Mental Health Mantra If you believe vocal lobbies, we can never devote enough resources to tackle our ongoing mental health crisis. Politicians of all hues like to champion the rights of mental health patients to better care. They try to score points on the perceived lack of funding for mental health services. The subtext is

In more innocent times we associated a language with its national community. For much of history nations and languages had a symbiotic relationship. Language is the ultimate vehicle of the cultural traits that hold together communities and build trust in institutions. A multilingual country is effectively an empire, for it has to unite peoples unable

Opinion leaders in the West seem to take four positions on the fast-moving Middle East quagmire: Some favour more proactive military intervention against our purported enemies and welcome more refugees and economic migrants from the wartorn region allegedly to boost the economy. This group clearly believes not only in the concept of humanitarian wars, but

As an idealist teenager I always wanted to side with the notional left on everything. The left represented progress towards a better tomorrow freed of human suffering, prejudice, inequality and exploitation, a panacea in which all human beings could enjoy life to the full in a giant communal garden of Eden. The right, on the

I don’t know about you, but 90% or more of my linkedin contact requests come from recruiters. I don’t accept them all. Am I the kind of talented high-flyer you would want to headhunt? Probably not, in person I’m rather shy and certainly not management material. I suppose I just know a few esoteric programming

All good programmers understand the concept of design patterns, creational patterns, structural patterns and behavioural patterns. We apply these patterns in different aspects of our projects. It’s good to recognise common patterns so we can generalise routines into reusable functions or objects. I won’t bore you with the details because you can learn more from

Do Corbyn and Cameron agree on Policing the human mind? Did anyone notice that we now have a shadow minister for mental health? Until recently we just had ministers for health concerned with the provision of medical services and social welfare. Indeed Labour’s new allegedly anti-establishment leader chose to use his limited time at Prime

Some of us are fully aware of the semantic differences between refugees and migrants. A migrant is anyone who moves from one region to another. All people classed as refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, emigrants, settlers, travellers or nomads are migrants. Migration is a wholly neutral term that implies nothing about our motivations or plans or

Reflections on Global Convergence As an idealist teenager John Lennon’s Imagine became my anthem. I yearned for a future devoid of the seemingly pointless nationalist rivalry and imperialism that had fuelled two world wars and enslaved millions in the colonial era. I dreamed innocently of a world where different peoples would learn from each other,

Jeremy Corbyn looks set to become Labour Leader and may soon trigger a realignment of the variety show called British parliamentary politics. Don’t get me wrong, Jeremy Corbyn was one of the few Labour MPs to take a consistent stand against recent military interventions and oppose the government’s love affair with global corporations. I’d certainly

If you want to justify any policy whether it’s higher military spending, deregulation of gambling, lower corporation tax or higher levels of immigration to a sceptical public, just claim it’s good for the economy. How could any rational human being be against greater prosperity? In today’s cultural climate could any political party openly advocate greater

Europe faces an unprecedented stream of human traffic from Africa, the Middle East, Southern and Central Asia. As wars rage from Afghanistan to Yemen and Darfur while deserts expand and arable land available for each inhabitant shrinks, this crisis shows few signs of abating. The heart-wrenching scenes of refugees huddling together on makeshift rafts in

A much publicised factoid, popularised by many left-leaning campaigners for greater equality, shows that the richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half or around 3.5 billion human beings. That would make each multibillionaire a staggering 41 million times richer than your typical Sub-Sarahan African, Indian or Indonesian. I’ve done

There has always been a thin dividing line between legal and illegal or between therapeutic and recreational drugs. We tend to call bad psychostimulants “drugs” and good officially sanctioned mind-altering pills “medication”. While the former are distributed by underworld dealers, praying on our psychological weaknesses and the cool factor, and the latter are aggressively pushed

I predicted a hung parliament that would ditch any manifesto promises at the behest of corporate lobbyists. A weak government is arguably more malleable than a strong one, unless the strong government does exactly what its true masters want. I suspect the new Conservative administration will disappoint many traditional small-c conservatives as it pursues a

I wish ballot papers had an extra box titled None of the above for I might very well be tempted to use it. None of the parties have a coherent set of policies that can deal with the fundamental stresses and strains of our overheated economy and overburdened environment, but some have policies I can

As an environmentally friendly, safety-aware, anti-racist, disability-positive, anti- homophobia, feminist, pro-growth, pro-children, pro-happiness party, we oppose all nasty policies that may harm other human beings. Global minimum salary: If elected the UK Nice Party will provide everyone in the world with access to an online bank account and transfer 1 bitcoin ( £150) a day

With so much media attention, you’d seriously think depression awareness raising charities would want to answer this very simple question. As the purported biological disease model of depression has now become almost an act of faith, debate now seems to revolve mainly around the relative merits of different forms of treatment. Whether it’s medication or

How would members of the panel deal with the rise in UKIP support among working class whites?

Rethinking the Migration Debate Were we to debate the ethics of racial prejudice, the relative merits of other societies or the wonders of humanity’s rich cultural diversity, I would not hesitate for a moment both to stand against all forms of xenophobia and to celebrate true cultural diversity. However, as soon as someone suggests the

Opinion leaders love to use inclusive first person plural forms, like we, us and our, when addressing unenlightened plebs who fail to share their enthusiasm for all things post-modern and mistakenly reminisce about the positive aspects of our recent past, like greater social cohesion, more respect for age and experience, simpler rules of social etiquette

In less than 5 years, the Labour left seemed to have forgotten the sheer treachery of the last Labour administration. Rather than focus their attention on the real ruling classes sitting in corporate boardrooms or relaxing on Caribbean yachts, they prefer to demonise the bunch of overgrown public school boys and girls in the current