Why I do not fear death

We all will die. One day. It is inevitable. In many ways it is best to die when still in good shape and vigorous, rather than decaying and decrepit IMHO, but anyway ....
So what happens when we die?
IMHO the brain, which feeds the conscious mind (i.e. our practical awareness of where we are) and the subconscious (which deals with our abstract thoughts, dreams etc.), will switch off. Permanently!
Everything will disappear from view/hearing etc. We will not be aware of anything, there will be total void.
Total void may sound a disturbing concept, but fear and anxiety will disappear as well - so there is no need to be afraid.
During my time in hospital in 2008, I came close to death anyway. During the second operation that they obliged me to have, I nearly died. During the time that I was going through the operation, everything was total darkness and total void anyway. Only when I nearly regained consciousness did anything occur - a dream appeared in my subconscious mind, after which I awoke - in such pain I could not believe it.
It would in many ways have been better to have stayed in the quiet peaceful void. No pain, no suffering, no fear, no anxiety. No thoughts or dreams either.
So can I believe that after death, rather than near death, that there will be anything different? Logically, no. Why should there be? What scientific proof can anyone produce to suggest that something else will occur? None.
Some invisible part of us that you cannot find on any x-ray will somehow emerge from us into some invisible place that no living being can locate, where there will be some form of after-life? Yes, well ..... Really it stretches the imagination (in our subconscious mind!), so far beyond any probability, it should not, to any sane or reasonable person, be worthy of five minutes of our time. There is no logic to it, and as such should be dismissed out of hand - without fear or anxiety!  

The differences between Fascism and Communism - a history lesson

I originally wrote this on MyLot.com. As I am the author of the piece, I do not see why I should not also issue it here. If there are any copyright issues, please contact me directly. This edition has been slightly amended to clarify some issues.


I have many times said that the terms "right and "left" are meaningless and will continue to repeat that belief.

It is also undeniable that the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet etc were murderous thugs of the worst kind, and their societies had undoubtedly nightmarish elements.

That said Hitler was not Stalin, though a lot of the results were the same.

Hitler was an extreme nationalist (Fascism is basically the application of extreme nationalism to the exclusion of all who do not fit the criteria). He obtained power by allying himself with "patriotic conservatives" who were afraid of the "foreign influences" running Communism.
He built his war machine not by taking over the arms companies, but by doing business with them. He was supported by the Ruhr capitalists in the 1932 election (Thyssen, Krupp, Kirdorf etc), partly because of his anti-Communist platform, and all of their companies profited massively as a result of the government orders that they received. As the likes of Margaret Thatcher, who was not a Fascist, ordered arms worth millions from private companies like British Aerospace, it is not unknown in democracies for governments to do this - it is not unusual.
Ownership of property was not discouraged, it was merely barred to those who did not fulfil the Aryan criteria.
Any "socialist" element in the Nazi party (NSDAP, people with a restricted and convenient view of history are always pointing out, contains the word "Socialist", so this needs explaining), was purged in the night of the long knives in 1934, when the leaders of the Strasserist wing of the party, who advocated a working-class based agenda, were either assassinated or driven into exile.

The rest is the "proverbial history".

Stalin meanwhile was a brutal tyrant who used the Communist Party for his own ends. Eventually its ideology recognises no right of ownership, and was about the collective sharing of all goods and produce for the common good (so all the arms produced for use during the war were not created by companies using the profit motive, but by organisations run by the party in the "name of the people").
It also recognises no national boundaries, so no nationalist concept is involved. So a Communist regime essentially was to be established using the right, established by the ideology, to cross borders and impose its will as the national boundaries were at best an inconvenience to be ignored. It was a sort of Imperialist theory, where the theory not a state was pre-eminent.
Stalin used this essentially as a means to impose his own version of tyranny. This was down to the man building power for himself and using the ideology to provide him the means to do this. Unlike Hitler who had killed people as they did not fit ethnic criteria (for the good of the nation - in theory), Stalin used the "anyone who gets in my way" approach, or maybe ideological criteria (bourgeois, middle-class etc) for the good of the ideology (though in fact to cement his own hold on power).

The next question is how do you stop extremist parties like these regaining power and influence?

Communism is a failed ideology which will not return any time for the foreseeable future. Its record of incompetence and tyranny will make sure that it is never that popular an option.

Stopping Fascist offshoots is a lot more difficult because this appeal to national characteristics (I suppose religious purist organisations could do this in a similar way, so it is accurate to describe Bin Laden as a type of Fascist) and the national good is a feature of politics. All you have to do is carry that thinking a couple of steps further ("the country is in a mess and it is the fault of the foreigners" etc), and you have potential trouble brewing.
The trick is to build an inclusive society with an inclusive economy and make sure that people are aware when something goes wrong, that the right people are identified as causing it.

It amazes me just how many people have forgotten what caused the 2008 financial crash. Some people seem to have even forgotten that it happened. Unfortunately in those circumstances, the easy targets will find themselves at risk rather than the true culprits.

Economic Disaster Stories

Slightly edited version of something I first wrote last summer:

The economic requirements for the United States and for Europe are different and demand different solutions, just as the economic systems of the two continents remain inherently different - a factor not always understood by the inhabitants in both these parts of the world, and for that matter not always understood by advocates of the global economy, or sometimes even by the World Bank and other similar bodies.

There is also a perception problem.

In the US, the government is seen as part of the problem – its role has almost become that of a perennial whipping-boy, damned when it does, damned when it doesn’t. So, for instance, in the Gulf of Mexico, it is regarded as the government’s place not to interfere (a business company has a problem which it must resolve itself), while at the same time Obama is condemned for not acting decisively enough.

In Europe, on the other hand, governments are expected to provide solutions. There is also a bit of the damned when they do, damned when they don’t though. If they succeed, it is by luck and anyway that is what they are there for, if they fail, it is only as expected. Governments in Europe though are expected to be there when the people need them, during a period of illness, during economic bad times, when it is impossible to get from place to place, and even occasionally when bills need paying.

Bureaucracy always looks bad in the US, but that is mainly because people probably only notice when it is not working. Bureaucracy in Europe, on the other hand, can look good, bad or indifferent all at the same time, depending where you are. If you work in an unemployment office in England, you invariably seem flustered, rushed off your feet, and of course unloved. If you work in an employment (the "un" is deliberately omitted – the difference in mentality is indicated by the choice of word) office in Germany on the other hand, you are expected to be polite, efficient, and purposeful – if not particularly loved either.

Where the difference in cultures is really emphasised though is the directions in which the two continents are heading. The US has a natural population curve, and is beset with all the consequent problems. Job creation has to be maintained at a level consummate with the ever-increasing demand of a new workforce coming through, while taking care of the retiring population at the other end.

The extreme dependence upon debt (both public and private), which has become a singularly disturbing feature of the American economic picture, has complicated this considerably. Student debt is becoming a millstone like never before, while many retirees have debt levels that they will never eradicate in their life-times. Meanwhile interest on government debt is responsible every year for over 5% of all tax income, and is growing almost uncontrollably. Eventually government programmes will have to be cut, with the most likely victims being the people who can least afford the cuts (particularly true when the Republicans, with their unreal accounting methods and unreal attitudes to tax collection, take power, but also threatened by an increasing number of Democrats who have to answer for their former profligacy). Cutting defence spending, the real elephant in the room,  hardly ever gets a mention of course – for further reference go and check out Robert Scheer’s works on the subject.

Compare the situation in Europe though. There you will find a rising line on the population demographic graph. The population is aging, there is a smaller percentage of young people than ever before, social costs have risen way beyond anything known in the past (required to meet the ever increasing requirements of the elderly), while revenues have been sharply hit (and let us not consider that the economic crisis is merely a result of the cowboy gamblers on Wall Street – the European banks played along, invested huge amounts on ridiculous gambles in the American property market and lost heavily, and governments reacted far too late to stop them).

You then hear laughably that Europe should have followed the American model. Some European countries, notably Germany and Switzerland, are known for their saving habits, a very un-American phenomenon. The UK, which has perhaps the most Americanised of all the European economies, also has one of the largest debt piles, one of the lowest saving rates (given the average wage in the UK that is hardly surprising), and is in one of the worst messes of any country out there. Expecting the Tories to fix things is like whistling for the moon, as it was their policies originally (borrowed eventually by Labour) which created the circumstances in which the economic crash was almost certainly inevitable.

Among the solutions being offered though by the UK government is one similar to that being offered elsewhere (see Angela Merkel in Germany). That is to cut government spending to reduce debt. One of the lessons of history is that which FDR encountered when fiscal conservatives in the American Treasury encouraged him to do the same thing in 1938. The economy, which was slowly recovering, went back sharply into recession.

At this time, cutting debt sounds sensible. On the other hand if there is no growth, the economy will not recover. So revenues will actually fall, causing a need to further reduce government expenditure, deepening the recession in the process. Go too far down this deflationary road, and you end up with a permanent depressive cycle. It is also to be borne in mind that the extent of the debt is the result of the economic crisis. Bank bailouts may have been an unsatisfactory solution, but would there have been benefits in letting the entire financial system collapse, which was pretty much the alternative?

Committed Marxists might have laughed and uttered the phrase: "I told you so". Conservative believers would have gone on believing, even as the number of business bankruptcies tripled or quadrupled – with all the consequent ensuing layoffs. History suggests that unemployment might well have surpassed 20%, and recovery would have taken decades – without solvent banks, there would be no credit available in the system.

Among the curiosities that you encounter is the fact that the financial solutions offered to the crash of 2008 are criticised by American conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, and American liberals like Michael Moore and Robert Scheer. Unusual playmates to say the least!

In Europe, where people are more used to government intervention, there was less open criticism, as the banking system is seen here as the key to the capitalism. The view was "what other choice did we have?". Two years down the road, however, and the situation in Greece became almost untenable, doubts set in - in a big way.

The problem left, frankly, and I see it in both the conservative American model, and its more liberal European counterpart, is that there is no solution that will provide for the needs of the necessarily unproductive elderly.

European governments are trying to delay the process by suddenly pushing for delaying the age of retirement up two or three years (from 65 to 68 for men in the UK, from 65 to 67 in Germany, from 60 to 62 in France). Sensible enough if you see that, to this point at least, people live longer than before.

Unfortunately a reality check will suggest that there is a certain futility in the exercise – the vast majority of employers simply do not want to take on people who have passed the age of 50 (I have one friend in the UK who has worked for five months in the last five years – that period commenced three days after he turned 50).

Try to persuade an employer to take on board a 66-year-old, no matter how gifted or talented? Do you really expect this to happen? Be real! The job will more likely be winging its way to China or India like millions of others already have done. All that this will mean is that the person remains on the government handout list, whether you call the payment a pension right or an unemployment cheque!

In good times, you might, through taxation on companies and the still-working population, be able to keep revenues up to a sufficient level to meet the necessary payments (although given the increasing imbalance in numbers between payers and payees, there will be an increasingly large number of complaints about the level of taxation).

I will also avoid the questionable logic of the "supply side" believers, who claim that revenues increase when you lower taxation – my research into that logic suggests that, while there are short-term benefits, the long-term results are not positive, and usually result in massively increased deficits upon the public account.

In bad times, though, the revenues will simply be inadequate to meet the current payment requirements. Which essentially means that payments will have to be reduced to what can be afforded. And ask yourself for a moment what would be the impact of reducing payments to the elderly? How do you handle a situation where a person cannot afford to survive and has no other potential source of income, and the government can no longer maintain the necessary payments. Letting them die off as quickly as possible – often in very miserable circumstances? Encouraging mass suicide maybe? OK the latter is not going to happen, but it would help government revenue crises if the demands upon the public purse were less! We can, of course, at this point start berating people for not saving for their old age, but frankly I think, personally, that we are reaping the whirlwind for the policies adopted in the 1980s, when unemployment was allowed to rise to ludicrously high levels, and insufficient action was taken to fix the problem. And where the problem was attacked (as in the UK), this was by encouraging a low-pay, high debt solution which entailed much by way of risk, and did not allow for a great deal by way of savings.

Curiously given the proverbial howls of anguish coming out of the United States, the picture there is more mixed. The negative factors there though should not be ignored. From 2011 starts the surge in the number of retirees, and this will not level off for a number of years. There will be a record number of individuals dependant upon the public purse to meet their needs, and the stress on the resultant programmes will be enormous, for all the reassuring noises that the politicians have been making about their viability for the last few years. Savings levels are reputedly at a record low, individual debt levels are already frighteningly high, and the economy is in the doldrums. For those who have invested in stock accounts, the markets have fluctuated in recent years, but essentially the values are approximately the same as they were ten years ago. The amount of growth in value has not, though, even kept pace with the allegedly modest rise in inflation. The outlook, given the nature of the markets, is mixed. If you had a preponderance of your investment in GM, Chrysler and Amoco (who were acquired by BP a few years ago), the outlook is grim.

Of course investment houses do not make that sort of mistake, do they?

Well, folks, be prepared to learn a horrible lesson ….

And then there are those who placed their investment in the property market. This might not always be the horror story that it sounds, but the percentage chance is that some people have seen the value of their original investment lose heavily over the past couple of years. Taking out a re-mortgage on a property (or selling one) with negative equity is simply not an option, of course, while for those with "positive equity", there may be insufficient gain to make the exercise worthwhile.

The likelihood of the existence of a generation of senior citizens who are heavily dependant upon debt, and may have difficulty sustaining their debt levels, should not be underestimated.

And when more debt is required by an individual whose asset values have expired, and the government can no more than barely sustain, can you imagine a lending institution lending them money that is very likely to be written off as "bad debt"? In my experience banks do not work like that – profit is the motive behind their existence, not charity.

So apart from allowing the elderly to die off in increasingly miserable conditions or under a pile of unsustainable debt, what is the solution? As the world gets more and more overpopulated, frankly I do not see one. Creating alternative income streams for them, maybe (apart from charitable handouts)? Let me know, I am interested.

We have though reached a point in history where much effort for little reward has become the norm, and we have not learned how to contain inflationary price growth in important sectors such as property (eventually everyone needs a roof over their head), and energy costs. And the dependence upon debt (both private and public) is something that should neither be forgotten nor forgiven by future generations. Every war has its unfortunate victims. Unfortunately the inevitable war on the preponderant debt pile could well require the mass die-off of many elderly people in conditions that would have been unacceptable for more than a generation.

Spammers - an analysis of one of the lower forms of human existence

I never understand the logic that drives the mixture of morons, cretins and complete imbeciles out there to send spam emails.
In the past few days there has been almost a cancerous disease in the spam queue of my mailbox. Idiots seem to think that it is amusing to send the same junk mail advertising "potency drugs" over a thousand times with an invented name, preceded by the abbreviation "Dr" (for doctor). Even if you were so stupid as to be interested, surely you would be put off if they sent it that many times! Why bother sending this trash? It only serves to annoy people.
This is though not the worst type of trash out there (though it annoys me more than the dating agencies and 419 scams, which you cannot take too seriously either, and arrive less frequently).
The worst stuff comprises the phoney job offers. If you are unemployed (and given the current economic crisis, there are a lot of people in this unfortunate category), the chance of a job opening gives a ray of hope. That such hope is generated by some phoney email, and is bound to result in disappointment, strikes me as an extremely nasty form of cynicism.
I would personally like to see the people who send these things out publicly excoriated, and incarcerated in some appallingly dreadful conditions. Somewhere where hope was the last thing that would enter their minds for at least a couple of years. That would be the only satisfactory reward for their cynical behaviour! 

Not a great week for astrologers

I must admit to a failure in my past life (not a life before this life - the past part of this life - got it? Good!).
Rationalist that I am, nonetheless I once actually thought there was something to astrology. I even went on a course in beautiful Buxton, Derbyshire, to see how it works.
It is only in recent years that my religious scepticism has also spread to pseudo-science, and astrology is the most definite pseudo-science that there has ever been.
This week they told us that there is a thirteenth astrological sign, and that all the dates of the signs have changed.
So many people, who have thought for all their lives that they were Arians, have been told that they were born under the sign of Pisces. And a load of other changes have occurred (my Cancerian wife is now a Gemini for example).
This has caused a load of furore out there from people who cannot accept the changes. This I can understand. If they have had much faith in astrology over the years, they will now realise that everything that they have ever been told about themselves was mistaken, and that any forecasts were based upon inaccurate information.
Worst hit by this though are the professional astrologers. Firstly they have to revise their techniques to allow for the changes. This could take months, even years, while they work out what the impacts will be upon their interpretations of the universe. And if they are fully computerised, think of all the changes that will be required. It could take months, even years, to bring everything in line with what is needed.
And then there is the question of the millions of incorrect forecasts people have received, as all of these were based upon incorrect information. "As far as I was aware of the time" hardly sounds a good reason for not paying the appropriate refund.
This could cost millions if you think about it.
Another industry may well be dying, and little can be done to stop it.
Of course it also gives them a ready made excuse for all the things that they got wrong in the past - that may well be why you did not win the lottery as expected - the astrologer acted in good faith, but nothing was quite where it should have been! I cannot see that this saves them though. Their forecasts were wrong, they have charged sizeable sums of money without having the correct data available. They were like practising lawyers who had used law books that expired years ago! Or doctors who relied upon medieval methods to cure patients.
The best defence actually is that the new sign is a phoney, and that reorganisation is mistaken and not necessary. After all it used to have this balance. Three air signs, three earth signs, three fire signs, three water signs, six positive, six negative. Thirteen is a horrible number to work with, it will not happily divide into anything else.
This could actually lead to a new schism. The "new" astrologers who work with the thirteen signs, the "traditional" astrologers who work with (of course) the traditional established model.
The question is then "who do you trust?", as there is obviously going to be large shadows of doubt hanging over the whole area for a long time.
Though there is a very easy answer, of course, and that would be to dismiss the whole lot of them as charlatans, and stick the words "caveat emptor" on the adverts issued by such individuals. That is the road that any sceptic should follow, and recent events should considerably increase the number of sceptics out there!

The worst decision of my life

            Maybe it was the ultimate defining moment of my recent life.

            May 2008 - I was in Paris (France) working for an international company. The job was going well, money was again coming in steady amounts (there had been problems with that earlier in the year), the job, as an IT specialist, was going well, I was really fitting well into the scheme of things. I was away from home and my wife five days a week – OK that was a problem - but for the rest life was good, everything was looking up.

            On the Monday evening (May 5th), I was walking near the Montparnasse railway station when I started getting severe pains in my chest – it felt something like chronic indigestion. It became so bad that I could not walk without being in severe pain. I could stand still, no problem. When I got back to the apartment where I was staying, I could sit down or lie down, no problem.

This went on for three days. Indigestion lasting for three days? Maybe not, but I continued being able to do the job well and without complaining, and that was the important thing. What else mattered?

The Thursday was a public holiday in France. I took the train early that morning and went home to Frankfurt. Wives being what they are, my wife was concerned. I shrugged off the concern – I would manage, somehow. As long as I was working, as long as I had money coming in, life would be OK.

After one experience on the Saturday when she had me walk halfway across the city, this concern rose to great anxiety. Even so I was even capable of having sex on the Saturday without too much difficulty.

We hit the crucial point on the Sunday. My gut instinct was to go to the station and get on the train, and go back to Paris. My wife implored me to go to the hospital for a check-up, if only for her peace of mind. You should always follow your gut instinct. I didn’t, I caved in – I went to the hospital as requested against my better judgement.

The tests that followed indicated that I had had a heart attack, and needed a triple bypass operation. They gave me a form to sign to agree to the operation. I could have signed the area indicating that I would refuse the operation and take responsibility for the consequences. I was about to do that – I still had time to catch the train and get back to Paris. My wife gave me that look. I agreed to the operation.

It was the worst decision of my life. The operation became three operations, I was 26 days living a nightmare while all the hospital treatment went on, and then I was another month in a rehab clinic.

This was bad? IMHO far worse happened. While I was in intensive care, the company’s client in Paris informed them that they were not prepared to wait three months for me to recover ….

By the time I came home in August, the financial future for me personally looked grim. The company had few other clients, and had to put me on part-time. I switched on television a couple of days later – the news. Lehman Brothers had collapsed, Merrill Lynch was going the same way, AIG was in trouble, European banks were in a state of panic  as their massive losses became apparent…. The chance of finding another job or the company finding another client where I could work looked extremely bleak.

I lived for nine months on a very modest part-time salary (no performance bonuses either as you got with the full-time job)  and used up my savings to keep us alive. Leave, register as unemployed? I am a foreign national here, I did not want the stigma, or to have to work my way through the bureaucracy. I want(ed) to be responsible for my own life, not dependant upon others, I had been economically viable as an individual I did not want to become economically dependant.

In June 2009, they finally had to lay me off as there was no new work coming in. Understandably. Since which time I have been on the government’s unemployment books as they try to work out what to do with me.

My doctor thinks that, within reason, I could go back to my previous career, or another desk job in line with my abilities would be in order. I have applied for dozens of positions – nothing (ageism is rife anyway – particularly in IT - and when they look at your date of birth and your recent medical record, they are not impressed, even if my track record, my performance level, and my references are very good. That is my assessment, at least).

I have tried to get work as a translator (German, French or Dutch to English) – apart from four days work last May, nothing! I have tried to get work doing English proofreading – eight days work last year, otherwise nothing!  I go through the listings on Elance.com and Freelancer.com every day, and apply for everything appropriate. Nothing!!!! I have tried writing on Helium.com – apparently I am a good writer. 120 Euro income in 12 months (and they have recently changed the payment methods, so that income has been cut).

I need ideas that suit my talents (and don’t talk to me about selling or getting referrals etc, thank you) and allow me to earn a decent income. To date nothing!!!!

I am now on a German government work experience course learning new IT skills, but the demand for those do not seem all that great.

I should, without question, have refused the operation in May 2008 and gone back to my job. I would have still had money coming in. I would have had my self-respect intact. I would still be economically viable. Even with my wife now working full-time (though being paid peanuts for a job which hardly matches her qualifications), we are in severe financial difficulties, and things get worse by the day. Life has become a complete nightmare.

           I am now healthy and this is what I have. If I had kept working, I might have died – you cannot live with the effects of such a medical problem for that long? So be it, we are all mortal, we are all going to die one day. Better to die with your self-respect intact than to live like this!     

Postscript (24/6/2025).

In passing whether this was the absolute worst decision of my life is open to question. Other major mistakes including:

1.    Deciding to go into teaching for a living. Yes, I wanted to give something back for all the opportunities which I had had (being the first person from my family ever to have a university education, for example). But I had the wrong personality for the job entirely. I was far too shy and not persuasive enough. Teachers are in many ways like sales people, you have to be able to get the point over and I did simply not have the personality to do that.

2.    Buying an apartment in an old building in Manchester. It was cheap and affordable (OK), but why became obvious. It needed a lot of repairs and extra costs. Having a comfortable interior is insufficient when the property itself needs constant repairs - and that is definitely not my thing.

3.    I should include a couple of relationships which I had with different girlfriends. No names given and no futher details.

What could qualify, but lack of practical alternatives means that it probably does not - leaving the UK permanently far earlier would have improved my life enormously. It is noticeable that of the 7 pivotal events in my life, 5 occurred after I left. As I was already 45 when I did leave permanently and I was trying to make up for last time, obviously going to what were then far more liberal countries (the Netherlands or Germany, really) would have offered more opportunities.

The trouble with this argument is, that in order to have succeed, you need to have a career possibilty lined up and until I had turned 40, that possibility did not exist.

The Mysteries of Life Explained (Part 1 - maybe)

            A few significant questions which are often asked, and relevant answers (this may be the first batch – I reserve the right to come back to this important, world-shattering subject some time later in history – if I remember, or if I can be bothered):

Q: Why are we here?

A: Because one night your father and mother chose to do what comes naturally, and did not use any protective measures (hopefully your mother did at least consent, and maybe there were protective measures which sadly did not work, which makes you an unfortunate accident – console yourself in the fact that you are not alone in this respect).

Q: What is the purpose of life?

A: Getting through each day as best you can, preferably without having idiots ask irrelevant questions like this.

Q: What is the meaning of life?

A: The answer lies in your imagination (if you are reasonably intelligent), in the imagination of someone else (if you are not so intelligent and subject to gullibility), otherwise reach the conclusion that the question is irrelevant and get back to your bowl of rice, if you can still afford that.

Q: How did everything begin?

A: Depends upon your interpretation. Either God invented everything (OK, but if everything began with God doing things, so how did God get there – run away quickly before I get pinned down on that question), or the Big Bang happened (but then what caused the Big Bang – if nothing was there how could anything bang, or make other types of noise? Run away from that as well ….).

Unhappy with the explanation? Then get into an argument with your neighbour, who is bound to disagree about some of the detail. Then one of you can kill the other over this. Nothing strange about this – more people in history have been killed for this reason than for any other! So you will not be alone!

Q: Is there an after-life?

A: Ask me when I get there! And if you are doubtful about being able to talk to the dead, remember that there are thousands of people on this planet who claim to be able to do so. You are not that gullible? You are not that gullible???? Come on, these people make millions out of the morons (sorry, everyday normal people) who regularly consult them – so there must be summat to it, right? No????

Ah well, maybe you will have to make a guess or consult a local “teacher” (these guys who wear silly brown, black, purple or grey cassocks, or funny white hats (careful with these though, their command of English is often limited to a word which comes out something like “infidel”!), or maybe black cloaks with skullcaps, or some very pleasant gentlemen with crew cuts who also wear saffron robes. They all get paid (or freebies - see the men in saffron robes) to offer advice on this, and as they get paid for it, they cannot possibly be wrong, can they?).

Or you can read one of several texts (don't read all of them - they contradict each other and you will get confused!) that is at least 1500 years old, and contains absolute truths that cannot be questioned. These texts were still written when everyone believed that the world was flat, so they must be correct and unchallengeable.

Q: Should I fear death?

A: Depends really. If that person is aiming an axe at you at this very moment, or alternatively is pointing an automatic rifle in your direction as I speak, or alternatively is lighting the fuse to that strange looking device about 1 metre 20 away from your feet this very second, or maybe is now clipping the belt together around his/her waist and making a funny metallic sound as (s)he does so – probably, yes! 

Adventures in making myself economically viable

             OK – the world does not owe you a living.

                A British business owner (and no doubt staunch conservative) said that to me at an interview in London back in 1971. I am not sure that he was all that interested in employing anyone, and my northern English accent must have grated with him. Maybe if I could have spoken to him in French, my Limousin twang might have irritated him even more.

                He did not offer me the job. This was probably as well. Southern money-grubber meets northern work ethic, it does not sound a combination made in the (non-existent) Heaven!

                So anyway, after my job disappeared while I was in intensive care in 2008, and I should have realised that it was not in any way possible for people of my age to think straight and logically as IT people are supposed to think (I think that is why people decided that they would rather employ some genius straight of university who has never worked in his life, and has no idea of how business works in Europe), what then?

                Well I hate selling things (quiet, shy introverts do not make good salesmen!), manual labour is also not my thing (and anyway my doctor would object), and I will not undertake slave labour at McDonalds or Burger King (and my doctor will not have me standing on my feet all day anyway!), so …. And trying to get referrals etc for various sites? Selling=recruiting=promotion! Equals “Forget it!”.

               

                I have tried all the freelance sites. You spend hours going down Freelancer.com and Elance.com, sending off dozens of “bids” and get three offers in a year (two from the same guy in Japan). This brings in some 450 Euro.

                You try writing on Helium.com. Some of the better administrators on the site tell you that you are a very good writer. You spend hours writing articles, and finally get to the point where you earn the magnificent sum of 46 Euro in one month, followed by 35 Euro the next. Then they change the payment system, as they are paying out too much!

                Then there are all the freelance translation jobs on the Internet for which you apply and hear nothing more. So the next stage is to try and get a certificate so that I can work officially as a translator in Germany. Actually finding out what to do to get this is difficult enough – even the local employment office cannot tell me what to do! And will it eventually get me anywhere?

                Despite this, you get the nonsense from elsewhere that you must be lazy if you cannot find work! Yes I know that such people are idiots who are cocooned in their own world, and do not understand how the world really works, but …..

                Eventually, maybe we should look at people’s economic viability. If a person is no longer financially viable, maybe we should find some way of disposing of them – mass starvation, now isn’t that a great idea? It’s their own fault, isn’t it? So who cares?

                Or maybe we should resurrect the old concept of full worthwhile employment (and stress "worthwhile"!), and fight like crazy to get it wherever we are in the world. The problem is, given the (undemocratic!) conservative business  forces that run the world, we probably would not get anywhere with it. It was not exactly that successful the last time, was it? Or why else would we be in this predicament now?

                But somehow we owe them a living.   

Jobs here NOW!

I was reading an article this morning on social benefit claimants in Frankfurt.
That in one of the world's major financial centres, so many people depend upon government handouts, strikes me as ridiculous. At the same time, I would anticipate that a large number of such people want out of the benefit system.
That requires getting people working.
That requires people earning enough so that they can manage on their own without help.
That means, among other things, repatriating the white-collar jobs from India, and the blue-collar jobs from China, which international corporations have been only too willing to send there, and paying the local going rate.
Things will cost more? Things will cost more! On the other hand, people will buy more goods, there will be more money in circulation, so the profitability graph should not change, though the axes will look different.
Local solutions (not this silly version of the "global economy", and realise that one single version of the global economy does not exist - there are many possibilities) will provide the economic answers.
In the short term people in India and China might suffer, but they too can benefit from local solutions. They can produce goods for their own market more, and less for the rest of the world. Their prices will reflect their lifestyle.
Eventually all, except the speculators, will benefit.

OK - Prove to me directly (not indirectly) that capitalism works!

Well, I am quite willing to be impressed.
My scepticism about capitalism is known from the rest of this blog. Now is your chance to prove me wrong.
You have to come up with a venture that will make me rich. That will absolutely not involve gambling, my taking out any debt, or requiring me to undertake any work with my hands except using a keyboard.
It will also absolutely not require me to sell anything to anyone (even indirectly - I despise Spam mails and will not resort to such. Nor will I send out leaflets or anything that unnecessarily disturbs people).
We are talking about using my brain power, and my willingness to work hard to get results. I am an excellent writer, that should help.
I will gladly let you keep 20% up to an income of half-a-million Euro, 50% after the million, 90% after the 5 million mark.
This is a serious offer (clowns are advised to keep their jokes to themselves, and I am a born sceptic, so I am not likely to be attracted by any old offer - it needs to stand up as a serious offer!). Please note that I am totally broke and I have nothing but brainpower to invest. And, I repeat, I will not take out debt for any reason!
I think that it is impossible. You can prove me wrong? Try it!

Happy New Year and another repeat of 2010 which was a repeat of 2009, which ....

This could be my best year in some time - if I get offered a job in keeping with my undoubted talent and my undeniable (and not invented) experience, and where I am paid sufficient to meet my needs.
Apparently the chances have improved this year. Apparently when you get past the ageism, the belief most employers have that you will do an amazing job for pigswill, and the strange ignorant conclusion that had been reached that people who are not currently working are lazy, then fine.
The chances have increased from 0.5% to 1.5% by my estimate. IMHO they would still rather throw talent away on the dung-heap and hire cheap labour as usual.