Nick Grant

This is a story about admiration...

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, we're told. I'm sure it's also a way to make somebody feel self conscious as hell, and maybe even feel great pressure to live up to expectations. People looking to you for inspiration, guidance and direction in their lives: it's a lot of responsibility. Thankfully I don't have that problem, being a complete loser.

While I haven't lifted a life plan straight out of any of my friends' lives, I've certainly borrowed parts of their life that I admire. The easiest thing to do is try and clone something of their digital persona. If they write a blog, you write a blog. If they tweet, you tweet. You read what they read, and try to understand where they're coming from when they make certain intellectual and emotional points: you try and empathise.

If you spend a bunch of time with a person, at school, at work, online, you start to get a sense of who they are, superficially. If you're a relatively sponge-like character like I am, you soak up mannerisms, certain phrases and even accents and colloquialisms. In a way, if you speak like a person, you start to think like them.

Well that got real creepy real quick, didn't it?

I was supposed to be writing a blog post to reassure some of my friends that they're not responsible for me. I was supposed to be writing to say that I'm sorry if it was all a bit too personal, when I alluded to how important your influence has been in helping me discover some of the pieces that make up my personality. However, it's all come out a bit like: I wanna be like you.

If you don't have any role models, how are you supposed to figure out what you want to be and who you want to be? I think you can admire somebody and want to be like certain aspects of their personality and do things like they do, but you're still very much yourself.

When I think about the things that an admired friend has done, built, written, I don't think "I've got to do that too". Instead I think about what was good and interesting and useful and inspiring about what they did, and I try to emulate their passion and industriousness, by reverse-engineering what I imagine to be the process that led them to arrive at their achievements.

Friends who are musically talented have not led me to learning the piano or the guitar. Instead I've looked at their passion for music and tried to understand how the pursuit of music became a passion, and not a skill simply to be acquired through practice and repetition. Sure, you can become good at something purely by imitating somebody. You can learn to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix, including imitations of all his mistakes, but do you really feel the way that Hendrix felt when you play, or are you merely miming the actions?

There's no point in turning yourself into a best-guess clone of somebody, just because you like and admire them. There's no happiness or salvation to be found in learning to look and act like somebody, unless you wanted to be a professional impersonator. Instead, if you think somebody looks passionate and fulfilled by something, you've gotta understand the dynamic that's driving that.

Life can also throw some weird curveballs. Like, I didn't get the whole social networking thing. When I heard an old schoolfriend was developing a social networking platform, I was like "what's the point?". Then I got into kitesurfing, and through kitesurfing I got into discussion forums, and discussion forums are mostly built on phpBB, which is a social networking platform. Social networking inadvertently changed my life for the better, but if I'd tried to involve myself in the world that my friend was passionate about it, I would have been lost until I saw the value through my own experiences.

Now, when somebody tells me their social business model is like an existing business model, but social, I'm like "so you have a comments section and people can click a button to tweet your shit, right?" and they're like, no, it's also a community, and I'm like "so you have a popup that asks you to fill in your email address so you can spam them?" and they're like, yeah, pretty much that.

Through the clouds of the bullshitters who don't really get it. Through all the swarms of "me too" idiots who are trying to hit all the buzzwords, it's passion and a depth of experience and knowledge that really shines through. I can be cynical as hell with my friends, but I know that I simply don't get the things that they're passionate about, until I do, and then I neatly slot them into my worldview.

It might look like I'm patchwork quilt of stolen ideas, borrowed personality traits and copycat behaviours, but I still make everything my own because I too have grown to see the value in the things that my friends have opened my eyes to.

I apologise if the hero worship is an unwanted pressure, or makes you feel uncomfortable. I'm sorry about where our worlds collide and I might directly or indirectly make reference to your influence on me and the stuff I'm doing. For sure I'm doing a bunch of figuring out who the hell I am and what makes me tick, and that's meant revisiting everything since childhood. It might be a bit cringeworthy, but maybe I'll get somewhere.

Anyway, I hope I don't make you feel too self conscious, and I hope that your involvement in my story has not been unwanted.

Thanks.

Tags: #friends #socialmedia

This is a story about simplicity...

A compressed spring is heavier than an uncompressed spring. When you lay down on your mattress, the springs of the mattress are actually getting heavier. When you get in your car, the springs of the suspension are getting heavier. When you wind up a clockwork watch, it weighs more. Wait, what?

Yes, it's as simple as I just said. When you squash a spring, the spring gets heavier. Any questions?

Probably just one: whaaaaat?

Well, it's because of E = mc² you see.

Oh, boring. It's one of Nick's crazy rants about physics. Perhaps he's gone nuts again. Perhaps he's having another hypomanic episode. Well, in some ways you're right. But before anybody shouts "BANANA" at me [it's my 'safe' word] you should really read on a little further.

The reason why I race off on those hypomanic episodes is that most of the time, some evil passenger in my car keeps putting the handbrake on. People keep climbing on my back and making me carry them. People keep putting rocks in my pockets and getting me to drag their shit along for them. I'm basically frustrated as hell the whole time at the endless monotonous boredom and not being able to get on with my projects because of absolute bullshit. I just like to work on things and finish them, you see. If you tell me that you need something building, I'll get on and build it, and give you a completed project, instead of sitting around with my head up my butt. I don't really like sitting around with my head up my butt. I like getting on and building shit.

And so, I become a compressed spring. The more that I'm held back, the more that I become coiled and squashed and full of energy, ready to spring forwards when I'm released. The time windows are very short, but I build a lot of cool stuff very quickly. I built iPhone apps that reached #1 in the charts in a matter of weeks. I built a gigantic summerhouse in my garden in the space of a few days. I don't generally fuck about.

"But why do springs get heavier when they're compressed, Nick?" I hear you ask. It's really easy to explain.

Energy and mass are equivalent. Therefore, if you apply a weight to the top of a spring, and it squashes down, the energy that is stored up in that spring is stored as mass. More mass means the spring is more heavy. When you take the weight off the spring, allowing it to uncompress, the mass is converted back into energy, and the spring gets lighter again.

That's all that the equation E = mc² really says. It says energy equals mass [times the speed of light squared]. Energy-mass equivalence.

OK... the speed of light squared is a pretty big number, so the amount of mass is pretty tiny compared to the amount of energy. So tiny that there isn't a set of scales accurate enough in the whole world to measure just how much heavier our spring got, when we compressed it. The amount of mass that we created from energy, by compressing the spring, was teeny tiny.

Equally though, you don't need to turn much mass into energy to create lots of energy.

When people talk about splitting the atom and nuclear weapons, I'm not sure what your average person on the street imagines. Perhaps they think that atoms are actually being destroyed to create the explosion. When a chemical explosive is detonated, the chemicals are rapidly being turned into gas, which is many many times more voluminous than the size of the solid or liquid explosives. This is not what's happening during a nuclear reaction.

The nuclei of atoms are held together by the strong nuclear force. Think of it like a door latch. The door latch holds together particles with similar electrical charge. I'm sure you remember playing with magnets, and you know that like poles repel each other. So, when you put the red end of magnet towards the red end of another magnet, they don't want to touch each other. The strong nuclear force holds those two red ends together, stopping them from flying apart. This is much akin to our coiled spring.

When the nucleus of an atom is split by being bashed into by another particle, a bit like a wrecking ball smashing into a house, then the 'latch' of the strong nuclear force is broken, and the particles with the same charge repel each other. The different parts of the atom fly apart because of this repulsion. It's like those coiled springs are uncoiling.

This means that energy is being released. Lots more energy than it took to unlatch the strong nuclear force that held the nucleus together. It's a bit like a room full of mouse traps, all sprung-loaded and waiting to go off. It only takes one light little touch to cause one mouse trap to go off, and before you know it, they're all setting each other off in a great big chain reaction.

And that's how a self-sustaining nuclear reaction works. A small amount of input energy is required to start the chain reaction, but once it's started, there's plenty of energetic particles flying around to smash into other nuclei and cause them to break apart. Less energy input was required than the amount of total energy output, and only a very small amount of the mass is actually being released, by the strong nuclear force being overcome, allowing the subatomic parts of the nucleus to fly apart.

The same cascade reaction is used in a nuclear power plant as was used in the atomic bombs that blew up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's called nuclear fission.

So, how does this relate to anything? Well, whether it's reading a stack of books about nuclear physics (this, by the way, was only the most basic introduction I'm afraid) or writing hundreds of thousands of words, I'm kinda a bit like that coiled spring, ready to unleash my energy on whatever I can when I'm given my chance, and I'm unlatched.

I just need a small opening, a small opportunity, and I'll run headlong at it. I'm so desperately bored by having to go at snails pace because of the limitations of the world around me. I live with constant frustration that I can't go at a natural pace, and so I go twice as quick as I should do when I'm finally given the opportunity to get on with something.

Had I ever gotten the chance to study theoretical physics at university, I would have read half as much in twice the time. Had I ever gotten to write at my own pace, with enough money behind me to keep a roof over my head, I would have taken twice as long and written half as much.

I'm now wrestling with the problem that I'm pretty much working two jobs, and in one of them I'm trying too hard at to compensate for the lack of fulfilment in the other. My day job doesn't challenge me. My day job gives me zero job satisfaction. And so when I get home in the evenings, I write and I write and I write. I've even taken to rattling off a couple of short stories every day while I'm at work. The one I wrote this morning was 6,000 words. That's right. I just rattled off 6,000 words because I'm so damn frustrated and bored, but I'm still working a full time job as well as producing some 14,000 words a day. It's too damn much and I'm going to burn out, but my day job is utter bullshit. My life is utter bullshit.

It's such a fucking rush, a hurry. It's such a fucking struggle. Trying to put up with enough boring bullshit that I've got a lump of money behind me to allow me to take a break and work on something I love and I'm passionate about. Either that, or I just take the tiny windows of opportunity where I find them, and work as hard as I can and as fast as I can, before the bullshit catches up with me again.

I honestly thought to myself that prison wouldn't be so bad. So much time to read and write, and ponder stuff. Really, I'm a fucking prisoner at the moment. I can't exactly get an interesting book out at my desk. Even when I'm writing, I'm doing it while looking over my shoulder. I've got to keep one eye on the boss, and be on my game in case I get asked to do something or somebody has a question for me. It's so fucking tense you know? It's compressing me. It's squashing me. It's making me dense and dark and heavy.

I fantasise about living in a tent, unencumbered by having to make rent payments and keep the electric and gas switched on. What would I really need, in this day and age? You can do so much on a smartphone.

I'm coming full circle. In a little over a month I will have been writing every day for a year. This whole thing started with me writing about some research I did on a public bench at a railway station. I think how different my life was then, and somehow I had much better quality of life, even though I was destitute.

Do I want this? This life? This life of commuting on the morning train, and office chit-chat and the daily grind, and of looking busy at my desk and saying clever shit to impress the boss, and hiding in the toilets browsing the Internet, and writing short stories in a really small font to disguise what I'm doing, just to pass the endless boring hours, and watching the clock, counting down, counting down, down, down. Down to what? My premature death from the stress and anxiety of it all?

Plenty of research has now proven that working a boring shitty office job is more unhealthy and lifespan shortening than smoking. Famously, people are suing their employers for the mind-numbingly dumb work they're asked to do. It's almost physically agonising. I'm being squashed. My very life force, my energy, my dignity, my passion, my personality... it's all being squeezed out of me like I'm a tube of cheap toothpaste.

I feel so sick and anxious. I don't know how to continue. I know that fiscally it makes perfect sense to continue. It's easy money, but it doesn't look that easy when it seems to be the root cause of my mood instability. People either ask me to work too hard for too long, so I burn out, or they bore the shit out of me, so I eventually explode with frustration. The pyramid scheme of corporate life is destroying lives. My life is being destroyed.

Oh God I want to throw up. This isn't just a job you fuckers. This is literally fucking me up. I can't do it much longer. I'm going to have a motherfucking breakdown. I can't cope and I'm waving the white flag in surrender but yet the gunfire does not seem to pause.

"Everybody needs to work"

"You have a great job"

"You're so well paid"

"People would love to have your opportunities"

"Count your blessings"

"Just another few decades and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams"

"Not long now"

"C'mon it can't be that hard"

"You should try my job"

"You've got things easy"

"I'd love it if I was bored all the time"

"You spoiled bratty bastard"

"You earn 6 or 7 times as much as I do"

"Why don't you follow your dreams"

"You've got nothing to complain about"

FUCK OFF, FUCK OFF, FUCK OFF

Argh! I can't deny my feelings any longer. I fucking well did what I have to, to get out from a fucked up situation, and I got somewhat out of the way of the oncoming collision, but it's been at great personal expense. I can't express how much it's killed me to put myself in a position where I might as well put my brain in a pickle jar and wheel my cryogenically frozen body into position at my desk.

Imagine if I picked fruit and vegetables for a living, and I slept in a barn on the farm where I worked. I could keep some of the fruit and vegetables that I picked, and eat them. My labour would provide my contribution for my space in the barn, as well as enough beans, rice, pulses and meat to keep my protein and carbohydrate intake at a healthy level. I would be able to see, quite literally, the fruits of my labour each day.

I live a life that could not be more opposite. I will never meet the people who use my software, and I don't even create the software anymore. I manage a bunch of people to create software for me. And I don't even see the people I manage face to face. They live thousands of miles away in some developing world country. I don't even know what management is. I pretty much just say "you're doing a great job. Keep going!" over and over again, to these poorly paid people who toil away, on the other side of the planet. Then some money is digitally credited to my bank balance, and I digitally credit it somewhere else to pay my rent. I never see actual physical money. I don't ever carry cash. Coins are just an antique novelty to me.

Modern life is making me unwell, I can sense it.

I have embraced technology and science, and I understand it better than 99% of people. In abstract terms, I'm doing really well, and it looks insane to be dissatisfied with my lot in life, but how do I really define my existence? Can I define myself as a father and enjoy family life, when I have no children? Can I define myself as a builder or a soldier, when what I do is so ethereal and intangible? Can I define myself as a farmer or a gardener, when what I do is so unnatural?

I'm a spring. That's what I am: a rusty spring.

I'm coiled up and compressed, ready to unspring, ready to bounce and boing.

It's fucking awful, let me tell you, being so unable to apply yourself to some useful mission, project or productive endeavour. It's fucking awful, feeling so trapped and imprisoned. That's why my thoughts turn dark and brooding so often. That's why suicide is so often on my mind.

Tags: #physics #writing #suicide #bipolar #career

This is a story about being in touch with your feminine side...

When I was a pre-pubescent boy, I read a book by Judy Blume about girls getting their period and having their first kiss with a boy. Before you boil over into a fit of inexplicable anger (as women are prone to do because they're completely ruled by their emotions) I'm not actually saying I know what it's like to menstruate, have boobs and to carry a baby inside me for 9 months and deliver it into the world through my vagina.

My education and upbringing was pretty heavy on the whole sex-ed thing. My sister was born when I was 10 years old, and so I clearly remember her birth and my Mum's pregnancy. My teacher at school was pregnant when we were being shown childbirth videos, and the schools in Oxford are actually pretty progressive. We were taught about the reproductive cycle in the first year that I went to middle school, when I was 9 years old.

Of course, I will never have the first-hand experience of having my cervix dilated by the large head of my child, to the point that it tears, and other painful sounding childbirth related stuff. I know that I would get yelled at with hormonal illogical female rage, if I was to suggest that other stuff that's happened to me has been painful. The muscle on the front of my calf was sliced in half, severing 4 tendons. The hospital in Oxford kept me for 3 days to re-stabilise my kidneys - no painkillers - and then sent me back home to London for the operation 2 days later. My whole journey on the train and across the capital was done without crutches or pain relief. My bandages were soaked with blood. I'm sure those 5 days where my calf had a muscle that was sliced in two down to the bone would give me no capacity to imagine having my vagina ripped to bits by a baby though.

I genuinely don't want to insult mothers. You're right, I'll never know what it's like to have a bad back from carrying round all that weight of a baby bulge for 9 months. I'll never know what it's like to have my internal organs being squished by the life growing inside me. I'll never know what it's like to be woken up by my unborn child kicking. I'll never know.

If you think I'm being flippant or sarcastic, I'm sorry, but I'm actually being genuine. I've often given consideration to the things I'll never know.

What man hasn't given consideration to how much fun they might have, if they got to swap bodies with a woman for the day. Of course, we'd like to play with our tits, but we're also fascinated to know what it feels like for a girl. There's a <blush> slightly kinky element. What does it feel like to be penetrated? Are multiple orgasms as good as they sound? Errr... did I just say that? Moving swiftly on.

Yeah, it's pretty shameful to admit this stuff, but I've made it my mission to vicariously experience what I can of the feminine. I don't think I'm one of those men who thinks that they're a woman who got born into a guy's body. I've just made it a goal in life to empathise. Empathise with everybody. Including the opposite sex.

When I was a teenager I read female erotic fiction. I tried to get into the mind of what women want. I tried to learn how to be a generous lover, so that I could please my girlfriends. I put a lot of effort into my 'research' and I have to say, I got a big kick out of it. However, I read an article recently where the author - a woman - was actually offended by how much of an ego boost guys get by knowing they've moved the Earth for their lover. Well, guess what? That's been added to the long list of considerations too.

So am I painting this picture of me as some sort of perfect guy? No. Don't be ridiculous. What I'm saying is that I'm an information gatherer, and I was born as a sensitive little soul who takes in a lot of what people say, how they feel and whatever I can divine from the media I have consumed. I guess I figured out from an early age that I wasn't going to learn everything I needed to know from pornographic magazines and videos.

It's laughable isn't it, to say that I empathise with women, mothers. and it's actually not true, I don't. I try to, but of course I fail on so many levels. You can't possibly know how much you don't know. Dunning-Kruger effect. Blah blah blah!

But, if you can have a tomboy, can you not also have a tamgirl?

I remember when a friend was talking about her hen do. I enthusiastically gushed "OMG! When is it?" without thinking that I would not actually be invited. I just kinda assumed that I would be. It was a strange situation, because she was a "one of the lads" kind of girl, and I'm a "comfortable with my sexuality" type of guy, so the gender exclusion of the event didn't even register with me.

So, why have I taken a wordplay of Mumsnet, turning it into something that's supposed to sound like The Social Network? Well, because I'm jealous. I feel like I'm missing out on something.

My same friend who I mentioned regarding the hen do was at one time (I'm not sure if she still is) an active contributor on the Mumsnet forum. I actually met her on a forum to do with kitesurfing, many years before. We were both active forum contributors. In fact, I think we competed for the top spot, quite often.

Another friend, a wonderful geek girl whom I very much enjoy the pleasure of the company of, is also another active Mom social networker, who I think also frequents the pages of Mumsnet.

The blogosphere is heavily colonised by mommybloggers, looking for some kind of activity to connect with the world in a way that fits with the demands of family life. Family members eagerly devour every last detail of life of the youngest members of the clan, and will scour the pages of every social media source in order to gather any updates and juicy pictures of the cute little kids as they grow up. Blogging about your family life is a natural extension of that.

However, I imagine that having kids can be a fairly bleak and isolating existence at times. Just as being single can leave you left out from all those couples events - who's going to invite sad Dave to dinner on his own? That'd be weird! - so the stressed out mom who's had to spend all day with fractious children is going to be overlooked by friends who don't want their peaceful child-free existence shattered by the arrival of mountains of childrearing equipment and tantrum-prone toddlers disturbing the peace.

Yes, unless you have a good baby circle of other moms who have kids of a similar age, it's kinda hard for anybody to relate to the particular struggles that you're immediately facing, whether that be teething and nappy rash, or the defiant "NO!" phase as the loveable darlings assert their own personalities. Which of your friends understands that they need to remove all the sharp, swallowable and fragile ornaments from the low surfaces? That bowl of potpourri looks terribly decorative on the coffee table, but to a parent of a young child, that's just a choking hazard. The worlds are going to collide.

And so, sleep-deprived moms get isolated, as social lepers because they're no longer footloose and fancy free. Not only must the children travel with mom, but also the changing mat, clean nappies, wet wipes, sterilising equipment, bibs, blankets, toys, teething rings, potties, spare clothes, medicines, high chairs, carrycots, pushchairs and every other bit of parenting paraphernalia to keep the tiny tots clean, comfortable, fed and watered, in the hope that they'll smile and giggle, not cry.

I have no idea if an Internet forum can provide some of the camaraderie that is necessary to make things seem a little less desperate, when Junior just won't go to sleep and he's driving you nuts with that noisy toy that grandma bought for him. I have no idea if getting together online, as moms who've been through it all too - they know all the shit that you're going through - in some way makes getting through the day a little easier.

I know that I miss my time being a top contributor on a forum. I know that I miss those familiar nicknames. I know that I miss the purpose and routine that it gave my life, trying to read absolutely everything, and make comments in the most active threads. I miss those virtual friends, who actually turned out not to be virtual at all. Some of the best friends I have, I made through forums. Some of the best experiences of my life, were when a bunch of us nerdy Internet dwellers met up, in the evening for drinks, for weekend trips away, or for adventures around the world.

The gender-blind part of me thinks that I should sign up for Mumsnet and join in the discussion and debate, but something tells me that might not go down too well.

There is a considerable hole in my life, without an online community to belong to.

Tags: #friends #socialmedia #sex

This is a story about sowing your wild oats...

I don't know if you remember, because you've got baby brain or maybe your raging hormones are affecting you, but I wrote a comprehensive guide to parenthood, including every intricate detail that I know about the lives of mummies and daddies, and imparting the extensive experience that I have of being a parent.

Given that it is now the school holidays, and the loveable rugrats are nipping at your ankles and the consequences of your decision to bring new lives into this world are brought into sharp focus, I think it is apt that I re-share this mighty tome of literature, so that hard-pressed mothers and fathers everywhere can leaf through its pages and gather valuable insights.

Don't stay up all night reading it, because I know that your sleep is precious, as your little darlings will be waking you up really early in the morning to be dressed and fed. That is if they haven't been up all night vomiting or with an ear infection.

Without further ado, please allow me to (re)present my hefty thesis on the matter of all things childrearing related: here.

You can thank me later.

Tags: #parents #family

This is a story about the looking glass...

What do you see when you peer into somebody's life through the prism of social media and the mask they wear at work? How well do you think you really know somebody, from the things that they choose to tell you, and from the side they choose to show to the public?

What do you know about me? Director of my own company, lucrative consultancy contract, flat on the river in central London, under 40, own hair, own teeth, no obvious disabilities. Brilliant! Perfect! Spiffing!

I don't even want to ham up the whole invisible disability thing. It's true, you can't see my depression, anxiety, bipolar. You can't see what my childhood was like. You can't see what struggles I've had in the past, to reach where I am today. You can't see my finances. You can't see my family pressures. You can't see the emotional baggage I'm trying to deal with. You don't even know what my daily existence is really like.

I'm not saying whether those things are good or bad, what I'm saying is that you're in no position to sit in judgement.

It's not a competition. It's not like I need to show you videos of me as a little boy, being sexually abused by my uncle [not that he did that] just to prove to you that I'm a worthy cause. How can anybody really say who is struggling and suffering more than somebody else? There is so much that is invisible, imperceptible.

There is no way to measure our distress, and to gauge who is worthy and who is being some kind of spoiled bratty person who should just shut the fuck up and go away. Count your blessings! Just be grateful for what you have! Look on the bright side! Cheer up! Chin up! etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Do you really want to take the chance of browbeating somebody and making them feel guilty for being desperately depressed and overwhelmed by their situation, until the moment that they take their own life? Is that really your preference, that people should just shut up and try to count their blessings, force their chin up and put on a mask of fake happiness, until they finally crack and they're gone?

Oh yes, isn't this so terribly melodramatic. Oh isn't it so terribly attention seeking. Oh wouldn't we all like to complain about our lives, and our lot in life, and our stress and the competing demands for our time and our money, and how emotionally and physically drained we are, and how we can barely cope. Oh me too, and you don't see me going on about it blah blah blah.

Well go on then.

Go on. I'm not stopping you. In fact, I encourage you to speak up if you're having a hard time and I will listen. If you're really at your wits end, I will find you and I'll make time for you. I know what it's like. A cry for help is a cry for help. Would you ignore a drowning man? Oh! It's just a cry for help! If he was serious about drowning he would have sunk to the bottom of the lake and be dead!

Cry wolf. YOU LEFT A LITTLE BOY WITH WOLVES FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

You know what it is, when people tell people with depression and crippling anxiety to shut up? It's bullying, plain and simple. People are being bullied into not talking about their distress. The bullies don't like attention being diverted from their narcissistic selves, so they bully people who are in genuine distress, using insulting terms like "melodramatic" and "attention seeker".

You wanna know what's attention seeking? Demanding that attention not be shown to those who are crying for help. Implicitly, by saying "don't look at them" you are saying "look at me". Yes, that's right, you're saying "don't look at that person who is yelling for help, look at me instead, aren't I fabulous?".

Guess what? You're not fabulous for having your shit together and no problems. If you're fabulous and have got your shit together, then try helping others who are less fortunate than yourself. What is Facebook and social media for? "I'm so pissed off because you're filling up my news feed with all your depressing stuff" = "make room for more selfies of me having a wonderful time".

When somebody is casting out for connections on social media, they have probably reached the limit of isolation. Social media is the last toehold that a person has in the world. They probably don't have friends, family and other healthy relationships that they can turn to in their hour of desperation. There's a reason why they're turning to social media, and it's not because they're an attention whore, looking for 'likes' on their shit.

It's rather tragic that I even have to explain this, and I know that the people who I have in mind when I write this have already switched off, because they're not tagged in a photo of them, smiling in the sunshine in their perfect fucking lives.

Is this whole essay based on jealousy of those who made smart life choices? Is this whole essay ignoring the fact that there are starving African children? READ IT AGAIN YOU FUCKING A-HOLES.

Tags: #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #socialmedia

This is a story about taking responsibility...

What did you do to get fat, poor, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, mentally ill, bored and unfulfilled in your job and your life, into an abusive relationship, trapped onto benefits or otherwise cornered?

Those who think of themselves as having made smart life choices are quick to criticise those less fortunate than them, believing that the difference between them was simply one of choice.

A fat person simply chose to eat more calories than their energy requirement. If you mostly sit around watching TV, you don't need any more calories than those required to pump the muscle of your heart, move the diaphragm of your lungs, and for your cells to create enough heat to keep your blood at 37 degrees Celsius.

A poor person simply chose to not study very hard at school, and to not seek a lucrative career. If a poor person wants to become richer, there is an established path of acquiring academic qualifications, and then working your way up through the ranks to gain the experience you need to get a better job.

An alcoholic simply chose to not stop drinking before their body entered a state of alcohol dependence syndrome. The first time that you get the shakes after drinking, you could quit and possibly avoid delirium tremens and having a seizure.

A drug addict simply chose to continue to seek whatever escapism and pain numbing they found comforting in their drug of choice. A drug addict could simply choose to live with the pain and issues that they're trying to escape, or kill themselves in a much quicker way.

Mentally ill, stressed, anxious, depressed people simply chose to put themselves into an overwhelming situation that doesn't meet their needs and constantly bombards them with things that they have to do that they can't cope with. A depressed person could simply stop working, draw the curtains closed, and wait to be sacked and evicted onto the streets.

People in abusive relationships are simply choosing to not give up on their partner and remain optimistic about things getting resolved, or are simply choosing to be trapped into a cycle of abuse that fills them with so much fear that they feel unable to remove themselves from the situation. People in abusive relationships are simply choosing to not run away from the family home with their children, and live where? On the street?

People on benefits are simply choosing to not take a zero hours contract McJob on minimum wage that would see their benefits slashed as well as also having to spend all their paycheque on childcare so that some stranger can raise their kids, who they never get to see anymore because they're at work the whole time. People on benefits are choosing to live on a government handout that is not enough to pay for the basic essentials that they need, and puts them into a hand-to-mouth stressful existence with no hope of escape.

Maybe you could combine all these things, so that somebody is an overweight drunk with a drug habit, depressed, anxious, under-qualified for any decent job, and wedded to both the welfare state and an abusive partner, both of which have their claws into the person such that they can never escape.

Do you think it sounds appealing, the idea of living life without the comfort of food and eating? Life without the simple pleasure of sugary and fatty snacks. Do you think it sounds appealing, being stone cold sober and straight, with absolutely zero chemicals to alter your perception of the world, when your world consists of collecting benefits cheques that disappear like sand running through your fingers, with no hope for any kind of different future? Life without the numbing power of intoxicants, and the brief moments of joy that might be brought by other drugs, in an otherwise bleak and depressing existence.

Imagine having to give up your home, your partner, your family, your chemical crutches, your favourite food, and live in the cold harsh light of a reality of being single, alone, homeless, withdrawing from drugs and alcohol, dealing with depression and anxiety with nothing other than this magical bullshit thing called "willpower" alone.

Yes, it's all very well criticising the poor and unfortunate from your villa in Tuscany or the deck of a yacht. Yes, it's all very well talking about poor life choices, while you sit in your second home counting your money.

The truth of the matter though is this: the difference between successful people and unfortunate ones is pure blind luck.

We don't pick our shitty irresponsible lazy parents. We don't pick how wealthy our family is. We don't pick our schools. We don't pick whether we will have academic aptitude or not. We don't pick whether we can apply ourselves to the task of getting a lucrative job, or whether we hold onto unrealistic fantasies of becoming a pop singer or a Premiership footballer for far too long, before reality finally dawns on us. We don't pick whether we get to throw ourselves into our careers, our homes, our families, our pets, our hobbies... or whether we end up running to the bottle, the pills, the powders and the needle, in order to deal with the extraordinary shitness of daily existence.

Life is short. Life is shit. If your life is not shit, you're in no position to tell other people that it's because they're lazy, irresponsible, stupid and they made bad life choices. If your life is not shit, it's because you were lucky enough to be born into a family of reasonable wealth and education. You were lucky enough to fall into something that was lucky enough to work out. Yes, you made choices, but there was a huge component of luck that it worked out. Plenty of people made the same choices as you, but through no fault of their own, things didn't work out well for them.

In the blink of an eye, you can have an accident that will have life-changing consequences. In the blink of an eye, your one golden opportunity can pass you by, and you'll be shunted off the smooth tarmac and onto the rocky road. In the blink of an eye, your fortunes can change, and you find yourself cast into the seething mass of humanity, all crawling over each other like crabs in a bucket, trying to escape.

Just because you were lucky enough to make your escape, doesn't mean that anybody else can follow your special recipe, doesn't mean that anybody else can find their perfect job, can find fulfilment, contentment. Just remember: one slip and you're just as fucked as all the other people who weren't lucky like you were.

One slip and you're fucked.

Tags: #politics #homeless #abuse #alcohol #drugs #addiction #mentalhealth #depression

This is a story about invasions...

Are you worried about your culture being wiped out? Are you concerned that we could all end up speaking German, Japanese, Chinese or Arabic? Are you concerned that you will no longer be able to worship your favourite imaginary friend? Are you concerned that you'll have to salute a different combination of colours, stitched into fabric and raised on a flagpole?

When you look at nationalism, you'll see that it's pretty insane. While some people willingly learn another language and enthusiastically adopt the culture of another country, and go and live amongst those people, others believe that "our" way of life is worth dying for. In fact, they believe "our" way of life is worth killing for.

Why would somebody learn German and go and live in Germany? Surely that would be like surrendering to the enemy. Surely that would be a slap in the face to our brave grandfathers and great grandfathers, who fought in two world wars so that we never had to learn another foreign language or eat a bratwürst. Our dead relatives laid down their lives so that we should never have to suffer an Oktoberfest and drink large steins of cold beer brought to us by buxom wenches in lederhosen.

When we study history and people's attitudes, it was nationalism that was the main reason we went to war, not the protection of the Jews. The genocide that was being committed is what we are mainly taught about today in schools, but the strongly held belief in British hearts, was that we needed to protect our country.

Only when our European allies had been completely overwhelmed by German forces, and they had reached the northern beaches of France, did we decide to put some boots on the ground.

If you examine the rhetoric of Donald Trump and the Brexit movement, you will hear similar attempts to stoke up nationalistic fever and paranoia over an 'invasion'. Apparently, a "swarm" of brown people are on their way to our shores, intent on fucking up our national identity. We are told to live in fear and mistrust of our Muslim neighbours, who wear strange clothes and congregate in strange buildings. Islamic culture is so different from ours, and we are being trained to treat what is different with suspicion of an ulterior motive, of overwhelming everything we hold dear.

Talk of walls and pulling up the drawbridge. Shut down the borders. Send "them" home. Look after "are" (sic.) own. Britain First. Make America great. Blah blah blah.

But, if we ignore the social problems that are driving suport for far-right jingoistic nationalists, like Trump, Farage, Le Pen, then we fail to defeat them. By continuing to bury our head in the sand and repeatedly just cry "racist" and "bigot" then we continue to drive a wedge between enlightened liberals, and the vast numbers of poorly educated people who feel economically disenfranchised.

Why would I talk about economics? Surely ordinary British people just want an integrated society, full of fellow British people, not all these damn foreign types with their weird food and strange customs? Well, no not really. The reason why people have rounded on immigrants, as has been stated ad nauseum, is that people feel poor and insecure in their jobs. Ordinary people are economically disadvantaged, and there is a popular belief that immigrants are fuelling excessive competition for a finite number of jobs and resources.

I'm about to suggest another, more controversial reason, why we have been taught that the West has 'won' and our way of life is the correct one.

Let's leave all discussions about anti-Semitism and the holocaust aside. Of course, any discrimination based on colour or creed is wrong. Of course, any act of genocide is deplorable. These things are not the topic of my thesis. Let's set those points to one side, because they're discussed at length elsewhere.

Now, let's think about how the Nazis swept to power. Do you think Hitler said "let's kill all the Jews" and all the Germans went "Yeah! Brilliant idea! Let's vote for this guy!". Nope. Even if the Nazi policies of getting rid of gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, Jews and other minority groups was central to their meteoric rise to power, something else was driving it.

Think about the economic situation in Nazi Germany. The country was saddled with debt. The war bonds were a crippling millstone around the neck of the ordinary German people. For every Deutsche Mark that was produced by hard working ordinary Germans, 17 more Marks had to be found for the repayment of national debt. The German people felt enslaved to the money lenders, and the money lenders were perceived as Shylocks (Jewish money lenders, Jewish bankers).

In the twenty year period in-between the world wars, ordinary Germans had been massively economically disadvantaged by the national debt, in the form of war bonds and reparations, that their own government and nation had taken on. Do you think the ordinary Germans felt that they owed this debt? Do you think that, given the choice, they would have borrowed so much?

The German people wished to free themselves from the slavery of interest payments and the tyranny of capitalism. The Nazi movement was essentially an anti-capitalist movement, with the ideas of Gottfried Feder at its roots. The Nazi movement was more akin to communism than the neoliberal capitalist democracy that we assume was the basis for all Western economies in the 20th century.

How were the Nazis able to motivate so many people to work hard to produce vast quantities weapons of war that are hard to not admire, for their sheer feat of engineering prowess? Germany took a great leap forward in putting the instruments of industry to productive use. From a position of being economically depressed, and with massive financial problems, how was it able to build airships, planes, tanks, bombs, guns, and massive amounts of infrastructure to support itself? How did Germany go from depressed doldrums, to becoming a world superpower, so quickly?

The answer is that they abandoned capitalism.

What, in essence, is capitalism anyway? Well, it's putting capital to work, through interest bearing financial instruments. Instead of having labour exchanged for food or goods or services, instead, debt is exchanged for factories and machinery, and people work because they don't own any of the factories or farms anymore. Where does the capital come from? The capitalists. Where does money flow to? Back to the capitalists.

Gottfried Feder figured out the pyramid scheme of capitalism. In his Manifesto for the Abolition of Interest Slavery, Feder explains how the owner of a factory does not benefit from the productive output, and neither do the workers either. Instead, the bonds that paid to purchase the factory bear effortless interest, meaning the profits of the factory flow back to the capitalist. The people who work in the factories need to buy the goods that the factory produces, so, their money again flows back to the capitalists. And through the exponentially multiplative effect of compound interest, the capitalists will grow ever richer, while never having to do a single day's labour. Infinite endless effortless capital.

It was an economic idea that brought the Nazis to power and kept them there. The Nazis brought a sense of prosperity and wellbeing to a nation that had felt depressed and enslaved to the capitalists. The Nazis brought about pride, not in the nation, nor the flag, nor the Nazi party, but in their productive contribution. People feel proud to have done a good day's work and to have produced something. Economic depressions rob people of their feeling of self worth. Economic depressions rob people of their self esteem.

Now, if we look at Islam, we can see that a core teaching of the Muslim faith is that earning interest is a sin.

In fact, do you think of yourself as Christian? Yes? Did you know that Christian supposedly means that you're Christian. That is to say, you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ our Lord and saviour. Do you believe in Christ?

Well, Christ is documented as saying "build no store of wealth on this Earth". Christ is documented as smashing the tables of the money lenders in Herod's temple. Think about that for a second.

Had time to digest that? Yes, that's right. Jesus Christ was anti-capitalist.

So, if we look at the successful religions from the past 2,000 years, and the most recently succesful attempts at world domination, you will see that anti-capitalism is the secret to their success.

Look at the Chinese. In 58 years, the Chinese have brought a nation of 1.3 billion people into economic prosperity. China has become a world superpower. China is one of the largest economies on the planet. How did they achieve that? By rejecting capitalism.

Islam counts 1.6 billion souls following the Muslim faith, and enshrined in law in Arab countries is the illegality of charging interest on loans. Imagine that! Imagine every bank in Europe and America being no longer allowed to charge any interest!

So, if you're looking for a reason why we should all fear the 'invasion' of these conquering hordes, and the demise of our precious culture, you might find that you're empathising with the likes of Rothschild and Goldman Sachs, cowering in terror because their plutocracy is about to be overthrown by the people that they have economically enslaved.

Why do we have a nation of bankers, lawyers and accountants, when those professions are only needed by the very wealthiest 0.1%? We are shaped in the image of what our rulers think is important. When we are governed by billionaires and millionaires, our whole nation and the priorities of our laws are shifted towards supporting their needs, not ours. We are producing trillions of dollars worth of useless derivatives, rather than useful goods & services.

Imagine if we took our best & brightest out of UBS, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, and instead deployed them to work in science and engineering. Imagine if we took our hardworking poor in McJobs, and instead allowed them to build wonderful things for the betterment of humanity. Imagine how much happier and productive everybody would be if they were working towards something, rather than against everything.

Our world is so adversarial, with us & them, the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, the wealthy white Westerners and those pesky brown people who want a few crumbs from the table.

In actual fact, there's plenty of everything to go around, but we are so intent on playing by the existing rules of the game, that we fail to wake up and realise that we are propping up a status quo that only makes us poor, disadvantaged and divided.

What have the Nazis ever done for us? They've shown us that economic ideas can create prosperity, optimism and productivity. They've shown us that there's a better way than neoliberal capitalist democracy.

It's distasteful to revere the successes of the Nazis, because I might be seen as also endorsing their genocide and ethnic cleansing. However, what could be more ethnically cleansing than building a massive wall, deporting all the Latinos and banning people of a certain religious faith from entering your country? Trump epitomises everything that is bad about the Nazis, whilst offering nothing that was good about them.

We need to cherry pick the best ideas, and we need to get rid of the ideas that enslave us and hurt the vast majority of ordinary people.

Tags: #economics #politics #capitalism

This is a story about punctuation...

When I was at primary school, aged 4 years old, I drew a picture of a visit to see my grandparents. Specifically, I remembered seeing my grandmother, with bleached blonde hair, and my grandparent's dog.

I was asked to also describe the family visit. Having written the story, I then considered the fact that I had not punctuated the tale. I knew that full stops - periods - were the most important punctuation mark, and so I proceeded to decorate my story with a few randomly placed dots.

Having scattered my full stops throughout the prose that I had written, I then thought that the little dots didn't look very big in comparison with my large and unwieldy handwriting. At age 4 years old, I hadn't achieved a nice neat flowing form of handwriting. In fact, I was lucky if I could get my 'b's and my 'd's the right way around.

In order to draw greater attention to my punctuative efforts, I then embellished each period with more emphasis.

Unsatisfied with the balance between characters and symbols, I decided that I should just put a great big ball between every single word. Extrapolating from the rule that every sentence must be terminated with a dot, I reasoned that every word would benefit from being demarcated with a gigantic black mark.

And so, a perfectly reasonable tale about me spending time with my bottle-blonde grandmother, became a rather bizarre study of how not to do punctuation.

Punctuation, now, for me, is something technical. As a computer programmer, the use of a semicolon is quite essential to mark the end of a concise instruction for a computer to follow. A wayward full stop can cause many thousands of lines of code to fail to successfully be assembled into a computer program. When I write, I assume that I am programming the minds of my readers, and that I must use punctuation to precisely instruct their minds, or else they will reject what I write with a simple error message: syntax error!

I was going to write you a lovely story this evening, about all manner of real-world matters that you could relate to, but instead I feel that I have to self-consciously apologise for the over-punctuation of my texts. I feel that what I have written to date is absolute garbage, because I haven't had the time to read it all and trim away the unnecessary commas that I inserted in the interests of legibility and clarity.

With the most casual of comments, a friend has drawn attention to the fact that I have a tendency to over-punctuate my prose, and it has caused me to call into question everything I have written to date. It's hard, neither having an editor - a proofreader - nor having the time to be able to pore over my output, and perform some kind of quality control process, myself.

If what I'm writing is unreadable crap, so be it. I've just got to get it out there at this stage, because it's been bouncing around the inside of my cranium for far too long. I bitterly regret not making greater efforts to achieve a higher standard of writing that may have avoided 'turning off' many of the people whose opinion I would value, but I've been shooting from the hip. I connect my brain directly to my keyboard, and out it all pours.

It seems like my love of commas has reached epic proportions. Even I think "maybe I have somewhat overdone it" when I glance briefly back over my text, before publishing. However, unless you have the time to read what you have written back again, and to test for the natural points where you would pause for breath, it's very hard to put punctuation in and get it right first time.

If my comma-heavy writing is destroying the enjoyment of what I write, I'm devastated. I've only ever tried to write in an accessible style; attempting to avoid pseudo-intellectual bullshit littered with words and a literary approach that is only ever designed to scream "fuck you! I'm smart!" at the top of my insecure lungs. Screw you, you English literature douchebags. Screw you, you fucking poncey twats with your past participles and split infinitives. Fuck you all to hell. Just write some fucking shit that people can read and understand. Fuck you with your use of a zillion words that your thesaurus told you would be equivalent to their more obvious counterparts. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, for pontificating, posturing and your pomposity. Just write something readable for fuck's sake.

If what I write is unreadable, because of my over-eagerness to punctuate in such a way as to delimit each point that I make, then I feel that I have crashed and burned. I feel that everything that I have written to date is a dreadful failure, and I have screwed up in the most horrible way imaginable. I feel that I may have fallen at the first hurdle.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about the rich:poor divide...

Theresa May, the British prime minister, had the gall to lecture the poor on living within their means. In actual fact, the poor are working hard and just trying to keep up with the wealthy, who are racing ahead.

If you look at the Instagram account called Rich Kids of Instagram you will see that it is extremely popular. 'Reality' TV shows that have followed mega-rich people like Ozzy Osborne and family, the Kardashians and the cast of Made in Chelsea, are some of the most viewed and talked about things on television. Wealth worship is everywhere, and is it wrong for people to feel that they deserve a little of the life that is rammed down their throats by the media?

When we are talking about living within our means, this is coming from politicians who spend 6-figure sums of money each year on expenses alone, while also pocketing salaries that are many many times more than the average wage. The problem comes right from the top. The more that rich public figures splash their cash, the more the hypocrisy is insulting when they tell the poor to tighten their belts.

How many people on council estates are driving Ferraris that they can't afford the repayments on? How many hardworking families have ordered yachts that they now can't afford to pay the remaining balance on?

When we talk about living within our means, we are talking about people who are quite familiar with budgeting, make do and mending, and the general attitudes of postwar austerity. Really, when talking about living within our means, we should be talking to the banks, who recklessly endangered their financial stability by not living within their means in terms of their ability to maintain solvency. It's the banks that are insufficiently capitalised and are excessively over-leveraged. It's the banks that have lent many, many, many times more money than their reserves allow, in the pursuit of endless effortless profits.

When a person borrows money, they intend to repay that money using hard work. The borrower will go to their job every day, and be productive. In return for a person's hard work - productivity - they will receive their salary, with which they will buy the things that they need and repay their debts.

When a banker lends money, they intend to profit for no labour at all. Through interest slavery, the banker will make money, simply because they already have money. Using the money multiplier - fractional reserve banking - the banker will in fact be able to lend the same money, over and over and over again, multiplying the amount of effortless interest that is earned each time.

It is the banks who are not living within their means, nor being hardworking or productive in any way. It is the banks who have decimated global finances, and are now demanding that the hardworking people accept austerity, pay freezes, job insecurity, unemployment and low growth, simply because they overstretched themselves in pursuit of yet more effortless and labour free income for doing absolutely nothing.

Let's imagine that a banker, with zero money of his own, is paying a generous interest rate of 0.25% on deposits - exactly the same as the Bank of England. Using a fractional reserve of 5%, which is the minimum requirement for today's stress-tests of banks, to make sure they're adequately capitalised in the event of another credit crunch, that means the banker can multiply a £1,000 deposit into nearly £19,000 worth of loans. Obviously, the loans carry a hefty interest rate. Let's imagine that the banker lends out the £19k as overdrafts, which often carry a 20% APR on the high street. In a year, the banker will now net nearly £4,000 of profit, for doing absolutely nothing, out of just a £1,000 deposit. That's a 4 to 1 ratio! For every £1 deposited with Utter Bastard Bank Plc, they're going to make nearly £4!!

So, while the poor toil and tighten their belts, buying the cheapest groceries they can and cutting back on every expense, the banks are getting fat for doing absolutely nothing at all. Interest slavery is a con and a crime, and the perpetuation of this situation is the only reason why ordinary hardworking people are having to suffer NHS cuts, crowded public transport, packed classrooms, pay cuts, redundancies and every other economic penalty for the bankers' failure to live within their means.

Yes, we'd all like to make money while we sleep. Yes, we'd all like money for nothing. However, a bank is just utter bullshit. A bank is supposed to be an instrument to grease the wheels of commerce, not a massive leech, sucking so many pounds out of people's pockets, for every penny they leave in their bank accounts.

And, when you're richer, the things that go wrong in your life are mere pocket change. Let's look at a person who earns £20k, versus a banker who earns £200k, i.e. a 10 to 1 ratio:

• Parking fine £50... costs the banker £5
• Car breakdown £500... costs the banker £50
• Need a new central heating boiler £3,000... costs the banker £300
• Private school fees £12,000... costs the banker £1,200
• Food £300... costs the banker £30
• Holiday £700... costs the banker £70

Imagine if your budget used the values that the banker pays. They're a much smaller percentage of your income, aren't they? Life would be a lot easier if everything cost 1/10th of what it does. Well, guess what, the banker pays exactly what you pay, except they earn 10 times as much, so the two things are equivalent.

Everybody's car breaks down from time to time. It's a fact of life. In fact the shitty old unreliable banger that the poor family bought, is much more likely to break down than the brand new BMW that has a warranty, that the banker bought.

Once you've got money, you can keep it and you can make some more. If you haven't got any, no amount of living within your means is going to improve your situtation. It's a con. It's utter bullshit. It's a swindle.

When the banks in Italy start to fail, and cause a domino-like collapse of all the banks across the world in a re-run of the 2007/08 financial crisis, except much, much worse, it will become apparent that all of the suffering that ordinary people have gone through in order to rescue a deeply flawed banking system, was for nothing.

I think people are going to be pretty angry when they realise that patronising idiots like Theresa May arrived in their positions of power by luck not good judgement. I think people are going to be pretty angry when they find out that the good times never stopped in the City of London, and pay rises and bonuses are just as big as they ever were, while all the hardworking ordinary people suffer the consequences of propping up a broken and corrupt system.

It's time to smash the system, and rip it out of the hands of a psychopathic elite who would have us starving and dirty, living on the streets, if it meant they could maintain their ill-gotten position of wealth, power and domination.

What's the difference between a successful banker and a struggling worker? Absolutely fuck all, apart from pure dumb luck, but those arrogant fucks don't even realise how fucking hypocritical and patronising they are when they accuse other people of being underachievers, having been profligate and poorly mismanaged their finances, and having not worked hard enough.

It incenses me, that a tiny handful have such unimaginable wealth, when so many billions live in abject poverty. Just 62 people have as much money as 3.6 billion others. There is so much that is wrong with that. Off with their fucking heads!

Tags: #banking #capitalism #politics

This is a story about profit...

If you work in a free market capitalist economy, the company you work for is run for maximum profitability. In order to maximise profits, a company will have the fewest possible admin staff it can, to keep overheads low, whilst also having as many revenue generating staff members as the demand for the company's products and services can support. There are no jobs that are created, solely for the benefit of the employee.

Think about it: if you were to quit, the things that you do wouldn't be getting done. If you're in an administrative function, perhaps that means bills not getting paid, invoices not being issued or regulatory requirements not being met. Sooner or later your business is going to get shut down if it neglects its backoffice functions. If you're in a sales function, that means less revenue for the business. Less revenue means less turnover, which lowers the company's valuation, making it harder for them to raise money for expansion. Less revenue means lower profits, meaning less champagne at the shareholders' annual meeting and tough questions asked of the board of directors.

Your salary is a payment for your time. Your time is then used to enable the company to continue to trade, or to make it directly more profitable. Your salary is offset by profits. Your salary is not a gift, out of the kindness of the heart of your boss. Your salary is way less than the profit that somebody else will pocket, for your efforts. Your salary is a price worth paying because the things that you do while at work will generate more money than it costs to employ you.

The business of employing people, is the process of getting somebody to do something instead of you doing it, but you get to keep a proportion of the fruits of their labour. The profit generated is many, many times more than the cost of the wages.

And so, we have described the ragged trousered philanthropists. It is the workers who are generously donating the vast proportion of the fruits of their labour, to an idle wealthy elite who employ them. The wages of those who toil at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, are inadequate to pay for high quality housing, the education of their children and nutritious food. Instead, the people who pick your vegetables and build your houses, and generally give themselves arthritic joints, bad backs and knackered knees, are left with ill health and a pittance of a pension when they are so overworked that they can no longer remain in the workforce.

But, we are told, you should count yourself lucky to have a job!

Lucky? Lucky? Oh, how terribly fortunate that I have enabled members of the board of directors to buy another yacht, or to purchase another rare artwork to hang on the walls of their mansion. La-de-da, how lucky I am to have been able to plump up the trust funds and offshore bank balances of rich shareholders.

But, there's nothing to stop the likes of you or I from quitting our jobs, and starting our own companies, is there?

Well, there are economies of scale and there are monopolies. Certain businesses will not be very profitable for the likes of you or I, because they have a low gross margin. When a company grows very large through acquisitions, swallowing up all of its competitors, it is better placed to capitalise on a market, because it's a dominant player. Also, the cost of administrative, legal and tax obligations as percentage of the overall running costs, is much lower for the very large company, which makes it more profitable.

When a company becomes very large indeed, it is even able to headquarter itself in a country with a favourable tax deal, so all the wealth that is generated by those ragged-trousered philanthropists, flows out of the country where they live and work, so even their public services become deprived of their vital cash.

Yes, you must consider yourself lucky to be able to have grown your company so large that it is able to cheat even the government out of the taxes that would pay for higher quality housing, healthcare and eduction, that would at least be some recompense for the fact that you see such a tiny share of the profit that you generate.

But don't companies offer their staff share options, and bonuses? No. These schemes are just scams to buy your loyalty cheaply. Share options cost far less than offering an attractive salary that would keep you with the company. When you really look into how much money you're going to make when you can finally exercise the options, you will see that your employer has bought your loyalty extremely cheaply.

The pips have been squeezed too much, and the wealth has not been shared. Large companies have not made the societal contributions that we must all make - taxes - to prevent the ordinary workers from suffering a drop in living standards. Education, healthcare, public transport, housing: these things are all chronically underfunded, while the mega-rich are opulently wealthy, living in a totally different world from those who toil tirelessly to add yet more zeros onto obscene bank balances.

It's time to soak the rich, not be grateful for our jobs.

Tags: #capitalism #banking #politics