The Thirty Sixth Blog Of Trig - Painman

Hospital rooms are not very nice places in my experience. It depends where you are of course, and how much money you have. If you had the money I’m pretty sure you could find a ‘super-Bupa’ somewhere, where the nurses work topless and offer more than nursing. But generally, even in the richer countries, a hospital is a cold sterile place that no-one in their right mind would choose to die in, but that was exactly what Amber had chosen. The doctors told her that the cancer in her stomach had spread to the rest of her body, that she had only a few months to live, and that those months would be painful and unpleasant.

I had been a porter at the hospital for six months when she arrived, wheeled in by another porter called Terry. She had been a pretty woman before the cancer, with powerful blue eyes and long light brown hair, short with a sweet pretty face and a curvy figure, but now the shadows on her face sketched the bones beneath her pale skin to make her look like some kind of apparition. But she was still beautiful.

She was very distant at first. After we met I did my best to make her as comfortable as possible, and I visited her more often than I might have other patients, talking to her and making gentle attempts to make her smile or laugh. After a short while I managed to get a smile from her.

She had moments when something would make her forget where she was, and her face would light up with life, her grey eyes shining through some of the warm blue that they had once shone. But then the numb shadow of pain regained her attention and she seemed to wither before my eyes.

“Are you afraid of dying?” she asked me as I brought her breakfast to her one morning.
“No,” I replied without hesitating, “I don’t see any reason for anyone to pre-occupy themselves with fear, especially fear of the inevitable. It’s something we all have to face. Life is an amazing experience…in all its’ joy and pain, and it should not be wasted by living in fear.”
She smiled for a moment, and then her eyes lowered and the smile vanished.
“But I’m not living, am I Anthony. I’m dying. And I’m in terrible pain.”
I looked at her for a moment with a split-second of despair, and then took her right hand between both of mine and thought about how to respond. She waited, looking into my eyes longing for answers, but I couldn’t think what to say. I felt completely helpless for a moment, and I just looked into her eyes and attempted a gentle sympathetic smile. As I relaxed and stopped trying to decide what to say the words came out naturally.
“When I am in pain, rather than fighting it, I direct my attention on it. I recognise that my pain is coming from me and is a part of me and it’s essentially no different to any other sensation of the nerves other than how I choose to feel it. When I choose to feel the pain with my full attention it feels like I move into a state of mind that is in tune with the pain. It’s like all along the pain has been trying to get my attention, trying to get me to listen to it, and I’ve been fighting it, telling it to go away…and once I dedicate all my attention to it I find a place of relative peace…it feels like I’m fixing the problem just by the act of observing and understanding it…I guess it’s kind of like meditation really. Meditate on the pain. Feel the way it flows through you, follow it and move with it. Fighting it is fighting yourself.”
Her face briefly lit up with life as she had one of those far-away moments. I felt a prang of happiness at the realisation that I had given her a good answer, or at least one that I felt was true to my belief.
“Did you read that in a book?” She asked.
I hesitated and thought about it. I wasn’t sure. I’d certainly never read those words before. As my thoughts ended I spoke.
“No. I’ve read a lot of books that have influenced me to think the way I do, but that came from my experience. I used to get migraines that propelled me into a world of pain, and I used to fight it; grit my teeth and get angry and frustrated; I would actually punch myself in the head to try and stop it; until it started one day while I was too tired to try and fight it and I relaxed and let all the pain through, let it take me over, and it vibrated through my body until it wasn’t pain any more. It changed, or my understanding of it did. It was like some kind of electric field in the darkness, with no direction and no centre. Everything else had gone; sound, light, no hot or cold or anything else, even time seemed to have vanished. All that was left was the silent, still, vibrating field of the pain, and my attention; my perception; which was engulfed by it. I observed it but I was not separate from it. I was the pain, and I was observing myself. After devoting my attention to it, it faded back into me and I fell into a deep sleep.”
Amber listened intently, with a sad look on her face.
“I don’t want to feel the pain,” she said, looking at our hands with the twinkle of tears in her eyes. I squeezed her hand affectionately.
“No-one wants to feel pain, but it is a part of us all and something we all have to face. Face it head on. You cannot run from it any more than you can run from yourself, because it is a part of you. Turn and face it, follow it and try to understand it. It cannot escape you and you cannot escape it. It’s like a switch has been flipped inside you, turning on an electric current. You cannot escape it. Follow the current until you find its’ source, and who knows, maybe there will be an off switch.”

I left a short while later to continue my rounds, and from the look in her eyes when I left I knew that she cried after I went. Her body was very sick, and was screaming at her in the language of pain. She did not want to listen, but that was what I had told her to do. The thought of meeting the pain she had already experienced straight on was a shattering prospect. She was a strong girl, fighting the cancer like she was not ready to leave, but it was taking its’ toll, physically and emotionally.

The next day Terry told me that she had refused her pain medication that morning. I was a little worried. I went to see her and found her curled up in her bed. Her eyes were closed and she did not register my arrival, but she was not asleep. Her deep concentrated breath told me that she was taking my advice. I dared not disturb her from her concentration, but I wanted to try and comfort her somehow, so I sat down by her side and gently put my hand on the side of her head, stroking her temple with my thumb. As I made contact she took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled, and her breathing rate slowed, but each breath still filled her lungs to capacity. I did not try to speak to her. I closed my eyes and sat with her for some time, trying to empathise with her pain, trying in futile desperation to find some way to take it all away. I was disturbed by Terry whispering across the room.
“Anthony, the boss has asked where you are. I told her you were talking with one of the ‘terminals’ and she eased off, but you need to get back on shift or she’s gonna come looking for you.”
I looked at Amber’s concentrated yet peaceful face, and replied quietly to Terry, “I’m on my way.”
“Don’t go. Please.” Amber’s eyes remained closed and she did not move except to speak. I looked up at Terry.
“Can you cover for me for a while mate? I’ll be back soon.”
Terry had heard Amber’s plea and gave me a kind smile.
“Of course mate. Don’t worry about it.”
Amber’s quiet voice expressed her gratitude, “Thank you Terry.”
Terry heard her, and looked both happy and sad as he left. Amber did not speak again for a while. As I sat with her, her face alternated between that of pain and concentration, like she was travelling through a strange dream interspersed with bad things. I closed my eyes and tried to empathise. Before I knew it I was in a dream myself. I held a child in my arms. I knew in my heart that I had to protect the young girl with my life. She was injured and I had to watch over her until she had healed from her injuries, then she would be ready to face the world alone, able to defend herself. I flittered between strange unknown places, some calm and peaceful, some dark and threatening, and I felt thoughts gathering and beginning to form fears but I let them pass on through me. I walked through the darkness without worry, past threatening apparitions that were nothing but empty fear. They withered upon my passing as I explored the world of the dream. The child I held grew heavier as I walked, and I knew that this was a sign of her healing. I had to put her down eventually, but I held her hand tightly and kept her close to me. We walked together, noticing that the darkness had lifted, and suddenly she stood beside me as a woman.
“You’re squeezing my hand too hard.”
I opened my eyes and saw Amber looking at me.
“You were in my dreams,” she said.
“You were in mine too,” I replied. I held her hand, tight but gentle. She smiled.
“I should get back to work. How are you feeling?”
The skin on her face was too loose over her bones, and her neck looked thinner than healthy, but her colour had changed. She looked warmer, more alive.
“I feel the pain, but I’m not suffering from it. It’s like you said. I feel like I’m listening to the pain now, and it’s not hurting me anymore. I’m very tired though. I need to sleep.”
I smiled at her, hesitated, and then leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
“Get some rest. I’ll pop in tomorrow and see how you are.”
“Thank you Anthony.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad that you’re feeling a bit better.”
I smiled at her for a moment or two, then fluffed her pillows and tucked her bedding around her. She reached out her hand and put it on mine. There were tears in her eyes, but she smiled from one of those far-away moments.
“Thank you. I feel better than I have in a long time.”

She died that night. I did my rounds and looked in on her before I went home. She was asleep, with a peaceful look on her face. I really thought she might pull through, but I guess her body had nothing left to do in this world. A part of me was horrified at the possibility that my advice might have shortened her life, which my conscience dismissed. I had spoken my mind and she had made a decision to act on what I said. I had spoken honestly, and that was the only honourable thing that I could have done in the situation.

I still dream of her from time to time.

The Thirty Seventh Blog Of Trig - 'God'

If I am asked if I believe in a 'God' like the Christians, Muslims or Jews do, then the answer is no. If however I am asked whether I believe that my own life, existence, perception, experience, is an unexplainable miracle, running parallel to an infinite number of others, that all appear to be made out of the same building blocks following the same basic rules of engagement, then yes, I believe in that as it is everything I know and feel. If by naming such a thing as 'God' we represent our inability to explain the inexplicable reality of our existence, then that I believe in, but it doesn't have a white beard and I don't expect it to welcome me through pearly white gates upon my death...

The Thirty Sixth Blog Of Trig - Flea Tale Part 2: Tom

The squirrel bound along the branch at speed, acorn in mouth, cat in tail. He believed this cat was after his acorn, when in fact, the cat just wanted to sink his teeth into the squirrel’s neck and make the last moments of his life as amusing as squirrely possible.

Before I continue, let’s quickly say something about squirrels; completely off the point and not really relevant, but necessary to fill a few lines and grab a few cheap laughs: squirrels aren’t particularly clever creatures, just very random; the sheer volume and speed of their randomness giving rise to the impression that they can be really smart. They can’t. They do lots of mindless random things constantly which we all dismiss as squirrelness, and sometimes one of these millions upon millions of mindless squirrel actions appears to be something really clever and logical. It’s not. It’s a squirrel being lucky. Don’t let this lead you into believing that they are particularly lucky animals. They’re not. It just seems that way because they all look the same. For example, let’s say 50 million people play the lottery and 10 win the jackpot; you dismiss the losers just as you dismiss the sillyness of the squirrels; you don’t assume that some people won because humans are generally smart creatures; or lucky.

So anyway, “Thesquirrelboundalongthebranchatspeed, nutinmouth, catintail.” He believed that the cat wanted his acorn, and was ready to defend this particular acorn with his life. As an example of squirrel mentality, this squirrel was in an oak tree…if you don’t get the point of me saying that, you should be guarding acorns. I am getting off the point though. The point is that this squirrel was not the one of the few randomly chosen squirrels who were lucky enough for their mindless random actions to work to their advantage. This squirrel decided to stop running away and face his attacker, who was a big tabby tom, looking for a bloody, intestine-trailing prize to leave on his master’s freshly cleaned sheets. Within minutes the squirrel’s chewed-up body was being dragged across a set-square mowed lawn towards a rather nicely built house. As the squirrel took his last few breaths, something really annoyed him. It was a flea, nosing around and leaking irritating saliva onto the corner of the death-wound in his throat. The adrenaline pumping round his squirrel body had all but relinquished the pain, and he had sunk into as comfortable a state of dying as is possible for adrenaline to induce, and now the bloody wound was itching! If he had been smart enough to construct an emotion resembling annoyance, the squirrel would have been extremely annoyed at his death being ruined so.

As is the way of the world, the squirrel’s uncomfortable death paved the way for some contentness for the little flea. It also gave some short-lived pride to the cat as he dragged the carcass through the cat flap, across the hall and upstairs to the bed of his owner; spreading a thin stream of blood and mud throughout the beautifully cream-carpeted house. Pride was very abruptly replaced with confusion when his owner seemed to lose his mind for no particular reason at all…

…”My master is not pleased with my gift,” thought the Tom. “I must find a bigger kill, with more meat and blood,” and he skulked off to hunt, in as much as a hurry as you can when you’re skulking.

Nestled on the tip of his ear, a little flea; one we have met before; rode the Tom proudly with a content sense of freedom. He had spent some time with the squirrels, observing their lives, living in their thick warm furs, and surviving off of their nutty blood. He spent a short time before that with his first mate, before abandoning her prior to her giving birth. He had felt some unnamed undescribable feelings for her that humans might compare to love, but as soon as they had mated she quickly swelled with eggs which started dropping from her everywhere they went, and he left, partly through instinct, and partly through a sense of adventure, and found himself where he was now. He was hunting with Tom, and he had a front-row corporate box to the show of carnage that was to follow…

Tom was your typical Tom. His strongly built frame was unnecessarily exaggerated further by his dense stripy ginger coat, which thickened slightly as it approached the neck; a valuable gift passed down from his deadly feline ancestors. His cat mouth turned down at the edges in a perpetual frown, as did his whiskers, giving every creature that encountered him the impression that he hated them – and the world – with a dull resolve, and it was with effortless consistency. His cheeks sagged like an old man’s after an entire lifetime of disapproving head-shaking. His lion-like paws made it seem he walked upon his fists, never running unless engaging a victim. He sauntered around like the world was his own, unwittingly frowning malevolently at everyone and everything. This had inflicted an unwanted life of solitude upon poor Tom, which his personality had adapted to by becoming increasingly reclusive and nihilistic. Really he was just lonely, and the external offensiveness and his subsequent defensiveness had reinforced this feeling, and built it into a vicious circle he could find no way out of.

“I’m a nice cat really,” tom would have told himself, “but if you keep stroking me like I’m a fwuffy-wuffy-kitty-cat, making those silly human baby-noises, I will literally rip your face off”, and he would.

The garden was fairly large. Beginning with a perfectly laid patio at the front, a rose framed, perfectly mowed, parallel-lined lawn led 30 metres down the garden, ended by a large barrier of shrub at the bottom. Birds had long ago given up setting up nest in this shrub, on account of Tom’s feline addiction to gift-shopping for his master. Hidden behind the shrub, accessible through a subtle archway in the corner, the garden spread out into acres of wild woodland, complete with rabbits, squirrels, foxes, hedgehogs; a not-so-modest ecosystem of wildlife; and a large lake which had covered Tom with slimy green gunk on many of his unsuccessful fishing attempts. Past this, farmland; tall crops and wonderful fields full of mice rats and birds; which Tom avoided after a scare from the farm’s red-eyed foamy-mouthed dogs.

On the far bank of the lake Tom sat, upright and austere, calmly watching large multicoloured carp swim in directionless patterns, a prang of instinct within him fighting a losing battle with a sensible, hard learned fact which reminded him that wet and slimy is not nice. Every now and then birds flew over, snatching his attention for a moment, before realisation dragged him back to the closer, yet equally unattainable fish. He tired of watching, folded his legs under his body and lay down, feeling a slight bruise on his ribs where his owner had kicked him. He shuffled his position a little to avoid it, and relaxed. Looking through the dandylion seeds floating across the lake, which glistened as the sun burst through the trees, his blinking grew increasingly delayed, until his eyes were closed, and he was nodding off to the edge of sleep. The sounds of the world still registered subtly. Different birds sang their songs over each other, some whistling across the trees, sweetly and mysteriously, and some of the larger blacker creatures occasionally cackling menacingly. The light air he felt creeping through his fur was warm but refreshing, bringing a scent of spring flowers mingled faintly with the fishy, soggy undertone of the lake. His mind began putting colour to the lonely sounds and sensations as he drifted, the colours slowly taking on shape and form until he was bordering on the world of the dream. Through the myriad of colours and sounds he gradually found himself chasing a fish through a pitch-black world, but could not get any closer to it. His paws charged away from him as he swiped at the shiny tail, but never close enough to get a grip. As his swipes missed, he had the unnerving sensation of falling, and his heart skipped a beat every time. The fish suddenly turned tail and headed for him, and he saw that it had the beak of a bird snapping open and shut at him, shining bright in the darkness. Behind the beak bright green human eyes scrunched aggressively, a face of pure malice advancing towards him. He felt immensely afraid and alone and tried to turn, but could not, and as quickly as it had come for him his assailant turned away and drifted into obscurity. His pulse slowed and he took a deep unconscious breath. He was asleep.

A flea tickle on his ear. A slight shuffle of fur as a wisp of air brushed against the back of his neck. The cackle of a magpie in the trees above him. None of these disturbed Tom. If any single one of them he recognised as a threat, even in his unconscious state, he would have been on his feet in a second, alert and aware. But his unconscious mind recognised these subtle disturbances as having no resemblance to any threat he had encountered in his life, and so let him sleep on.

From the depths of sleep his mind began to ascend, his thoughts shyly appearing like little eddying currents in an otherwise calm river. Thoughts swirled and disappeared. Some grew but then vanished like they had never been there. And then some collided and joined forces to create ideas and images, which then took on the appearance of more complex thoughts themselves, interacting with each other to create a world in his mind which mingled with the sounds and senses around him to propel him once again into the world of the dreams.

He was hunting, but this time he was in a more complex world than his last brief dream, and this made him more comfortable and confident, even though the surroundings were not completely familiar to him. The scenery would change as he slowly and cautiously advanced. One moment he would be in a twisted backward representation of his familiar garden and woodland, then could emerge from a shrub or depression to unexpectedly find himself on the edge of a road or in an alley. A man, shabbily clothed, with a sad but friendly face, would always appear somewhere and look at him quietly. He would always stop to consider the man, before an uncomfortable feeling set in moving him on. The urban environment was a sidetrack though, the dominant environment being his familiar garden backdrop, where he was now hunting. He was looking for something big, a baby fox maybe, a crow would be a prize to be proud of…he moved dreamily through the dream world, looking for a victim, but the dream world had nothing to offer him today. He soon tired of searching the random, illogically positioned environment of his mind, and in his dream he fell asleep. In the world, he woke up.

His eyes opened slowly, the low sun across the lake making him squint through his lashes. In the hazy light he sensed a grasshopper in the grass ahead and his eyes opened wide. His paw shot out instinctively, trapping it to the ground. His claws held the creature in place as he pulled it into his mouth whereupon he crunched it to pieces with wide deliberate snaps of his jaw. Feeling the creature moving in his mouth as he chewed woke him up and he spat the unsavoury insect pieces onto the ground and stood up. He licked his lips of the tiny entrails and armoured limbs, and stretched his legs, one at a time behind him. He then put his front legs forward and stretched them towards the ground. He brushed a few remaining pieces of grasshopper from the corner of his mouth with a paw and raised himself to his full height, looking across the lake. He could not see the house properly for the glare of the sun setting behind it, and so looked down upon the surface of the lake. Still squinting he saw the fish swimming slowly in random circles, occasionally popping their mouths out of the water to snap something off the surface. The dandylion seeds which had filled the air a little earlier formed a sparse carpet across the surface, the threads balancing precariously on the surface tension waiting to be engulfed by a stray drop.

Tom heard the cackle of a large bird and turned quickly to face away from the lake and the house. His pupils contracted to their favourite position and his eyesight quickly adjusted to the lack of direct sunshine. He saw a large crow in the trees a little way off and some smaller birds fluttering from the same tree to the ground below. Something was on the ground which they were feeding off. He quickly lowered himself onto his haunches and slowly advanced, making no sound whatsoever on the leafy ground. The hunt was on…

The Thirty Fifth Blog of Trig - Schizophrenic's Escape

I open my eyes but I can’t see anything. I am lying face down in my bed and my clothes are on. I lie here for a while longer, drifting in and out of dreamy places, before I start stirring and stretching a little. Streetlamps illuminate the curtains so that there is enough light in my room to see the things around me. I check my phone for the time and it is exactly 3:30. If it had been 3:33 I would have frozen for a moment, thinking of the 666 connection. Have you ever woken up to find it is 3:33 in the morning? I have. It is a little unsettling. Then I remind myself that I don’t believe in ‘God’ or the ‘Devil’ and laugh. But it was 3:30 on the dot, and I sat up and looked around me. There is a joint and a small bud of cheese wrapped in cling film next to me, my phone near my feet, and a cigarette box next to that.

Last night I came to my parents house after work, which was goddamn awful. I’m suffering a severe case of holiday blues having just come back from Thailand. I had dinner with my parents and then rolled a joint and smoked it outside. Then I asked my brother if he was ready for a game of chess but he was doing something, so I sat down feeling rather stoned and played the guitar. I can’t play much but I love messing around. I strummed the few chords I know and exhausted the variety of styles I could find to play with them today. When Mat is ready we play chess, but he is not on form and I decimate him quickly. Then I say goodnight, roll a joint in my room, and grab some porn and have a wank, getting scared once or twice that someone might walk in. When I’m finished I wrap a tissue, put my cock away and fall asleep on the bed.

I awake and it is 3:30am. The joint I rolled earlier sits by my side, eager to be smoked. I am happy to oblige. It is cold outside and I send a moment’s thought to all the hapless smokers and outdoor people who must endure a bad winter. Then I wonder why I am smoking this joint at 3:30am. Then I wonder why anyone in this world does any of the pointless, horrible, unbelievable, mundane, and downright fucking amazing things they do. Maybe they do it to escape, as I think I do. Consciousness is a curse in this concrete and metal jungle we’ve been grown into.

The next morning I wake late due to the joint at 3:30am, which was followed by an hour or so of writing, and by 9am I am on an underground tube train watching people mind their own ‘busyness’. I think the reason most people avoid eye contact on the tubes, and pretty much in general, is the coldness in everyone’s eyes. It reflects the emptyness and dissatisfaction in their hearts. People are told to separate their work and personal lives, to forge split personalities that they switch on and off each day at times designated by a contract. The tube is where the have their ‘transition time’, where they prepare themselves to transform from ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ into their daytime personas.

We are Jekkyl and Hydes, but unlike Dr Jekkyl we did not inflict this upon ourselves. That implies free will. We were born into a family then sent to school and maybe shipped off to uni, and by the time we are able to acknowledge our ‘free will’, it is so bent that it can no longer be called ‘free’. We are more a list of career potentials now, picking our careers with no idea or maybe no interest in the persona we will have to adopt every day in order to ‘do well’, and usually no idea or interest in the ‘bigger picture’ of what our work will be contributing to.

Some people absorb their work-imposed ‘job description’ personalities and have trouble maintaining a ‘healthy’ ‘social life’. Some people shun their positions and try desperately to hold on to something ‘real’, stopping them from ‘doing well’ for the company. Most in this category will break under the financial pressures of wanting a partner, a family, material possessions (which are usually requirements for the former in today’s ‘civilised’ ‘Western’ society), and to a large extent (~60-80% of their waking lives) they will become their jobs. Politicians make changes which promise for a harsher, more corrupt world in the future, then cuddle their children to sleep and tell them it was just a bad dream. Parents drink and smoke, but tell their children not to do touch either on pain of cancerous death. Couples fall out over lies told, but the lies go both ways. Parents sell drugs to the local kids, but tell their own kids not to go near them. Of course the same kids will be selling the drugs back to their offspring in a few years, and the cycle of dishonest hypocrisy perpetuates. Let me repeat that: DISHONEST HYPOCRISY PERPETUATES.

Dishonesty perpetuates itself. I think there is a belief among the dishonest that life is easier if you are able to act with dishonest intent when ‘required’. This is a fallacy. I was brought up in a non-religious family, but had a strong moral upbringing. The honesty I have attempted to maintain throughout my life has been infinitely easier to achieve than the perpetuation of some of my smallest lies. The only way I could ever be whole is if I could eliminate all dishonesty from my life, and unite all the subtly different yet distinct personas I have created for dealing with the different people in my life.

Have you ever told a secret to someone you had been dishonest to or even just kept quiet about an issue around, and felt free and refreshed? I have. That relief is the breaking down of a wall separating two personas; you, and the filtered you; which is you minus the ‘lie’ you had been sitting on. That lie has been hiding behind a wall of dishonesty, a subconscious barrier which you erected through a conscious decision to keep something from someone. Breaking this barrier brings you closer to that person. These barriers split you into pieces and prevent you from being whole.

It seems impossible to completely unite all the personalities you store for the different people you encounter, but it is not. Only fear prevents this. You are afraid that some people might not want anything to do with you, because they don’t like the aspects of your life and personality which you normally keep hidden. Well fuck those people. Be yourself! Those who matter will be there still. Those who don’t will be gone. You will be an honest, complete person, with nothing to hide. The people who really matter will still be there, whether they have their own personal feelings about your life or not. Make sure you are always honest, to those around you and to yourself.

Some people may try to impose their ideas onto you; allow them this; and allow yourself to listen and understand their words. You do not have to follow them if you do not agree. You do not even have to explain to them why, but be honest as far as possible, even if your honest position is to tell them that you don’t want to explain yourself.

The weekend worship of people working 9-5 is due to the fact that for most people this is the only time they can be themselves. The reason most people don’t enjoy their work is that it is not their work, it is someone else’s. They are adopting a personality dictated by the rules of a job description. Create your own job description.

Unite yourself.

'Thirty Fifth Blog Of Trig'

The Thirty Fourth Blog Of Trig - The Reality Of The 'Banking Crisis'

My dad read a letter in the Guardian to me the other day (3rd May 2012). The letter was from Labour MP Michael Meacher, describing the implications of the data revealed in the recent 'Sunday Times Rich List', and is duplicated on his blog. Mr Meacher describes how the richest 1000 people in Britain have increased their wealth by £155 Billion in the last three years, and goes on to link this with the actions of the UK Government to assist them in maintaining this. Rather than describe his letter, I will let you read it yourself. Enjoy:



Thank you Mr Meacher.

Thirty Third Blog Of Trig..

The Thirty Third Blog Of Trig - The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition 2012

A friend who has gotten into journalism work recommended me to enter a competition hosted by The Guardian the other day. He himself entered the competition in recent years and was one of the selected few to get published and win an all-expenses paid trip abroad to cover a story. I was interested and jumped to the website to have a look (http://www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition), to read that entrants had to write 650-1000 words on one of 16 specified humanitarian themes or issues in the world. At the top of the page, the sponsorship money from Barclays Bank and GlaxoSmithKline advertised their brands proudly, bringing to my attention a disconcerting but not unfamiliar sense of hypocrisy.

To further emphasise the cause of my attention to these sponsors I will first list the themes available to entrants, which are: Filling the skills gap in African health care systems; Giving birth - the most dangerous thing an African woman can do?; Poverty and HIV: a lethal combination?; The legacy of HIV: the people left behind; How can financial inclusion improve the lives of poor people?; Why does it take images of starving children for the world to act?; Is education the greatest weapon for change in the developing world?; A human right to choose?; The contraception conundrum; After emergencies, how can communities move from short-term disaster relief to long-term recovery?; What steps need to be taken to end extreme poverty and reach economic security?; Advancing women's rights in fragile states; How are people in the global South responding to climate change?; Malnutrition: The Hidden Crisis; The vital role of healthworkers in reducing child mortality; Growing the future: how can farming attract more young people?

Now: Barclays. I have a fairly negative opinion of banks, for their indiscriminate investments into global corporations responsible for everything from oil spills, to high-tech weaponry, dangerous chemicals and by-products, sweat shops employing children at slave wages, planned product obsolescence, fraudulent financial activities and tax dodging, money laundering, funding of mass-murderers, but also for the very fraudulent structure of the banking system itself, the basic reality of the creation of money and its' intrinsic value, all the way through its' life until it hits the peoples' pockets to end up back in another bank, and as a result of all this and more, for their encouraging of the upper extreme of the 'capitalist' way of thought, in direct contradiction with the ideals that inspire charity and humanitarian activism.

The day after I was shown the competition I found an article shared on Facebook entitled, "Barclays accepts shame award for its role in causing hunger across the world".
This article, by the 'World Development Movement', an anti-poverty campaigning organisation, described how two of their campaigners (picture above courtesy of 'World Development Movement') went to Canary Wharf to present an award for Barclays Capital’s 'irresponsible corporate behaviour as the UK’s lead player in food speculation'. The site goes on to say:

The World Development Movement estimates that Barclays made up to £189 million from speculating on food in 2011. The bank is the biggest UK player in commodity markets, and claims to be in the global top three. Massive influxes of speculative money in food markets have been driving sharp price spikes, sending the cost of food soaring beyond the reach of the world’s poorest people."

"Barclays is making millions by speculating on food, but speculation is driving prices up, squeezing household budgets here in the UK and pushing millions into hunger and poverty worldwide. Not a penny of this speculative money is invested in improving agriculture, and it benefits no-one except a few wealthy investment bankers. Food is a basic human right, not just an asset class, and we need tough controls to prevent banks like Barclays pushing its price beyond the reach of millions of people."

I stick 'Barclays crimes' into Google and see what comes up. There's a lot. One of the first results is from 'Burma Campaign UK' . They say the following:

"Barclays Bank has agreed to pay a $298m (£190m) fine for breaking US sanctions against several dictatorships. The bank had been charged with breaking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act between 1995 and 2006. The countries involved were Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan."

"Have Barclays helped arm a dictatorship (Burma) which uses rape, torture and slave labour, and stands accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity?"

So Barclays Bank gives The Guardian a few £Million for sponsorship of their 'International Development Journalism Competition', and what does that do? It creates the false image that Barclays is an ethical, considerate organisation that cares about the people of the world and wants what's best for everyone. This is the opposite of the truth. Bear in mind also that I have only slightly touched on two tiny aspects of Barclays' £1.5Trillion asset empire (note: £1.5 Trillion is what 1 million people on £40k a year earn in just under 40 years; if all of Barclays' 146,100 employees earned £40k a year it would take them 256 years to earn that much, saving every penny - #simplemath).

As a final note, the aforementioned WDM explains how Barclays' "£1.5 billion investment banking bonus pool could pay for school meals for two years for the 23 million primary age children who attend school hungry across Africa." - but Barclays really does care. It says so on their website.

Let's have a brief look at GlaxoSmithKline. As with the banking system, I have a lot of negative impressions of the pharmaceutical industry, or as the theorists call it, 'Big Pharma'.

Typing 'GlaxoSmithKline crimes' into Google quickly yields such distressing headlines as, "GlaxoSmithKline fined over vaccine tests that killed 14 babies."

Just below that an article from 'The New York Times'  states, "The British drug company GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday that it had agreed to pay $3 billion to settle United States government civil and criminal investigations into its sales practices for numerous drugs."

The website 'Natural News' goes on to say that, "after being exposed for illegally marketing drugs, paying off doctors to promote dangerous drugs, and manipulating scientific data to get dangerous drugs approved, GSK has essentially been pardoned by the US government in exchange for $3 billion."

The website 'Corporate Watch' tells us that, "GlaxoSmithKline owns dozens of chemical plants all over the world. The chemical plant they own in Ulverston is marked by it’s carcinogenic emissions and repeated violations of environmental regulations."

The list goes on and on. In 2011 the company raked in approximately £43Billion in revenue.

I tried to convince myself to enter the competition, but I couldn't do it unless it was on my terms, so I decided to scrap the themes and write a brief critical piece on the hypocrisy of an 'International Development Journalism' competition sponsored by such organisations as Barclays and GlaxoSmithKline, and this is that piece. Took me about an hour.

This is the 'Thirty Third Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Thirty Second Blog Of Trig - As I Observe

As I Observe fearful thought, I forget myself, I smile, I laugh, and it is gone.

As I Observe angry thought, I forget myself, I smile, I laugh, and it is gone.

As I Observe egotistical thought, I forget myself, I smile, I laugh, and it is gone.

As I Observe, I forget myself, I smile, I laugh, and I see clearly.

The Thirty First Blog Of Trig - Fear, Anger & Happiness

Anger is the past. Anger is the recollection and repetition of negative experience.

Fear is the future. Fear is the construction and repetition of unpleasant imaginary possibilities.

Happiness is now. Happiness is the acceptance of now.

Thirty First Blog of Trig....

The Thirtieth Blog Of Trig - You Can Quote Me On This

I'm not saying love angry offensive people in the traditional sense, so much as loving the experience of life with no fear, not wasting the amazing miracle we are priviledged to witness on negative emotions that reduce us from our natural higher state of ecstatic participatory engagement with the world. In that state we are also in the best possible place from which to react to angry offensive people in a way that can better the nature of the exchange. You can quote me on that.

The Twenty Ninth Blog of Trig - Why We Shouldn't Smoke

My mother's father Sam was a wonderful man. Many of my earliest most prominent memories are of him spending time with me, teaching me to play snooker, badminton, cards, carpentry...I remember his patience as I got something wrong again and again, and he would calmly explain what I was doing wrong and tell me to try again.

Sam and my grandmother Ida; 'nanna'; owned a successful upholstery business that they had built from scratch. My granddad was an amazing craftsman, taking care of the carpentry, and my nanna took care of the upholstery and the business matters. They had a factory where they built luxury sofas with matching curtains and drapings and anything else their clients wanted. They were good to their employees and paid them fair wages. Nanna since told me about how she argued with Sam because he was paying one of his carpenters more than he was paying himself. "He's a hard worker and he deserves it," was his reply. Nanna was certainly the 'business-brain'. Sam took on a troublesome young lad as an apprentice at the pleading request of his mother. My granddad taught him well and he later went on to run his own successful business, doing very well for himself and his family. He was kind and generous, as is my nanna, but he was more so.

Sam served in Europe in the second world war. We have a stand-up cigarette lighter in our living room which he made from a piece of a downed Messerschmidt wing in France. Ida served with the British army in Germany after the war, liaising with Russian and German diplomats as they broke Europe in half.

They married fairly late in their lives, not long after Sam's brother married Ida's sister, bringing the two families closer together. Nanna tells me that Sam was the kindest man she ever knew, but his brother, "if he was any more difficult he'd be impossible!"

My mother was born in 1962 and they devoted themselves to her, raising her as an only child, but surrounded by the extended family of an already extended family.

In January of 1983 my mother turned 21, and on June 27th of that year I was born in Barnet Maternity Hospital. Not much more than a year later my mother had a stillbirth. I don't remember much of that, but I remember the morning of July 30th 1986, waking to hear a baby crying, and finding that my mother had given birth, in her bedroom as planned, with her midwife by her side. I had a baby brother who my parents named Matthew Luke.

When we were both very young Nanna had an aneurysm close to her heart. She was given a small chance of surviving the operation which saw her chest opened up, leaving a scar which remains a reminder to this day of how close she came to death. But she did survive, and she went back to work with Sam until he got ill.

Our Granddad Sam was a smoker. He also smothered every meal with an excessive amount of salt, which contributed to what happened to him. I think it was early 1991 when he got ill. He had a swelling on one of the main arteries leading from his heart and spent some time in the Royal Free Hospital where I remember us visiting him. I can remember not wanting to go there, maybe because I did not like the hospital, maybe because I did not understand the seriousness of his illness, but probably a combination of these and my desire to go out and play. He was pretty much his usual self in the hospital, and I remember getting in trouble with the nurses for pulling the panic cord in his bathroom. I thought it was the light switch.

He was sent home from the hospital because of a lack of beds. I can remember my dad being angry at Margaret Thatcher and the other 'Tories' for pulling the money out of the NHS. He was sent home and while back at home he collapsed, within a day or so if I remember correctly. He went to hospital, but was again sent home because of a shortage of beds. The next time he collapsed it was because the artery in his chest had burst.

My brother and I were not allowed to visit him in intensive care, our parents not wanting us to have memories of an unconscious granddad with tubes and drips protruding from him, so we recorded tapes of us both telling him to get well soon and sending our love, which they played to him when they visited, and although he was not conscious, I'm sure he heard us. My mother spent many nights staying at the hospital, and we were sent to stay with our dad's parents in Salisbury for a week towards the end of June, to give mum and dad some rest, especially mum. I remember having panic attacks many nights, unable to sleep and crying uncontrollably for no reason that I could find, until I fell asleep from exhaustion. We returned home at the end of the week, after my 8th birthday on the Thursday.

I think it was after school on the Monday that our parents both picked us up, fighting back tears. My mum was obviously distraught in my memory, but I was too young to put two and two together. We went home and they bought me and Matthew ice cream from the van outside the house. Matthew and I went into the garden and were eating our ice cream when they came out and told us that granddad had died. The ice cream dropped from our hands and we ran inside to our room crying uncontrollably. Our parents joined us on the bottom bunk of our bed and we all cried our eyes out together for some time.

One of the main reasons Sam died was because he smoked. Other things contributed, like the salt, and of course the evil scumbags in government who decided to drain money out of our hospitals leading to bed shortages, but the fact remains that the smoking played a major part.

It was more than twenty years ago that he died, but it still affects our family, especially those of my mother and nanna. Nanna, having lived alone for the last twenty years, has become increasingly depressed over time, despite the attention, especially my parents, have given her. She spent her life working, going on to marry a man she loved, continuing to work with him to build the home they hoped to retire in. Shortly before he died Sam finished making a beautiful suite of furniture with which to furnish the front room they had almost finished decorating. We uncovered that furniture recently, and it finally graced the room that it was made for twenty years ago. It looks beautiful.

Sam and Ida spent their entire lives working hard, paying their taxes in contribution to the society they live in, making an undoubtedly positive contribution to society, and hoping to retire in comfort. Then Sam died and left a hole in all our lives. Nanna has been alone for twenty years in the lovely home that they built together, and the loneliness and depression has ruined her mind despite everyone's best efforts. My brother, only four years old when he died, missed out on many years of love and teachings from one of the best teachers I ever had. My mother's life is fraught with worry and stress due to the fragile state of her mother, who simultaneously hates being a burden but demands attention from her every day. The entire family was robbed by fate.

Every time you smoke a cigarette to deal with some stress in your life, think to yourself; does your stress arise from your efforts to provide for your future? Imagine spending your life struggling to provide a future for yourself and your family, smoking to deal with the stress, only to die early and undo all the work you have done. Think of the faces of your loved ones as the tears wash their face with the salt that could have contributed to your early demise. Think of the struggle the people you love could face after your heart gives in when it cannot pump past the crap that has clogged your arteries. Think of Sam, and stop smoking.

'The Twenty Ninth Blog Of Trig'.

The Twenty Eighth Blog Of Trig - Lost Souls

His hands grip the arms of the chair like an incessant electrocution, his body rigid except for his feet, which alternately pump to a beat that only he hears. His eyes bore through me, driven by an unflinching power that I don't feel anyone else understands. They see it, because I sense their fear under his gaze, but they do not understand it, and this is the reason for their fear. I try to hold his gaze but I can't. I'm not strong enough to hold it, and I feel pretty strong.

My words seem fruitless and my thoughts powerless. There is nothing I can do but be present, being present feeling the helplessness that he must feel in abundance, locked in an ironic battle with the strength he maintains.

Surrounded by lost souls he wanders the halls, waiting for orders; "take this"; the 'cure'; the poison that will cure your poison; the business that poisons the souls of poisoned souls cares not for lost children. They are not compatible with the Zeitgeist, that which denies its' children, denies them a family and dooms them to the orphanage of eternity. Shuffled into obscurity, marked with the repellent status of the indifferent, the lost children of today take their poison or it is thrust into them, helpless, careless, hopeless they accept their fate and hold back their hate for another day. The lost souls.

The Twenty Eighth Blog Of Trig.

The Twenty Seventh Blog Of Trig - The Sound of the Initiator

I was thinking about music and sound a while back, and I thought about the way we speak of one beat being faster or slower than another. Surely, I thought, it makes logical sense to speak of frequency rather than speed. We describe this thing called a beat as going faster or speeding up, but technically it is more frequent. Speed should be confined to continuous change such as in motion.

Then I went deeper...consider a quick burst of sound. If repeated periodically we can describe the resulting rhythm in terms of its' frequency, and this is what is mistaken for speed. We talk of 'bps' or 'beats per second', which is another way of saying frequency; how frequent the beats are. Let's take a small section ('wavepacket'?) of this rhythm, and 'speed it up' (increase the frequency) until it sounds like a beat itself, we can them repeat the resulting blip and produce a new rhythm containing the original rhythm hidden in each beat. We can then repeat the process, taking a packet of these beats and increasing the frequency until they themselves are a beat, and start again.

This led me to the idea of frequencies hidden within frequencies (...within frequencies). A sound wave, or a burst of waves, can be repeated regularly to form a beat. A section or 'wavepacket' of this beat can then be 'sped up' to the point where it becomes a 'blip', the individual beats so close together that we cannot distinguish them by ear. Repeat this again and again, repeat it indefinitely to form an infinitely complex sound, with completely different characteristics dependent upon the wavelengths/frequencies you are tuned in to. Unless you were on the level of the original blip, looking 'down' on your creation, you would see (/hear) around you an infinitely massive world of vibration, most of which is out of your range. You would only hear the frequency within your range, and might believe that this was all that exists. The further down the vibrational chain you are resident, the more impossible it would seem to see/hear the top of the chain; the sound of the initiator.

'Twenty Seventh Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Twenty Sixth Blog Of Trig - The Only Miracle

YOU SILLY PEOPLE HAVE ALL FORGOTTEN THE ONLY MIRACLE THAT YOU HAVE, OR EVER WILL WITNESS : YOUR OWN LIVES.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THIS ROLLING MOMENT OF LIFE IS A MIRACLE. REMEMBER IT LIKE YOU DID WHEN YOU FIRST OPENED YOUR EYES, FIRST TOUCHED WATER, FIRST BREATHED AIR.
YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN.
REMEMBER.
YOUR LIFE IS A MIRACLE, THE ONLY MIRACLE, SIMULTANEOUS AND PARALLEL TO ALL OTHERS.
WE SHOULD ALL EMBRACE THIS MIRACLE TOGETHER.
IDEOLOGIES CAME AFTER.
ABANDON THEM.

The Twenty Fifth Blog Of Trig - Significance

I had my arm around her shoulder. She had hers around my waist. We stood in the garden looking up at the stars as the clouds blew swiftly past, illuminated by the bright full moon that shined down on us through light clouds that bent a rainbow-halo around it. I commented on how peaceful it was. She didn't answer. There was no need to. The peaceful silence agreed wholeheartedly.
"I sometimes look up at the sky and I feel so, insignificant," she said. I look at the stars, focusing on one, then another. I wait for the right response to come. The right response is not something I always feel I can deduce from thought. Sometimes I just have to wait for it to just come rather than thinking too hard. My response came without effort.
"Existence is the only significance."

Existence is the only significance.
So simple. So true. So elusive.
Top of the food chain.
Cap on the pyramid.
Existence is the only significance.
The foundation of everything we hold dear.
The substance of experience.
Existence is the only significance.

PoEPIC!

This is 'Twenty Fifth Blog of Trig' signing off...