This is a story about brain damage...

When George Ricaurte and his team vivisected Rhesus monkeys and dissected their brains, after having given them enormous intravenous doses of Methamphetamine, they found that their neurons had been damaged. The very cells of their cerebellum had withered and died.

It's very hard to objectively judge whether you have driven yourself irreversibly insane, or how stupid and brain-dead you have made yourself, through the abuse of drugs & alcohol. But both are freely and relatively cheaply available in massive quantities to almost anybody who wishes to avail themselves of such substances.

I have a rough measure for the strength of my sanity. I can tell you, in terms of number of nights of sleep lost, at what point I will become psychotic, and at what point I will lose consciousness. 10 seems to be the magic number.

I had to go back to my house in Bournemouth, leaving behind my new home, my new friends, my new girlfriend, my new startup and my newly incorporated company, in order to rummage in my attic and find some crap to sell in order to raise some money, because my parents had reneged on their promise to save me the stress and hassle.

For 9 nights, I was hopped up on Supercrack, just about managing to sell my car and gather a few high value things, but otherwise totally out of it. On the evening of the 10th night, just as it was getting dark, I was convinced that the house was surrounded by police, and climbed into the attic without the ladder and tried to close the hatch behind myself.

I blacked out, and when I came round I didn't know what I was. I literally couldn't understand my blurry vision or what any of my senses or thoughts were telling me. Then I didn't know who or where I was. Was I in a rustic farm building? Was I a farmer? Then it became clear to me that I was in an attic, and I remembered who I was, but I had no idea how or why I would be there. Then it became clear that I was perilously close to the edge of an open hatch, with an 11 foot drop onto steep stairs, which descended another 10 or so feet onto a hard wooden floor.

A previously absent sense of self preservation caused me to cautiously lower the ladder and descend from the attic, whereupon I noticed that it was late afternoon. At least 18 hours had elapsed. I surely could not have slept, for I'm sure that movement in my sleep would have sent me tumbling through the hatch.

Remembering then, why I had entered the attic, I was surprised to not see any police. As a precaution, I then went and hid in my shed for another day or two, before I phoned a friend and asked if he could drive me back to London with the couple of valuable items I was going to sell.

It must be re-iterated that these items were not going to be sold for drink & drugs. Supercrack costs just 18p per day, remember? I'm not really built to sell junk from attics and sheds. I find it stressful. My Dad's 'job' since getting my Mum pregnant with me had been to buy & sell junk. My job, for almost my entire professional career, has been to write computer code in an air conditioned office.

Anyway, you can see that my window of opportunity had closed, and my life had become rather dysfunctional.

As soon as I got my share of the house sale money I put myself through 8 weeks of rehab, before remembering that there was some Supercrack hidden inside a golf brochure sent to me from Canada, in my stack of unopened post from 2 months prior. Given how much I hated my parents for tossing me to the wolves, I saw no reason not to pay them a visit and have a massive relapse in their home.

My left leg was destroyed as I tried to leave, in an unnecessary tussle with my Dad. I then tried to O.D. in some terrible flat in Kentish Town. As the amount of blood in my urine grew and grew, as my organs slowly shut down, I phoned an ex-girlfriend for help, when I felt sure that I only had about 24 hours left to live. The hospital gave me about a 30% chance of survival, and treated me for about 3 weeks, 6 intensive days of which were very touch-and-go.

Camden Council were most uncooperative in helping me, despite letters begging them to support me, from my GP and Psychiatrist. Finally, with no state support, I ended up in a hostel in Bayswater, and then living in a bush in Kensington Park Gardens.

Obviously, life was rather unstructured and dysfunctional, and again after the magic 9 nights of madness, I believed I was being pursued by police, ran across a rooftop, fell through a glass window, and then went and hid 80ft up a massive tree with a huge shard of glass sticking out of my 'good' leg.

The scar on my leg is about 5 inches long and nearly an inch wide. I lay in my bush in Kensington Park Gardens, in agony, until it healed enough for me to hobble to Paddington Station, where there is a public shower. I got cleaned up enough to get myself a hotel room.

A friend invited me to come and stay at her flat in Notting Hill, but I was so mad by this point that I tried to hide under a mop bucket in her basement. A fully grown naked man cannot be concealed by a mop bucket on his head.

She coaxed me out of the basement, whereupon I then tried to hide in a fortress of pillows and sofa cushions, and then decided to hide in her shed. I then took offence to my own penis and tried to rip it off my body. Having made quite a mess of it, and clearly sanity having escaped my grip for far too many weeks, I decided to try St. Mary's Hospital and Westminster Council.

Westminster Council beat up Camden Council for being so beastly towards one of their residents, and UCLH Androgyny were quite helpful in repairing my male member. One of the mental health Crisis Houses took me in for a couple of weeks while a search party for my marbles was despatched.

Fundamentally, I still believed that the state would keep its word in helping somebody who became addicted to a legal high, which the government then made illegal. My social worker had promised imminent admission to treatment services. There was also the promise of supported accommodation, post-treatment. This was salvation.

However, it all got botched. One social worker lost all my paperwork and had to restart the process entirely, and the next one decided to keep deferring my case, because she believed I could recover without state support.

It was me who blinked first, after 6 months of this hell. I used my credit card in order to get myself a hostel bed and no longer be sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. In a way my social worker was right, I had been sufficiently scared, shellshocked and traumatised. It helped that when I once got arrested, the police doctor was very surprised that I didn't die in custody when she saw how low my blood pressure was. Being in a cell, dying, is not a very nice experience.

Anyway, I went cold turkey in a 14 bed hostel dorm, in full public view, on street bail with the police.

After a couple of months, I got a job and things appeared to be going swimmingly. However, the lifestyle of a completely insane, drug addicted homeless person, is somewhat incompatible with the life of a middle-class IT consultant working for a global bank. There was a certain amount of friction between old life and new.

Somewhere between losing all my friends, losing my job, the contract ending on a room that I had let and the general disintegration of my life, the whole horrible cycle started again. Recovery is fragile.

By May 2015, I believed that my mobile phone was talking to me and giving me instructions. Under its direction, I then embarked on a half-marathon, with a fully loaded backpack with all of my most valuable possessions in it.

This is your brain on Supercrack. Pre-existing mental health problems + drugs + gentle external encouragement = completely bat shit insane behaviour. Somebody doesn't just run like this just because they're on drugs, but it doesn't take much to get them going.

Don't worry though, because by June I had a job working for HSBC on the number one project: Customer Due Diligence, which is naturally where you would expect a homeless, insane, drug addict known to the police to find themselves. The global bank is clearly an expert in doing due diligence background checks on people.

Anyway, I might have made all this stuff up just to embarrass HSBC and the CIO in charge of the number one project, plus the rest of the management team, who are making a bit of a botch job of things. You'd need to do the due diligence to find out, which presumably HSBC did?

So, I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge. How do you find me? Completely bat shit insane on a permanent and irreversible basis that means I should be 'committed' immediately to an institution, where I will shuffle around for the rest of my heavily-medicated days, no longer a menace to society... or is there a question mark hanging over the whole infernal affair?

This very document, this entire blog, seeks to challenge your presumptions about addiction and mental health. Has it succeeded yet?

Tags: #nhs #mentalhealth #addiction #bipolar #depression #suicide #career #banking #london #homeless #injury

This is a story about extrapolation...

I just met two social workers who I had never met before, therefore they had no reference point, from which to extrapolate.

They've gone now.

I'd like to get back in contact with you, friend, soonish. I'd like to stay in regularish contact. It's important that I do. It's been too long. Also, I have too few people who I see on any kind of regular basis.

Too unwell to even know what help to ask for. How ironic.

I have started improving again, since 12:10pm.

Unless you've been nearly dead (multiple times), nearly in prison, nearly on a mental health section (multiple times), nearly bankrupt (multiple times) and nearly totally alone, it's a bit hard to imagine what all the fuss is about. Personally, I've stopped believing I exist, because it's too statistically implausible. I'm assuming I'm make-believe, like the tooth fairy or unicorns, because my reality doesn't sound very real.

I'm going to try again to sleep. I totally screwed up the whole of yesterday and last night, because of something I decided wasn't important, that later turned out to be. My hand slipped. It was a 50:50 chance, but instead of one or the other it was limbo. Slipped through the crack.

How do you morally judge an actual good act, when chance results in a bad intention? I did the bad act that I intended, fixed the original good, and now I have good intentions, all the way to hell.

It's too difficult for a non-existant person to figure out. I'm going to try and go to sleep and see if I feel more real tomorrow.

I've got a couple of people who care whether I'm still breathing, so don't worry. Would be good if you could be there for me in some small way soon though. It's a long road.

Tags: #nhs #suicide #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about trying to break the loop...

I reprogrammed my brain. Infinite loop. Game over.

It was really hard but I mostly programmed it back. But you know why code line numbers go 10, 20, 30 etc? It's so that you can add extra lines without having to renumber your whole program: e.g. 11 GOTO 20

I took my working fixed code, and added an old buggy instruction that I used to write. It's a screwup, but I know where the bug is and how to fix it.

It's not something the hospital, or mental health services, crisis team or some specialist private care, or social services, or the police, or my GP is going to fix. There's an art installation called The Pharmacy by Damian Hirst, about our faith in medicine, at the Tate Modern. You should think about what he wanted you to think about, when he made that artwork.

Please don't think there's somebody qualified or professional out there, unless they can show you the evidence and data that proves that they and/or medications are 'curing' people of Type 2 Bipolar & any substance abuse issues they might have (Dual Diagnosis).

I managed my symptoms down to just a single suicidal episode in 5 or 6 months with zero drugs, medication, alcohol & caffeine. Also managed 5ish months work. Long hours too. Also had to move house a bunch of times, nearly go bankrupt a bunch of times, travel 3 times further than necessary, carry my life in a few bags. I would say that I'm the qualified one around here.

However, somebody has activated 'professional help' so I may be disappearing into one system or another, or one via another. The bug will still be there if I ever get out of the damn revolving doors and it's so exhausting you never have enough energy left to finish the job of rebuilding your life and getting better.

Please wish me the very best of luck in being 'assessed' and whatever is going to happen instead of me trying to fix my life and get back to normal.

I know it's well intentioned, but please re-read this whole thing again. It explains why it hurts more than it helps.

By the way: Nurses, Porters, Phlebotomists, Doctors and all the people who have to do a very difficult job under difficult circumstances. I am grateful and I do think that what you do is very important and helps enormous numbers of peoples's lives. I'm sorry for the time & effort that is about to be wasted on me.

Tags: #bipolar #depression #suicide #addiction #nhs #mentalhealth

This is a story about three types of people...

There are only 3 types of people in the world. That's it. The whole of humanity can be divided into just 3 buckets. If you want to label people, you can use one of these 3 handy labels, to judge people.

But 3 doesn't sound like very many? Aren't people way more complicated than that? Aren't there 12 buckets that people are put in, like signs of the zodiac? Yes, isn't your star sign all you need to know about a person to figure out everything you need to know about a person? If you know somebody's star sign, you just have to look at their horoscope for the day, and you can predict their future, right?

Well, maybe all that horoscope stuff is bunkum. Maybe it's New Age hippy crap that doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's not very scientific, is it? Everybody knows that horoscope writers just put generic stuff that could apply to anybody. That's the skill in writing horoscopes: writing statements that are ambiguous enough that they could apply to anybody.

So what about Myers-Briggs? Isn't 16 types of people rather than 12 the solution? Having 16 buckets to put 7 billion people into is surely the solution to the madness of believing in horoscopes. Yes, those extra 4 buckets make all the difference.

I do take some pride from the fact that I come out as an ENTJ - Field Marshal - personality type, when I'm tested, which is only 1 to 3% of the population. However, I have a way of simplifying things and making them very black & white. I'm a computer programmer, so I like binary. There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

So, the best I can do is to categorise people into 3 buckets, so that they can be judged and mistreated accordingly. We seem to love prejudice and presumption, and bullying people, so I've developed a really simple test and a form of categorising people into just 3 categories.

Here it is...

Type I - Potential Addicts

The potential addict is somebody who has not yet tried addictive substances. An addictive substance is anything psychoactive that alters your perception of reality, with examples being:

• Alcohol
• Caffeine (as found in tea, coffee and cola)
• Nicotine (as found in cigarettes, cigars, shisha and vape)
• Medication for depression & anxiety
• Pain medication
• Legal highs
• Narcotics (illegal drugs)

The potential addict has not yet tried any of these things, so we do not yet know if this person is an addict. These people are normally children, because most adults have been exposed to one of the above substances.

Only if you have never tried any of the above substances, can you be considered to be a potential addict.

You need to be really honest when you are answering the single question that identifies you as a potential addict.

Here's the only question you need to answer:

Have you ever taken any of the substances listed above?

The next part is really easy. If the answer is no, then you are a potential addict and your capacity for addiction is as yet unknown. You should be regarded with fear and mistrust. You are a ticking time bomb of addiction. You are a potential monster. You are a menace to society.

Type II - Addicts

The addict is somebody who, at least once every 3 to 6 months, takes an addictive substance. An addictive substance is anything psychoactive that alters your perception of reality, with examples being:

• Alcohol
• Caffeine (as found in tea, coffee and cola)
• Nicotine (as found in cigarettes, cigars, shisha and vape)
• Medication for depression & anxiety
• Pain medication
• Legal highs
• Narcotics (illegal drugs)

The addict takes these substances on a regular basis. Whether that's every 3 to 6 months, or daily dosages of the demonic plant alkaloid known as caffeine. Addicts who drink steaming hot cups of addiction are littered throughout society, flagrantly parading their lack of willpower and devil-may-care attitude to the damage they're doing to themselves and others.

Addicts who smoke or vape are smelly and are setting fire to money on a regular basis and inhaling toxic combustion products, and toxic chemicals. This insanity is further evidence that they have been possessed by a demon. That demon is addiction. These people are monsters. They should be shot at dawn. Their heads should be put on a spike.

Medically sanctioned addiction is no better. Just because your doctor (a.k.a. drug dealer) gave you medication for pain, that's no different from scoring heroin on a street corner. There is zero difference between obtaining medication for depression, or injecting heroin to treat your crushing emotional damage. Zero. Nada. Exactly the same thing.

You need to be really honest when you are answering the single question that identifies you as an addict.

Here's the only question you need to answer:

Do you take any of the substances listed above (every 3 to 6 months or more regularly)?

The next part is really easy. If the answer is yes, then you are an addict and you need help. Why are you wasting money and damaging your health taking substances? There's no excuse.

Because you can't stop taking these substances, you have proven to the world that you have no self-control. You have proven to the world that you have no willpower. You have proven to the world that you're weak. You selfish monster. I hate you. Pooh you! You shitting pooh-pooh head! Stinky bum head!

You lose, addict.

Type III - Non-Addicts

The non-addict is somebody who has tried addictive substances but has not become addicted. The definition of not being addicted is having tried something, but choosing not to take addictive substance. The very process of not taking an addictive substance is what defines a non-addict.

The non-addict is aware of the effects of addictive substances, but chooses not to use them. The non-addict is somebody who demonstrates willpower and self-control. The non-addict, is by their very omission, proving that they are not addicted. They have tried, and they resist the temptations of the addictive substances.

Not taking addictive substances, having tried them, is the only way to prove that you're not a potential addict. If you haven't tried addictive substances, you simply don't know whether you're an addict or not. A non-addict can conclusively show that they are not an addict. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Non-addicts are completely abstinent from all of the following substances:

• Alcohol
• Caffeine (as found in tea, coffee and cola)
• Nicotine (as found in cigarettes, cigars, shisha and vape)
• Medication for depression & anxiety
• Pain medication
• Legal highs
• Narcotics (illegal drugs)

The non-addict has tried one or more of these substances, and proven that they are not an addict, by not taking them. If you take any of the above substances, you are an addict, not a non-addict.

It's a really easy test to see if you're an addict or not. If you drink tea, coffee or cola, you're probably an addict who is in denial. Denial is not a river in Africa. Denial is when you deliberately ignore the evidence.

Non-addicts have collected evidence that they are not addicts. Non-addicts are laughing at you when you accuse them of being addicts, in between sips from your coffee cup.

There's a simple test to see if you're a non-addict or not. You have to go for more than 6 months without having any of the addictive substances you've tried. Yes that's right: any of the substances. Because addictions can be transferred, you can't just stop taking heroin and take up drinking coffee. You can't just stop smoking cigarettes and start having cups of tea. That's just transferring your addiction.

Here's the only question you need to answer:

Do you take any of the substances listed above (every 3 to 6 months or more regularly)?

The next part is really easy. If the answer is no, then you are a non-addict and you can laugh at anybody who talks to you about addiction in between cups of coffee and puffs on cigarettes, while swallowing loads of medications etc. etc.

If you break your abstinence by taking any of the listed substances, then you are an addict. There's no cheating. There are no excuses. You are self-medicating for your untreated addiction if you take anything from the list above. You might be in denial if you're saying things like "yes, but" or fooling yourself about how regularly you are taking addictive substances.

Only a non-addict is able to go for over 6 months without any of the substances listed above. And only a non-addict can stick two fingers up at you and laugh and call you a c**t. Yes, non-addicts are allowed to be all high and mighty, and look down their nose sneeringly at you. Only a non-addict is allowed to be pious and critical of your lifestyle. Only a non-addict is allowed to act all holier-than-thou and pretend they're whiter than white.

It's an established fact that non-addicts are allowed to be as horrible as they like to Type I and Type II people, because they're inferior. The Type I and Type II people are weak and worthless, and can be treated with disdain, contempt and disrespect. Type I and Type II people are literally pieces of s**t that shouldn't be p**sed on if they're on fire.

I think you'll find that this logic is completely watertight. I think you will find that there is not a single flaw in this reasoning. I'm sure that you'll agree wholeheartedly with this new system of classification, given that it is reasoned from unquestionable base principles.

My own mother used to take heroin, but then stopped. She believes that this proves she isn't a heroin addict. Her reasoning is pretty sound. Seems to make sense to me, at least. Well done her.

Only my Mum still smokes and she's a total alcoholic. Oh, and she drinks loads of tea and coffee. So I guess she's still an addict. Oh, oops. So her stopping taking heroin really didn't prove anything, did it? No. Especially as she was still taking other illegal drugs. Yes, there seems to be a flaw in her logic.

I like my Mum, even if she's a total alcoholic junkie. She decided to have a baby (me) with another alcoholic junkie, which is a shame, but at least they never judged me, because they're aware of their own addictions.

Oh no, hang on a second. There was that time when they walked into my house and stopped me from emailing psychiatrists about a hospital admission to treat my Bipolar Disorder, and instead accused me of being a drug addict and dragged me outside where some work colleagues saw me and wondered why I wasn't at work.

Yes, it seems rather odd that a couple of drug addicts would enter the private home of a person with a mental illness, and drag him through the streets, accusing him of having a drug addiction. That would seem to be rather hypocritical to me.

I wonder what the psychological effects of such action would be. To shame your son for the guilt that you yourself carry. To blame your son for your own lack of willpower and addiction. That would be pretty shitty, wouldn't it?

Yes, my parents kinda like to pass the buck. They think they're so smart, but they're just out to cover their own guilt. They're pretty paranoid and psychotic after so many years of extensive drug and alcohol abuse. Years and years and years. It takes its toll on the body and the mind. They have lost the plot. They're fucking senile.

Oh, what about me?

Well, I've not been drinking for 82 days, but I've been abstinent from all the other substances for 6 months. I'm well on my way to non-addict status. I'm a lot more of a non-addict than anybody else I know. That's why I find it so insulting and offensive when people want to talk to me about alcohol, drugs etc.

If you want to know about being a non-addict you should be asking me, not telling me things. I can tell you about how hard it is to flush all psychoactive substances from your life. They are ubiquitous. They put caffeine in all sorts of things, so that you get hooked on those products.

I have started to hear people saying "sugar is a drug" and that's given me an idea.

When you eat food, your body will break it down and convert the carbohydrates into glucose, because glucose is what powers every cell in your body. Your human body runs on glucose and oxygen. Your body runs on sugar.

However, I accept the challenge.

I've decided that as my final challenge I will go without sugar. Given that sugar is glucose, and all food is converted to glucose, I will have to go without food. Yes, if I'm going to quit sugar, I will have to quit food.

So, I've decided to go on hunger strike. Yes, when you're all stuffing yourselves with your Christmas dinner, I think I will go and stay in a tent (houses are a drug?) and just live on fresh air. I'm going to quit food for Xmas. How's about that?

I'm just taking things to their logical conclusion. The only way to prove that you're a non-addict is to give up on food.

If you give up on food, pretty soon you give up on oxygen. Oxygen is a drug. You keep taking breath after breath, you oxygen addict!

I'm going to quit food, because food contains sugar, and sugar is a drug. By quitting food, I get to quit oxygen too.

Yes, when I'm dead from starvation, suffocation, you will be able to see just how brilliant not being addicted to anything is. Make sure you have a warm cup of tea or coffee with some sugar in it to sip at my funeral. The glucose from the sugar will help to keep you warm, and the caffeine will help you concentrate on whatever bullshit the preacher is spouting.

Hurrah for me. I'm a fucking genius. I've figured out how to not be addicted to ANYTHING.

Yes, I'm going to sit in my tent, with no food, no sex, no internet, no gambling and certainly no tea or coffee. I've never smoked and I don't take drugs, so it should be fairly easy. I just need to beat a few hunger pangs and then the pain will be over.

I'm looking forward to an eternity as a non-addict. The dead aren't addicted to anything. Hurrah for the dead. I aspire to be dead. I'm mostly there.

Have a little think about what type of person you are. Be honest. How long have you honestly done, without a single drop of any of the substances I listed? You're going to have to be super duper honest because addiction makes you lie to yourself and others

Tags: #addiction #alcohol #drugs #bipolar #mentalhealth #childhood #parents #notanonymous

This is a story about libido...

You're probably not aware of the role that your sex drive plays in your thoughts and actions, but it's the most fundamental force in your human behaviour. It's programmed into your DNA to procreate. It's essential for the survival of the species.

Ask yourself the philosophical question why are we here? What is your answer? If it's something about watching TV or getting fat and dying or going to work, then you're clearly not a very elevated thinker. If it's something to do with children, then you're at least able to identify that you're basically just an animal under your fancy clothes.

Personally, I want to figure out as much as possible about how the Universe works. I want to answer questions about the fundamental nature of reality. I want to know the answers to unanswerable questions. But how do we know they're unanswerable unless we search for answers?

Theologians from all religions were content to come up with some hand-wavy claptrap theory that wasn't backed by any experimental evidence. They attempted to come up with convenient ideas that dumb people could grasp, and could be neatly packaged into sermons and soundbites, so that the ideas would spread like a horrible virus of stupidity.

People like to spread ideas, just like they enjoy spreading their genetic material. Being influential, being a thought leader... it brings you more power & status, and therefore the better potential mates. If you are a powerful thought leader, you get to have a pretty girlfriend or a hunky boyfriend. It comes down to sex, again.

Every time you get a new Twitter follower, or a retweet, or a like on Facebook, or a post shared, or a friend request, or a comment that engages with something you shared or liked or posted yourself... you get a dopamine hit. Your brain rewards you for spreading seeds.

Internet memes and email chain letters. These kinds of things are just somebody wanting to test the reach of themself as a cult personality. You see loads and loads and loads of pictures of teachers being shared, holding a piece of cardboard that says "Let's see if I can get this shared in Australia. Do it for your kids!" or some other lame patheticness.

If you don't have kids of your own, you feel acutely aware that you're dying, and you're not going to leave any mark on the world. Yup, you'll be gone and forgotten, because you have no genetic heirs who might carry on your name and your teachings. Parents are very influential in their kids lives, beyond the genetic material they give to them. They shape their values and their fundamental ideas.

Because I don't like my parents, I reject their ideas and values. Instead of history, I studied geography. Instead of religion, I study science. Instead of the piano, I learn the guitar. Instead of being a Conservative, I'm a socialist. Instead of being a selfish c**t, I'm a humanist. You get the general idea.

So it looks like I'm very down on parents, but really I'm not. I see lots and lots of great parents out there who give their kids a brilliant life. I see lots and lots of parents out there who love their kids and make them feel loved and cherished and cared for and happy. I see lots of my friends with smiling happy looking children, and I know that because my friends are caring and nice, they are caring and nice parents too.

It looks like I'm being down on teachers, but I'm really not. I had some amazing teachers who I can still remember the names of, and loads of really important things that they taught me. I had teachers who really went the extra mile, and taught me the things that are really important in my life and allowed me to distance myself from my parents and escape a horrible life.

I'm a big believer in planned parenthood. If you're not going to go the distance with kids, don't get involved in their lives. Kids need consistency, reliability, inspiration, praise, love & care. The world has plenty of things that are going to kill kids and injure them and knock their confidence and destroy their self-esteem. It's not a parent's job to add to a child's woes.

In the UK we have a nanny state. However, that doesn't mean that you're a rich Victorian who has employed a nanny to rear your children. What it is supposed to mean is that there's a safety net there if you f**k up. You're not supposed to f**k up. Having a safety net there does not mean you can just take drugs and not work, and spawn as many children as you want.

It sounds like I'm having a go at a tranche of society, but I'm not. I'm aware that there are a huge number of young people who just smoke dope and play computer games. It looks to the untrained eye like they're lazy and idle, but the fact is that they have no prospects, no opportunities.

Those kids who sit around smoking dope and playing computer games have been failed by parents who decided to have children without thinking about their future. The time to plan for a child's future is before they're born. You line up your ducks and then you shoot them down. You don't just risk it and hope for the best, unless you want to go back to living in caves and bashing each other over the head with clubs.

Earlier this year, I was sent this photo from a girl I knew. I looked at the date stamp of the image. The photo was taken in 2006. I put the image into Google Reverse Image Search and found that she had taken the image from another woman's blog. That's rather strange behaviour.

The strangest part was that she claimed to be pregnant by me, even though I hadn't ejaculated in her vagina. The thing about being pregnant is, that it usually involves ejaculation into a vagina. Some sperm have to be ejected near enough to the cervix for those little tadpoles to swim to an egg and fertilise it. I'm not sure if I have super sperm, but I'm pretty sure they can't travel through time, get another woman pregnant and then transport the foetus forward in time and implant it in a different womb. Maybe I'm just a bit too heavily reliant on this science stuff though?

Yeah, I put my faith in technology and science, rather than religion, and it turns out that I was right. You do have to ejaculate in somebody's vagina for them to become pregnant. It turns out she wasn't pregnant. What a bizarre turn of events. Who would have thought that I could have planned to not get somebody pregnant like that?

There have been other times when there's been a risk but there's this thing called the morning after pill, which is an exceedingly unpleasant thing to have to take. I'd never recommend or suggest a woman should take it. I imagine that you wouldn't take it unless you want to be really careful that you don't have a baby after a moment of drunken madness.

Babies are for life, not just an inconvenient mistake.

Yes, if you decide to keep your baby, you should really prepare yourself to go the distance. You might have to look after that kid for up to 18 years. That's a long time. They're also not cute like a kitten or a puppy. They scream and shit and vomit everywhere. Your fanny will get ripped to pieces and all your nice things will get covered in snot.

Babies also grow into little children who need trainers and a tracksuit or whatever sub-culturally appropriate clothes they need to wear in order to not be beaten to shit for non-conformity. They can be your special little angel, who is unique and is going to be a brain surgeon. Yes they can be your fantasy, but only in your f**king dreams. At least let them not be bullied their entire f**king childhood if you send them to school rather than locking them in a basement.

I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but I wasn't very well. I had been sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. I bumped into this friend when I was looking for a warm bed for the night and she was very keen that she get this photo of us together. I was very keen to get some sleep. Sleeping rough is hard.

So why on earth would a woman want to get pregnant by a homeless guy anyway? It seems ridiculous. Probably the very least likely person to be able to provide a happy stable home for a growing infant. Well, my theory is that women's caring instincts are activated by seeing a proverbial bird with a broken wing.

It does work to a certain extent. If you can't find Mr Perfect, you can find somebody who's heartbroken and in trouble and help to fix them up. You can fix a man and make him happy and healthy. I don't recommend or condone faking a pregnancy though. You shouldn't take things that far.

Because my parents lied about supporting me, I had to turn to friends and girlfriends. My parents told me they would help me get through my difficult divorce, until my house was finally sold and I was back on my own two feet again in London. They are liars. There was no support. They just lied. They liked saying the words "we'll support you, we'll help" but they had no intention of helping anybody. They are liars and c**ts.

Luckily, there is a peer-to-peer support network. Friends and girlfriends helped me out when my parents lies were exposed as nothing but hot air.

My parents are always looking for an excuse not to help. They are masters of the reason why they aren't going to do what they committed to doing, or just lying. They will say something and then deny they ever said it, if it's more convenient to just lie. They figured out that it's easier to just tell the world you're a good parent, to lie about being a good parent, than to actually do the hard work of being a good parent.

Being a good parent is hard work. Alternatively, you can just concentrate on lying, then you don't have to do the hard work. If you just concentrate on sitting around taking drugs and lying and training your kid to hide your guilt, then you have a lot more time & money for drugs and alcohol.

The problem is, that you are dumping your child onto the state. The child doesn't expect it, because your child trusts you and believes your lies. The state doesn't expect rich middle class parents to dump their kids on the state either, which means that those kids end up stuck in a precarious position.

The state can't really afford to support any broken homes. I don't feel entitled to state support, but I do feel aggrieved when people who supposedly care about me break their promises. Especially when those promises are repeatedly and insistently made. If you make some throwaway remark about "just let us know if there's anything we can do to help" then I understand that you just like the way those words sound. You just like the warm fuzzy feeling you're giving yourself by making some empty offer you have no intention on making good on.

My parents work very hard to demonise me. To ruin my good standing with people. To blacken my name. Family life is much easier if you've picked a black sheep to be the one you blame for your own shortcomings.

My Dad had previously used his own brother as the black sheep. He liked to spread negative gossip about his own brother, and generally ostracise and antagonise him. When his brother sufficiently distanced himself from my unpleasant father, he moved on to me. I'm now the guy who he likes to bitch and whine about, while with his other face pretending like he's a supportive Dad.

The fact of the matter is that he perpetuates a co-dependent abusive relationship with my Mum. He's horribly abusive to her. They managed to numb themselves to the destructive nature of their horrible relationship, by taking loads of drugs and getting drunk all the time, but they're horrible spiteful people when they're together. They hardly have any friends because they're so horrible to be around.

So, I've decided to break the cycle. Because I have a brain. Because I have self-awareness and I can self-direct my actions, I have decided that I'm not going to pass the buck. I'm not going to pass on the blame. I'm going to shove it right back to where it belongs. My Dad needs to stop abusing his girlfriend (my Mum) and stop being such a critic and a liar and a spreader of malicious crap. He needs to support my Mum and her kids or f**k off and die.

Obviously, it would be pretty hard on me to force his hand on this matter, so it's probably best if I just distance myself from him. However, I do worry that he will make my Mum's life even more hellish, or find another victim for his abuse. I feel responsible for stopping him from spreading any more human misery.

One way I have decided to stop the spread of his influence, is by considering my own potential fatherhood very carefully. It's very important to me that I'm absolutely nothing like that complete c**t. It's very important to me that if I do decide to have kids, that they have a really happy childhood and they're well supported when they need support.

Just having sex and then lying about taking responsibility is not acceptable. Abandoning your kids onto the state is not acceptable, especially when you have promised to help and misled your kids into believing they can count on you.

I've always planned around the idea that my parents are a complete waste of space and I'll need to make my own way in life, which is why I paid for the deposit and mortgage on my house and fully furnished it and spent loads of money on it, all without a single penny of parental support.

However, when I was going through a horrible divorce, moving from Bournemouth back to London, trying to find work, working on a new startup idea, reconnecting with friends and my business network... my parents were interested in earning money from me, while I waited for the equity in my home to be released. It was easier than going to a commercial lender. The problem is, that my parents are liars.

I could have arranged a bridging loan, but my Mum, on multiple occasions, reassured me that I didn't need to go through all the hassle of arranging a bridging loan. Given the fact that I had a huge pile of equity in my home, and we were only talking about a very small amount of money, and a potentially very healthy rate of interest for them, it seemed to be a win:win situation.

The problem is that my Dad's a c**t. He talked my own Mum out of helping her son and left me high & dry. What an utter c**t. They waited until the last minute and then pulled the rug out from under my feet. What total c**ts.

Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping.

I wonder if it's some Munchausen by Proxy thing. I wonder if my parents like keeping me sick and desperate. They are certainly a couple of irrelevant shrivelled up junkie alcoholic c**ts who should be kept away from the world. They certainly have nothing of value to offer, except to die and finally allow my sister and me to stop being beaten down by their harsh criticism, laziness and unrealistic expectations.

Anyway, I'm exhausted by it all. If they think they have won, and they get to label me for life and die smug, buried with their hoarded wealth but hated by their kids, because they totally failed as parents, then f**k them. I will shame them as much as I possibly can. I've done enough to prove my value. I've done enough to prove my work ethic, my ingenuity, my resourcefulness, my kindness, my caring. I've done enough.

I'm done, I'm through, I'm fed up, I'm p**sed off and I'm at the limit. I'm at the bitter end. I can't take it anymore.

I've been strung along. I've been lied to and had enough promises broken. I've had enough of the smug cunts telling everybody they're doing everything they can when really they're just undermining me and leading me on.

Yes, I've been led on. I was sold a lie. I was told that parents should be respected. I was led to believe that parents care. Throughout my childhood all I saw was that they cared more about having enough drugs and booze and cigarettes. They cared more about sitting around with their few friends or arguing with each other. That's where the time went. That's where the energy went. That's where the money went.

Sex is a dangerous thing if you're having it unprotected and you're not prepared to take the morning after pill or get an abortion for a child who you have no intention of loving and caring for. If you're not going to love your kids, kill them in the womb.

I'm going to abort myself, age 36. It's the abortion my mum should have had.

You like coffee for the same reason why you like sex and you like drugs... dopamine is released in your brain. You're just chasing a high, and you might be doing it so recklessly that you're making unhappy little children (October 2013)

Tags: #parents #childhood #divorce #addiction #alcohol #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about my cyclical nature...

When my tale is finally told, I hope you will understand why people enter a mood disorder cycle. It's not about broken brains. It's about abused children.

Does abuse have to mean being kiddy fiddled by your uncle? Does abuse have to mean being touched in private places? Does abuse have to mean sexual abuse? Well, everything links back to sex in some way, but the web of life is incomprehensibly complex, so I suggest you just listen for now.

I went to playgroup from the age of 3, went to school at the age of 4, and stayed in school until the age of 17. It was horrific. Every single year, my Dad did something to f**k up my chances of having any self esteem and avoiding relentless daily bullying.

Yes, I'm singling out my Dad, because he's a total cunt. My mum is loving, and has tried very hard to make her children feel loved, but she's got the shittest taste in men imaginable. My surname - Grant - comes from her ex-husband, who was a heroin addict. That's lovely. Instead of being Nick Newton - perhaps a descendent of a famous physicist - I'm Nick Grant, named after a heroin addict. Brilliant.

Keith - as I very clearly remember him telling me - does not want to be called "Dad"... "who's Dad?" he would say to me, when I was only about 3 years old and learning to talk. "I'm not Dad, I'm Keith" that's a lovely thing to say to the little boy you're looking after isn't it? That's definitely going to make them feel loved and secure. What a cunt.

I think the main problem is that my parents were never outnumbered, until my sister gave birth to my niece. The penny hadn't dropped until then, that my parents lives and disgusting lifestyle needed to change, because children had arrived. Keith was so lazy, that he sat around in a house that my Mum's Mum bought for them, drinking and smoking, and sending my Mum out to work full time in order to pay for his lifestyle. What a cunt.

Yes, my mum was the breadwinner, while my Dad was at home, telling me how resentful he was at having to rear a child. He thought he had solved the riddle of life the universe and everything, and got to take drugs, get drunk and have sex with my mum. Sadly, sex leads to children. Denying that you're a Dad isn't going to get you anywhere, except making little children very sad.

My Mum and my Granny were lovely, and I do have lots of happy memories of time spent with them. Sadly, if you're a full time working mother to pay for your lazy drug addict partner, you don't spend as much time with your child as they'd really like, especially if the main childcare is hungover or on a comedown, and saying "who's Dad?".

I wasn't really prepared for social interaction with other children. I didn't used to go on playdates or have friends over. My parents had their friends over instead. And they sat around taking Cocaine and doing jigsaws. Yes, drug taking and getting drunk were my parents passtimes, not doing things with their kid. By their own admission, they used to stick my carrycot on top of the jukebox when they were down at the pub. They definitely weren't going to let a little accident like a child get in the way of their big ambitions to be drunks and drug addicts.

What happens next is you go to school, and you don't have a frigging clue how to relate to other children. All you know is how to interact with adults who tell you to fuck off because they don't want you to interfere with their high, or they're cranky because they're hung over or on a comedown. You know how to speak relatively articulately, because you've been trying to make yourself heard and understood in an adult way - because all you know is fucked up adults - but you don't know the rules of the jungle.

If you're going to be a drunk and a drug addict, at least have a bunch of kids, so that they can play with each other when you're getting high and drunk. Being outnumbered might also make the penny drop a little earlier, that your life is now fucked, and you're going to have to make some lifestyle adjustments unless you want to fuck up innocent lives too. Is that too much to ask?

Playing on your own is no fun, and you're not learning how to socially interact with your peers. It's not normal, for the development of a child, to have no other children of similar age. Humans are social creatures. We weren't evolved to sit around getting drunk and taking drugs, which is why people's lives are destroyed by those things. We were evolved to be part of a clan or a tribe that was socially cohesive. Drugs and alcohol don't glue things together, they make things fall apart.

So when I went to playgroup and school, I really wasn't properly prepared for social interaction with other children. I remember whichever toy I picked up, somebody would indicate they wanted to play with it, and I would hand it over of course, because I could understand English and adult interactions very well. After a while it became very confusing. I didn't understand that the other children enjoyed taking toys away from me more than they enjoyed playing with them. They wanted to fight with me, to test boundaries, but I was used to the adult world of co-operation. I lost, they won, and I didn't understand why.

Yes, I 'played nice' from the very outset. I just couldn't understand why other children didn't. I expected them to be little adults like me. They'd call me names, and I'd say "why are you calling me that?" and get upset rather than calling them names back. I took things right in the feels, because I never learnt tit for tat. I never learnt retaliation. I was raised to be a liberal adult pacifist hippy, by spending all my time in the company of adults.

My Dad very much discouraged friendships. I wasn't allowed to be friends with Andrew, because he was a picky eater. I wasn't allowed to be friends with the little boy a couple of houses down the road, because he was too immature. Too immature? Are you totally fucked in the head? HE WAS A FUCKING CHILD, OF COURSE HE WAS IMMATURE.

Throughout my childhood, I was reprimanded for anything approaching childish behaviour. Yes, it's good to teach your kids good manners, but they really don't understand the subtle nuances of adult society, and things get very confusing indeed for them when you're abusing drugs and alcohol, because those things are forbidden to the child and you have surrounded these revered substances with mystery and lies.

Children are naturally inquisitive, and ask questions. When I asked my parents questions about their drugs, they lied to me, and they told me to lie to teachers and other children about their drug taking. Being the keeper of your parents secrets is very confusing as a child. It's not a responsibility that you should put on a child.

You think that photo's cool? Grow the fuck up. Drug dealers go to prison, and my Dad already had a criminal record for drug possession, so the courts were not going to go easy on him. The children of criminals often go into foster care. Being such a drug addict that you're prepared to go to prison and have your children taken into care is fucked up.

Am I building up a clear enough picture of what my parents life priorities were? Am I spelling it out in plain enough English for you to understand what the consequences of fucking with your child's life are? Am I laying out my case for where a big chunk of responsibility lies, where the proverbial buck stops?

Yes, I'm shaming my parents, but why the fuck shouldn't I. I had to guard their secrets and lies throughout my miserable childhood. Why so miserable? Well, you try being bullied every day for 12 or 13 years and see how you like it. You try having your friendships destroyed and self esteem taken away, by a total cunt of a Dad. You try dealing with selfish self-centred drunks and drug addicts instead of sisters, brothers and friends of a similar age.

I changed schools 6 times. That's 5 times more than is supposed to happen. You just can't disrupt a child's life that much without fucking up their life. Especially if you do extra stuff to fuck them up too.

Lots of kids have to wear glasses, but do all their own fathers bully them about it? How many Dads out there think it's a good idea to call your kid "4-eyes" and "brains" and take the piss and laugh at your son? Let's have a show of hands. Hands up if you think it's a good idea to bully your own children, in the same childish way that they're going to get bullied at school. Nope, wrong answer, Dad. Get to the back of the class, in the corner, wearing the dunce hat. See the headmaster after school. Very disappointed with your behaviour.

All kids get bullied to some extent, or at some time or other. When it's relentless, at home and at school, around the clock... yes, life is fucking shit. I can't express to you just how shit life is when you're being bullied. I used to look forward to getting sick. I used to be overjoyed when I was throwing up such vast quantities of projectile vomit that it was pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to be in school without getting chunks of half-digested carrot all over the classroom.

I used to cry and cry and cry, when I got well. I remember breaking down crying on my way to school, after a day or two off. I was so upset that my parents actually decided to let me have another day off, which I clearly remember with crystal clarity as one of the moments of my childhood where I felt pure relief flood my entire body. I felt a 100 tonne weight of anxiety be lifted from my entire body.

One thing that my Dad used to do, was to price everything in terms of bags of drugs, rather than pound notes or the abstract measure of child happiness. Yes, child happiness is hard to measure, especially using bags of drugs. Let me give you an example. At primary school, it was close enough to cycle there as a little boy. My Dad is very clever, and he figured out that girls bikes are cheaper than boys bikes, because lots of Dads want their little girls to be like little boys, and they buy them bikes that they never ride. This oversupply of girls bikes creates a great opportunity to save the price of a bag of drugs, for merely the immeasurable cost of childhood happiness.

Yes, my Dad has done that a few times. Don't give your kids enough pocket money to be able to buy a bike, because pocket money is the same money as should be used to buy bags of drugs. Instead, you can save the money and buy more bags of drugs by simply buying the cheaper girls bike, or stealing bikes. Yes, stealing bikes is the cheapest way to get a bike of all, and it leaves the most money for bags of drugs. Drugs come first. Childhood happiness can't even be measured on the all-important drug bag scale.

Do you know what happens when you send your kid to school riding a stolen girls bike? One of them even had a FUCKING BASKET ON IT FOR FUCK'S SAKE. What a cheapskate drug addict cunt. It's a reasonable presumption that mature adults might think it a little eccentric, or even consider it to be a conversation starter. For children IT'S THE END OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE. Do you think kids forget that kind of shit? The bullies at school certainly didn't FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME I WAS AT SCHOOL YOU CUNT.

If a trick's worth pulling, it's worth pulling a couple of times. Yes, my Dad managed to pull this stunt a few times and RUIN MY ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD.

It's a Catch 22. Without a bike you can't go and see your friends and get to school independently. But then the FUCKING CUNT hasn't even thought about how you need to get to school anyway. Did I tell you that the FUCKING CUNT bought a house at the top of a massive hill nowhere near any fucking busses, in the middle of fucking nowhere?

But it's OK, because I'm not upset about having had to go through living hell. It's not affected me at all. On the surface, everything seems absolutely cunting fine. I look, to the untrained eye, like I'm well adjusted, successful, happy and content in life. Cunt.

Hmmmm. Could edit this. Not going to.

There's the smug prick. I would only piss on him if he was on fire because he seems to be an OK granddad to my niece. What a piece of shit. He only finally sorted his fucking life out once and for all when my niece was born (photo circa 1995)

Tags: #parents #bullying #childhood #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth

This is a story about life support...

I was in a metaphorical coma for 4 years. I was virtually on life support for the first 2 years, and then I woke up to find my wife and parents trying to turn off the 'machines' that were keeping me alive. Shame on them. I gave up on life and spent the next 2 years at death's door, in and out of hospital.

The first 2 years, there was nothing anybody could do. Having suffered 6 years at the hands of somebody so unfaithful, cruel and abusive, my body & mind finally gave out on me. I cracked, collapsed, capitulated. The crash was inevitable. You just can't abuse somebody for so long and expect them to just suck it up.

Two years might sound like a long amount of time to 'care' for somebody, but if all you're doing is going on dating websites and taking holidays using my money then it's not all bad. I don't even care about the money. I'm open hearted. I pay it forwards. If you take and you don't give back, then I know that you pay a debt of guilt. I know that if you have a moral bone in your body, you know what the true balance of karma is.

Actually, not a lot of caring went on. During my first hospital admission, my ex-wife didn't even ask about visiting hours, the phone number to contact me or bother making any plans to come visit. The moment I was admitted to hospital, she jumped right on those websites and started arranging to meet people. What a c**t.

Oh, sorry... I'm not supposed to be bitter about stuff. Yes, I'm supposed to be the punchbag. I'm not supposed to have feelings. I'm supposed to be a pincushion. If you prick me, I'm not supposed to bleed. I'm supposed to be inhuman. But insofar as I can tell, I'm very much human. Sorry about that.

I suppose she's human too, although it's hard to imagine when she treated me so inhumanely. I suppose she was probably a sex addict or something. Definitely some psychological problems, but who am I to judge? I'm just the guy who was nearly killed by her narcissism and selfishness.

I wonder how you can move on like that. Destroying somebody, putting them in hospital, and then just immediately thinking about the next victim. I wonder what kind of callousness, lack of empathy, psychopathy, allows you to expend a human life and move on as if it was nothing.

I suppose if you've decided that you want another boyfriend or husband because you don't like the one you've got, the best thing to do is probably abuse them until they kill themself. It's a lot quicker and easier than just breaking up with them. I guess she had moved on, which is why she thought it was OK to go on dating websites while I was fighting for my life.

What difference does having a supportive partner make anyway? What difference does having supportive parents make? It can't be very much. The parents should just support the partner who's going to be bereaved and help to finish off the sick and weakened person. Yup the sick person is a lost cause, so it's a good idea to hurry death along a bit.

My parents initially refused to help at all. They refused to help either of us. Then they started abusing me too, but I can see that it was probably an ill-advised attempt at 'tough love'. Well guess what? I'd had my fill of tough love having my face smashed in by my partner.

Then my parents did what she wanted, which was to get me out of the way so she could go on dating websites as if she was single and had managed to buy a house on her pathetic salary. Yes, she quite liked the house that I paid for. She did let me have the deposit back when we divorced, but only because my solicitor fought for it. I just wanted my life. I told her to take as much as she wanted, and horrifyingly she wanted it all, including my life!

Perhaps this horrible treatment had something to do with prolonging the first terrible 2 years. I was a bit like a car running on 3 cylinders, spluttering and coughing, kangarooing down the road. There were opportunities for recovery. There were periods of improvement. However, the toxic atmosphere still persisted. You just can't recover when your partner wants you dead and your parents are co-operating with them.

I'm pretty canny. I know how to choose my battles wisely. I knew that it would drive me insane if I tried to battle the abusive shits head-on. You just can't win a battle where you're outnumbered and weakened. If you want to live, you need to curl up in a ball and protect your vital organs, and wait for the blows to stop being rained down on your head. You need to play dead.

So my ex-wife took her loot and ran for the hills, leaving me bruised and bloody in the gutter. I don't begrudge her taking her share. She paid into our joint finances, and took far more than that, but it's not her fault that she's so sick that she can't do the basic maths. She felt entitled, to damages perhaps? But it was me who was damaged. It was me who was left fighting for my life. It was me who was nearly dead.

I just wanted her out of my life after she said she'd rather I was dead and marked my suicide note in red pen, with loads of abuse all over it (she's a teacher, you see... so that's OK, right?). She was homocidal. I'm not saying she's a murderer (that I know about) but it's pretty worrying behaviour. Certainly a breach of the "in sickness and in health" marriage vows we made to each other. What a c**t.

Oh sorry, almost a bit of bitterness there. Except it's passing now. Now that I know that I'm free, and I'm alive, and I'm somewhat recovered from where I was 2 years ago, when we finally separated. It was a very close call. Apparently probate is a lot easier than divorce. That was her preference anyway, to be widowed rather than divorced. That's what she said to me. What a c... oh, hang on, I'm now starting to feel pity for her, rather than bitterness.

Yes, I'm wondering what could drive a person to have such careless disregard for a human life. It's rather worrying. She must have had some pretty horrible stuff happen to her as a kid. Yes, I really pity her. What a sad messed up person. What a shame. She is very smart and I found her very attractive, although a lot of people wouldn't fancy her. I was totally in love with her, even though she was very hard to love.

I really hope she learnt some stuff from our relationship. I know that I did. When a recent ex-girlfriend started throwing abuse and plates and knives at my head, I dumped her immediately. She was a feisty Italian lovable little thing, but there's no future for me with somebody who thinks that kind of abuse is acceptable. When another girlfriend started using abusive language towards me, I told her I didn't like it and asked her politely to stop, and she did. That seems more normal to me, more healthy.

I think alcohol and drugs can be dangerously disinhibiting. I don't think my Italian ex was drunk at the time but she was probably high on drugs or on a comedown. I have no idea. It's just an excuse anyway. Those things are not changing your character, they are just revealing what lurks beneath the surface. They are showing you what that person is really like, under the surface.

When you get drunk or you get high, you are testing yourself to the limits. You are effectively putting yourself into an extreme situation that would never occur in normal life, except during exceptional circumstances. You are switching the mode in your brain to a state that it would normally only enter because of a response to something very unusual.

By taking drink or drugs, you are going to trigger fight or flight responses in yourself. When I got very upset with my ex-wife, I used to get in a taxi, or drive to an airport. I'm a lover not a fighter, so it's the flight response, not the fight response, that gets triggered in me. I left our joint birthday party in 2006 because she was having a tantrum and saying she was having a horrible time.

I called the cab for both of us, but she was having such a horrible time that she wanted to stay, so that everybody could see how horrible it was for her, having a massive party. What was horrible for me was seeing the girl I loved very upset. I was trying to take her away from a situation that she was telling me was horrible for her.

Another time, she was having such a horrible time, sitting on a sofa with my friends, with me excluded for some reason. It was so horrible for her, having all these friends around her, caring about her. It must be so horrible to be loved by somebody who cares and wants to make you happy and protect you from horrible things. That must be horrible. I drove to Gatwick Airport, because I didn't know what to do. The flight response.

Yes, I fly, I don't fight. I can fight, but I won't. I will take flight. Fighting doesn't achieve anything. Flying gets you out of the situation of conflict and stops anybody from getting injured. It's the more evolved response to a stressful situation.

I flew us around the world many times. That was my solution. I paid for tens of thousands of pounds worth of flights, to keep her happy, to keep us happy. She was very hard work, and had very expensive tastes, but she was worth it and I don't regret it. I loved her to bits.

It kind of works, having 5 star holidays all over the globe. I remember her having an absolute meltdown every time something would go wrong with our travel arrangements, and I would just have to quietly move her a safe distance away, and then go and use a charm offensive to repair the damage caused by her sour face and tantrum, before negotiating what she wanted.

Holidays were very stressful. She wanted a camper van when we went to Hawaii. The poor people who ran the camper van company just wanted to have a relaxed Christmas break, and when their camper van broke down, there wasn't a mechanic on the island of Oahu who fancied fixing it during the holiday season. I had to bust my balls, and theirs, just to keep her from throwing her toys out of the pram. It was hard work.

That's just one example. Every holiday, she was very demanding, and I was her personal tourguide, smoothing things over with the locals. Yes, she was very organised, officious, but that's not the way the world works. Things go wrong, and things don't run like clockwork. I remember getting wound up when taxi drivers would stop in the middle of the road and talk to each other in remote windswept locations that hardly any Europeans ever visit, but then I realised that it's important to embrace local culture. It's important to go with the flow. I learnt some patience, some humility.

Yes, you can go to a place and splurge your cash and expect to be chauffeur driven around by a man-servant. However, when I asked her, she said she wanted the authentic experience. As her personal tour guide, I delivered what my client asked for, always. I think she really liked the local bus we caught in Egypt, packed full of farmyard animals and cargo, with the passengers who just wanted to discuss English Premier League football with us.

Travelling is hard work, and it's stressful, when you're the one who has to figure stuff out on the ground and actually deal with the language and cultural barriers. Getting stroppy and telling people that you're disappointed and "it's not good enough" really doesn't get you anywhere. Tact and diplomacy are the order of the day.

I hope my exes enjoyed their holidays. I really poured my heart & soul into making sure they had a lovely lovely time.

13,796ft high, at the summit of Mauna Kea. Trip of a lifetime. Was she grateful? The fact she wanted me dead would suggest not (December 2012)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #frankie

This is a story about three amigos...

You need some fire in your belly if you're going to achieve great things. The three handsome gentlemen above have all bucked the trend and excelled at what they do, in their own unique ways.

It's not my place to share other people's stories, but we all had events in our lives that have had an influence on the passions we have pursued. You never know what somebody else has been through, so it's always the best policy to be non-judgemental.

I'm not saying that we had it harder than anybody else. It's not a pissing contest. It's not a competition. And this isn't going to be a tear-jerking tale of woe is me. In fact, I'm not even going to tell you anything more than what I have already stated: behind every driven ambitious person, there is usually an unseen reason.

So, have we got chips on our shoulders? No, we have each others arms on our shoulders. We stand in solidarity, brotherhood. We are positive can-do people who act with energy and enthusiasm, not negativity and bitterness. If we have a reason to put more effort into things, to try harder than Average Joe, then it's because we are channelling our feelings in positive ways.

My friends aren't always immune from gossip, rumour and prejudice. However, they have been good enough to reserve judgement of my character. Yes, I have been pleasantly surprised that my friends have been good enough to listen to my story, now that I'm becoming well enough to tell it.

Writing somebody off, writing off a life, declaring somebody a 'lost cause' is never good. It's a death sentence. You never know just how close somebody is to the edge of the abyss.

Something happened yesterday that really struck a chord. Somebody was pushed in front of a tube train, at Kentish Town station, where I used to live, until very recently. I would travel every day from that very station platform. That's what is happening in our society. People don't jump, they're pushed.

Nobody chooses to jump off a building or in front of a train. Nobody chooses to slash their wrists or eat poison. Nobody chooses to suffocate themself or slit their own throat. Nobody chooses to blow their brains out or electrocute themself. Nobody chooses to hang themself or overdose.

Yes, it's more obvious when you can physically see somebody else pushing the person to their death, but it also happens in unseen ways too.

Every ignorant comment, every bit of gossip you pass on, every time you pass judgement and assume that you even have the faintest idea of what's going on beneath the surface of a person's life, you are slowly killing that person. You are driving them inwards, you are isolating them, you are killing them.

Yes, talking about somebody behind their back might feel like helping. Wringing your hands and saying to each other "what can we do?" while you exchange your guesswork, your ignorant speculation... it's not getting to the heart of the problem. It might be making things worse, by making that person feel alone and not understood.

It's hard, I know, trying to help somebody who has stopped communicating, clammed up. But I have no words that can possibly express the difficulty of trying to communicate with a far greater number of people who are talking to each other about you. The numbers just don't stack up. There's only one of me, so there's no way I can keep everybody informed, especially when I'm very sick.

Please don't think this is a criticism of my friends. The fact that they have reserved some judgement and they're slowly coming back into my life is spurring me on in recovery. You have to have hope and optimism to fight back from the brink of suicide, and you need friends. You need to feel like there's some chance of escaping depressed isolation, which is a death-spiral downwards.

People might think I'm pedantic. I am, but only on things that matter. If I correct you on the difference between mania and hypomania, it's because it's an important distinction that allows me to maintain hope of having some kind of quality of life. If I point out the research that shows better long term outcomes for unmedicated patients, in my situation, then it's important to know that I've had many discussions with many doctors and you telling me to follow doctors orders is not helpful, because you have no idea which doctor you're talking about.

Oh snap it sounds like I'm ticking people off. I'm really not. I just want friends in my life, not amateur psychologists, amateur psychiatrists, amateur doctors. It's really sweet of you if you've done any reading about Unipolar Depression, Type II Bipolar and other issues affecting my life, but it's really not necessary. I've done all the reading and the best possible thing would be to just judge my character and trust me... I'm working on the illness thing.

The thing that I'd like to reassure people about is, insofar as me and the docs can tell, the illness is acute not chronic. That means there's a chance I can get better if I'm given a window of opportunity.

Looking backwards to move forwards is 'wrong' apparently, but I tend to ignore the advice of anybody who hasn't been to hell and back. I've tried doing things the way that ignorant people have suggested, and I can tell you first hand that your oversimplified version of reality doesn't work.

There are no short cuts and you have to use stepping stones. Sometimes the path might double back on itself, but as long as it's the right path, you have to keep following it. I went up a cul-de-sac and I could have raged and stormed and sulked and generally allowed myself to be trapped in a dead end - indeed many people wanted to trap me in the dead end - but in the end I had to just ignore all the haters, travel back down the one-way street from the dead end and find the correct path.

Everybody boos and jeers you when you have taken a wrong turn. Nobody congratulates you on having figured out you have made a mistake, and pats you on the back for being strong enough to retrace your steps, rather than just kill yourself. Nobody says, hey, you've had to travel twice as far as everybody else, let me give you a hand. Nope, people will expect you to work three times as hard, because you made a mistake. You already have to work twice as hard, but that's not good enough for people. They want to put the boot in and make you work three times as hard, because having to work twice as hard is not enough punishment as it is.

Yes, it's easy to end up hating the world, because the world is looking to scapegoat you. The world is looking for easy answers. The world is looking for convenient members of society to isolate and blame. Adults are not really very grown up. Adults have never really left the playground, where they liked to pick on children who were different. Bullying is rife in society.

When somebody gets weak, they're such an easy target. And the best part of all is that they get weaker and weaker until they die. Yup, it's great fun being an adult bully, because you get to kill people and then deny all knowledge, because you're smart now. You can cover your arse with plausible deniability. You can point the finger at all kinds of things that were symptoms of that victim's distress.

If it looks like I'm stuck in the past, it's because I've waited 10 years for the opportunity to be able to move on from a fateful mistake. It's a messy story, and it's not like I can point to a single error, but there was a significant life priority change in 2005 that threw my world into chaos.

I left London to live by the beach, but that wasn't a mistake necessarily. However, it put me in a precarious position. New town, new friends. I was rebuilding my life fairly quickly, but things were still fragile. Plus my circle of friends were all starting to leave London anyway. Lots of people came to visit. It could have worked.

I played for the title. I took a shot at the top. I tried to have it all. I thought I had found the girl of my dreams and I had it all. Turns out, I wasn't as mature as I thought I was. I made the mistake that nearly every adult must surely make at least once or twice. I picked the wrong girl.

Because I was in a fragile place, I had one or two attempts at correcting my mistake. I tried to break up with her, when I could see that my quality of life was being destroyed. It was my mistake. It was my lack of strength. It was my neediness and insecurity, being relatively young and inexperienced and in a strange new town and in a new job... I couldn't just walk away so easily. I don't blame her for not letting me go. It was my fault for getting trapped.

If you love them, let them go. I loved her. She didn't love me. You live, you learn. My parents taught me to never give up on a relationship, so I didn't. I kept going. I don't give up on things. It's not in my nature to give up on things. I'm the guy who fixes things. I'm the guy who makes things work.

Yes, I've read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and I know that women aren't after a Mr Fix-it, but it's more romantic than that. I'm a soppy loved-up kind caring sort of guy who just wants to make things work, patch things up, move forward together. I'm a diplomat, I'm a pacifist, I'm a lover not a fighter.

Did I deserve to have my face beaten to a pulp for the way I felt? Did I deserve to be driven to the brink of suicide? There has to be some shared responsibility somewhere, but I'm over it now. I know that I'll never get an apology. I know that she'll always think she was justified for battering both sides of my face when I turned the other cheek. I didn't lift a finger in self defence or retaliation, because I'm an open hearted person.

Three strikes though. Three strikes and you're out. Nobody has hit me in my adult life except for my ex-wife. Probably because they can see that there is anger just waiting to be unleashed if you mistreat me. Yes, it's really not advisable to hit me. You can try, and you might get away with it a couple of times, but I really wouldn't advise you to test the three strike rule. You might get a knuckle sandwich.

Why would you hit somebody who is kind and caring and open hearted anyway? What's it going to achieve? I'm a lover not a fighter. Just be nice and kind and caring and then we'll get along just fine. If you abuse me, my response is going to be predictable. Yes, abuse has predictable results. Bullying has predictable results.

My Dad raised me as a pacifist. I was raised to ignore bullying. I was raised to not rat people out. I was raised not to complain about abuse. I'm very good at calming myself down. I'm very good at absorbing blow after blow that is rained down on my head. I'm like a giant abuse sponge. I soak up all that abuse.

However, there is a saturation point. When the abuse sponge has become completely soaked with your rage and agression that you have taken out on me, you'd better be a little worried. When the punching bag can't take any more, you'd better not take another cheap shot.

I can tell you a lot about de-escalating situations. I can tell you a lot about anger management. I can tell you a lot about dissipating negative feelings. I can tell you a lot about de-fusing a ticking time bomb. Blaming me - the abuse victim - is not a successful strategy for helping somebody to get over their mistreatment.

Am I hamming myself up too much as this big victim? Am I too self pitying? Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink? Well, people have to find a way to cope somehow. Presently, that's this blog for me.

Yes, you can follow my progress right here, as I work through a bunch of stuff, in public. I'm not holding back. I'm staying true to my values of honesty and openness. I'm baring my soul as I'm working through this stuff. It's weird that I'm still carrying this stuff around, right? But where's it supposed to have gone? How do you get rid of all the crap you've taken, all the abuse you've absorbed? How do you dump it?

People have got a zillion and one techniques, suggestions. I've got a suggestion for you. Fuck off unless you want to be my friend. I need friends not therapists, carers.

I want friends. I need friends. I miss friends.

Before everything went to hell in a hand-cart (April 2005)

Tags: #friends #divorce #mentalhealth #bipolar #suicide #depression

This is a story about the seasons...

I'm not just a city slicker. I'm actually reasonably tuned in to nature. I have studied weather patterns and the seasons. I have studied tides and rivers. I'm pretty adept at spotting patterns, and I can be a good data scientist to prove it.

Tomorrow - Sunday - I'm going on a climate march in the capital of the UK, London. It will be the first ever political march I have ever taken part in. That's pretty shocking. I have been remiss in my duty as a citizen in keeping UK politics honest. I've been one of the silent 76%. I will be writing about the reasons for why I was so quiet during the last General Election in later blog posts.

I had the pleasure of taking a plane ride home chatting to a couple of millennials a couple of years ago, and oh my God do they work hard. They wanted to go to University, but they quite rightly saw it as a huge privilege to go, and were exceptionally grateful for the opportunity. They laughed at the idea of spending a precious penny of education money on frivolities like partying. They gawped at the idea that the baby boomers paid no tuition fees, got grants and had plenty of money for drugs, drinking and smoking.

Yes, there is a huge generation gap. One generation got to drive around in gas guzzling cars and have heaps of foreign holidays where they travelled all over the globe by jet aircraft. That generation guzzled all the profits, the equity of the nation.

Baby boomers have bankrupted the UK with an unsustainable pensions model based on passive asset management. These lazy people were asleep on the job... never attending any shareholder meetings, while blue chip companies paid huge salaries and bonuses to lazy executives, and the massive enterprises were asset stripped in order to keep paying dividends into pension funds that were managed for short term growth.

The next round of asset stripping is now taking place, with round after round of redundancies, with all the jobs going offshore to China and India, plus the multinationals are restructuring to make sure they hardly pay a penny in corporation tax.

This won't work. We are expecting the millennials to prop up the pension funds, like a ponzi scheme, but we are getting rid of their jobs at the same time. How are they supposed to work to support the baby boomers in their retirement, if the same baby boomers have offshored all the jobs? There won't be any tax receipts either, because everybody will be either retired or unemployed and the multinational corporations won't be paying a penny in tax to the UK.

We are governed - politically and in our jobs - using a top-down approach. A pyramid scheme. The problem with that model is that if the guys at the top are total psychopaths, megalomaniacs, myopic losers... then the whole world is screwed.

The only antidote is grass-roots activism. The power of the unions was destroyed by the Tories, but we thankfully still have the right to peacefully protest about our lives and planet being destroyed by greedy fat cats.

I don't really care whether you believe man made climate change is real or not. If you want to deny the existence of the overwhelming body of evidence that shows that things are probably way worse than we could possibly imagine... get to the back of the queue for the water tap when the drought hits. Why don't you move to the edge of the Sahara... that'd be lovely and warm for you?

Yes, why don't we do that? Instead of taxing a tiny bit more for people who drive polluting vehicles, why don't we suggest that them and their family are therefore put lower down the priority list for assistance, when climate catastrophe hits. When there's a flash-flood, wildfire or a hurricane, you'll be last to be saved. How's about that?

If you're putting yourself first and ignoring the wellbeing of humanity and the planet, that seems fair, doesn't it? If you're so busy watching TV and reading crappy newspapers that print lies and pandering to your spoilt children and teaching them the same ignorant crap that you've bought into, I don't see why you and your lot shouldn't drown in the rising sea levels that you've caused.

We are a nation of sailors in the UK, and we are an island nation with the 2nd biggest tides in the world. The English Channel is one of the windiest places on the planet. Also, the UK is only able to enjoy its mild climate because of the anomaly of the Gulf Stream. The sea might look tranquil at times, but it can rage and storm and smash everything to bits too.

If you are a sailor you must master the state of the sea (waves) the tides and the wind, which can gust and squall out of nowhere. You have to look at the clouds and the surface of the water to see what's happening in the invisible currents of the air. You have to look at any points of reference on any land that you can see to guess what's happening in the invisible currents of the sea. The tide can carry you far faster than the wind sometimes.

It's a similar thing with the planet. You have to get way up a mountain or look from the basket of a balloon or the window of an aeroplane, in order to gauge the state of the climate. If you can see melted glaciers, dry river beds, empty lakes, dust bowls, deserts... the planet might be trying to tell you something.

Everything might feel OK in your double or even triple glazed house with air conditioning and other refinements that are designed to shut nature out and maintain a degree of microclimate control. Everything might feel OK in your air-conditioned car with tinted windows. Believe me, things are not OK.

The oil/energy industry is bigger than you can possibly comprehend. Their lobbying power is immense. They have bought politicians and media outlets around the world. They have controlled almost everything that is printed and has been broadcast, for a very long time. It's only with the advent of technology like the Internet that these monopolies are being eroded, and honest people are allowed to be heard for once.

You see that hole in the cloud cover, which is like a lovely dappled blanket over most of the area you can see? That hole is caused by a power station. Its heat output has actually vaporised the cloud cover above it. That means that not only the energy output of the power station is being pumped into our greenhouse, but also less of the sun's energy is being reflected back into space.

Can you  see how nice and white the clouds are, when you look down on them from an aeroplane? That's because the sun's energy is bouncing back into space. Clouds are fantastic at keeping the planet cool.

You know what isn't good for keeping the planet cool? Water. Yes, as a sailor you learn about something called sea breeze. This is wind that is created because land heats and cools very rapidly, but water absorbs and stores the sun's energy. That means that when the land starts to cool when the sun goes down, you get a big rush of warm air out at sea, back towards cold land. You always get a nice on-shore breeze in the evening during the summer.

Imagine if much more of your planet is covered by water, and much less by snow and ice (which is white, so reflects sunlight) and you have way less cloud cover because the temperature is raised so high that water droplets are not forming. Imagine if what little land that remains has been covered by power stations, roads, airports, offices and houses, which pump out huge amounts of energy. Imagine that.

What I think would happen would be very extreme weather. Cataclysmic storms, bush fires, mudslides, expansion of the deserts, inhospitable temperatures, flash flooding. Yeah... pretty much what we're seeing.

The oil/energy men will say that it's not true. They won't refute it with good science. They'll just say it's not true, and tell you to keep buying their plastic crap and driving around in your gas guzzling car and having heaps of foreign holidays in aeroplanes.

Yes, it's true that I flew all the way to San Francisco to have my photo taken at the Golden Gate Bridge. It sounds like I'm the ultimate hypocrite. However, it wasn't a holiday. I was going to kill myself.

That's right, I have reached the point where I can no longer stand what I see in the world. I can no longer bear wars being fought in my name, people being oppressed in my name, the planet being destroyed in my name. Politicians need to stop using me - their citizen - as an excuse to perpetrate war and suffering.

There is talk of austerity. How's about this? We don't bomb Syria. I will take a 'cut' in the amount of bombs that I buy. I don't want to buy any bombs at all, let alone have them dropped on anybody's head. Zero bombs for me, please. That goes for bullets and shells too. Yes no bullets for anybody's guns and no shells for anybody's tanks and artillery. I don't want any. None, zero, zip, nada... I don't want any. Not for me no. Never.

So, I'm a member of the majority of people in the UK. I'm one of the 76% of people who didn't vote for the Tories. That means that no war should be waged in my name by an unelected minority. Unelected? Yes... 76% of people in the UK don't want the Tories.

So, don't let these unelected wankers, these Eton toffs, these psychopathic warmongering twats... don't let them commit war crimes and global destruction in your name. You didn't vote for these awful awful people. We need to get out into the streets and let the arrogant little shits know that we won't put up with their awful policies.

The Tories will try and bolster their power to subvert and oppress the UK citizens. They will try and keep the police and the armed forces on side with flag-waving nationalism and warmongering, plus ostracising the poor and underprivileged. They will try to divide and rule. It's so painfully obvious that they have all studied the 'success' of the Falklands war and the growth of the City and financial services, in terms of Tory popularity. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that they caused the recession and the Poll Tax Riots.

Please remember that I'm promoting civilised nonviolent protest. No vandalism, no abuse and please be mindful that the police are just doing their job, and doing it in really tough circumstances. We do need law and order. We just don't need the kinds of laws that the Tories would really like to sneak through Parliament using their plutocracy.

I think the Queen and the House of Lords are actually doing a reasonable job of keeping a muzzle on the dangerous dog that is the Tory party. I was reading today about what a bunch of bullies and psychopaths are at the very heart of a party that will gladly drive people to suicide to further their political agenda. These dangerous megalomaniacs need to be treated with the contempt that they deserve.

So I know that many people are turned off by politics and probably will not have even read as far down as this. I will try and dumb things down for people and keep my political message coated in sugar and generally hidden from sight, like peas hidden in mashed potato to get a fussy child to eat some green vegetables. I'm sorry that's a little patronising, but you're letting the country and the planet get ruined by people who are political... but they're horrible.

I seriously recommend that you get some people who are nice and honest and caring, into the political system. All the psychos are really making the whole nation, the whole planet, very sick indeed.

That is all.

It's time to make the call to action right now. Christmas is going to be a big distraction, but when the credit card bills start hitting people's doormats in January, the suicide rate is going to soar. It's also going to be a bitterly cold winter because of climate change (October 2015)

Tags: #politics #suicide #mentalhealth #civildisobedience #notanonymous

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