#WorldMentalHealthDay

As I’m sure most of you have seen by now with social media talking about it a lot, today is World Mental Health Day. Something else that many of you will already know about me is that I’m someone who is affected by mental health as a sufferer of bipolar depression disorder. The combination of these two facts would generally prompt me into writing one of my (in)famously long essay status thingys, so I’ll try not to disappoint anyone.

I am glad that we live in a society that is capable of having open and accepting conversations about how anyone is feeling and the need to hide away what you’re feeling is no longer as commonplace as it was years ago. This does not mean that we live in a perfect society; this is far from the case. Many young adults, especially young men like myself, find themselves unable to talk about their own negative feelings about themselves as a result of societal pressures – the idea that men don’t talk about their feelings and the generally idea that we must all strive for perfection regardless of what it takes. To that I have one phrase (Forgive me, Mum): what a load of rubbish.

This is not a derision of the motives for why we don’t talk about our feelings to people, so don’t go lambasting me in the comments before you’ve finished this. My enflamed comment there is we feel we need to live our lives according to an outdated system that has existed in British culture for decades – the stiff upper lip. Only a conversation I was having early today says a lot about this; the British people think rather than feel. We find it uncomfortable to talk about how we feel, whether it be about ourselves or how we feel for one another for whatever reason that may be. This will lead to a backlog of feelings and that pressure can often cause great harm to many people.

I get that. I get that as I understand that it is terrifying to tell someone that you’re scared by your own thoughts, the fear of rejection and humiliation at not being strong enough to deal with your own problems. But there is nothing weak in asking for help from someone. There is nothing weak in needing someone to listen to you talk about your fears, to be there for you even if they don’t do anything. And there are always people who are happy & willing to listen to you; whether they are friends, family, or strangers on the end of the phone at the Samaritans.

Never think that you’re not worth anything because I have news for you – you are worth so much more than you think. We might not all be the most popular person, the funniest, the smartest, the best at everything, but that doesn’t make you worth any less than anyone else in the entire world. Every single person on this planet is important. We make the world what it is, for all of its faults & flaws, a myriad of wonder and spectacle. You’re never alone and never not worth anything – remember that.

I might sound like I’m rambling off a lot of nice pieces from graduation speeches here, but it’s all true. (What I’m saying is true, not that I took any of this from a graduation speech. It’s more Doctor Who really but anyway…) I’ve heard all of this before too and I’m sure that a lot of you have heard it too. But that’s how I know that it works and it’s true because I’ve been to those same dark places that others have been to; the place where the world is cold, dark, and full of shadows, where you feel completely alone and would be better off not even existing, where no-one will miss you if you’re not around anymore. But that’s not true. Because the world is full of wonders, of people who love & care about you, and even if that might not always be there to see or speak to you, that doesn’t mean you’ve been forgotten about.

I always look at the night-time sky every night before bed now. I look at the stars shining in the sky; even if it’s cloudy and I might not be able to see them, I’ll still look extra hard. In that vast inky, blackness that seems to cover everything and surround all of us forever, there are pockets of light shining through brightly that the rest of the universe can see. And that gives me hope. Hope is something that we need more of in this world – we see disaster, hate, misery, death, greed, and a host of things that can drive a person to the brink. But hope, compassion, friendship, happiness, and most importantly love are the things that we all have in our lives that are often overlooked.

Hold onto them. Because they are your way from the darkness of the cold pit and back into the warm starshine of love.

I’d quickly like to say thank you to everyone who has been there for me in my dark times, whether they have known it or not, and helped me through those trips back into the light.

There has never been anyone who wasn’t important and you are not the first. I love you all and know you are not alone.

 - Alex

Opening the door on Europe

Well, despite spending a long time away from here, I have not forgotten all about it. So I’m returning to it again to tackle the big issue in the UK at the moment: the EU Referendum. And what an issue it is.

So far, most of the information that had been peddled by both the Remain and Leave campaigns have been mutually accused as ‘Project Fear’, a term that was also used by the Yes campaign during the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 (More on that later). The Remain campaign has mostly been focussing on the economic impact of Brexit (British exit from the EU for anyone reading this whose been outside of the UK news bubble) arguing that Britain’s departure would have a huge negative impact on our economy; we receive not only huge amounts as being a member of the EU thanks to the lack of trade barriers that we receive being a member state, but also this would affect other trade as international companies would be willing to move elsewhere to have access to the European market.

The Leave campaign, by contrast, has focussed on immigration as its main issue for leaving the EU; only by leaving the European Union and the ‘uncontrolled’ migration that it allows between its member states and those refugees and immigrants wishing to pour into Britain can we restore our national sovereignty whilst being able to reclaim the money we would otherwise spend on the untold millions entering the country seeking to steal our jobs and robbing our unemployment benefits at the same time and use it to save our welfare state and the NHS. (Yes, the sarcasm is coming off a bit strong there – I know)

So, they’re the key areas really – either you’re a friend of big business who doesn’t want to see the economy go down the tubes or you’re a closet racist with particular position on Schrodinger’s migrant who is simultaneously taking your job and your unemployment benefits. One obviously is coming across as worse than the other really, but accusations continue to fly. The Leave campaign, or Brexiteers for a catchier, youthful name, have argued that the Remain campaign is only looking to help big business and the large multinationals that benefits by the UK staying in, whilst the ordinary person in the street doesn’t see any of those benefits. The Remain campaign have accused the Brexiteers of being…well, how I described them earlier.

All in all, it is not a pleasant or hopeful message for either to pitch really. Both sides are pandering to make you vote for their option out of fear for the other side – would you rather have a national economy come crashing down and be abandoned on the world stage or find yourself surrounded by immigrants & no say on any laws in your own country?

So, what do I think?

I am, like many of my generation, pro-Europe. The EU has been around for my entire life so I could not begin to imagine a world without us being a part of it – those who do remember it will harken back to the glory days of the 1970s when it was still the EEC (European Economic Community) that saw Ted Heath take us into the Common Market the referendum two years later in 1975 that saw us overwhelmingly supporting being a member. Back then, I would have voted for us to leave.

My reluctance when it comes to the EU are the same arguments that were made by the late great Tony Benn – there is a fundamental democratic deficit within the EU. It’s leadership and composition is only partially democratically elected by the populations of its member states, whilst the remainder is appointed internally. Quite famously, or infamously depending on outlook, if the EU were to apply to join itself, it would not meet the criteria required as a democratic state to join. Equally, the nature of the European Union today is a free market national community – one of the reasons that Margaret Thatcher was an early supporter of the EEC prior to her change of heart as Labour become pro-EEC/EU when workers’ & trade unions rights were made possible through its membership.

Despite this, I am a reluctant European. The benefits that we gain through membership to the EU; workers’ right, paid holiday leave, gender equality in the workplace, etc. are all secured through our membership to this exclusive club that helps bring together and unite the continent of Europe. A continent that has, for most of its history, been engulfed in bloodshed & warfare. We now live in a Europe of peace, where war between European nations is no longer a possibility thanks to the EU. (I would now encourage anyone wishing to looking into this particular fact towards Robert Schuman, the father of the EEC, and how he came up with the idea in the first place)

Fearmongering in politics has become commonplace – it was seen in the Scottish Independence Referendum and is also now being seen in the US presidential elections. What we need in politics is not fear and a place to direct anger, but hope and way to make things better for ourselves and all other people. Making people passionate about a cause you believe in is always a good thing if it can provoke like-minded people to band together, but only if it means the building of a better society that doesn’t cause the mindless destruction of the society that we live in already. Love and compassion are easier to understand than hate and prejudice.

I’ll probably get more into the EU Referendum as time passes by on it with specific references to some of the more notable events and individuals so far (Boris, I’m coming for you!) but this should serve as an opener for you in the meantime.

Looking across the Atlantic

So, I’m going to be starting off my first post with a brief comment on one of the biggest world politics event taking place: The United States 2016 presidential nominations. A little odd for me to be starting with this as I expect most of what I write on here will be about my own national politics (British, in case you were wondering), but it’s one of the hot topics at the moment so I’d tag my own thoughts to it.

Now I have some friends who live in the US, one of whom sent me a link to an interesting article at Politico Magazine which talks about how Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have shifted the American political environment towards one away from the traditional American viewpoint and more in-line with that of Europe. My friend actually wanted me for my views on the matter as a European, but I thought I would share them here as an interesting starting point for the blog. (Shelby, I hope you don’t mind)

In some parts of the article, I think that it is correct that both Trump and Sanders have pushed the debates and issues into different directions and different areas than are usually focussed on during the presidential nomination period and, subsequently, the election period itself. Trump has pushed immigration to the fore with a strongly populist message about opposing not only immigration from neighbouring Mexico with the construction of a wall, but also with his strong stance against allowing Muslims in the United States as a security measure, whilst Sanders has made the wealth inequality within the country a key issue for his own campaign and railing against Wall Street and the private banking system. In many ways, they serve as counterpoints to the differing issues that are dividing much of the world – immigration and financial equality.

However, I would not agree that these are issues that are inherently European. In the article, Trump is compared to Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian Prime Minister who was infamous for his ‘Bunga Bunga’ parties and seen as corrupt by many. The comparison comes from Berlusconi’s background as a businessman before venturing into politics and the comparable nature of their own political ideologies, though I don’t think that Berlusconi was quite as extreme in some views as Trump is in his (Never thought I’d be defending Berlusconi, believe me). A major difference between these two though is that Trump has never held any elected office in his life, whilst in a parliamentary system, Berlusconi did hold a seat in the Italian Parliament before eventually reaching the position that he would serve as the Prime Minister. He didn’t simply go from one to the other. Not that might be a quibble over the minutia in that comparison, but the difference is that Trump himself is not a politician and doesn’t claim to be.

Moving to the other side, Sanders is compared to the current British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected as the party leader last year on a wave of anti-austerity protests and apathy towards perceived ‘career politicians’. In some ways, these actually do serve as better comparisons as both men serve their own personal beliefs whilst the Democratic Party and the Labour Party have respectively transformed over the decades into something to be considered more ‘electable’. Both Corbyn and Sanders are against the sheer amount of influence that private business, the media, and private banking have in current politics and believe there must be a radical change in both systems. At the same time, I would not agree that Sanders is someone with a more European idea of politics than an American one – he still holds true to many American values & ideals, as can be seen to his approach on gun laws, which many Europeans would not agree with.

Trump and Sanders are also both anti-establishment candidates – neither have the support of their respective parties (I won’t get into the matter of Sanders technically being an Independent Senator rather than being a party member, but go with me on this still) and are not the preferred choice by the leadership. Rather than seeing this a complete transformation of the American system into one more akin to Europe, I think there are issues that Americans focus on more than are affected in Europe.

My biggest issue with the article though is Trump himself. I don’t know of anyone, amongst my friends, relatives, strangers I overhear on the bus, or internet commentators, who would willingly vote for Donald Trump – I say that as a Brit and as a European. Much of what he says is appealing to a broad right-wing populism that is anti-Obama, in addition to being strongly anti-Islamic and xenophobic. Europe has our own version of this, with UKIP here in Britain, Front Nationale in France, etc. However, none of these seem to be the same vein or style of Donald Trump and his campaigns.

I would say that the United States presidential election of 2016 isn’t so much the beginning of a shift towards a more-European style politics for America as it is a shifting in the focus of the debate and issues. Sanders, in many ways, is a reminder of the New Deal Democrats prior to Carter and Clinton years which has been lost to generations of Americans, whilst Trump is a mix of the negative aspects of Barry Goldwater, or at least how he was portrayed during 1964, and George Wallace’s American Independent Party in 1968. America isn’t just looking across the Atlantic for 2016, it’s also looking to the past.

Pulling on my Anorak

Well I’ve been meaning to set-up a blog for some time now. And by ‘some time’, I mean at least over a year since one of my oldest friends did so and gave me the idea to try it myself. As you can clearly see, I was swift in my response. Nevertheless, here we are – ‘Anorak on a Soapbox’. I’ve had that name for a longer time for something I would use either as a blog or the name for an autobiography, if I ever reached a stage in my life where I could/should/would write one.

It’s a fairly obvious breakdown in terms of a title; I am generally a bit of a social oddball and so would fit the definition of being an anorak quite nicely, even if I do actually lack to the item of clothing in question (Not for want of trying, but they’re not terribly easy to find & seem to be a small fortune for one too). This is also a way that I can broadcast or share my thoughts on the state of things in the world i.e. current politics, world events, social events, etc.

Most people I’ve met & know me have said that I should go in politics as a career path, which always rankled with me slightly as I was studying to become an actor and have since graduated with that degree in hand. But I’ve also always been someone who doesn’t openly broadcast or share his thoughts on current political events as a sign of not wishing to fill my own Facebook with a stream of politicised essays on a constant daily basis whilst wishing to respect that my various ‘friends’ on Facebook (A loose terminology as I would expect that if asked I would imagine that most of those comprising the three-digit total of my Facebook friends might be consider me to be amongst their friends as we’ve not exchanged any kind of communication in years however that’s a point for another time) probably have different political opinions to my own. I already know this is the case with my friends that I see in the real world (Yes, I do have some of those too).

 

So we’re brought back to ‘Anorak on a Soapbox’ where I can occasionally talk about my thoughts on the burning issues without too fear of creating walls of text on what should otherwise be a social media site used for friendly conversation, light-hearted pictures, and the occasional rant. I know there’s much more to Facebook and all other social media than that, but I’m trying to be relatively simple with it.

I’ll probably be putting up the first ‘proper’ post later today so feel free to check it out.