Nick Grant

This is a story about piggy in the middle...

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the police have a very difficult job to do. I have nothing but admiration and respect for front line officers. I have found the police to be the nicest, kindest and most amazing people I have ever dealt with.

Maintaining the status quo by upholding the laws that you effectively voted for, when you elected your member of parliament, is very challenging. This is because you probably didn't get the MP that you voted for, because the majority of people either don't vote or don't get the person they voted for.

Yes, that's right. Here's the simple maths that proves it:

Turnout: 66%

Conservative vote share: 36.9%

Percentage of people who voted for current government: 24%

So, less than a quarter of the UK population want a Conservative government.

Some strange things start happening when so few of the population are politically represented. People can be criminalised by laws that are only in the interests of the minority rather than the majority.

It happened to me, and the police had to use their judgement to save my life, rather than the letter of the law. Yes, I nearly died in police custody, but that was just part of the story. The whole fiasco is far too complex to go into in a single blog post, and your presumption gland is already throbbing and swollen, so I'm just going to leave this hanging for now. You can start guessing. I bet you'll be wrong. Maybe suspend your prejudice, just for a minute?

Our front line police officers see first hand, on a daily basis, the result of the laws that are passed in Westminster. Things like Care in the Community for example, which was a Tory policy, which pushed vulnerable people, who are a potential danger to themselves and/or others, out into the cities, towns and suburbs.

Changes in the law are rarely made with enough safeguards in place for the impact. Care in the Community made everybody assume that their neighbour was an axe weilding maniac, discharged from an insane asylum, and made everybody put extra locks on their doors, not talk to strangers and ring the police to deal with issues that they used to resolve themselves between one another.

So, I'm that axe weilding manic [N.B. I don't own an axe, nor would I wield one]. I was clearly sick enough to be locked up in one of the few remaining Psychiatric Hospitals. So what the hell am I doing, being allowed to wander the streets wearing a nice suit and working for the biggest bank in Europe on the #1 project? I don't even take my medication. Perhaps I should be sectioned and forced to take it, in the interests of public safety?

But that can't be right, can it? Surely, there's a contradiction there? How can somebody who should be locked up in an institution be the guy that the CIO of the number one project in HSBC put in charge of the top priority item on the number one project, at the Town Hall meeting, in front of the entire department? How does that work?

Well, if you think it was lies, deception, fraud, that got me that position, you'll be very disappointed to know that isn't true at all. The programme director actually said to me that he was really happy with all my work, just before I left. He was also happy to phone me every weekend, until I said I couldn't handle that kind of pressure any more.

Yes, fundamentally, I'm only human. If you prick me, I bleed, and I bleed red. If you pile pressure on me and work me very hard, I eventually need some time off.

But everything is too highly leveraged. The cracks are showing, but nobody has allowed any contingency for stopping and fixing things, or even slowing down a little bit, in the interests of long-term sustainability. All our targets are so short term.

So an entrepreneur is somebody who throws themself off a cliff and builds an aeroplane on the way down. However, when managers try and imitate the entrepreneurial mindset, they will fail to be able to build the vehicle while travelling along without the wheels falling off and the thing crashing horribly. Never ask people to work harder than you're prepared to do yourself.

Our politicians are asking the police to protect them from an angry electorate. They are asking the police to uphold laws that hurt people, rather than protecting the most vulnerable members of society. They are asking the police to suspend their better judgement, and see people who are the wrong side of the law as 'evil' rather than 'good'.

Being human is not about good vs. evil. We are built for survival. If you starve a man and take away his means to earn money, deny him any way to get food in legitimate ways, why do you call him a "thief" when he steals an apple? [N.B. I'm not a thief... guess again, sucker].

We make the rules for the game of life. Why do we punish people who play by the rules, but there is literally no way for them to survive, beyond what would be categorised by Eton-educated idiots in Westminster, as 'criminal' behaviour? These public [private] school toffs have absolutely no idea what it's like to be a British citizen. They have probably never met an ordinary person in their insulated existence, so far removed from reality.

I actually quite liked Thatcher and Major. They came from humble backgrounds. They were actually ordinary decent people. Unfortunately, the party they led is full of the old-boys network who think they're masters of the Universe. Those disgustingly spoiled brats think that the world was made for them to scorch. They'd hunt peasants on horseback if they thought they could sneak the laws through parliament.

I'm disruptive but I'm not a criminal. The thing about disruption is that it's actually a good thing. Whenever the status quo is overturned, the ordinary people are normally the biggest benefactors. People are held beneath glass ceilings, they are oppressed for far too long. The trickle down effect is just a lie. The fat cats are not sharing their wealth.

White collar criminals are the very worst. Do you think Stuart Gulliver the CEO of HSBC keeps his wealth in the bank that he runs? Do you think he pays tax in the UK, where he works in the HSBC headquarters, at 8 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London? Nope... he keeps his wealth in a Swiss bank account and pays his tax in Hong Kong. What a crook.

How can you defend such actions? How can these hypocrites be so influential in UK politics? It stinks.

Please sue me. I look forward to battling it out with you in court. A fair fight, in the full view of the public is all I ask.

That is all.

You don't normally get to see stuff like this. Privacy laws protect us, to make sure that prejudice doesn't destroy people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. Guilty by association... is that really guilty at all? Aren't we all connected by no more than 7 degrees of separation? (no date supplied... keep guessing, sucker)

Tags: #politics #notanonymous #civildisobedience #mentalhealth

This is a story about home...

I always wanted to live at the water's edge. Now I do. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

Getting myself off the streets and into a flat was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back though. It wasn't even my idea. Working 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week was not really possible while homeless, but equally I don't need such a great place to live. I have been living to work, so all I really need is a bed, somewhere I can prepare food and a shower.

When an aeroplane cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will automatically be deployed. If you have ever listened to the safety briefing that the cabin crew give, you will know that you should put on your own mask before helping others. I haven't really applied that advice in day to day living.

I did a Hack-a-John where I spent a couple of weeks training a friend who is an idle gambling addict, to be able to get a job. I then got him an interview at the biggest bank in Europe, for a position on the #1 project. He messed it up. The reputational damage that I personally sustained kinda sealed my fate on that particular contract. I was a marked man for doing something so audacious. John, however, doesn't seem to see things in the wider context, and has gone back to sitting on a couch, gambling. That's ingratitude for you. I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink.

I then went to a Hackathon to try and help with the refugee crisis. There I met an extremely capable and lovely guy called Klaus. I wanted to get involved helping refugees. I ended up helping Klaus - the tidy Kiwi - who urgently needed a place to stay. He now sleeps on my couch, enjoying the above views.

Life in London is pretty hard. You might think that I sit around swilling champagne and eating in expensive restaurants, taking taxis and wringing my hands as I read The Guardian but in actual fact I'm far too busy trying not to die.

My life is minimal beyond belief. All the clothes that I own in the world are in my floordrobe (the pink and grey boxes on the floor) plus I have a single suit, single overcoat and a single pair of dress shoes. I do also own 10 smart work shirts - 5 at the dry cleaners and 5 ready to be worn for the working week... which doesn't quite work when you are in the office 7 days a week.

For years, I've been trying to tell my friend Posh Will that investment banking hours are unsustainable and not productive. However, I had to do yet another horrible banking project in order to try and save my own life. I needed the overtime to get myself off the streets and into a home.

Bizarrely, I kind of regret it. I was surviving quite well as a homeless person. I think I was given about a 30% chance of surviving one particularly bad hospital admission, but I pulled through. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Life is much easier when you're just concentrating on staying alive, rather than worrying about any dependents.

I'm not really sure how I ended up with dependents. Why did my friend John end up relying on me - the suicidal homeless guy with mental health issues - to get him a job? Why does my friend Klaus get to go to the gym, and yoga and spend all his time talking to his friends & family, when I'm the one paying for the roof over his head?

Yes, I really need to learn to look after #1... and I don't mean the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I need to learn that it's important to put on the oxygen mask before helping others.

So I'm really at the end of my tether. I'm at my wits end. I've got nothing left to give. However, if I'm going to be a better leader, there's no sense in getting angry with the people who I have carried - they were just smarter about being selfish, looking after themselves at the expense of others. That's the way to win the rat race.

London and our adversarial culture really does encourage us to trample on each other. I think absolutely nothing of clattering into some thoughtless person who would rather that I stepped into the road, into the path of a bus or a truck, in order to get out of their way. I really don't bother with good manners if somebody is standing on the left hand side of the escalator, or decides to stop and have a chat with their companions in a really inconsiderate location.

We have run out of patience and we don't have time for asshats in London. This sprawling metropolis is already creaking and groaning at the seams, and Londoners really don't have time for gawping tourists who left their own sense of good manners at home. Perhaps I should come to where you live and just stand in the road causing a traffic jam because I want to admire something interesting without having to think whether it's appropriate in the wider context.

I would say that London is not dehumanising, as many people believe. It's actually the complete opposite. It's overwhelmingly humanising. You see all of humanity's very worst traits in evidence. You see people starving on the street while people pay £6 for a coffee and croissant, barely a few metres away. You see people shouting and fighting, but you pretend that you didn't, and you just scurry down a dark hole, underground, to go and be forced to invade each other's personal space in the interests of getting home a little quicker.

The calm serenity of living by the Thames is really unsettling for me. It feels like I have left London. I can feel my body, my soul, mourning the loss of humanity. It's really fake here in Canary Wharf. There are no beggars, no homeless people. This rich enclave has excluded the undesirable members of society from the private estate.

It might look enviable, and perhaps you are even enraged that I have become depressed in my current situation, but I'm not going to lie to you. I was happier living with homeless people and at the moment I feel like I'd rather go back to living on the streets. I just can't handle the pressure of those who think I'm a hypocrite, and those who want to ride my back.

I don't feel very true to myself at the moment, true to my values. I always believed that when you have surplus, you should give it away, but it's never enough for some people. I'd rather just be responsible for myself again. My life felt much less in danger when I wasn't carrying any ungrateful fools and dealing with jealousy and accusations of hypocrisy.

If I'm going to continue my journey with authenticity, and without hypocrisy, I may have to give up the material distractions that other people struggle to see beyond. People probably see my home as a status symbol, rather than simply a place that I can eat, sleep and wash.

"Been there, done that" is what many travellers do, when they're racking up pins on the globe or any other kind of stamp collecting. People can be very boastful about the experiences they have racked up. They have cultivated an entire personality, their whole self-esteem system around their travel tales and photographs. Perhaps I'm the same, but it's literally life and death for me, rather than simply a means of impressing dinner party guests.

I love cooking and I love hosting friends. I used to throw huge garden parties for loads of people. I used to thrive on it. Has it really helped me today? No, not really. Everybody else just moved on with their lives, and a single guy who's still living like a bachelor I don't really fit into the rhythm of my old friends lives now they have wives and kids. Lots of my friends left London to get sprogged up.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes, and London seems to be so much about drinking. Drink all your wages, and spend whatever you have left on meals out and foreign holidays. I don't really do that. I haven't been drinking for 62 days and I haven't had a holiday since October last year. Even my meals out have a business purpose. What you see is not what you get with me... my brain is always in work mode. Even my flat is basically a co-working space.

The line is being blurred between work & life to the point where I literally never stop working, even to the point that my dreams are filled with work stuff. I'm a total workaholic, but what else am I supposed to be living for? You tell me if I can afford to take my foot of the accelerator. I don't think I can... the world is too highly leveraged. We haven't made allowances for people who need to stop and catch their breath.

So I desperately need to go to Ireland again. I desperately need to decompress. I desperately need to get away from the relentless pressure to provide for everybody, to prop them up and help them keep their dreams alive. I need some time out for me.

Not sure if I'm going to get that time, because I need to make hay while the sun shines. There is work available, and my bank balance could sure do with a boost to make sure that Klaus has a couch to sleep on while he's doing his gym and yoga and stuff.

One day I'd like to do yoga. Maybe when I'm dead.

That is all.

I need to go back to Ireland and be a culchie for a little bit, as I'm not getting to be much of a culture vulture in London (February 2015)

Tags: #london #career #ireland #homeless #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #friends

This is a story about loyalty...

Midland Bank was taken over by HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) in 1992 and in June this year, HSBC announced that they were going to bury the Midland brand. I think that's a real shame.

I have family connections with both Sheffield, UK and Hong Kong, SAR, China. I have a very personal connection with The Bank as it's affectionately known in Hong Kong. I even learnt to speak Chinese, with the intention of furthering my career with HSBC, in the Far East.

HSBC had the 'prime' years of my life, and they taught me a hell of a lot. Not just how to drink like a fish, and prop yourself up with vast quantities of strong coffee. It might not have come across with a few of my previous blog posts, but I really do love Midland Bank and HSBC.

That's a snippet of an email I personally got from the CIO who is in charge of the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe, which did $6bn of profit in the last quarter... I'm talking about HSBC of course.

So, I rather burnt myself out trying to get the #1 project back on track. Of course, heroics are never good. Projects are a team effort, and my actions were just as one tiny member of a very talented and dedicated team.

Did I make a difference? Did I make a noteworthy contribution? Emails like the one above remind me that I was pulling my weight in a big team, helping to get the #1 project over the line in time for the timetable imposed by the Department of Justice, to avoid the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) which could mean a fine of $5bn, or worse.

So, I'm sure if the project was going wrong, was running late or there were any concerns, that things would be escalated. It's really important that public companies are very careful to tell their shareholders how things are going, and be honest. Those shareholders own that company, and they need the facts in order to make their decisions about how their company should be run.

If you're a HSBC shareholder, you do attend the AGM don't you? You do ask the board some really hard, cutting questions, and demand that your company is run to the very highest standards, don't you? You do demand that your C-suite executives - the CEO etc - are all doing their job effectively and are keeping you, the owner (limited by shares) informed of everything that you need to know.

It's actually a legal requirement, and part of the role of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to keep public companies honest. If a group of people knew that there was a problem in a company before the public did, they would be able to sell their shares before that news became general knowledge, and as such they would be able to profit at the public's expense.

Insider dealing is a serious crime, as is knowingly withholding information from shareholders, when issues are being escalated.

For me, a clear desk is not a clear conscience. If I know that some wrongdoing is being perpetrated, the fact that it is a well guarded secret does not make it OK, for me. If you've taken the public's money, when you floated a company on the stock exchange, then you have duties to those shareholders. It's an issue of morality.

Very few white-collar criminals go to jail and I'm really not OK with that. Many people's life savings and pensions have been obliterated by white-collar criminals, who think that the law doesn't apply to them.

Cases brought against companies are incredibly hard to fight. Big companies have big legal teams, and the cases are so hard to prosecute. Plus white-collar criminals are extremely adept at covering their arses. They will make sure they have a fabricated paper-trail that supposedly exonerates them from any personal responsibility. They will make sure that the water is sufficiently muddy that they are really hard to prosecute.

Technology is helping. We can now mine millions of emails and use data visualisation to understand the connection between keywords and people and start to build up a picture of what really went on during the run-up to the eventual downfall of an organisation.

At HSBC on the #1 project in the bank, we started to use a hashtag in our email subject line. That hashtag was #RED. Yes, I saw a lot of that hashtag during my time working on the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I didn't see a lot of #AMBER, and I'm not sure if I saw any #GREEN at all, but that's just from memory. I'm sure hoping that somebody tells the shareholders if there's a problem with the #1 project.

It's not my job to communicate to the shareholders. It's somebody else's. The guy in charge of communication left shortly before me. Not sure who's in charge now. I wouldn't really want that job. Jeeps! That'd be a lot of pressure to do the right thing.

I like doing the right thing though. It means I can sleep at night, when there are 245,000 jobs, 220,000 shareholders and a bank that's too big to fail on the line.

Do the right thing.

That is all.

I lied on my timesheets. I was actually working every hour that I was awake. I didn't sleep very much, but not because of a guilty conscience, but because of the importance of the project (September 2015)

Tags: #banking #career #hsbc

This is a story about my best friend...

The first 10 years of my life were pretty lonely. Then along came my best friend in the whole world.

Naturally, my parents were harshly critical of me for not being some male nanny, perfect parent type figure. I was, strangely, more of a brother to my sister. That was a disappointment to them. They thought that having more children meant more free time to get drunk and take drugs.

Anyway, let's ignore my parents. They were very much of the Victorian mindset that children should be not seen and not heard. Maybe it would have been better if children were not born, but I'm very glad that my sister was. Having a sister is the reason why I'm clinging onto life with my fingernails.

Having a 10 year age gap is a bit strange, but I think it's kinda got advantages. My parents can't be bothered to imagine how hard it is being a young person today, and they get a particularly warped view because I was always very independent and a high-earner from the age of 17. Sadly, the opportunities for the majority of young people are rather bleak.

Yes, the challenges faced by me and my sister in day to day life are really chalk and cheese. While I battle with my mental health, in order to be able to work, my sister also has to battle a highly competitive job market and low pay. While I have to ensure that I earn enough during my hypomania in order to survive during my depression, my sister has to stretch her budget beyond any feasible limit.

Yes, our parents generation really screwed things up, and life is very hard for my sister. I went through a horrible divorce that nearly killed me, but that was due to a single vicious and mean person who had not a care in the world for human life, and couldn't act with a single shred of decency. My sister not only has to deal with a horrible divorce, but her rent & bills as a proportion of her income are totally unmanageable. That's not her fault. She works 6 days a week.

So, tomorrow, during the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, tax credits and other benefits are going to be cut. People like my sister are going to be horribly affected, and there's no way she could possibly work any harder to fix her own finances. She rents a very modest property for her & my niece, she works 6 days a week, she's very dedicated to her job, there are no better paid jobs... she is being shafted by politicians and society.

As a working mum, who did nothing wrong and is doing everything right, why should she have even more financial woe and stress heaped on top of her? She's working her arse off but she is being destroyed through exhaustion and stress, by a government that just doesn't care about the wellbeing of its citizens.

The net result is pretty much what the Tories want. My parents will have to work for longer and have less money in retirement, in order to support their daughter and granddaughter, despite the fact that they've worked hard all their life and their daughter is already working 6 days a week. That's bullshit.

Our family has not racked up huge debts buying crap. Our family has saved money and bought property and done all the things we were supposed to do. We've played by the rules of society, and my parents and sister have ended up diddled by the system. They paid in, with their income tax and their national insurance and their council tax... they're not acting like they're entitled.

My parents just want to have their pension. My sister just wants to work. My niece just wants to be a toddler. It's outrageous that my parents' pension goes to pay my sister's bills. My sister's 6-day-a-week job is not enough to pay for her bills. My niece hardly gets to see my sister because she's working so hard. Is that the kind of society you want, Tories?

Throughout Britain we see examples of how people are being asked to fend for themselves. While the richest members of society contribute a pittance of their net wealth, so many are having to dip into their life savings, their pensions, just to survive. I actually phoned JPMorgan's pension scheme administrator to ask if I could have any money released for hospital treatment I desperately needed, when Camden council bungled my case yet again.

I've managed to limp through and get myself to the point where I have survived an ordeal that would have killed most people. However, I had to borrow money to do that. Why am I borrowing money to pay for lifesaving treatment, when I have paid staggering sums in tax and National Insurance? It's all been pissed away on tax breaks for the wealthy.

Why should the National Health Service be facing a funding crisis, because we wanted to line the pockets of the super-rich? Why should state schools suffer? Why should our brightest children be cutting short their eduction and looking for crap jobs because we wanted to make the rich richer?

We are asking each generation to work a lot harder than the last. Our grandparents lived through a war, so they knew about austerity. They knew about make do & mend. Unfortunately, too few of those people are in positions of authority now. Their kids - my parents generation - think that life is easy, because they lived through the post-war boom. They are wrong. Life is hard.

So, take a note of the date and remember that today was the day that the government went too far. They cut too deep and they hurt people who were already hurting. They scapegoated the wrong people.

Anger will rise up. It will start with the young people who have been frozen out of the job market, who are marginalised and demonised by the media. It will spread to the hard working mums who are struggling to balance the books already, struggling to stretch their budgets. Then it will hit the grannies who are providing free childcare and cash handouts from their pensions in order to keep their kids and grandkids afloat.

There will be a groundswell of public opinion against being told how to live our lives with more frugality from some vintage wine swilling toffs who like nothing more than to admire each other's art collections, and ponce around the country telling the great unwashed masses to stop complaining. Let them eat cake, right?

Things are a lot worse than you can see from within the echo-chamber. Get your head out of the statistics. Get your arse out of your Tory party circle of friends. You're out of touch with reality and it will come and bite your ass.

The problems in society are being masked and things will come crashing down quicker than you can say "Poll Tax Riots".

That is all.

Tags: #politics #childhood #parents #civildisobedience

This is a story about chronic fatigue...

Smart bosses have figured out that happy employees are more productive. If you don't have the right culture in your organisation, you will make people very sick. You will be burning people out in order to achieve your unrealistic targets.

Forward thinking organisations are letting people have dogs at work. They are promoting more flexible working arrangements. They are seeing their employees as people and not just numbers in a spreadsheet.

I wrote an IT Roadmap for a company which had just been spun off by its parent company, and sold. I took one look around the little company, and I knew immediately that they had got the culture spot on. I wrote my roadmap with this culture as the guiding principle.

I urged the new CEO of the spin-off company to preserve the culture, in order to maintain the high productivity and excellent morale of the staff. I tried my best to pursuade him of the benefits of investing in technology that would support the staff, that would preserve the brilliant working environment. He ignored my advice.

I quit that job, because my opinion wasn't valued. You can't pay me enough to rubberstamp the wrong decisions. If you're looking for a "yes" man, a sycophant, then you've got the wrong guy.

So, after I left, the culture was destroyed, money was burnt on stupid vanity projects, all the good people left. The profits dropped 90% and naturally, the CEO was fired. I take no pride, only sadness, in saying "I told you so".

But one cool thing happened. At a conference a little over a year later, the CEO of the parent company presented my ideas. They had implemented them. Ideas are worthless, and the implementation must have been very hard - although I had done a proof of concept with my team - so I can take no credit. But it was so nice to be vindicated that I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

I've been bumping along like this for quite a few years now. The problem is, that I'm exhausted. I've got enough energy to do the job, but not enough energy to endure the idiots. I tend to get the important stuff done, and then I have to bow out and allow the sacking of the egotistical dead wood to happen.

Fundamentally, I burnt out in 2008, working on JPMorgan's #1 project. Instead of going off work sick, I decided that I needed to change jobs and as soon as I did the wall of exhaustion that I had been holding back hit me like a steamroller.

I was so flattened by it, that my doctors thought I might have AIDS. We tried every test under the sun, but fundamentally, I now believe that I was simply overworked. I had worked hard and played hard for far too long. My body & brain just couldn't cope anymore.

I was a bit of 'swan'... looked very serene and calm on the surface, but my legs were going like crazy beneath the surface of the water. During some 'time out' I remember playing golf, trying to putt with my phone jammed to my ear while I attempted to resolve some issue a team member was having.

I am so passionate about my work that I tend to dream about it. I even have 'eureka' moments sometimes and wake up and start writing code or an email. There is no switching off when I'm in the 'on' position.

My commute to the office (September 2007)

It's not very healthy, but my parents, school, partners, lazy friends, bosses, society and the surrounding culture has driven me to this unsustainable level. People say 'take it easy, slow down' but as soon as I do back off the gas, they soon start complaining. People get used to a certain level of contribution. They start taking you for granted.

What am I living for, if it's not for work? Nothing is ever good enough for my parents. I haven't had a nice caring kind girlfriend for far too long. I haven't got any kids. What's the point of life if it's not to make some kind of epic contribution?

It's not about heroics, and I really don't expect anybody to get the violins out and say "ooh, poor you". It's literally that work fills an otherwise empty void in my existence. Without work to dedicate myself to, do I really exist? My day to experiences would suggest not.

Yes, I know that work is a dangerous addiction that is damaging my health, but it's the only place that I ever hear "well done" or "thank you". My parents and ex-girlfriend/ex-wife would never sink so low as to actually show me any respect. It's expensive, apparently, to show somebody some appreciation.

During seemingly interminable periods of fatigue, depression, you can obviously reflect and see that you are repeating the same vicious cycle. It doesn't mean that you can beat it though. Nobody stops the world so that you can get off the rollercoaster.

So, everybody will be very relieved when I'm 'recovered' from a crash, but the fact of the matter is that recovery actually only starts when the exhaustion and depression have passed. All that time in bed is not recovery... it's staying alive. It's surviving, not thriving.

Yes, I'm surviving, but I'm not thriving. Nobody will let me get that far. When I have an opportunity to thrive, everybody says "Oh, you're fine now. We don't need to help you, we can go back to taking from you" not that I really receive help anyway.

My friend Klaus brought me a bag of stuff in hospital. That was one of the kindest things that anybody has ever done for me in a couple of years. Does that mean I owe him a favour? Well, he was already living rent free on my couch so I guess we can call it quits!

I do keep a very careful eye on my karma balance. I have paid it forward big time, and I always want to run a net karma surplus. If you do your accounting with some surpluses, with contingency, then you don't have to sweat the small stuff.

There are some people who feel hard done by at my hands. My friend John who thought it was OK to use me for free rent, spending money and as a personal life coach to help him over his gambling addiction and general idleness, for example. When life became unmanageable, I chucked him off my back to save myself. Am I supposed to be sorry about that? Why was I carrying him in the first place?

I don't really understand why I attract klingons. I guess it's because I'm a kind and generous person who gives off an aura of success and I make what I do look quite easy, so other people think there's not much effort required to achieve the same things. That's the thing about being good at what you do. You make it look easy.

I certainly have suffered from the "I could do your job" mistake. When CxOs and managers have been fired because they didn't listen to my expert advice, I certainly wouldn't want to take their place. I'm not trying to steal anybody's job. When I was younger, for sure I thought I could do my manager's job, and do it better. The fact that I have proved it, does not actually mean anything... I hated doing those managerial jobs!

Yes, management really is not for me. Somebody else can have the pressure and stress and responsibility. I think it's a vocation, not a job title. I think it's a demotion not a promotion. Those who can, do. Those who can't, must depend on others to do for them, and must be more organised themselves to compensate for the fact that they can't both be both organised and productive.

So, I'm exhausted by having to design, build, lead, argue with idiots who don't know what they're talking about and make dead wood losers look good.

I'm laid low with depression, fatigue.

Sorry about that, klingons.

That is all.

Frankie loves being tucked up warm in bed. We all do during winter. Fatigue and depression are much more serious. I'm suicidal and I can barely get out of bed (November 2007)

Tags: #career #banking #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about cat & mouse...

Catch me if you can. But why are you chasing me? I'm not a bad guy. Trying to prove someone guilty who is innocent is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps you should consider your own guilty conscience.

So, I'm well aware that I have rattled some cages pretty hard. I'm also aware that the slow, lumbering and dimwitted sleeping beasts that I have awakened, will take a while to kick into gear and mobilise against me. I'm aware that my privacy is being infringed (using back doors) in the name of so-called justice.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, as a matter of professionalism, I told my end-client - HSBC - some hard truths that they didn't want to hear, about the fate of their #1 project. Plausible deniability is rather hard to maintain if a highly paid consultant is giving you their expert opinion. Also, my ex-wife, who said that she'd rather that I was dead, has recently received the rather disappointing news that I'm still alive.

I don't actually wish either my ex-wife or HSBC any ill will. I want the biggest bank in Europe to succeed with their #1 project and retain value for the shareholders, and remain as a profitable entity that employs 245,000 people. Those jobs are important: many families are depending on the income from those employees. I want my ex-wife and me to be able to both move on with our lives.

My occupational health doctor at JPMorgan urged me to try and make an ally out of my ex-wife. Sadly, she said that she would divorce me if I accepted life-saving hospital treatment. It's a bit hard to make an alliance with such a person. She marked my suicide note in red pen, with many abusive remarks written in capitals all over it. I'm a good diplomat, but that's kinda hard to deal with.

So, my ex wrote to me and said that she wanted to deny all knowledge that we had ever had a relationship. That's going to be a bit impossible, given that the record of our marriage is in the public domain, and so is our divorce. Anybody can look those things up in the register of marriages, and the court records.

Denying history, like pretending there was no holocaust in World War 2, is not going to work. Pretending that things didn't happen, is not going to lead anywhere good. Her guilty conscience will always follow her around, and there's nothing I can do about that. It's not my fault that she acted in an immoral way. I can't absolve her of her sins, although I do forgive her.

Fundamentally, this is about forgiveness. I always turned the other cheek. I have absolutely no idea why she is violent and aggressive and abusive, but I forgive her. I have no idea why she wants me dead and buried so badly, but I feel sorry for her. I pity her.

So am I bitter? Am I hanging onto things that I should just let go of? Am I agonising over things that were said and done so long ago, that my feelings are invalid?

Actually, it can take a long time to surface things, when you have been abused for a long time. She will claim that she is the abuse victim. Yeah, that makes sense... when I'm the one who was self harming, suicidal, couldn't work, was totally isolated from my friends and family.

She used to boast about hitting ex boyfriends. When she started hitting me, I didn't know how to deal with it. I trashed our flat. Then I started cutting myself. I was going to kill myself. It didn't really fix things.

She has been very quick to forgive herself, to excuse herself.

Frankly, there is no excuse for perpetrating violence and abuse against somebody. I feel very guilty about the times when I have lashed out. It's driven me to the brink of suicide. For her, it seems to have made her cultivate a holier-than-thou fake self image. I don't buy it. Start with kindness and go from there. If you're not kind, you're not a good person, in my opinion.

Every part of me feels like not publishing this. Every instinct tells me not to share these inner demons. That's why I'm going to do it. I'm going to keep pushing myself to share more and more of my inner turmoil.

Obviously it would be really easy for me to just bring out the big guns. It would be really easy to lay out all the evidence that I have collected of the years of abuse that I endured. That kind of character assassination would just be sinking to the same level as my persecutor though. I don't think that's the right thing to do.

Fundamentally, I could just say that I was victimised, and use that as an excuse for what happened later. I didn't do anything to defend myself for a very long time. I got battered but I turned the other cheek. It was beaten into me, to expect violence and abuse to be perpetrated against me, as a passive and kind, soft, caring, innocent confused and trapped victim.

However, my reaction was wrong. I should have been stronger. I should have walked away. I didn't. That makes me an accomplice. That makes me complicit. I helped to perpetuate what was going on, by not removing myself from the vicious cycle.

So, guilty people can be pretty sneaky. They will collect 'evidence' that will support their warped worldview. They will prepare their ammunition for the day that karma catches up with them. They will try and build a base of support, and cultivate an image of guilt-free innocence.

I'm guilty. I'm guilty of sticking around and trying to fix things. I'm guilty of caring too much. I'm guilty of not protecting myself. I'm guilty of letting my defences down. I'm guilty of making mistakes. I'm guilty of hitting back.

Don't let anyone tell you that I'm an abuser. Don't let anyone tell you that I'm out to control anybody. I'm a kind person. I'm a caring person. I'm a loving person. If somebody is telling you a negative narrative about me, you need to consider what their ulterior motive is. You need to consider what guilty conscience is being covered up.

Yes, I'm no saint at all. I'm guilty, not innocent. I'm exposing my conscience to the world. I'm very disappointed with myself about the way I've acted, in a whole bunch of ways. I could tell you all the reasons why I am who I am and why I acted the way that I did, but it's probably better if I just say that I accept responsibility for my actions. I know that there were better ways of going about dealing with things. I know that I would do things differently today. I feel guilty about a bunch of mistakes, even though I know that it was impossible for me to act differently in the circumstances at the time.

If anybody wants to blame me for things, be my guest. I'll even help you. I am going to provide the world with all the evidence and an open account of my wrongdoing. My gut instinct is to start with the rationale behind things, the reasons, the circumstances, the pressures and the stresses. However, that might seem like I'm trying to justify my actions.

Hurting somebody is always wrong. I'm sorry if I've ever hurt you, whoever you are. I really didn't mean to, and I do feel guilt and empathy. You can come and take your pound of flesh if you think it will help. I'm beating myself up, but if you want to inflict even more blows against me, be my guest... I'm used to being a punching bag.

So, is this self-pitying drivel? I have no idea. It's the beginning of a journey for me. Either there will be liberation or there will be death.

That is all.

Frankie the cat lives with my parents. He's pretty much the only living reminder that their son is still surviving, somewhere in the world. Please don't take that away from them (November 2012)

Tags: #divorce #career #banking #suicide #privacy

This is a story about determination to succeed...

When I finish this blog post, I will have written 50,000 words in two months. My aim is to write 300,000 words this year. I'm on target, but just hitting 100,000 words will be hard... that's the length of a novel.

So, I'm re-centring myself for the next push ahead. I know that I have rambled and lost my way, and confused myself about why I even started writing this. However, I have continued putting one foot in front of the other, in the hope that I will reach some unseen summit at some point in future.

Why do people climb mountains? "Because they're there" is the usual response you will get from a mountaineer. For me, I like the view and I like knowing that at the very moment I reach the top of the peak, I'm amongst a group of people who are similarly blessed or cursed with the desire to put themselves through great hardship and work very hard to achieve some abstract goal. Very few people in the world will be enjoying such great views at that moment in time, as a reward for their efforts.

Sometimes work is its own reward, and I certainly feel a bit of premature pride, knowing that I have produced half a novel already. Ok, so it wouldn't be a very good novel, but if I can write 3, then with some aggressive editing, there might be something readable there.

Even if I throw away everything I've written and start again, after a year, at least I will know that I have the stamina and discipline to sit and write every day. I will have some ideas about what kinds of things I'd like to write about, some themes. I can then structure and guide my writing, to produce something that is more coherent.

Ok, so writing about oneself is conceited, and nobody cares who I am because I'm not some Z-list celebrity who's famous for being an idiot on a reality TV show or whatever it is. I don't actually care who reads this now. In a lot of ways this is an insurance policy.

I wrote before about how I had written my own obituary. When I read it back, it was barely a few bullet points. I often think of that Nina Simone song that goes:

Well I'm just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I'm actually crying as I write those words, because it feels as if I have now re-centred on why I am writing all this stuff. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm very upset about the idea of being buried as some kind of black sheep. A convenient dumping ground for other people's guilty conscience.

I've been fighting to be heard and understood my whole life and unfortunately, when you are sick and tired and exhausted, the bullies and the abusers find it very easy to drown you out. Yes, the weaker you get, the easier you are to quietly brush under the carpet.

The problem with character assassination, is that if the person still lives and breathes, they can still call you out on your preferred version of history. They can still raise their voice and say "Hey! I'm not dead yet! You didn't finish me off, despite your best efforts to bury me!". That's inconvenient, embarrassing.

I want to do something called hedging. I'm not sure if I'm going to live or die young, so I want to have some kind of life insurance policy that is more than monetary. I want to make sure that I leave some kind of useful legacy beyond cold hard cash.

So, I want to speak out on the topic of bullying, and the abuse of men. I want to speak out on the topic of depression and suicide. I want to end the stigma of being a little boy who cries at sad films. I want to end the acceptance of bullying as a "fact of life" and instead get the world to recognise it as abuse, plain and simple. I want to raise awareness of depression as a sane response to an insane world, and deal with the root causes of it: loneliness, isolation, stress, pressure, abuse, bullying, war and every other kind of human suffering.

Does this all sound ridiculous? Yes, it's rather silly, eh? Of course I'm not going to make a blind bit of difference to the world. It's set in its ways and there are problems everywhere we look. One wide-eyed, naïve, over-optimistic, non-celebrity, non-rich, non-famous 36 year old man who came from nowhere and is going nowhere... what could he do?... nothing!

I don't actually give a damn. I know how to do a few things reasonably well, so I'm just going to do them to the very best of my ability. I'm going to use all my wits and cunning and hustling abilities, combined with my lack of fear, and my strong feelings of empathy towards humanity, and just put myself out into the world and push hard.

I'm going to do what I do when I climb any mountain. I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and not think about the summit. I'm just going to keep grinding and grinding the trail. I'm just going to keep gaining altitude little by little, knowing that if I keep going up and up, I will eventually reach the summit.

I've always been a natural climber. I can't help climbing. I just want to get high, naturally or unnaturally. Actually, just being alive is unnatural. Well, highly improbable anyway.

The universe doesn't like tall buildings, peaks. It doesn't like things to fight the forces of nature. The highest mountains in the world - The Himalayas - are also some of the youngest. The Universe has a property called entropy which can describe the tendency of things that are structured and ordered to decay and be ruined.

Entropy is busily trying to tear down Mount Everest. Meanwhile, mountaineers are taking on the entire Universe and sticking two fingers up at it, by climbing 8,848m, while it still remains so high... in millions of years time it will be nothing more than a pile of broken limestone fragments.

If you think I overestimate my position in the Universe, you're wrong. I've considered everything in context, from our best estimates of when "time" began, to just how "large" the known universe is (those things are in quotes, because space and time are actually much more complicated than we experience in our day to day life on Earth).

I'm well versed enough in General and Special Relativity to know that most questions about our place in the Universe are more unfathomable than any mind could possibly comprehend. Time and space are such elastic and supermassive things, that it's just laughable to even talk about one tiny speck of an organism being less or more important than another one.

If anybody says that I should shut up because I'm not very important or interesting, they should perhaps consider that in the context of the estimated 13.82 billion years that the Universe has had a concept of time. Assuming that person has an above average lifespan of 100 years, that'd be 100 years in 13,820,000,000, which makes their lifespan equal to 0.0000007% of that time... they're hardly important enough to make such a pronouncement, surely?

Yes, you really are a drop in the ocean:

The oceans of the world are estimated to weigh 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. You perhaps weigh 100kg... that means you are not even as much of a "big deal" as a raindrop in a swimming pool.

So, when you start talking about which human life is more or less valuable than another, you should get a grip of yourself. You need to have a reality check. Not reality TV. You need to get your textbooks out and actually look at your significance in the Universe. Then you might start realising just how arrogant and stupid you are, if you think you are a superior being.

Things start with good science, and from base principles, not with egos and guesswork. Certainly not with a cult of celebrity and hero-worship. Remember that Einstein was a patent clerk who was not very good at maths. All men are created equal.

Think big.

Halfway up Mont Blanc on my 18th birthday, enjoying a snack above the clouds (August 1998)

Tags: #climbing #suicide #bullying #depression #physics

This is a story about breaking point...

I don't believe in 'rock bottom'. Instead, I feel that I have either run out of fuel or suffered some kind of mechanical failure. You can't drive yourself at the absolute limit forever without some kind of blowout. I have melted my tyres by cornering at high speed.

When I was younger, I pushed myself very hard because I was bored and not at all challenged by what was asked of me. I needed to work many many times harder than my colleagues to prove that my age was no limit to what I could achieve. I've been programming since I was a little boy, so why shouldn't I be better at it than somebody who's been doing it for less years than me?

I had a couple of brilliant teachers growing up, one of whom taught me boolean algebra. If you can master boolean algebra, then there's not much you can't do with a computer. Else if, you're not cut out to be a programmer. End program.

So, I've been doing more or less the same thing in my full-time career for 19 years, because it's a skilled job and is very highly paid. However, there are so many asshats that I must endure in order to get on with my job, which is rather trying. Eventually, the pen-pushers grind me down and I lose my patience with them.

What's really heartbreaking is that I have worked so hard for so long in order to have some time & space to do some things which I actually love and I'm passionate about. However, just when things were seemingly working out for me, people came and picked my pocket.

Now, it's my own fault for being so open and trusting and generous. I have always refused to stop treating others the way I would like to be treated myself. Just because other people are mean and selfish and steal from each other, doesn't mean that I'm going to be like them too.

I imagine that they must feel pretty rotten about themselves, knowing that they have profited from other people's hard labour. I know that we all think of ourselves as relatively hard working. Just remember to look at the evidence. Think about how many 100+ hour weeks you have racked up in your life.

So this isn't about boastfulness, or oneupmanship. It's just about an attitude adjustment. I know that many baby boomers who are in the process of thinking about retirement feel pretty tired and that they have worked pretty hard. Well, I would advise you to look at some hard numbers about just how hard your sons, daughters and grandchildren are working and will have to continue working in order to fund your retirement.

There is a "screw it let's just drown our sorrows" attitude amongst the young, who have no hope of job security, not enough money to buy a house, not enough money to support a family without state support. This is a rational response to a world that has few opportunities left for them.

Underpaying people below the age of 25 is obscene. I was working as a contractor for Research Machines and Lloyds TSB at the age of 20 and they paid me top dollar because my skills and youthful energy got shit done.

It really depresses me, just how many layers of idle and out-of-touch management there are sitting uselessly on top of the toiling youth, while they wait to collect a pension that they didn't contribute enough towards to justify what they are going to withdraw from the system.

The future of children and grandchildren has been mortgaged by profligate baby boomers who were too busy getting stoned and taking LSD to actually ban the bomb and prevent British industry from being asset stripped and having our competitive edge completely destroyed by myopic idiots. Nuclear arms proliferation is not my legacy... it's yours, old people. The lack of jobs for young people is not my fault... it's yours, old people.

Ok, so you might be feeling rotten in your old age, but maybe your body wouldn't feel so bad if it wasn't full of cancer from all the radioactive particles floating around from your nuclear testing? Maybe you'd feel a lot better if the nation hadn't been totally bankrupted by you and your cronies, so we didn't have to cut medical research budgets?

My suggestion? Well, Soylent Green seems a little unpalatable, so perhaps we could just make sure that the burden of austerity falls on those who are responsible. It wasn't a debt binge by young people that caused the current crisis. It was a complete lack of political and social responsibility from the baby boom generation, that meant that the landed gentry had their hands in the safe, helping themselves to all the loot, while you sneering arrogant wannabe pensioners were drinking and smoking and taking drugs.

So, we have a very cold bitter winter ahead of ourselves. Everything is going to hell in a hand cart. Please please please remember not to blame your children for the implosion of the world and the collapse of society. Your pension is a privilege you get for leaving the world a better place than you found it, and I'm afraid you have no right to take something you didn't pay for.

I'm really reluctant to do another round of propping up a broken system, for the benefit of a bunch of ungrateful twats who show no appreciation. I think I'm going to stand back and watch the whole thing burn down.

That is all.

This is my sister's cat, Calcifer. He was catnapped. Us young people are struggling to look after our loved ones, because we are under too much pressure to work 6 or 7 days a week on hardly any money... baby boomers have no idea how hard it is being young (September 2014)

Tags: #career #parents #childhood

This is a story about the shoe being on the other foot...

There's a Madonna song called "What it Feels Like for a Girl" which talks about men secretly wondering what it's like, being a girl. Here are my raw, candid, thoughts and experiences.

Men can be domestic abuse victims too. I've had to go to work with black eyes and a broken nose and make up some story to try and cover up for my partner's aggression and violence. I've had to lie to friends and family members about my battered & bruised face.

You know that as a man you can't hit back, because then you're the bad guy. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You can't turn the other cheek forever though.

When it comes to dating, men have got it fairly hard. I'd much rather that loads of women just chatted me up... gave me complements and massaged my ego, and then I just picked the best of the bunch. Yes, that'd definitely be better than being one of the horde of horny guys fighting over the passive females.

Yes, being passive is nice. I've been to gay clubs, and it's super nice being eyed up and having people ask you for you phone number. It's nice to feel wanted. It's nice to know where you stand. It's nice to have choice, to have options and just pick the person who you're most attracted to. Sadly, I'm not attracted to men.

Being objectified, mentally undressed, groped and otherwise felt up, ass slapping and pinching... I'm sure that can be draining. I'm sure it's often unwelcome. I'm sure it's pretty horrible, as a girl just trying to travel on public transport. However, I'll admit that personally, when those things have happened to me, I've enjoyed it to some extent. I guess that could be novelty though.

I did have one guy being really forceful with me, right in front of his boyfriend. It did become annoying after a while. I also felt sorry for his boyfriend. Mostly, it made me feel pressured into doing something I didn't want to do (which I didn't do... that time) but it still inflated my fragile ego a bit. There is security, self-confidence, to be found in feeling sexually attractive.

Girls are expected to maintain an immaculate home, be a supernanny to the children, masterchef in the kitchen, powerdressing businesswoman and a whore in the bedroom. Sure there used to be a high expectation placed on women. However, men are modernising too. If you picked a knuckle-dragging caveman, more fool you: you can't really complain, can you?

Actually, I'm extremely neat and tidy and clean. I can cook a 7 course dinner and wash up as I go along. I can't imagine doing it while trying to round up children, of course, but I've always seen child rearing as a teamwork exercise. I've certainly always dreamt of working part-time when I have kids, so I can play an active role in their upbringing.

When it comes to bedroom antics, I've written before about my dislike of blow jobs. One of the big reasons is that it's hardly mutual gratification. Sure, women can derive satisfaction from knowing that they have pleased their partner, but it's still hardly the most pleasant of acts, is it? With a bit of practice, sex can be a thoroughly satisfying affair for both guy & girl.

I'm sure there are still neandertal men out there who haven't taken the time to practice their skills. They can't be bothered to satisfy their partner, because frankly, they're getting what they want. Again, it's down to choice: why did you pick such a selfish partner who doesn't get you off?

I'm a thoroughly modern man. In touch with my feelings and able to express myself and generally communicate very effectively. I don't really believe in traditional gender roles, and I have strong views about men's responsibility for contraception, household chores and childcare. However, that's not really gotten me anywhere so far.

I guess the battle of the sexes still rages, and the nice guys still finish last. Women believe that equal rights will be their salvation, but they still pick totally chauvinistic pigs as partners. They are still choosing DNA material donors based on animal instincts, despite the argument that women are equal.

Sadly, equality will never be achieved when we are breeding lazy, selfish, ignorant and sexist boys. You picked the man, and I'll show you the boy.

So, it's kind of up to you, ladies. Stop dating d1ckheads. Stop rewarding selfish chauvinists with the sex and easy life that they don't deserve, and then maybe we'll have a better world.

The alternative, which is to date kind and caring soft modern men, but then beat them up and abuse them... that's not really working.

As a metrosexual man, life was very hard at school. It's not that I wasn't fancied at school, but it would have been popularity suicide for a girl to date an outcast. The occasional tryst with a girl from another school, was all I had to keep me going through those years of puberty and early teens, along with the occasional secret note that was given to me saying "would you like to date... when we leave school?".

So, I skipped any childhood sweethearts. Getting girlfriends in later life when you're a bit of a late starter is very strange. I was cynical and mature enough not to declare undying love for anybody. I held off using the "L" word until the age of about 26. That's not to say that I didn't have crazy feelings for any girls though. I was just aware that it was probably lust and loneliness conspiring against me.

When things start getting serious, that's when you get seriously screwed. Because I always open my heart, take the chance... I laid myself wide open to be destroyed by a spiteful ex. I've actually managed to come out of it without being horribly twisted. I still insist on wearing my heart on my sleeve and acting with some common decency, and taking some risks.

So, on International Men's Day, I urge guys to remain honest & open, and keep on the trajectory of modernising themselves. I know that many women view men who talk about their feelings as "soft mummies boys" and potentially not good partner material. Well, if you don't like equality then that view is probably correct.

Personally, I'm still dreaming of being a house husband some of the time. I'd like to discuss my feelings openly and without fear of ridicule, with my partner. Partnership is about equality, mutual respect. That's what I want to see on this day, and every day going forward.

That is all.

I got custody of Frankie the cat, but my ex thought she should have it all, even though he was the reason why I kept myself alive when I was starving myself to death (May 2008)

Tags: #divorce #frankie

This is a story about the spread of lies and misinformation...

Wealth does not trickle down, but information does. If you pass off lies as if they were facts, they will spread and people will start to believe complete rubbish. Journalists need to check their facts. So should we, if we are going to broadcast things all over social media and to our friends and family.

I was disappointed by the number of my friends sharing a story about an ambulance "packed with explosives" at the Germany vs. Netherlands football game that was called off last night. I think it is little co-incidence that these were the same friends sharing stories about what a successful air strike the French had made against "ISIS" the day after the Paris attacks. From what I could see, it was an air strike against the sovereign nation of Syria. Strikes against a nation without declaring war on them is illegal, or so I thought? Perhaps it's me who is confused.

So, what the heck is going on in the world? My friends and family have been turned against me, with rumours being spread about my mental health, alcohol and drug issues. If you didn't see it with your own eyes, or see some evidence, why would you believe those who would seek to damage? What is the ulterior motive, when we are being told that a group of people or an individual is "evil" and needs to be excluded, wiped out... they are dehumanised.

What does this kind of infighting really achieve? Aren't we all the same, under our clothes? Don't we all bleed red? Don't we all feel pain when you hurt us? Don't we all have fear when you threaten us? Don't we all cry when you isolate and exclude us?

What's the point in spreading lies, misinformed rubbish that's based on complete ignorance? What are you hoping that it will do? It certainly won't make anybody think you're a better person. It certainly won't advance humanity, civilisation. It won't protect you and your children and your grandchildren.

Yes, I think that fundamentally, people are playing on the fears that you naturally have as a parent. You want to defend the genetic material that you have managed to replicate into another bag of DNA... your children and grandchildren. You will happily kill if it means that more copies of your DNA get to be reproduced. It's the selfish gene in action.

However, you have higher brain functions. Society and the advancement of the human race now means that we have written language and a body of historical literature that we can learn from. We can look at what has happened with countless empires and see that the same mistakes get repeated over & over again. Human nature includes animal nature, and that most basic nature is to fight and fuck and try and pass on your genes.

Do you think you could rise above the level of a mosquito, just for a minute?

Stop sucking blood and fighting and fucking. That's what animals do.

Yes, you're an animal, but you also have the gift of consciousness, which means that you're self aware, and you can self-direct your actions based on the evaluation of more than whether you are horny or hungry. Yes, you might still be horny and hungry, but you can also be considerate and kind and thoughtful. You can surely see the physical manifestation of immorality in the world? Does "thou shalt not kill" apply to you?

So, I'm not religious, but at least religion preaches a code of morality. I have morals even though I don't worship any god(s). I believe in certain things that have been attributed to a 2,000 year old man who was supposedly called Jesus Christ... but I'm not a Christian.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Does that ring any bells? Guns and bombs are like stones, that we are raining down on the heads of many of our fellow human beings fairly indiscriminately. That's immoral.

You cannot let things that are going on in the world sit comfortably on your conscience, unless you're some sort of psychopath. Look at the huge number of refugees fleeing illegal wars. You help to support the kind of horrific barbaric behaviour that is causing this human suffering. If you're thinking "what can I do?" or "it's nothing to do with me" you are an ignoramus. You are a horrible person.

Your kids and grandkids have got to grow up on this polluted war-torn rock. If you're teaching them that it's OK to sit idly by while people are killed, or worse, you are promoting killing and illegal war, you are immoral and you are destroying the world. You don't deserve to be teaching your children and grandkids vile views that will perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence.

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

That is all.

Frankie: "Why, daddy? Why do the horrible people do it? I just want to eat cat food and play with a ball of string and sleep in the sunshine" (June 2007)

Tags: #parents #politics #civildisobedience #frankie #terrorism