The Great Lockdown of 2020 Being forced to stay at home for weeks on end allows the energetic and self-directed to invent new ways of filling their time with productive and satisfying activity. This would be an interesting topic for Marxist thinkers to develops in terms of alienated labour. However, for someone as basically idle …
Category: personal
A Sick Society
The attack on sickness benefits has been going on for a number of years but has been vastly accelerated by the LibCons. This attack is both a personal and political matter for me. It has been brilliantly covered in a number of articles by HarpyMarx which I link to below. I wanted however to both …
My Silence – Part One: Personal and Political
Anyone who follows or followed this blog can hardly have failed to notice that, with one exception, it has fallen silent since October 2010. Those who have followed it previously will also know that silences are a not uncommon occurrence and are a result of my depressive episodes. However, although 2011 was a very bad …
Continue reading My Silence – Part One: Personal and Political
September Miscellany (2010)
September has been a very good month. A score of 7.07 on the Depression Scale which is the second highest ever and by far the best September. This may be partly because I am now marking more generously. It may also be partly because there is always something of a positive reaction when I emerge …
Reeves on Mill : Chapters 6-7
Chapter 6 In the late 1830's Mill once again became heavily involved with public political events. It was a time of hope for the Radicals; hopes which were centred on achieving a split in the Whigs between the progressive element and the rest, and the introduction of the secret ballot. Mill fretted that he could …
August Miscellany (2010)
So I return to produce the first monthly miscellany since February. It is my intention under my new regime that these miscellanies will actually be shorter and I will have more individual entries. Since my recovery on August 5th (as usual it was fairly sudden and I can therefore be specific) the rest of the …
Scottish Idyll
An entry of purely personal interest, being an account of our holiday in Scotland in May. We spent the first couple of nights on Arran at the Kildonan Hotel (fairly obviously in the village of Kildonan which is at the southern tip of Arran). The hotel was decorated and furnished in a pleasing, if somewhat …
Game Therapy
As usual during an extended illness one of my chief weapons in staving off the emptiness and despair has been video games. I believe that much more serious consideration needs to be given to the therapeutic role which they can play for depressives. It is of course highly unlikely that this will happen given the …
My Annus Horribilis
This entry attempts to explain why my blogs have fallen silent for the past 6 months and is therefore mainly of personal interest, although I include some cogitation on the barriers to those with MH issues getting involved in campaigning for better services etc., and also a brief summary of what I have been doing …
January 2010 Miscellany
A substantial change to the way in which my life is organised, and especially the time I have available, took place this month when, to my considerable surprise, I was elected Chairperson of the Birmingham LINk (an organisation which seeks to improve the provision of Health and Social Care in Birmingham). I now have to …
Moving Toyshop 