I am 110% sure that you will enjoy this article. The last statement is a lie, but not entirely for the reasons you think. Obviously, I cannot be sure that you will enjoy reading this – I am not you, not everybody will like or be remotely interested in my writing, and indeed some of you will have stopped reading already. But more significantly for what I want to talk about today, you cannot be…
Every so often, rumours circulate that someone famous has been dead for some time, and all we are seeing is a lookalike hired as part of a cover up. Experts give their view on tiny mannerisms and details of the appearance to try and determine if it was the real person that was seen. Of course, there is generally no smoke without fire, and it is quite well known that some world leaders have used…
When I was 12, I was traumatised by a lump of clay. The setting was my compulsory school art class. We had all been told to create a building out of our imaginations and form it from the cold, wet lump we were all given. As the rest of the class created turrets, towers, and ramparts straight out of Disney or Tolkien, my lump simply changed from one amorphous, unrecognisable mass to another. Eventually, several…
There can be few things in modern life as frustrating as automated telephone answering services. You ring up to try and resolve a problem, knowing that a human being can likely fix it in a few seconds. You have tried using the website and got nowhere. Your situation just does not fit the options available online. So you brace yourself and dial the number. First you have to endure perhaps a minute of recorded messages…
If you had a leaky pipe in your home, would you consider putting a bucket under the leak and emptying it every hour, day and night, a long-term solution? Of course not. You would use a bucket to minimise damage until the pipe was repaired or replaced so that it stopped leaking. This is the crucial difference between addressing the cause or the symptoms of a problem. It seems obvious. But like so many things,…
Sometimes it feels like the only choices you have are which brick wall to bang your head against doesn’t it? You keep trying your best, attempting to make a difference, to improve things, to help people. In return, you get silence, or active hostility. However well thought through your ideas and proposals, however important your questions, you just feel invisible, or perhaps like an unwanted irritant. You see avoidable problems coming and point out any…
I really can’t believe I am having to say this. It should be simple common sense. Unfortunately, simple common sense seems to be yet another casualty of the post-truth age. So let me put this very simply. Saying something does not make it true or change anything, in and of itself. Your words have to be backed up be meaningful actions. Otherwise, nothing changes. We can all agree and say repeatedly that pigs can fly,…
I really should know better. I have gone around this loop so many times, and it never ends well. But each time I think it will be different, that this will be the final push that gets something done. It always starts the same way. I let a few communications about having zero tolerance for bullying, harassment and discrimination go by. They mean well, I tell myself, even if the pretty words are never remotely…
What do you want to be when you grow up? When I was young, I dreamed of being an astronaut. With my dodgy eyesight and total lack of physical coordination, it was never going to happen. These days I long to be a full-time writer. I am still some way off this, but it feels rather more attainable than making it into outer space! What I never imagined I would be when I grew up…
I have been bullied throughout my life. I was bullied more or less continually through my school years, I have been bullied at work multiple times, and I have been bullied in a relationship. Do you know one major thing that all the people that have bullied me had in common? Not one of them would have agreed that they were bullies if challenged at the time. Most of us, in my experience, could do…