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 about being patronised...

This is my cat, Frankie. He was the kitten that nobody else picked. He's the most loving cat you could ever hope to meet. He loves humans. He thinks he's a little doggy, and follows you around and licks your face and stuff.

I think that I provide a nurturing and loving home for people and animals. I don't have a lot of evidence for this, but my friends used to love coming to my house, before it was sold, and Frankie used to call it home, and be a happy well-adjusted kitty there.

I'm going to switch this blog from telling you about me, and tell you the story of two Franks. First, there is Frankie my cat. Second, there is Frank: my homeless friend from Primrose Hill. I promised Frank that I would tell his story, and in telling Frank's story, I inadvertantly became entwined in it.

This is me climbing the hill, where I met Frank. I had no idea I was going to meet him. I was just taking photographs of London's skyline at daybreak. I sat down to rest on a park bench, struck up a conversation with a stranger, and our story began.

Frank's needs were not hard to understand, and seemingly not hard to address. As a firm believer in direct action, I was galvanized into a blur of activity. Who was I trying to save, him or me? Who cares... nobody else was there for Frank. Were you there for Frank? No. A lot of people had let him down. I had the time and the means to be able to try and help him.

Try is the operative word here. I'm going to try and not spoil the ending - which is going to be easy because we are writing the future as we live it - but I should let you know that this is no fairytale. I'm certainly not the knight in shining armour here. Despite my initial patriarchal attitude, it was me who learned from Frank, not vice-versa. He ended up helping me more than anybody could surely have predicted. I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to judge (with your super judgey-judgey face you reserve especially for people like me... whatever box that is you've tried to put me in).

So, what did I do? Well, we had a normal human conversation. Who knew that this is how human relationships are formed, and bonding and empathy can occur when we do such a thing. This so-called 'human connection' seemed to somehow transfer some understanding of Frank's fears and needs, into my brainbox, whereupon I somehow naïvely imagined that with whatever surplus I had, I might be able to help with some of his basic needs.

I defend thinking that I could help. You can't just throw money at the problem, but what have YOU tried yourself? Sure you read in a newspaper that we spend X on dealing with problem Y, and you think "that sounds like a lot of money" but really is it? How much direct support actually reaches people on the streets?

We absolutely can not criticise those who are trying to help, and take it from me, there really are not enough resources (shelter, food, volunteers, money for full-time workers and the real estate that is needed) to go around. This might sound anecdotal, but just use your eyes. Do you think people choose to sleep rough on the street? Are you stupid?

While you're digesting the fact that I just insulted your intelligence for being so prejudiced about the homeless, here's a photo of the view that Frank and I were enjoying on our park bench. Seems like a pretty sweet life, huh? Imagine waking up to this view every morning.

Have you noticed that it's not sunny every day? Have you considered that it rains a lot in the UK? Are you aware that it's pretty cold for most of the year, especially at night? Have you thought how you would stay warm & dry, if you had to sleep on the street year-round? How would you keep your clothes and sleeping gear from getting sodden with rain and dew? How would you stop your stuff from being stolen? Have you thought how much of your life you take for granted?

Is this too challenging? I know that it is, but I don't really care if you want to bury your head in the sand. I don't actually care if you switch off, disengage. I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing this for me & Frank. Maybe I'm just writing it for me, but it's still about Frank and it's still true. Try and dismiss me, try and dismiss this... go on!

JPMorgan Chase & Co investment bank employee and home owner tries to help homeless guy... coincidentally becomes homeless himself and follows in the footsteps of Frank. This is the true story I'm going to tell you.

I asked a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary (a Metropolitan Police Officer) to be a witness to me fulfilling the first of Frank's needs, right there and then, on the spot. Frank did not have a mobile phone, as he had been mugged. Without a means of contact, the Safer Streets team have very little way of finding people, except if they are sleeping somewhere obvious where they are preyed upon by muggers... Catch 22. I gave Frank my iPhone, and had a passing Policewoman witness the giving of this gift, in case he was ever accused of theft.

This was just the beginning of a journey that entangled the tale of Frank with mine, as we travelled on a similar voyage, through the same social ecosystem and his story became our story.

I took photos, and made notes throughout, but you have to believe me when I say that nobody would choose to go through what Frank and me went through. Nobody could plan for it. Nobody would want to experience it. Nobody should have to go through it, and I plan to share our journey, in the hope that people can empathise, rather than dismiss.

If you think "I've heard it all before" please share any links to those stories in the comments section below. Don't you think that the people who fall between the cracks should have their stories told? I do.

From high up, we see just how far we can fall (October 2013)

Tags: #homeless #frank #frankie #london #banking #career #police

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 red flag that gets raised before disaster strikes...

Why does a person sink? Why do they get swamped? Why do they collapse inwards, under the gravity of their own infinite stress, sadness, blackness? Why do they implode in a spectacular supernova? Can we ever understand and relate to depression so deep that it would drive a person to take their own life? Can we make a difference? Can we empathise, help and ever rehabilitate somebody who has the clinical diagnosis of depression, without pills and a padded cell?

From my personal point of view, I have always felt that making a mistake leaves a dark stain on me, a black mark. People seem to have a very long memory for the mistakes I have made, and enjoy bringing up things that embarrass and upset me. In my career, the people who I need to impress and to promote me are always very keen to know about my weaknesses and flaws, seemingly as an excuse that I should "know my place" and not challenge the status quo.

The world has organised itself into a Pyramid Scheme, where there are a handful of unbelievably filthy rich oligarchs, sheikhs, kings, queens and emperors and other scum, who sit in their palaces, while their people starve in squalor. The trickle-down effect is a lie, spun by the courtiers, the sycophants in the entourage of the super-rich.

This wealth-worship has created a totally fake society, where newspapers, TV and the media, exists only to tell the proletariat that they are 'special' and 'unique' while at the same time, getting them to buy mass produced products from factories in China.

The best example of which is Apple and Beats by Dr Dre. There is a standard line amongst the creative community, that only a MacBook will suffice, as a the workhorse for the output of recording artists, graphic designers, web developers and startup founders. This is backed with the celebrity endorsement of footballers, who are seen arriving at matches wearing their 'individual' choice of a pair of overpriced Beats headphones.

I have always said that it's the software packages that are important, not the Operating System (OS) or the hardware, provided that both of those things are adequately up to specification to run the software. It's true that Apple stuff "just works" but anybody who foolishly accepts a new software release too early also finds that Apple do a lot of their testing by relying totally on the loyalty of their Fanboys.

I have mixed feelings about the largest consumer electronics company in the world. I think they are more anticompetitive than Microsoft ever was in their heyday. When IBM's BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) was reverse engineered, which started the boom of IBM Personal Computer Compatible grey clones. This, along with Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS) launched the home computer from the realm of labcoat wearing boffins, into the ubiquitous Internet-of-Things existance, where my car and my washing machine have an Application Programming Interface (API). This has been Bill Gates' vision for as long as I can remember.

I have always been fairly platform agnostic. I tend to go with whatever works, and ignore the marketing rhetoric and hyperbole.

That takes a lot of work and bravery, because at some point, people start to have vested interests. There are billions of dollars at stake in the tech industry. Apple majicked (sic.) a billion dollar App industry into existence more or less overnight. Who would have thought that paying 59 British pence for stupid little time-filling games (the developer used to keep 36 pence of that) would be so lucrative?

It also seems to take a lot of bravery to stick around and re-invest your cash in something worthy or pay the tax, because Apple seem to have precipitated a brain drain in the developed nations. I know far too many wealthy people who are hiding in tax havens, due to fear and greed. Why run away to South East Asia, taking your cash pile with you? What was wrong with paying tax or investing in somebody or something? What are you afraid of?

Perhaps I have little appreciation of risk? What's the worst that's going to happen to me though? The Conservative government will support me as a successful entrepreneur who invests in people, ideas, research & development. The Labour government will support me as a socialist who pays his taxes and does not try to evade them, recognising that the National Health Service, high quality schools and colleges, roads, libraries, street lighting, policing, fire service, trash collection, civic ameneties, community events, social services and the broad and rich spectrum of life in the United Kingdom is truly a model that every nation should aspire to emulate.

Feel the fear and do it anyway (Y2K)

Tags: #apple #computing #career #NHS #politics

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

This is a story of the people who see you at your most tired, afraid, and in the most pain and discomfort...

I owe the hard-working, caring and dedicated nurses of the National Health Service my life, along with the Radiographers, Cardiologists, Phlebotomists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Psychologists, Nutritionists, Physiotherapists, Pathologists, Porters, Caterers, Cleaners and of course the Doctors, Consultants, Surgeons and Anaesthetists. It would be ridiculously selfish of me to not continue living after all the hard work that a huge team of people made in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I always seem to expect that things will heal overnight, and indeed I rushed everything after a fairly major leg injury. After the accident, which luckily seemed to avoid any major blood vessels, despite severing a load of muscle, tendon and nerve. I hastily cobbled together a 'field dressing' with sanitary towels and a dressing gown cord, and wanted to make my own way home, but paramedics insisted on checking me out. It was them who discovered I couldn't actually raise my foot anymore, due to a severed tendon, and had lost feeling on the top of it, due to a severed nerve.

The operation took a long time and must have cost a lot of money. I have paid a lot of tax and National Insurance during my career, but that does not make me entitled. I need to repay my debt to society somehow. I haven't thought how I'm going to do that just yet, but I do think about it. I do have a list I'm working through, although I'm obviously never that mindful of the "one step at a time" mantra... I tend to sprint everywhere.

Running before I can walk, running with scissors (not how it happened, just a metaphor) and all the other things my Mum warned me not to do never ended in tears because I was always told to MTFU (Man The F**k  Up). A kind friend told me the other day that excess mucous and swollen mucous membrane might indicate a backlog of tears. I guess my tear ducts are fairly full.

But let's keep this about those in the caring professions. These people have to mop up your blood, pooh, pus, vomit and mucus, while you wince and generally try and hide your discomfort and be as polite and courteous as you can under the circumstances.

We should pay people in the caring professions a living wage, and more to reflect the important role they have in society.

I, for my part, am going to ensure that I pay full income taxes on my earnings when I am inside IR35, which is anytime that I have a regular place of work and commute to the same office on a regular basis... like now.

Coming from a startup and small business culture, I have always re-invested any profits into Research & Development projects in my time between contracts, but I think I need to just get a regular hobby... probably a safe one, given my accident prone nature!

I also think that a socially responsible proportion of my disposable income that I have should go as Gift Aid to Macmillan Cancer Support, because Cancer is a disease which blights all our lives, and the nurses in Palliative Geriatric care are really doing an extremely tough job and should receive all the support that we can possibly give them, as highly qualified professionals in a job that demands them to be kind and caring, loving and supportive, dealing with the inevitable painful loss of loved family members.

This by no means absolves me of my social conscience, but it's a public declaration of starting as I mean to go on. Some might see this as pathetic hypocrisy. Fine. Send me a postcard with a better idea.

Tags: #NHS #injury #startup #charity #career

This is a story of the people behind the camera; the unsung heros....

As I was having a "brand interaction" with Shaun the Sheep, I observed that there was one gender that was statistically more probable to be behind a camera, photographing a little person.

Mums are our unsung heros, Grannies are the nonjudgemental free babysitters for mollycoddled mummies boys, Aunties are the eyes that see everything from afar, Cousins are the ones who are 'Goldilocks'... not too close but not too far. You shouldn't marry your cousin though. Not enough genetic diversity.

Men are arseholes. Powerful men are entitled, bullying, cruel and myopic arseholes. Men are warriors, but we are supposed to be civilised. There is nothing civilised about war. There is nothing civilised about bullying, pain, human suffering, hunger and feeling unloved.

Mums are the antidote to men's raging testosterone. When women give birth, maternal instincts are programmed into the mother, which are necessary for the survival of the species. However, human babies have very large heads (ouch!) and are totally unable to support themselves and their alien head until they have drunk lots of mother's milk from the mammary glands of their mother.

Oxytocin is released into the bloodstream of nursing mothers, as part of bonding, but there is a sympathetic reaction, which is not in the mother's body, but in the father (if he stuck around for the birth). The release of this hormone is critical, to change the mode of the male, from fight, fuck and flee, into a responsible adult who deserves to have his offspring survive for long enough to possibly pass on 50% of his genes.

This is not so much the 'selfish' gene, as the 'anti-freeloader' mechanism. I'm sorry buddy, but you don't get to sow your wild oats and expect to reap what you sow. That's called rape.

I'm sorry to say it, but there are far to many rapists in the world. Men who think that they can get away with taking what they want, and not sticking around to face the emotional and physical consequences. The price for your 3 seconds of copulation could well be a pink/brown/yellow/red, screaming, incontinent midget, which can't feed itself, but yet you find yourself doing a weird dance in worship of this blood and mucus covered alien that just exited the mothership.

The "summer of love" was merely a chemical blip that nature would inevitably find its way around. The powerful drugs that have been synthesised in Bayer, Roche, Lily, Pfizer, Myers-Squibb etc. etc. which were tested on animals, including many of society's undesirables is a holocaust that we have conveniently forgotten. Baby boomers should not be nostalgic for being doped up in a field having unprotected sex, because that's f**king up society.

Many well meaning Physicians have entered Psychiatry, believing that it was a new Science, motivated by the desire to improve lives. Nobody did the long-term studies to find out whether the outcomes were better or worse. Where data has existed - for example, with Heroin, Cocaine, Laudenum, Snuff, Cannabis - the long term outcomes only look OK for the extremely wealthy. Are you the Queen of England? No? Then perhaps Cannabis is not for you. Big Pharma gets very rich indeed of patent royalties, which is completely at odds with the needs of sick people.

Psychoactive substances have always been the means of controlling society. Whether it was the Coca leaves of Peru and Columbia, Betel nut of Africa, Paan of Southern Asia, Tea of North India and China, Coffee and Cocoa of South America... and of course, Tobacco of the Americas. Older than all of these, is of course, alcohol which was brewed by monks in order to addict people to something that would fill their congregation pews.

As shamanism, witch-doctoring and magic declined in Europe, so organised religion rose to fill the void, as child mortality and and an early death were guaranteed to feature in the lives of Medieval people, along with hunger and bitterly cold winters. Life was short and sh1t.

Civilisation has advanced. We now have the resources to treat diseases, making them go away and people live instead of dying. In a hell of lot of cases that's a mosquito net and a sachet of salt & sugar, which will save the life of a person with runny pooh, provided they have access to clean drinking water. It's as simple as that.

Add food into the mixture and you're improving lives immeasurably in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara is a bleak and desolate space that separates almost an entire continent from having access to civilisation. Do we travel there to distribute clean water, medicine, bicycles? No, we go there to steal gold, diamonds, uranium ore, dam their rivers, steal their resources and take what little crops the African people grow to feed themselves, paying barely enough for them to survive the winter. This is rape.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I'm quite angry about this. I have been for as long as I've been able to hold a complex thought and set of feelings in my young mind. I'm sorry I wasn't a right-on lefty liberal, born with a copy of The Guardian clutched in my hands, as I was ejected from my mother's womb. I'm sorry that you're too far up your Islington Blairite Hypocrite Champagne Swilling Holier-than-thou F**king A*se to see that the working classes care too... but they didn't have the benefit of your privileged education. But then you're so smart that you knew that? No?

Thankfully, Oxford is a think-tank, where burnt out Blairites decide to raise a family. It used to be an affordable commuter belt City with enough culture and academic interest to make the trip into Paddington on the train, worth jostling with other suits in the morning.

Oh yes, Oxford has its fair share of people who look down their noses at the great unwashed masses. Thankfully though, some of them couldn't avoid actually encountering some grubby street urchins, and having their perceptions shaken up.

There was a joke shop in the heart of Jericho, where you could buy water balloons, smoke bombs, whoopee cushions, firecrackers/bangers and other things that could shock a smug mummy's boy out of his self-obsessed preening, admiring themselves in their gowns in shop windows as they walked through the cobbled streets of Oxford's dreaming spires.

My Parents never really reprimanded me for launching a "Swallows and Amazons" style attack on the punters, from the high boughs of trees and bridges in the University Parks. We were little monkeys, who tore around town on our BMXs and skateboards faster than any Park Ranger or officious old fuddy-duddy could chase after us. We used to ring doorbells, egg houses, put treacle on door knobs. We were working class kids thumbing our noses at the establishment and everybody loved it, except for the arrogant elite.

Luckily, all the 'warrior' men were all in London, hunting big game and beating their chests. We knew our mothers would tell us off and say "wait until your father gets home" but we also knew our fathers would be exhausted from full-on days of p1ssing contests in the Big Smoke, followed by horrendous rat-race train journeys from hell.

This kind of matriarchal society took the sting out of any beatings that the kids got, and us kids bonded a lot more with our mothers than would be ordinary at that time. Did it lead to a load of mummies boys? Actually, it might have led to a group of people who feel so loved and cared for that they feel invincible. Is this a bad thing? Well some of my friends have died young, making unwise decisions when fuelled by alcohol.

There was one friend who shone bright in all our lives, and the circumstances in which we lost him were close to my own childhood experiences, of playing on railway tracks unsupervised by adults. I could totally picture exactly how it happened. It was chilling, and still is today. I am not imagining myself doing that, I am actually able to perfectly empathise with the mindset that would have led to a tiny mistake, which cost my friend his life.

I hope that his Mother and family is OK, if they read this. I'm trying to write it as sensitively as I can. Our friend is still very much alive in our hearts, and I'm crying as I write this. Tears are rolling down my cheeks and splotching onto my keyboard. I can remember how he touched our lives, as clearly as if it were only yesterday.

The cruellest twist of all, was that we had reconnected just as we were leaving adolescence; and embarking on our journey into adulthood. It robbed us all of the chance to see just how great that young man was going to become. Life can cheat and short-change us still, even at the end of the second millennium.

The challenge that life set our group of friends, was how to cope, in the modern age that had scattered us to the winds. We couldn't really grieve properly as a group. Even though, by total coincidence, this young man had ended up in the same City in Hampshire as me. Most of our other friends had remained in Oxford, where we grew up in.

I used the Internet to try and reconnect with these friends, but it was still very early days, and I felt very damaged and bitter about having been taken away from this group of beloved people. My parents were always moving me away from my friends and schools I loved. I didn't undertand why this had to happen. It was heartbreaking.

We left Aberystwyth for Kidlington, we left Kidlington for Tackley, we left Tackley for Oxford, we then had an abortive attempt to leave Oxford for Cinais in France (thankfully my teachers stepped in and stood up for me, explaining that my life was getting f**ked up by this wanderlust) but we still left for Harcombe, and then the family left Harcombe for Charminster.

By this point I had gotten f**ked off and left home at age 17/18, for Dorchester and my first job. I had barely settled in when British Aerospace then had the lovely idea of moving me to the Portsmouth/Fareham/Gosport area. Eventually I got f**ked off with that company keeping me away from my friends (and being responsible for making weapons that were used to kill people) so I moved to Winchester, where unsurprisingly I didn't have the most developed set of social skills or any ability to relate to my peers... unintended consequences, but it certainly hit me right in the feels.

I had a very weird time in Winchester, but I made 2 key friends, one of whom has recently re-entered my life, which restabilised it temporarily. Friends are important. Continuity is important. Stability is important. Trust is important. Truth is important.

I'm still working through thorny feelings about being taken away from my peers. It left me feeling I had to be fiercely independent and do everything early, in a rush. I've always felt like I had to take care of my Parents. When we were in Ireland when I was a little boy, I remember staying awake all night so that I could go and fetch the coal in the morning. I got myself dressed at dawn, and was just heading out with the coal scuttle to fetch the coal, when my Dad woke up and asked what I was doing.

Yes, you can raise your kids in a Victorian way, and they will turn out OK to outward appearances, but they may have problems reconciling your nostalgia for a time that probably didn't exist and you are over-romanticising, with reality in the 20th and 21st century. The projection of your inadequacies will have unexpected consequences. "Children should be seen and not heard" is one of the most offensive things I have ever heard in my life. F**k you, you dinosaurs.

It's not your fault. You were the best Mum & Dad (I wasn't allowed to say "Mum" or "Dad" for some reason) that you knew how to be. I did have an interesting time in my not-really-allowed-to-be-child-hood, being your experiment in denying the infantilism of an infant. It's benefitted me in the long run... I've had a great head start in many aspects of my life. I'm just not what you might call, a rounded character. For every yin there is a yang.

I'd probably make a good butler. I like dressing up and I sound posh. I can be anything you want me to be. I aim to please, Sir.

Tags: #childhood #career #london #oxford #parents #drugs #addiction #alcohol

This is a story of a growing problem in people's lives....

I can't get no sleep. That's a double negative. What I mean is, that I have a problem with insomnia, because I stare at backlit devices around-the-clock. The problem with backlit devices is that they output light that hits your retina, telling your body "it's daytime, get up".

When I'm awake, which is most of the time, I'm either at work on my laptop or working at a double or even triple monitor, looking at my phone, or looking at a TV, tablet or some other backlit device. I had even taken to reading books on my phone, which means that my body had absolutely no light-based clue as to what the f**king time is.

Unsurprisingly, this messes with your circadian rhythm, even if you eat your meals at regular intervals, and attempt to get in and out of bed at normal times. I generally keep at least 3 electronic devices within grabbing distance of my bed anyway (phone, laptop, smartwatch) and often times I fall asleep with either my laptop on my lap, or still wearing my smartwatch (which helpfully vibrates, so I can briefly wake up to check any alerts).

Photographing stuff on my phone and uploading it to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, posting check-ins and status updates, and making snide or sarcastic Tweets - from 4 different accounts, at least - has grown and grown, leading to a kind of live-blogging of my life.

To say that I was obsessed with social media would be a massive understatement. It's actually an addiction that is affecting my health. That's the generally recognised definition of an addiction: when something you enjoy is negatively affecting your life, but you are struggling or unable to reduce your dependence on the thing you are addicted to (water, oxygen and sugar don't qualify, you see, because you die without those things).

The inscription around the woolly head of our sheepie friend reads: we are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. Shaun would be well advised to make sure he gets enough sleep, as our immune systems can get dangerously low if we aren't giving our brains and bodies the rest they were designed to have.

Modern life gives us surprisingly few environmental cues as to what we should be doing. Here in London we have artificial lighting 24 hours a day, and there is barely a wall that doesn't have some kind of flat screen attached to it now. We really are a City that doesn't sleep. When all the bankers, lawyers and accountants go home in their taxis, just before midnight, an army of cleaners and trash collectors sweep in behind, to collect all those discarded coffee cups and sandwich wrappers.

Most offices are now 24 x 7 x 364 (you get Christmas Day off - this is the only real Bank Holiday) which have cost-saving motion sensing lighting, so you only have to glance up at one of the tall office blocks at an unusual hour, to get a rough idea of just how many people are working on some unrealistic deadline for their client.

Delivering a deal, getting the Thank Yous from your bosses and clients. High-fiving your colleagues, and adding another tombstone to your impressive collection of deals or projects that you have delivered... that's addictive too. You get a little dopamine hit every time one of those things happens, and before you know it, you find yourself going into the office 7 days a week and answering the phone to your bosses whenever they call.

In a global business, we operate a follow-the-sun model, where Europe hands over to the Americas, and then onto Australasia, and then Asia-Pacific, and then Middle East and North Africa and all too soon it's dawn again. Where those business centres are unable to fully support themselves, some poor sod carries their phone and/or BlackBerry everywhere anytime. We used to call it Crackberry when we first got our BlackBerries, and you found yourself checking email at 4am, even when you officially weren't on call.

We can't actually help ourselves anymore. Whenever we hear that bleep and see that message notification light blinking, we have been habituated into reaching out and grabbing it, no matter what time of day it is, no matter how socially inappropriate it might be, no matter what else we are attempting to do at the time.

I find myself looking at my smartphone, one-handed, while cycling along in front of 3-lanes of red London busses and trucks... what could go wrong? I find myself finishing typing a message, one-handed, while descending steps and even a ladder that leads down onto the 'beach' outside my flat. That ladder is about 80ft high. It would hurt if I fell, or maybe even kill me.

It's a similar deal with selfies. People will go to extreme lengths to get the shot. They won't even let you skydive with a camera until you have done a certain amount of jumps, because of the sensible precaution that people should concentrate on the hard ground that is approaching at 125mph, and not the killer shot that will make their Facebook profile look super awesome.

So I tried to photograph 64 painted sheep in Covent Garden yesterday. Should we be quite worried, in a pathetic hand-wringing Daily Mail reader way? Why? In the above image, some adults might have been accidentally been photographed obsessively taking photos of their children. The image is low enough resolution that you can't actually recognise people, but some idiot will still declare that their privacy has been invaded. Welcome to London, you muppets. We are one nation under CCTV.

(NOTE: I took particular care to avoid taking a photo of anybody's child, and no, that really is not your kid in the image... it's someone else who shops in Baby Gap or Mothercare or wherever, and has a blonde/mousey/dark-haired kid. Can you imagine how hard that is in Covent Garden?).

So, for my part, I am pretty much putting my entire life - not including anything I am under contractual and professional obligation to protect - into the public domain. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Is this brave, or stupid? Will I come to regret doing this? Am I embarrassed? Yes, there is embarrassment at first, and then this grows into a feeling of being liberated. Nudity, sex etc. are still taboos, so I'm not going to take things that far, and I am mindful of other people's need for privacy so I won't be exposing anybody else to my public life laundry. Ask yourself though, why do you feel uneasy about something leaking out?

So, I believe that Cannabis is a very dangerous drug that has been allowed to enter popular culture (some conservative estimates say that 1 in 10 people are regularly 'stoning' themselves). My biggest concern is that prodromal Schizophrenia is being turned into fully blown psychotic episodes in young people. The paranoia and disordered thinking that I have witnessed in friends and relatives is disturbing.

The strains of Cannabis that have been developed with very high Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content are ruining many lives. People just sit around, eating, playing computer games, and p1ssing their youth away. These are smart and enterprising people. We are losing a whole generation, and I'm pretty angry about that.

If you walk around Camden Town, you will realise how the Marajuana plant has become a ubiquitous emblem for a huge powerful narcotics industry. The revenue and turnover involved is many many billions, in the UK alone. The corruption involved, the bribery of government officials, is a multi-agency problem that spans Border Controls, Customs, Police, Local Government, and of course, Parliament. Professor David Nutt was run out of government for trying to bring some sanity to the issues which threaten to tear our society apart.

We can't have an entire generation, whose ideas and energy have been repressed by a chemical 'straight jacket'. These stoners are too intoxicated to see that they have been conned. They might think they are part of a counter-culture revolution. From my first-hand observations, they are actually spouting complete rubbish, gawping at the TV, surrounded by empty junk food wrappers, in the stained clothes they have been wearing for days.

It sounds like I'm having a go at young people. I really am not. This is a major sadness in my life, that brilliant, bright, intelligent, energetic, beautiful young people are selling themselves so short, because they have been trapped into a cycle of poverty and intoxication, addicted to strong narcotics. What other hopes do they have? Getting a job as a young person is almost impossible.

Can't get a job without the experience. Can't get the experience without the job. That's the spine-chilling Catch 22 that is destroying a whole generation. These are your children who are being frozen out from the employment market. Take a bloody look at yourself, stop looking at the profit and turnover for your company, and ask yourself how many apprentices have you trained? How many entry-level positions have you created in your company? What are you doing to help the next generation?

Give young people the break they need in life. It could be as little as a small business loan, of a few hundred or few thousand pounds. That kind of money is pocket change compared to the value of your savings and assets. If you don't give away more than 1% of your total personal wealth (value of your house + value of your salary + value of your savings + value of your pension) every year, for the lifetime of each child that you have spawned, then you are a pathetic spineless leech on society.

My parents, tried to be as supportive as they were capable of being, and I love them. They have made mistakes, just the same as all of us, and I do recognise that being a parent is hard, and everybody is just winging it.

Tags: #childhod #addiction #mentalhealth #drugs #privacy #london #banking #career

This is a story of queue jumping and those who get left behind...

I keep this in my wallet, to remind myself not to be one 0f the self-important pricks who thinks they deserve their position in the world. It reminds me that it's never OK to barge in front of the struggling masses. I found it in the middle of a forest in Ireland. The former owner, I imagine, was a jumped-up London eedjit who littered one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of our world I have ever seen. This little patch of green is one of the few places to not have been totally screwed by selfish and greedy monsters.

This keepsake also reminds me of the day that I decided to make a switch, from being so consumed with the rat race that I was unable to stop and smell the roses, to notice that there are very few places left that have not got massive concrete tower blocks, huge piles of plastic rubbish, terrible air quality, polluted rivers and all the increasingly obvious signs that the human race is acting with little or no care for the future of the planet.

It also marks the day that I reconnected with nature, having been stuck in the concrete jungle for far too long. The problem with London is, that unless you have a healthy outdoor hobby, like cycling or surfing, you have very little connection with your environment. We live under artificial lighting 24 hours a day, and our views are dominated by huge buildings, not towering trees.

Another problem with London is the drinking culture. I'm not sure if London drinks alcohol to switch off and get some sleep, after all those strong coffees, or whether to numb the realisation that the standard of living is actually pretty poor, when you consider long commutes, high rents, overcrowding, crime rates and poverty everywhere you look (except for Canary Wharf, which is a private estate).

So, I decided that I am going to quit drinking. This is harder than you would think, when you work in an industry where a standard interview joke with a candidate is "Do you drink? Don't worry if you don't, we can send you on a course". They closed the bars in offices, as the City has cleaned up its image, but you can still roll from your desk straight to a bar within barely a few strides.

Let's be clear about my drinking though. I drank pints of lager out with the lads from work. Drinking spirits and drinking alone set of alarm bells in my head, luckily, but binge drinking huge amounts of beer is not good either, even if everyone else around you is doing it too.

It has taken some time to prepare my colleagues for the relinquishment of my final vice. I have never smoked in my life. I gave up caffeine over the last year or so and I am now completely decaffeinated. I am targeting targeting a 1 pint a week, which will be cut to zero in October. This is a drastic reduction from having 5 or 6 pints of Peroni (over 5% alcohol) on a midweek evening, and my body and my colleagues have felt the impact.

So, at first, my body was extremely unhappy about going alcohol free. My sleep was terrible. I was waking up sweating in the middle of the night. In the morning I felt like I was full of flu: aching joints, feeling sick, painful abdomen. This was when I was STOPPING... surely we are supposed to feel better, not worse? Well, as it turns out, it takes quite a long time before you start to feel better.

I was shocked by how long it has taken me to taper my alcohol consumption down to just a single social drink, which I accepted on the proviso that nobody was allowed to pressure me into having another one, and I would go home after I had finished it. My colleagues carried on and were nursing hangovers the next day. I felt surprisingly rubbish after only 1 pint, but I was able to get up and have my breakfast at the normal time.

I think it really is like my friend, Tim, often jokes: "I'm not an alcoholic, because alcoholics go to meetings". The City runs on that kind of gallows humour. However, I have now started to lose friends and colleagues to alcoholism, and many more are very ill indeed. I don't want to be next.

Could this be my last ever pint? My body and brain wish it was (October 2014)

Tags: #career #london #alcohol #addiction #mentalhealth #banking

This is a story of exploration, at the ragged limit of control...

Promises are easily made, but you have to make good on those promises if you really meant what you said. When I found myself without any money or support to build the startup that would set my conscience straight, for my involvement in the Credit Crunch, and help me back to health & wealth after separation from my wife, I had to think creatively.

I sank every penny I had, plus everything I could borrow from the banks and other commercial lenders (which was a lot... I am extremely creditworthy) into Bitcoin, in August 2013. This turned out to be a rather shrewd investment. Only one friend, Cameron, was wise enough to back me, and I think the return on his capital is likely to have exceeded a lifetime of Governement-backed tax free saving.

Another friend, Will, decided to copy my investment strategy, and had me to manage the purchase and sale of his Bitcoin Miner to maximise his profit. However, he decided to hold and try to run his profits on his Bitcoins, when I was cashing out in December 2013. The losses he sustained from that mark-to-market point, have been pretty eye-watering. Oh well; he's still suckling at the teet of Investment Banking, so he doesn't need the money.

Selling my house, dividing up all my posessions and trying to move what I could to London, as well as divorce paperwork and general breakup unpleasantness, plus having to risk everything just to keep my hopes & dreams alive, was the very last distraction I needed. Doing a startup is hard at the best of times. Moving is stressful. Leaving everything you've built and worked for is heart-wrenching. Doing it when you are unwell... it's enough to finish a person off.

And so, in the first half of 2014 I had to invest in myself. All my profit was re-invested in my health. I parked my dreams of building a social enterprise - a not-for-profit built to salve an aching conscience - built with knowledge gleaned from my obscenely rich masters.

Exactly how rich did I make my masters? Well, software I designed and delivered was responsible for the confirmation of $1,160,000,000,000,000 in Credit Default Swaps contracts in 2008. That's $165,714 for every man, woman and child on the planet. That's f**ked up.

A guy I worked with resigned in moral protest... but he was really just looking after himself: he bought gold at $550 a troy Oz and a chicken farm in New Zealand. I was disturbed by what we were doing, but I'm just a frustrated coder... I knew I could deliver the project for the bank... I didn't know how to say "no".

Scarcity, collatteral, securitisation: the basis for the non-insane version of capitalism (September 2013)

Tags: #startup #career #banking #capitalism #computing #divorce #friends