The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category

That’s an actual photo of a Lon­don bus advert placed by Release, an organ­i­sa­tion com­mit­ted to reform­ing UK drug laws.

Here’s Release’s mis­sion state­ment, from their website:

“Release is the national cen­tre of exper­tise on drugs and drugs law – pro­vid­ing free and con­fi­den­tial spe­cial­ist advice to the pub­lic and pro­fes­sion­als. Release also cam­paigns for changes to UK drug pol­icy to bring about a fairer and more com­pas­sion­ate legal frame­work to man­age drug use in our society.”

Release have launched this new pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign, please visit their site for more details. Its sen­si­ble, log­i­cal and very true.

And click here for the The Guardian’s take on the campaign.

Could this be the first step in the right direc­tion? Let’s hope so!

Update 10th June 2009:
Since post­ing this a few days ago, the ad cam­paign has been cen­sored by adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tors and taken down. Click here to read more.

Hello. Wel­come back. Did ya miss me?

Its ram­ble time. Woke up too early fol­low­ing too lit­tle sleep. Must focus.

On what?

Its a pleas­ant, relax­ing day off, or rather it should be, but I’ve got heaps to do ‘round the house and I might even wan­der up to my local high street.

Do they call it a “high street” because you have to get high before you go there? No? Well, tough, because I will be high when I go.

It should be a rule that you have to be high before allowed onto your local high street. It would make the entire shop­ping expe­ri­ence more pleas­ant for every­one involved. The shop assis­tants would think all the cus­tomers were mel­low and pleas­ant, the shop assis­tants would be help­ful with­out being over­bear­ing and I wouldn’t nearly get into fist fights with all the rude, surly peo­ple knock­ing into me and block­ing my way.

Oh wouldn’t it be grand?

As soon as they start open­ing cannabis cafes around the coun­try, this is the sort of relaxed Utopia we can expect. Until then it will con­tinue to be no fun.

Did you see a group of for­mer pres­i­dents from Latin Amer­ica are urg­ing the world to adopt a con­trolled and reg­u­lated cannabis mar­ket? Did you look here?

Even the UN is work­ing towards this fairly obvi­ous and sen­si­ble con­clu­sion. In the good ol’ US of A, they are mov­ing in this direc­tion. Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama has even said that fed­eral raids against med­ical mar­i­juana estab­lish­ments must end and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment needs to start respect­ing laws passed by indi­vid­ual states.

Many states in Amer­ica have already decrim­i­nalised weed. That means it is con­sid­ered the low­est pos­si­ble polic­ing pri­or­ity, with penal­ties for pos­ses­sion being the equiv­a­lent of a minor traf­fic or park­ing offence.

Why can’t we do that here?

We could and we were going to until Gor­don Brown and Jacqui Smith started muck­ing around with things. These two nin­com­poops believe laws should be used to “send a mes­sage” to peo­ple, rather than reflect the sci­en­tific evi­dence or the truth.

This week the Advi­sory Coun­cil for the Mis­use of Drugs (ACMD). the body that advises the gov­ern­ment on drug pol­icy stated that ecstasy (E, pills, MDMA), be re-classified from its cur­rent A grade, back into Class B, to reflect its rel­a­tive harm to the user. Sounds sen­si­ble enough as E is not in the same league as coke and smack.

The head of the ACMD, Pro­fes­sor. David Nutt went on to say that tak­ing ecstasy is no worse than horse­back rid­ing and an equiv­a­lent num­ber of peo­ple die from both activ­i­ties annu­ally. You would have thought that he said Jesus was secretly Satan for the drub­bing he took over the com­ments. He was even forced to apol­o­gise and his future on the ACMD has been questioned.

Just for telling the truth!

In Amer­ica, MDMA has been used by men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als to assist in the ther­apy process. Would med­ical doc­tors pre­scribe some­thing poten­tially lethal when their first rule is to “do no harm”? What do they know that we don’t know.

Noth­ing! The dif­fer­ence is our gov­ern­ment uses leg­is­la­tion to “send a mes­sage” rather than to treat peo­ple with respect. Leg­is­lat­ing moral­ity never works, because peo­ple have their own moral com­passes and that counts for something.

The sim­ple fact is that any­one who’s ever smoked a joint or necked an E knows that what the gov­ern­ment is say­ing is bull­shit. What do you reckon that does to the government’s credibility?

It knocks it into the toi­let. When a gov­ern­ment lies about any­thing, we all suffer.

Drug tak­ing is a health issue, not a moral or legal issue and try­ing to force it only does a dis­ser­vice to every­one. If I choose to ingest MDMA, or cannabis or choco­late or even bro­ken glass, its my body and my choice.

Crim­i­nal­is­ing mil­lions of peo­ple serves no one. If you’re hav­ing trou­ble with drugs, you should be able to seek help with­out wor­ry­ing about end­ing up with a crim­i­nal record. And if you are enjoy­ing them respon­si­bly, it should be nobody’s busi­ness but your own.

Com­mon sense and com­pas­sion will even­tu­ally rule the day, but for now we’ll have to just keep watch­ing our lead­ers screw things up more and more. Its frus­trat­ing, annoy­ing and unavoid­able, for as long as politi­cians can use the debate over drugs to score points with Mid­dle Eng­land, the sense­less per­se­cu­tion of peo­ple who enjoy some­thing other than booze will continue.

Gee, that wasn’t as nearly as ram­bling as I expected it to be. Lucky you, or maybe even lucky me.

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

As much as I like to pre­tend I am per­fec­tion per­son­i­fied, the truth is I am a deeply flawed individual.

My life is lit­er­ally lit­tered with bad deci­sions and unfor­tu­nate choices, the results of which con­tinue to dog my days on a daily basis.

It’s fine to reflect upon ones mis­takes, as long as one is not mis­taken into think­ing that some­thing can be done to rec­tify them. The choices you make can’t usu­ally be undone and the con­se­quences will be with you until the day you die and may even con­tinue to effect oth­ers after you’re gone.

I’ve got no par­tic­u­lar deci­sions in mind, this has more to do with a gen­eral overview than any­thing specific.

I don’t want you to think every choice I’ve made in my life has been wrong, I’ve made some good choices too, but lately I’ve been think­ing about some of those moments in my life, where I zigged when per­haps I should have zagged.

It’s easy to sec­ond guess your own deci­sions after the fact, when the full­ness of time and expe­ri­ence yield the miss­ing pieces of the puz­zle that weren’t avail­able at the time of tak­ing the deci­sion. It’s also an exer­cise in futility.

Much of life is futile and point­less, so its not really enough of a rea­son not to think about these things.

There’s a the­ory that states every time a deci­sion is made, the uni­verse is split and alter­na­tive real­i­ties fol­low both paths and that all of exis­tence con­sists of a “multi-verse” of infi­nite exis­tence. Every­thing that can hap­pen, does hap­pen, just not in your reality.

Some­where in the multi-verse, there’s a ver­sion of me that suc­cess­ful, happy and fully ful­filled. No doubt taller, too.

How’d I get stuck in this real­ity? If there really is a multi-verse, then in at least one of them (and pos­si­bly many more), I’m king of the planet and in charge of you all. Don’t worry, if there are infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, then you get to be king or queen of the world your­self, and I get to be your slave.

Not all of the real­i­ties in the multi-verse would be sunny, as I expect there are plenty that don’t turn out as well. Think about it, how many real­i­ties exist with­out me? Per­haps in some, I was still born and never even got to take my first breath.

I know that even when my deci­sions have been wrong, they’ve been right for me at the time. I have to believe that, because I can’t travel back in time and change them. At least not yet, any­way, but give me another six months and my time machine will be up and run­ning and I’ll be charg­ing loads of dosh for rides to the past and future. Think you can afford it?

My many per­son­al­ity flaws, at least as I see them, colour my every move. I’m cer­tainly my own worst enemy and I’m more respon­si­ble for hold­ing myself back than any­one else.

I used to gen­uinely believe that any­thing is pos­si­ble, but as I get older, I’m less con­vinced. As you get older, the cor­ri­dor of options nar­rows and while you may still cre­ate the illu­sion of choice, your choices become more and more lim­ited with each pass­ing day.

I can’t remem­ber where I heard this one, but it made a lot of sense: “You spend the first half of your life acquir­ing things and the sec­ond half hav­ing them all taken away from you.”

I’m unde­ni­ably in the 2nd half of my life. It’s not too much of a stretch to see where things are going for me. Its all down­hill from here.

Can you tell that my birth­day is approach­ing? It’s about 2 months away. Hey ho.

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I do things dif­fer­ently? Of course I would, what hon­est per­son wouldn’t?

That doesn’t mean I would do every­thing dif­fer­ently, but there are a few wrongs I would cer­tainly put right.

It doesn’t mat­ter because no one gets a sec­ond chance, except in the multi-verse real­ity where rein­car­na­tion hap­pens and it was just my luck not to end up in that one either.

Socrates said “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing”. If that is really true, then I have the most wor­thy life known to man.

Either that or my nar­cis­sis­tic ten­den­cies are start­ing to over­whelm being an obsessive-compulsive sociopath with manic-depressive tendencies.

You have a nice day, too.

I don’t think any­one is going to be sur­prised that I’m hop­ing (and wish­ing and pray­ing) that Barack Hus­sein Obama will be elected as the next Pres­i­dent of the United States.

If the New York Times can endorse some­body, why can’t I? Here on the inter­net, we’re all equal, though I don’t make you reg­is­ter to get to the good content.

If you’re sur­prised by my endorse­ment, then you don’t really know me very well. I’m extremely lib­eral and not ashamed of it.

Being lib­eral is a good thing, it means you are open to pro­gres­sive ideas and new ways of look­ing at things. Being lib­eral means I’m more inter­ested in the hap­pi­ness of peo­ple, then main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo for the sake of it.

Many lib­er­als have become afraid of the word and now call them­selves pro­gres­sives. You say tomato…

If gays can take back own­er­ship of the word “queer”, then why can’t we reclaim the word “lib­eral”? Like gays, lib­er­als have noth­ing to fear or be ashamed of and we should all come out of the brainy closet.

I’m lib­eral because I am smart. Smart peo­ple are liberal.

All you need to do is spend 10 min­utes watch­ing FoxNews and you will see what I mean. They don’t allow many peo­ple with lib­eral views on-air, they stick to their con­ser­v­a­tive agenda all the time. The over­whelm­ing amount of stu­pid­ity that spews from the mouths of their pre­sen­ters, guests and pun­dits will be more than enough to prove my point.

I watch FoxNews strictly for com­edy value and if you added some canned laugh­ter, you’d think you were watch­ing a bad sit­com for dimwits.

Being lib­eral means not fear­ing change. “Change” can be a good thing and if Amer­ica needs one good thing right now, it would be change. “Change we can believe in”, if you will.

Obama offers that change. As one of the most lib­eral mem­bers of the US sen­ate, which is demon­strated by his vot­ing record, Obama is offer­ing Amer­ica the chance to right the myr­iad of wrongs from the last 8 years.

Yes, I am talk­ing to you George W. (for What­ever hap­pens next week, he’s still his­tory come Jan­u­ary) Bush.

Obama has the ideas, intel­li­gence and charisma to be a real game-changer. He can help restore Amer­ica back to its for­mer glory.

Maybe you’re not old enough to remem­ber way back when, but peo­ple actu­ally used to like Amer­ica and I don’t just mean the shop­ping and the enor­mous por­tions in restaurants.

It’s kind of amaz­ing if you con­sider how much real dam­age Georgie Bush junior has done to America’s rep­u­ta­tion and stand­ing in the world. Com­pared to Bush the lesser, even Richard M. Nixon seem like a decent guy.

Think back to 8 years ago, when Big Bill Clin­ton was run­ning the show. The econ­omy was in great shape, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment was debt free and had a huge sur­plus of cash, Amer­ica was at war with nearly no one and Amer­i­cans abroad didn’t have to pre­tend to be Cana­dian. These are all good things.

Eight years of the Repub­li­cans not only undid all the good that came from Clin­ton, they thought of loads of bad shit of their own to do, to drag Amer­ica down even further.

Before you start think­ing, “what does some twat in Lon­don know about Amer­ica?”, I should, in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure let you know that I spent around half of my life liv­ing in Amer­ica, so I am in a posi­tion to jus­ti­fi­ably com­ment on all things Amer­i­can. I con­tinue to con­sume a lot of Amer­i­can media and I am always across every­thing in the news — it’s an occu­pa­tional hazard/bonus (delete as appropriate).

I also get loads of Amer­i­can vis­i­tors to my site, obvi­ously far more than from any other coun­try, includ­ing the UK. On the inter­net, Amer­i­cans out­num­ber everyone!

I like Amer­i­cans and I actu­ally like Amer­ica too. At its heart Amer­ica is good, kind and just coun­try, pop­u­lated by good, kind and just peo­ple. They can’t help it that their elected lead­ers are mas­ters at manip­u­lat­ing the media by spoon­feed­ing them crap that the media is too stooopid to question.

In the after­math of 9/11, your media failed you. Your gov­ern­ment wrapped every press release in the stars and stripes and ques­tioned the patri­o­tism of any jour­nal­ist who dared to ques­tion the offi­cial ver­sion of events. That’s espe­cially true about the “war” in Iraq.

I’ve got some news for you, it was never really a war. It was an ille­gal inva­sion of a sov­er­eign nation, jus­ti­fied with bold-faced lies. We were lied to, over and over, for no good reason.

The inva­sion was brief, the occu­pa­tion seems end­less. The geniuses in charge had no con­crete plans on what to do once they arrived in Iraq. It was an unmit­i­gated dis­as­ter and con­tin­ues to be one.

I don’t know how many peo­ple died in Iraq, I’ve lost count. And for what?

Noth­ing at all. No good rea­son. No rea­son at all.

But what about the “surge”?

The surge is mean­ing­less, extra troops haven’t calmed things down, cold hard cash is what’s done it. Again, your liars, I mean lead­ers are not only nego­ti­at­ing with “ter­ror­ists”, they are brib­ing them with large sums of cash not to stage attacks any more.

It’s a bit like giv­ing the school bully your milk money in return for him not beat­ing you up that day. It doesn’t make you tough, it makes you a wimp and a wuss.

Since when does Amer­ica pay its ene­mies and groups labelled as ter­ror­ists not to attack?

Since a cou­ple of years ago.

Can you imag­ine them writ­ing a cheque to Osama Bin Laden in return for a promise not to plan another attack on Amer­ica? To me, it sounds like it would be the next log­i­cal step from their unof­fi­cial “brib­ing the enemy pol­icy” in Iraq.

The point is that the Repub­li­cans have fucked Amer­ica over every which way from here to xmas and back again. Every day, in every way, they have done some­thing to screw you all over and you’ve had to just lie there take it like a bitch.

Not any more. This time, you actu­ally have a gen­uine choice to make between to polar oppo­sites. That doesn’t hap­pen very often, maybe once in a lifetime.

Like 1960, when the choice was between Nixon and JFK and prob­a­bly not since.

You can choose between four more years of the same bull­shit, or you can elect a man who will set Amer­ica back on its true course.

Here’s another word you shouldn’t fear: Socialism.

In Amer­ica, you’re taught, or rather indoc­tri­nated into the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and told that social­ism is just another word for com­mu­nism and that’s just plain wrong.

The state should not exist to sup­press and exploit you, it should act in such a way as to ben­e­fit all of the peo­ple, all of the time.

The state, your gov­ern­ment should be there to pro­tect you, and not just from imag­i­nary enemies.

The state should be there to help you, as an indi­vid­ual as well as for the greater good of soci­ety. You don’t pay your taxes to be kept in your place, yet that’s what the state does, rather than encour­ag­ing you to flour­ish and realise your potential.

I’ll go with the clas­sic exam­ple and its some­thing I can com­ment on with author­ity because I’ve lived under both sys­tems, pri­vate and nation­alised health care.

You have excel­lent doc­tors and hos­pi­tals in Amer­ica, some of the best in the world, yet your life expectancy is in decline. There’s a sim­ple rea­son for that, some peo­ple are denied access to your fine doc­tors and hos­pi­tals purely on eco­nomic grounds. If you can’t pay the extor­tion­ate fees charged, then you have only one choice, to get sicker and die.

That’s wrong.

That is so wrong.

Health­care should be a basic human right pro­vided equally by the state. You shouldn’t be penalised for not hav­ing the dosh to stump up for treat­ment, if that lack of treat­ment results in your death or incapacity.

Here in the UK, where I’ve also spent around half of my life, I’ve been a patient of the NHS. The stan­dard of the health­care I’ve received has been first rate, though I’m not going to deny there have been some wait­ing times that have been longer than I’ve liked and to be fair that has improved dra­mat­i­cally of late.

I can ring my GP’s surgery, any week­day morn­ing and get an appoint­ment to see my GP that same day. My cur­rent GP, who I’ve seen for over a decade is excel­lent, I never feel rushed, he always takes the time to lis­ten to me and he doesn’t hes­i­tate to pre­scribe an expen­sive drug or test, if he thinks it is nec­es­sary. The flip­side to this is that he is often run­ning behind on his appoint­ments and I usu­ally have to wait to see him. A lit­tle bit of my time is a small (and only) price to pay for access to excel­lent health care.

This is what I don’t get about peo­ple who oppose any form of social­ism; what’s wrong with help­ing oth­ers? Why should any­one resent any­one else receiv­ing assis­tance from any­one, whether its a rel­a­tive or a com­plete stranger or the gov­ern­ment? Isn’t it a good thing to help others?

Isn’t that what Jesus would do?

When some­one else is in pain, do you not have sym­pa­thy for them? Do you not have the empa­thy to even feel their pain? Does it not touch you, even slightly?

If you could feed all the hun­gry chil­dren in the world, would you? Regard­less of the cost?

If you could cure all the sick peo­ple in the world, would you? Regard­less of the cost?

I would.

Ninety per­cent of the wealth in this world is in the hands of 1% of the people.

That’s just fucked. You can’t jus­tify that, no mat­ter how hard you might try. It’s 100% fucked. Par­don my fuck­ing French.

The redis­tri­b­u­tion of the wealth doesn’t mean the lux­ury police are going to come to your house and nick your flatscreen telly and give it to some ran­dom poor person.

The redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth doesn’t mean we’ll have to dress like Chair­man Mao, even if you think his uni­form was fashionable.

All it means is poor peo­ple pay less tax, rich peo­ple who can afford it, pay more. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Rich peo­ple spend any way, because they are rich and a slightly higher tax bur­den isn’t going to effect them very much.

Poor peo­ple pay­ing less tax, means poor peo­ple (remem­ber the 99% of the rest of us) will have more money to spend. Spend­ing money fuels the econ­omy, a fuelled econ­omy can cre­ate jobs, new jobs means more peo­ple work­ing, with more money in their pock­ets to spend, which fur­ther fuels the economy.…

You get the idea.

Some­one has to redress this hor­ri­ble eco­nomic imbal­ance and that’s Barack Obama. He wants to do it, don’t you want him to do it?

As I sit here in my north Lon­don lair, exactly one week before elec­tion day, Obama is way ahead in the polls, but his vic­tory is not assured. Every reg­is­tered voter out there in inter­net­land has to vote to insure he wins and wins big. Bill Clin­ton is right, Obama needs a huge man­date to affect the kind of change he has in mind and he needs to have the Democ­rats sweep the house and the sen­ate too.

I’m also con­cerned that the bad guys will steal it from Obama, as they did to Al Gore in 2000 and prob­a­bly Kerry in 2004 as well, at least in Ohio. Those elec­tronic vot­ing machines sound dodgy and I’ve read uncon­firmed reports in the early elec­tronic vot­ing of bal­lots being “flipped” from Obama to that old guy with the forced smile and ident-i-kit wife.

If they steal it from the Democ­rats again this time, burn the place to the fuck­ing ground! Let’s hope they don’t, as I don’t want to see any coun­try in flames, but if they fuck around with this elec­tion, they deserve it. SWAT teams are allegedly already on standby for pos­si­ble unrest, so this sce­nario is possible

Barack Hus­sein Obama is America’s best hope. Don’t let your­selves down, don’t let the world down. Please vote for him.

And for those of you that still might have reser­va­tions over Mr. Obama because of his race, shame on you. Obama is a remark­ably intel­li­gent and edu­cated man and his race should not be a factor.

If you’re afraid to vote for him, because his skin colour dif­fers from yours, please look deep into your heart and soul and finally see the truth about race — like most things in this world, it’s mean­ing­less. We’re all the same on the inside, our hearts all beat, our lungs all breath the same air.

But if you really can’t look past his race, per­haps this lit­tle cam­paign jin­gle I wrote on Obama’s behalf might help.

(sung to the tune of Santogold’s “You’ll Find A Way”)

You know you wanna
You know you wanna
vote for Barack Obama
You know you wanna
You know you wanna
‘cause a white woman was his momma

It’s catchy, ain’t it?

Look, all jok­ing aside, if you are reg­is­tered to vote in the United States of Amer­ica, I don’t just urge you to get out and vote, I implore you to vote for Obama.

If I’ve man­aged to sway just one unde­cided voter with this post, then I’ll feel like I’ve done my part, but I’d like to sway even more. If you know some­one who’s waver­ing and you think I might be able to have a pos­i­tive effect on their deci­sion, please feel free to email this to them or send them a link to my site.

It’s not just Obama who’s count­ing on you, and not just your nation, but the entire world.

Please don’t let us down.

Why isn’t THIS WOMAN in charge of UK drug policy?

I’m talk­ing about Lady Amanda Nei­d­path, the head of the Beck­ley Foun­da­tion, the group respon­si­ble for THIS REPORT which I wrote about recently.

Why are our elected offi­cial so afraid of the truth?

Why do we ignore experts on issues which are con­tro­ver­sial? Cer­tainly peo­ple with this sort of exten­sive knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence on any sub­ject (includ­ing and espe­cially drug use) should be embraced, as should their conclusions.

We don’t expect enough from our lead­ers, we should expect more. We should receive more too.

Let’s put Lady Nei­d­path in charge of the UK’s drug strat­egy. She’s already got my vote!

Back in 1992, it was the “econ­omy, stu­pid”, but here in the future, its the stu­pid economy.

The econ­omy is stu­pid because it has been built on credit, not actual assets. That’s stu­pid and its no won­der its tank­ing now.

The peo­ple run­ning big busi­ness are stu­pid too, for let­ting things get to this unbe­liev­able state.

But worst of all are the col­lec­tive gov­ern­ments dump­ing tax money into pri­vate com­pa­nies to bail them out. That, my friends is the wrong answer yet every­one is still won­der­ing why the stock mar­kets con­tinue to drop.

Sim­ple, investor con­fi­dence is non-existent. How could it be any­thing else, when gov­ern­ments are reward­ing badly run firms with bailouts. That’s not how busi­ness works and investors won’t respect it.

CEOs and MDs are used to mak­ing dif­fi­cult and painful deci­sions, that’s why they make the big bucks. They don’t hes­i­tate to decide to cut 10 or 20% of their work­force, if it makes their com­pa­nies more prof­itable in the longer term and screw the poor saps who lose their jobs. Life is tough. I don’t think this is a good thing, I just think it is a true thing.

So these tough, hard-assed man­agers are used to exe­cut­ing painful edicts for the good of their firms and they’re not accus­tom to throw­ing good money away. When a gov­ern­ment throws good money away, it wor­ries everyone.

That’s what all this bailout bull­shit is, just plain throw­ing good money away. It’s not going to save any reg­u­lar folks, its not going to pre­vent the stock mar­ket from plung­ing and in the long term, its not going to pre­vent any of these poorly run com­pa­nies from going under.

Its not going to do any­thing except make things worse.

They should have let all of these poorly run, badly man­aged, shitty com­pa­nies fal­ter. Eco­nomic Dar­win­ism and sur­vival of the finan­cially fittest would have been the sen­si­ble response. That would have prob­a­bly resulted in the com­plete restruc­tur­ing of the world’s economies into some­thing sus­tain­able and work­able. Most of all, it would have sent the right mes­sage and let the captalist-pig world know that if you fuck up, you lose.

And then we wouldn’t all be fucked.

Except me, I’m not fucked. I’ve been gath­er­ing shells, beads and berries. I reckon I’ll be able to trade them for weed and junk food when the time comes. That’s all I really need to survive.

Don’t throw away all those bills and bank notes just yet, though, as they’ll still be use­ful as toi­let paper.

Greet­ings and salu­ta­tions. Hello. Wel­come. Yes, I am still alive.

Well, I’m as alive as I can be, fol­low­ing my recent health troubles.

For the last 15 days I’ve been suf­fer­ing with seri­ous back trou­ble. I could barely walk for the first week or so, every step was pure agony. Sit­ting was agony too and lay­ing down was impos­si­ble. I was well and truly fucked.

I’ve been see­ing a chi­ro­prac­tor and I think he’s helped a lot. I’ve had count­less adjust­ments, start­ing with a home visit because I couldn’t get to his office. I’m walk­ing well now and have much less pain, I’m hop­ing to return to work later in the week.

This episode really freaked me out, I was prac­ti­cally crip­pled. I couldn’t even make it to the loo with­out assis­tance from Mrs. H, I couldn’t get dressed, pre­pare a meal, do any house­hold chores. I couldn’t even sit at my desk and use my iMac, I couldn’t use my lap­top for the first week or so. If it wasn’t for my iPhone, I would have been com­pletely cut off from the world.

There’s a sense of panic and des­per­a­tion that one is over­come with in these sit­u­a­tions and I was no excep­tion. As I sat upright on my sofa, for the fifth or sixth night, des­per­ately try­ing to snatch an hour or two of light, unsat­is­fy­ing sleep, dark and dan­ger­ous thoughts would bub­ble to the sur­face of my brain.

What if this is permanent?

What if this is the begin­ning of my slow, grad­ual health decline lead­ing to my pre­ma­ture death.

What if I don’t get better?

What if the excru­ci­at­ing pain never ends?

What if.…

I found myself hav­ing mini-panic attacks, hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing slightly and relief not com­ing through the codeine or spliffs.

Though my back may be improv­ing, I find myself filled with a lin­ger­ing, nag­ging depres­sion over my future.

Is this the begin­ning of the end?

They say that every sec­ond after your born, you are one sec­ond closer to death, so in the more gen­eral sense, the end has no begin­ning; or rather the begin­ning of the end, begins at the very beginning.

But that’s not what I mean. I just have this hor­ri­ble, deep feel­ing that my best years are well and truly behind me. It’s prob­a­bly true, as its undoubt­edly true that I’ve lived more than half my life already as the chances of me even com­ing close to 90 are slim to none.

I’m feel­ing my mor­tal­ity and I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve aged in the last fort­night, like my years have finally caught up with me. I don’t feel youth­ful, as I always have, instead I’ve felt like a decrepit old man.

The thought of a slow, painful slide towards death fills me with dread. I don’t want to suf­fer through a litany of minor and major health prob­lems until one of them finally snuffs me out. That just sounds horrible!

I sup­pose death is very much on my mind because of the death of my cat a few weeks ago, which I wit­nessed first­hand in all its mis­er­able, tor­tur­ous glory. While her death was mer­ci­fully quick, she didn’t go gen­tly into that goodnight.

Watch­ing her con­tort and strug­gle against the hand of the grim reaper has had a pro­found effect on me, though I am still try­ing to deci­pher what exactly what effect it has had. I’d never actu­ally been with any liv­ing crea­ture, human or ani­mal, at the point of death until her pass­ing three weeks ago.

My younger brother, who is far more spir­i­tual than I could ever hope to be, says I absorbed some­thing from this expe­ri­ence, which man­i­fested itself with my back trou­ble, or per­haps was this was the trig­ger for it. I can’t say I am convinced.

When the chi­ro­prac­tor was tak­ing my back­ground and his­tory, one of his first ques­tions was if I suf­fered any trau­mas recently; my cat died about a week before the real pain started, though I had sore­ness in my back a few days before it really hit me.

The chi­ro­prac­tor said that my back trou­ble was build­ing up over time, that the inflam­ma­tion had wors­ened to the point of spasms in my back mus­cles, caus­ing acute pain.

Is this a coin­ci­dence of tim­ing or defin­i­tive cause and effect? I couldn’t really say. You could con­vinc­ingly put across either side of this argu­ment and I just don’t know.

All of this has left me hat­ing aging and mor­tal­ity even more than before and I didn’t think that was pos­si­ble. What’s a self-confessed sociopath and ama­teur nar­cis­sist to do?

Keep hop­ing that some­one works out a way to down­load my brain into a com­puter after the death of my body, so I can con­tinue to exist, in dig­i­tal form. How else can I hope to keep post­ing dri­vel here through­out eternity?

My cat died sud­denly yes­ter­day. She was old and in decline for the last few months and I did know the end was near­ing, but it was still a shock to have it hap­pen like this.

One minute before she died, she was eat­ing. I’d helped her to her dish in the kitchen and left her there, hap­pily munch­ing away and returned to the liv­ing room. All of the sud­den, one of my other cats leapt with a start and I heard the sound of some­thing falling over in the hall­way. I thought it was just some post com­ing through the let­ter slot in the front door. I was wrong.

It was my cat, she’d fallen over with what I am fairly sure was a stroke. She was gone in about 2 min­utes, but I was there with her.

She was around 16 years old, but its pos­si­ble she could have been older. Mrs. H got her in 1994 as a fully grown cat, I knew her for over 11 years.

Before Mrs. H got her from the local shel­ter, she had been liv­ing in the local mar­ket, exist­ing on scraps and hand-outs from the traders. She loved peo­ple food and if it was good enough to be on your plate, it was good enough for her — she’s eat any­thing, fruit, veg, meat, cheese, bread, you name it, though of course we mainly fed her cat food.

On Mon­day night, she had cheese from a pizza and licked the rem­nants of a bowl of choco­late ice cream, which was her absolute favourite.

I appre­ci­ate if you’re not a pet lover that this post is prob­a­bly tedious read­ing for you. I am a pet lover, I’ve had dogs and cats my entire life. The rela­tion­ships you have with your pets are some of the most hon­est rela­tion­ships you can have.

My cat hadn’t been well for the last few months. She gone mostly blind, her appetite was decreas­ing and her back legs were get­ting weaker. I would be lying if I said I didn’t con­sider putting her down and my one real regret is that I didn’t trust my instincts. The day before she died I thought about it and even yes­ter­day it crossed my mind more than once. I could have spared her a brief, yet hor­ri­ble death.

Dying is hor­ri­ble and wit­ness­ing my cat’s pass­ing was dis­tress­ing. While it was mer­ci­fully brief, my cat fought and strug­gled to her very last breath, but that’s what she was like. She was a fighter and didn’t take shit from any­one, not even Death, though in the end, Death always wins.

I spent the last cou­ple of days talk­ing to my cat, telling her how much I would miss her when she was gone. I really did sense that the end was extremely near. My other three cats were all dis­tressed as well when she died and could sense some­thing was very wrong. And even though I cleaned up the spot in the hall­way where she passed, they are still sniff­ing around it. They know, even if they don’t understand.

Pets are part of your fam­ily, they have per­son­al­i­ties and strong char­ac­ters and are loyal and faith­ful com­pan­ions, dogs and cats alike. When you lose one, it hurts and hurts deeply.

I can remem­ber when I was a child and we lost a pet, my mother being so very dis­traught that she would always announce with great author­ity and final­ity, that this was the end and she would have no more pets, ever, because los­ing them is so painful. It’s not fair that they have such brief life spans!

I’ve lost 2 cats in the last year and it doesn’t get any eas­ier. I’m lucky now, the three I have are all quite young and I hope it will be a good long time before I have to face los­ing any more.

I’m going to miss my sweet lit­tle girl so much, I already do now and she hasn’t even been gone 24 hours.

In truth, she was partly gone already, as I watched her health decline, espe­cially over the last week or so. I know its a cliché, but she is at peace now. Every day was increas­ingly becom­ing a strug­gle for her. She doesn’t have to strug­gle any more.

I hate death. It sucks, but I think the dying part is the worst of all.

Check this out:

It’s over 6 min­utes long, but I promise, it’s worth it.

Don’t have 6 min­utes? Ok, you can read THIS VERSION in 2 mins, from the NY Times.

Per­son­ally, I think this is the first ratio­nal expla­na­tion I’ve ever heard on the nature of exis­tence and it deserves a much wider audi­ence. Please spread the word!

Now that you’ve read the NY Times arti­cle, or watched the video, read the title of this entry again.

Ok, who’s with me?