Tag Archives: Thoughts

30% rise in suicidal calls to Mind Infoline

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Sad news from Mind;

Mind, the mental health charity, today expressed alarm as new figures from its national telephone service show a 50% call increase within twelve months. The number of calls rose to over 68,000 in 2012/13[1], from 46,000 in 2011/2012.

 

The Mind Infoline has seen a corresponding shift in the nature of calls, with people presenting more acute and complex problems, many stemming from severe financial worries.  This is reflected in a concerning 30% rise in calls relating to suicide: In 2012/13 there were 1,546 calls from people who had experienced suicidal thoughts, had taken steps to end their own life, or had concerns about a loved one, this was up from the 1,185 contacts received the previous year.

 

In response to the worrying figures, Mind acknowledges the increased need for its services, and urges people not to wait until they hit crisis point before getting in touch. As the charity announces the appointment of a new celebrity ambassador, TV presenter Anna Williamson, it hopes she will help raise crucial awareness through her role to ensure no one has to face a mental health problem alone.

 

Anna Williamson, who this week starts her new summer role offering viewers advice on ITV’s This Morning,  has battled severe anxiety and panic attacks for many years. She now talks openly about her experiences and the vital first step of asking for help. Anna will play a key role as a Mind ambassador, encouraging others to seek support as soon as they need it.

 

Anna Williamson said: “I know just how scary it can be to start the conversation – worrying what friends or colleagues will think. But I also now know that opening up is the key to getting better. Since I first shared my own experiences, I’ve heard from so many others in the same position. It’s easy to forget you’re not alone, that actually 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem every year.

 

“I am passionate about raising awareness and thrilled to be joining Mind as an ambassador. Through my new role I’m determined to let people know its OK to ask for help.”

 

Paul Farmer, CEO for Mind says:

“Today many people face the stark reality of severe financial pressures, be it through employment worries, benefit cuts, increased cost of living, or a lethal combination of all three. It’s therefore no surprise that people need Mind more than ever. We urge anyone who needs our support to pick up the phone and to do it today.   

 

“We know that when people in the public eye speak out, it inspires others to seek help. We are delighted to have Anna Williamson’s support and are confident her honesty and candour will strike a chord with many others across the country and prompt them to get in touch.”

 

The Mindinfoline is a confidential telephone service providing information about mental health diagnosis, treatment, medication, local service provision and advocacy. Open from 9am – 6pm Monday – Friday, calls to the service are charged at a local rate and can be reached on 0300 123 3393.

 

The Sin of Envy…and Some Other Sins {Ceri's Column}

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Man alive, that green-eyed monster is an awfully selective beast. He lives just above my cerebellum, right next door to the gnomes that run my conscience and sense of shame. He occasionally feeds on the gnomes and wotsits but mostly on the painfully huge talents of others.

There’s many a person who turns me a grassy hue when I consider their ability or achievements. Seth “I created, voice and often write for my own selection of massively successful animated sitcoms that is watched by millions worldwide” MacFarlane is one. Matthew “So yeah my voice is kind of samey in my songs but I seem to shit innovative modern rock classics without any need for laxative AND play my axe better than anyone in the rockesphere right now” Bellamy is another. Rick “Holy shit I’m lucky that everyone is Rick Rolling each other or I’d have probably stuck my head in the oven a loooong time ago” Astley is not one.

There are a few people around who don’t stir the beast in my bonce. For some reason, Eddie Izzard and Robert DeNiro don’t. I admire them, I wish I possessed a trillionth of their respective talents but I don’t envy them. They’re…too good.

Robert Plant – Too good

Bill Hicks – (was) Too good

That bloke on E4…y’know, the voice-over dude – Too good

Richard Dawkins – a fundamentalist atheist and painfully over-exposed pop “philosopher” who’s stunning lack of logic, understanding of the basic tenets of Religious language and an annoyingly snappy dresser….shit I’m well off course here.

What the hell was my point?

Oh yes…uh…Usain Bolt – Too good. Yeah, that’ll do.

Ceri: Portrait of an Inadvertent Killer {Ceri's Column}

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I killed the most beautiful butterfly today. Wow, that sentence makes my look like a soon-to-be serial killer. I didn’t mean to. It was fluttering along, maybe trying to find a new home, maybe trying to find a mate. Probably just fluttering aimlessly. The problem was, it was fluttering 1.5 meters above the M4 motorway.

I wasn’t fluttering. I was moving at a positively super-sonic pace (late for some bollocks, again). I was also encased in my 2 tonnes of steel and fibreglass and whatever the hell they make the cup-holder from.

The colourful mass left on my windscreen really was horrific. I mean, it was like the aftermath of a clown’s suicide jump…I assume. Fragments of red and yellow wing were still visible through the dark gunk, (butterfly lung, ass and uvula).

My next action, on reflection, was quite sick when you think about it…and you have nothing else to do. I pulled a tiny lever and the corpse was washed away in an instance. The remnants of such a beautiful little creature treated as equal to fluff, stains and those bits of crap that get in the way of our otherwise squeaky clean world. I’m a killer. I’m a bastard.

I mean, I couldn’t avoid killing it. The insurance folk wouldn’t accept “I swerved into the tanker to avoid a butterfly” as a valid reason to write off my car and maybe write off a limb or two. But my reaction, or lack of, makes me a killer. And a bastard.

But that spider I Hoovered deserved it. I hope the fucker rots in spider hell…great, now I’ll dream of being in spider hell tonight.

Shitter.

by Ceri Phillips

Self service checkouts mean the end of the world {Carl Packman}

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You may have met a manager like this before:

They don’t wear ties because they had a boss once who wore a tie, and he ran himself to the ground, things are easier now, so much so that his (or her) top three shirt buttons are undone, and (s)he’s leaning on the radiator while addressing your team – where you’re all key players.

They are realistic about the working day, having read somewhere, in a Zen capitalist rag, that if a team member (not worker, not staffer, not peasant) relaxes, listens to their personal music player perhaps, then more will get done in the long term, way more than a frazzled brain taking 9-5 too literally.

Want to wear shorts on a hot day? You got it! Want to drink coca cola between tasks, laughing and talking about big brother while the managing director is behind you doing the same? They’ll join you! Want to go for a beer after work, no can do, they’re off to Nobu with their buddies.

This isn’t capitalism, baby. This is capital 2.0 – but it’s virtually the same thing, and it amounts to smoke and mirrors.

Changes the working day doesn’t it! Well, it’s all for nothing!!!

Consider what Roy Mayall, the pseudonym for the postal worker/blogger and occasional comment is free writer, has said about his line of work, on the subject of new Royal Mail investment in multimillion-pound walk-sequencing machines “as part of their new modernisation and investment programme”:

What the new machines have done is to take away the last element of skill from our job. There’s no memory involved any more. We pull out a letter, and we stick it in a slot. We pull out the next letter and stick it into the same slot, depending on the address. Once all the letters from the first address are finished, we move on to the next address. We carry on and on like this until all the letters are sorted.

This does not necessarily speed up the process of throwing off the frame, as most postal workers know their frame so well they can sort it almost as fast without the walk-sequencing technology. Estimates are that it will save about six minutes a frame. Previously, it took about an hour and a half to throw off an entire frame, so six minutes doesn’t really make all that much difference. But what it does mean is that the Royal Mail can now use unskilled labour to do what was once a moderately skilled job.

The optimist may believe that Royal Mail is just buying into more efficient tools to save time in an ever-competitive world, particularly in their industry. But anyone can see, by what Roy Mayall describes, that this new programme has given licence to invest a lump sum into machinery that will undercut skilled work in that industry, saving money in the long term on wages and paying for unskilled workers where skilled ones were needed previously, reducing the need for employment overall.

People tend not to think of this in economic debates, but the supermarket self-service checkout; this machine allows sometimes up to 12 machines to be manned by one person. That is 11 jobs undercut in one shop alone. If a shift is on average eight hours, and the shop is open 24 hours a day, that is 33 less people needed to be employed on minimum wage for the single purchase of 12 machines.

Consider this by regional and then national figures – that’s many jobs, and a lot of money saved.

I could make examples ad nauseum, but I have designated these to show that for all the supposed change in managerial and organisational ethos, across all sectors, the main problem still remains – and always was – in the logic of capital itself, which at its heart sacrifices staff for illusory appeals to efficiency.

by Carl Packman

You can read more of Carl’s thoughts and articles on his blog Raincoat Optimism.

Something About Eleanor Rigby {Carl Packman}

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Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and populariser of the word McJob – to mean unskilled work, product of the transformation from industrial to postindustrial labour – suffered loneliness when he was a young man, influencing his later novel Eleanor Rigby.

He once spoke of his lonely experiences in the Melbourne broadsheet The Age:

If they told us in school that there was this weird thing you were going to experience the moment you turn 20, that would have been a great service. It might be just a North American thing but you always have to smile for the camera and give it your best. Negative emotions, or inevitable emotions, never get discussed.

His book, as those of sound musical mind will know, is named after a song by The Beatles about an old woman who dies lonely, and whose funeral is only attended by a priest called Father Mackenzie, who may or may not be based on a real ‘Father’ Tommy Mackenzie.

Oddly enough, Rigby herself existed, and is buried in a graveyard in Liverpool where Lennon and McCartney used to spend their bored days.

The Beatles anthology, the name of a documentary series of three albums and a book about the band, mentions that McCartney ended up not thinking that it was all a coincidence, but rather that Rigby was hanging around in his unconscious.

If the story is to be believed, one day, on his own, at a piano, the first line of the song just came to McCartney:

The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head… ‘Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church’. I don’t know why. I couldn’t think of much more so I put it away for a day.

On Tuesday, the Daily Mail published an article about how children in the age of web 2.0 – the social networking class – “are twice as likely to feel lonely as those over 55.” The article cites the Mental Health Foundation as saying that the modern world is making the young more vulnerable. This quote is not in quotation marks, but a quote by Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the foundation, is in quotes. He says: ‘The internet is not a root cause of loneliness but it can exacerbate the problem.’

Typical Mail. They provide an analysis of what the foundation have said first which ends up contradicting the quote they use by the chief executive of the foundation.

Dr McCulloch’s point is of course the one to listen to, at least half of his point is; that the internet is not the cause of loneliness, but it might make the problem worse. But then, if you’re lonely, what will help? How can we really tell if the internet is not helping the loneliness of a lonely person? Sounds like guesswork to me.

The internet might not help (Help! I need somebody Help! Not just anybody Help! I need someone Helllllllp! – as John Lennon once said) but what exactly do we have to prove that it might exacerbate the problem? Nothing.

But even so, doesn’t the song Eleanor Rigby teach us something about modern kids and loneliness; namely that when Lennon and McCartney were kids they would hang around graveyards, and become consumed by names on graves who forever more linger in their unconsciousnesses. Lonely or not, kids today ought to count themselves lucky they have internet porn and pac-man to play with rather than creepy, haunted carcass parks.

But also, most importantly, the song Eleanor Rigby was written when McCartney was alone on a piano. To be alone is one of the few pleasures left in the modern world, where hell is other people more than it has ever been.

by Carl Packman

You can read more of Carl’s thoughts and articles on his blog Raincoat Optimism.

Under Pressure {Ceri's Column}

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I do love a game of poker. It really does grab you by the balls and holds you close saying: “Yeah? Yeah?! You think you’re so fucking hot, huh? Punk ass?” Well, that makes it sound like a violent pimp, but you get my drift. No? OK: Poker is awesome.

Mind you, I’m not great at the suspense side of it. I get all screechy when I’ve gone all in (chucked all your chips away) and are awaiting the river card (the last one they flip over and the American commentator of late-night Channel 4 poker shows calls out “Holy Yowza! If that ain’t the darnedest 3 hole strip-lined dandy river I ever saw!”…or something). I can’t bloody stand it!

It’s odd. I’m fine with scary films. I’m a picture of serenity with any real-life danger. Even sporting pressure is OK, (I played rugby for many a year until I got ill…and shit at it). But in the context of a game? I really am useless.

I’ve been known to stand up and shout: “WILL YOU FRIGGING HURRY UP AND TURN OVER THE CARDS YOU DIRTY ASSSSSHOOOOOLEEEE” at the poor, defenceless dealer! Well I say “defenceless”. I was escorted out of the casino by a burly security guy…who was wearing the same uniform as the croupiers. I hope he wasn’t a croupier…anyway, as per usual, I digress.

Come to think of it, I’m rubbish in other suspense-filled games.

Jenga? Jesus wept; I’m a nervous wreck… The thought of being responsible for a whole structure just tumbling down brings me out in hives! I stay clear of any game that even looks like it’s primarily made from wood now.

Buckaroo. It’s the bastard’s face. He looks so stressed! There is nothing worse than staring at an angry donkey carrying random objects.

Kerplunk? Fuck off.

So, by all means play me at Scrabble. Or Monopoly. Cluedo (or Clue to you Yanks) is a bit of a grey area. Hmmm. Better stick to I spy.

by Ceri Phillips