Poorhouse Blues Now that I have some free time again and got back my interest in current affairs amongst other topics I stumbled across an article by Frances Ryan of the Guardian, a paper I rarely read that was really very interesting and thought provoking. Do poor people deserve leisure? Having been unemployed and ill for nearly a year I've struggled dreadfully with money, relying mostly on the grudging charity of the Government and family. This has kept me in a cycle of poor life decisions leading to more resentment from family and struggling to make appointments with the Job Centre when I know myself that if I find myself in a position when I don't need to worry about where the next pack of fags is coming from for even a few weeks I very quickly start to feel better and take some really quite big steps towards total recovery and a return to work. If you've never lived totally on benefits try imagining those who genuinely do have to choose between eating and heating the
Posts
Nice One Me Ol' China I said in my profile and recent posts that I intended to cover one of the topics of interest to me and that is car boot sales. During my recent difficulties I was lucky enough to sometimes have enough money to attend quite a new one in Chelmsford that has quickly become very popular and successful. I've found some really quite interesting bargains there and there is the usual mix of the public and traders to choose from. One word of caution though; be careful where you buy a burger from, you can get ripped off. For years I have bought, sold and collected mostly antique china and have found some really nice and hard to find or replace pieces. One of the things that most attracts me to china is the remarkable skill that was present in its design, manufacture and artistry, often done by hand. There is an awful lot of it still around sometimes from 200 years ago or more and I like to imagine that at one time these items were very much cherished wedding gift
Everything Louder Forever I'm sorry, my very few readers, this post also touches on mental health, mainly because I am currently confined in Goodmayes Psychiatric Hospital on a Section 2 so as you can appreciate I have a lot of free time (geddit?). I have recently suffered an incredibly long and difficult mental health crisis and at some point during the last 9 months started to hear voices. I variously spoke to Steven Spielberg and the Jewish money men who wanted to make a film of my life for a whopping fee, with Owen Wilson starring as me. I spoke to God and Satan, MI5 and MI6 who were recruiting me as their new head via telepathy and one very scary Australian called Cobber. The upshot of this is that whilst most of these conversations with my subconscious were quite pleasant I also spent a lot of time listening to music and one of the albums I listened to was Motorhead's Everything Louder Forever. I think it was actually released after Lemmy, the last remaining member o
It's a Conspiracy, You See This may be a longer post than usual, endeavour to persevere. Here's a thought, dear reader. What does it mean to you when you think of your human rights? The Human Rights Act? Consider this: the only human rights you really have are the ones you can defend yourself by force or that others are willing and able to defend for you on your behalf by force. Now consider the Human Rights Act itself, these are all the rights you have. Article 2: right to life Article 3: freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment Article 4: freedom from slavery and forced labour Article 5: right to liberty and security Article 6: right to a fair trial Article 7: no punishment without law Article 8: respect for your private and family life, home and correspondence Article 9: freedom of thought, belief and religion Article 10: freedom of expression Article 11: freedom of assembly and association Article 12: right to marry and start a religion Article 14: protecti
Intensities in Ten Cities I'm back! Pleasingly, at least a few people seem to be reading my thoughts so I will continue posting them until we all give up. I intend at this stage to keep this post short, I don't want to dwell on mental health too much, I hope to cover many more topics of interest to me and, hopefully, the reader also. I've come to the conclusion that I likely have always had Asperger's Syndrome and my traits are only really obvious to an observer at times of stress, unhappiness, frustration or anger. For example I have read that Autistics do something called 'stimming' which is a kind of physical stimulation which fills a void in their thoughts or actions. An example; I can slap myself on the chest repetitively and have other repetitive hand to face habits that I do when I am not otherwise focussed. This led me on to conclude that some of my bad habits such as chain smoking and drinking litres of Diet Coke are a kind of stimming in as much as t