter from my doctors, explaining that I was extremely vulnerable and that I should receive urgent assistance. The person I spoke to then went on holiday and that was the last I heard of it.

I don't blame the system or the people. People are trying to do the best that they can, but there are so many people in need of assistance, and so little money, because we are fixated on helping the rich to get richer, rather than supporting the most vulnerable members of society. I'm not even angry about it. Living in the Royal Parks and on Hampstead Heath was an eye-opening education for an extremely highly qualified and well educated guy who fell on hard times. If you think I chose to become homeless, then f**k you, you ignoramus.

Yes, I could have sold my camera, but I wanted to document what happened to me and I already sold all my other possessions to support myself. When will you be satisfied? Sell my clothes? Locking me up for being naked will be expensive (June 2014)

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #homeless #sex #banking #career #london #culture

This is a story of the part of Great Britain without a voice...

Our media misrepresents "youths" (young people) just like they misrepresent "refugees", "insurgents", "benefit cheats", "drug addicts", "criminals", "con men" and a whole host of other convenient 'bad guys' that help them to tell stories to sell newspapers, magazines and sell TV and radio advertising slots.

I saw a TV program the other night that was criticising a small business owner for paying somebody cash in hand to work for them. Surely the real story was that this well presented, educated and posh sounding journalist was even able to get a job paying £6.50 an hour without alerting suspicions... that's about the best job that even high-achieving school leavers and graduates can expect to get.

The prospects for young people today are atrocious. There are not enough training contracts and apprenticeships. There are no jobs to gain the valuable experience that will make these bright, energetic, enthusiastic and hard-working people into productive members of the workforce.

The Conservative Government has done what it normally does, which is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and I'm pretty angry about that.

The Tories presided over the Big Bang, which resulted in the Yuppies and Loadsamoney generation of the 1980s, but still left big social divides. When the Tories then tried to introduce the Poll Tax, which was a massive tax on the poor, people were outraged.

The Tories have now started to attempt to dismantle the social welfare system, leaving many unemployed, unwell and less abled people, living well below any acceptable standard for a developed Western nation.

Have you actually spoken to people, about how hard it is for them to stretch their budgets? Have you really gotten to know what the daily problems they face are? Have you attempted to live on Jobseekers Allowance, Employment Support Allowance or Disability Living Allowance? Have you filled in the forms? Have you been to assessments, been to the centres, tried to navigate the system? No, I didn't think so.

Many parents have masked the problem, until now, by subsidising their children and grandchildren. This has merely propped up a completely untenable government and lined the pockets of the rich. So much money has been siphoned off into wealthy people's pockets, with little or none of it actually reaching those who work so hard to improve the day-to-day lives of British Citizens.

Do our Nurses feel better off under the Tories? No. Do our Teachers feel better off under the Tories? No. Do our Police feel better off under the Tories? No. Do our Firemen and women feel better off under the Tories? No. Do our Armed Services feel better off (financially) under the Tories? No.

While the Tories have fanned the flames of nationalism and warmongering, and attempted to stoke up a culture of Union Jack and St. George flag waving. This hoodwinks the undeniable erosion of the standard of living of ordinary people living in the UK.

Have the Tories made it any easier for people to buy their first house? No. Have the Tories made it any easier for young people to get their first job? No. Have they increased wages, or reduced rents or generally taken control of the fact that people's debts are spiralling out of control because most young persons' incomes are not sufficient to pay for the basic essentials for an acceptable life.

We are living, for the first time, in a generation where our opportunities, our standard of living is significantly worse than that of our parents and grandparents. Can people afford to get married, buy a house and have kids? No.

If you take away all hope from people, of being able to own their own little piece of the world, to put down some roots, to fall in love, make a baby and raise a family independently... you are robbing people of their self esteem. You are robbing a whole generation of the chance for them to show you just how hard working and intelligent and resourceful they are, in 'legitimate' ways.

The 'austerity' has merely drained the pension pots of our parents, in supporting the children that have been abandoned by a government run by rich old people, for rich old people. These greedy greedy career politicians are so completely out of touch with what is happening in high-rise council flats in Britain's towns and cities. They haven't got a clue what's happening on the huge estates and new housing developments.

The career politician went to private school, lives in taxpayer funded flat in a gentrified enclave of wealth in London, and commutes back to a rich market town or pretty village, where they are surrounded by wealthy people who have bled Britain dry at the expense of the masses. They have never spent any time in the real world.

There are exceptions, on the left and the right, of course, but in general it seems like the strategy of selecting a House of Commons from the most elite group of privately educated toffs who have never had to experience the welfare system first hand, might have something to do with why people are so angry and upset right now.

The problem is, that these people have few routes to being heard in the media and affecting the public opinion of those in power. Politicians are surrounded by an echochamber of similarly minded and educated elite people, who arrived in their positions as journalists, by very much the same route as them.

London really is a place where a politician and a journalist can live in one gentrified street, completely oblivious to the struggles in the social housing on a neighbouring street. Of course, the people in the 'council house' can't afford to shop on the super-expensive streets of London's trendier areas, so the wilful ignorance persists, because the different socioeconomic groups never actually intermingle.

You can't criticise the business owners who are only supplying to demand. It is not the hipster's 'cereal cafe' that is in the wrong, but in fact the whole system that allows such disparity between rich and poor, to exist and grow.

So, the young have ended up being misdirected into disliking the hipsters, just like they were told to hate the yuppies before. Actually, these people are the ones who got lucky or worked hardest. The people we should really be angry with are the ones who are filthy rich and didn't work for it.

I know it looks to many like riding a bike to work and wearing trendy clothes is all there is to the job, but actually, people in startups do at least 5 jobs each (e.g. Designer, Developer, Tester, Marketing and Sales) and tend to work at least double the hours that you would work in a regular job. They also work 6.5 days a week, and are always available on email and social media. They never switch off, because they are so passionate about their businesses. That's why their businesses have succeeded and not just been turned into another bland chain of corporate humdrum grey monotony.

I urge people to find their voice, and make themselves heard in a peaceful, constructive and erudite way. I'm concerned that the media will fan the flames of youth anger, racist ignorance, misguided nationalism, anti-immigration bigotry and everything else I detest about media 'themed reporting' that tends to fixate on a particular narrative that engages people's eyeballs... and therefore their wallets.

We need to remember... the only 'free' press is online, the BBC and the Observer. Everything else is paid for by a greedy rich old person with a political agenda.

I would suggest that people start boycotting newspapers that are paid for by headlines and advertising, and TV news that shows adverts on commercial channels. Start reading opinions from individuals on Twitter who you like and trust. You will also see what's trending, which is far more real than what is being chosen to be pushed by a news desk editor.

Tags: #media #politics #racism #nationalism #gentrification #youth