This is a story about reaching the limits...

We are about to enter a consumer debt crisis. Credit Crunch 2.0. How do I know this? Well, I don't see any joined-up-thinking in retail banking, but I do see all the signs of a bubble about to burst.

In Germany, there is a central system that tracks what money is owed between every company. When you raise an invoice, you enter it in the system, and that way, you can see who owes who, and how much. You can do something called netting where all the balances are totalled up and you can then see exactly who's in debt and who's in credit.

The Germans have got that spot on. We need to know where the bad debt is, so we can contain toxic companies that are trading recklessly.

We don't have anything similar for consumer debt.

The credit-scoring system is only useful when people are applying for more debt. When they get into a debt crisis, they only show up when they start defaulting on their loan repayments, get to the limit of their overdraft, can't make their credit card minimum payments, default on their mortgage etc. etc.

I worked in Debt Management in 2012 and I listened to many phonecalls with ordinary individuals who didn't do anything reckless, but got caught in a debt trap. They were encouraged by consumer lenders to take out more loans to cover the last loans, and then payday loans to cover the interest, and before you knew it BOOM they were as good as bankrupt.

Personally, I hadn't been in debt since the age of 19 or so. This is unusual. I paid the deposit on my house. I paid for my wedding. I paid for my cars. I paid for our holidays... all with cash I had personally saved. The only way that was possible for me to do this was with way above-average earnings. This would have been impossible for anybody who was earning average wages.

I didn't really know what it was like for an ordinary person, living on an ordinary wage, in an ordinary way.

There was a huge amount of interest in my Debt Management startup, when I tried to found it in 2013. People still email me about it today. People still remember. I only worked on it for a short amount of time before I was consumed by my own ordinary life event - a divorce - which tore my stable world apart.

I wanted to let out our house, so that we had steady rental income, and I was able to defer the stress of financially settling the divorce until I had re-established myself back in London. I begged my wife to allow me to secure my life before she rained fire and brimstone on my head. She undermined everything I tried to do to protect myself.

By the time 2014 started, I had managed to keep my finances ticking over with Bitcoin trading, but she had wrecked me. When the house sale money eventually came in, I was in no fit state to work. She had destroyed me. I could have sold the house in 6 weeks. She managed to drag it out to 6 months. It was fine for her, she was staying in Bournemouth and she had a job. I had to rebuild my entire life.

I had a huge cash pile, but I had been stress tested to the limit and beyond. I couldn't work. I had to go to hospital. I was a wreck.

So, I ended up spiralling downwards. I didn't borrow money, but you sure rip through it if you're unwell, living in London and trying to support yourself getting better. Especially if you can't afford to sit and wait for state support. It was a Catch 22. London is where friends and my work network are, but it's certainly not easy to get any help from over-stretched boroughs. I had to turn to the private sector. That cost me a lot of cash.

So, I don't really qualify for state support... that's right. Why should I take something which I could afford to pay for privately? Only I couldn't really afford it... I got well, but then I had no personal safety net any more.

I spent all my money keeping myself alive. I had yet to thrive. 

Other people are very good at spending my money. My ex totally forgot that I paid for everything. She felt entitled. My ex flatmate, John, went overbudget on a flat that he didn't pay a penny towards, and even took some of my furniture with him when he left. He felt entitled.

Why do people feel entitled to come and pick my pocket? I've got nothing left.

The banks have done very well out of me and I've defended them. I've not claimed my PPI that I'm entitled to. I've not frozen the interest on my loans and had unfair credit charges refunded to me. I could - in fact - just throw down my tools, and say sod this for a game of soldiers. I'm trying to prevent a domino-effect of systemic failure in the banking system, which would see bank runs and total carnage as the whole system deleverages in an extremely inelegant way.

I'm trying to help my masters avoid such a crisis, but I feel like ground zero at the moment.

I need to go to work tomorrow, but I can't. I'm not well. I have been stress tested to the limit, and it's broken me.

Poor Frankie lost his home, which was his castle. Look how relaxed and happy he was there in his lovely big bed (June 2008)

Tags: #divorce #mentalhealth #frankie #banking #career

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 being a martyr...

My wife said she would divorce me if I went to hospital. The alternative was death. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get the most out of the treatment that I received. I'm glad we're not together any more (we divorced last year). Perhaps we can finally start to move on with our lives. I really do wish her the very best of luck in life and love.

If people think I'm self-pitying, a martyr, they're wrong. I had a horrible time, but I'm making a clean break from that life and letting that stuff go. I was told - by my wife - that I was infringing her human rights, by barricading myself in a room for my own safety. When I decamped to living in mega shed she wouldn't even leave me alone in there. All I had was water from a hosepipe. She used siege tactics and I nearly starved to death.

Cause and effect. Life is all cause and effect. I don't believe it's entirely deterministic, but it's statistically probabale that certain actions will - in all likelihood - lead to certain reactions. If you prick us, do we not bleed?

So, I'm hoping to discharge myself from hospital today. I need to come back to hospital though, because my heart is literally broken. It should be OK, but I don't know for certain yet. I need to have an echocardiogram.

If anybody thinks I'm irresponsible, or self-indulgent, you should know this: even when my ribs were poking through and my trousers falling down, I still fed my cat. I love Frankie and I care about him. He doesn't know any better. He was there for me, as non-judgemental unconditional love.

That was all it took to save me from some very dark days.

The pink paint splatters are from 'the test': did she love me or did she love our house? (July 2013)

Tags: #divorce #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #NHS

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 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

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 ambiguity and interpretation...

Does anybody remember the computer game Lemmings? It was probably one of the most influential games of my childhood. The Psygnosis development house was also responsible for Shadow of the Beast; and even today that game remains a piece of great artwork, which spans the visual and auditory mediums. Wot I mean iz the graffix and music is pure brilliant too, innit!

So what's that got to do with a rather camp picture of me from 2006? You tell me, Einstein.

Tags: #computing #LGBT #computergames #sailing

This is a story of the darkness that drives away the light...

I once wrote my own obituary, believing I wanted to die. When a kind and loving person told me that they supported an accurate portrayal of my life, and I felt I no longer had to plead and beg to be given a chance to not have my history rewritten by my perceived persecutors, I had a reason for living again.

During my descent to this point, I realised that there must be other people, going through what I was going through. I decided to try and found a startup to try and help them.

Did you know that the Apple Watch has a feature where you can send your pulse to another person's watch, and they can feel your heart beating too? This is essentially the idea I had, while I was dying. I don't claim that it is an original idea, nor that I had prior art, but only that I think it's a brilliant use case for modern technology.

One of my best friends, who had taken me in, during my descent into melancholy and infinite sadness, confessed to me that he was kept awake at night, and was stressed at work, not knowing whether he was going to come home to a corpse. Secretly I had resolved to try and end my life away from his house, as I wouldn't leave that legacy in somebody's home.

That was how I arrived at the idea. The idea that you could just touch base with somebody... to see if their pulse still beats. And if that person knew that somebody cared whether blood still coursed through their veins, they would feel a little bit less alone in the world, feel a little reminder that people still care whether they live or die.

You think this sounds melodramatic? F**k you.

I have just registered the domain name areyougone.org and the Twitter handle @RUg0ne ("Are You Gone?" with a zero for an 'o') which will tweet the name of the person and a message, when you email. For example: email nickgrant@areyougone.org with the subject line "answer your bloody phone, we love you" then message and the name as a hashtag (which would be #nickgrant in this example) will get Tweeted out to the world.

I have also registered the Twitter handle @NotGone1, and any information relating to that missing person can be tweeted back with the relevant person's hashtag (e.g. #nickgrant) and this will be emailed back to those people who emailed the address.

At the moment, it's only in Beta testing, but I have started to link together the software that can fully automate this. If it's a useful application, I will automate more and more of it, so that it can stay on top of demand. If there is no demand, that's good, because it means that nobody else feels like I did on that day.

People sometimes push loved ones away. We need to understand why (April 2015)

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #startup #friends