Markets

It is Sunday, the day of rest. What are the "markets" doing today? Scratching their balls?
Tomorrow, we will wake to more talk of what the markets, the anthropomorphic representation of financial fluctuation, are doing.
Talking to a friend who questioned the validity of the term, I was led to reflect on what the function of this term is in our society.
We are currently having to decrease our financial wealth, having lived on money that has been borrowed or created for several years. The borrowing must be repaid, while the created money leads to no enrichment except for those who create it and syphon off existing money for the lending of the created funds.
So why must we create this bogeyman, the "markets", when the money is owed to particular entities and the amount we pay or receive depends on an equilibrium determined by other agents involved in the transaction? In an economic sense this is the market, however, the "markets" we hear about on the radio or television every day are not the same.
The "markets" are not represented as abstract entities that are determined by the buyers or sellers, but as a personalisation that is driving our collective destinies. Why do we have the need to abrogate our role in the financial transactions that we are participating in as individuals, companies, cooperatives, countries? We need to reclaim our role in the world we live in and answer for the decisions that we have made as individuals and groups.

The New Year

It is already the third of January and my year has started with a slow series of lie-ins and gentle TV. Some work has been done and the gremlin sits on my shoulder whispering in my ear "you should have done more". I pop him with my holiday feeling and the pleasure of no on calls over the past two weeks. As Pip might say the sentiment has more sense than to go on living.
What to expect of this new year? A job application is a certainty, a job a possibility and a pay rise seems to be fading into the distance with Lansley's pig-headed white paper reforms. The adamantine hubris of his plans is admirable for its purpose and direction, and despicable for it's lack of strategic thought and compromise.
What else awaits us in this year? Sunshine, rain, and more sunshine.

Letter to my MP regarding the Home Secretary's dismissal of Prof. Nutt of the ACMD

Dear Mr. Smith,

As one of your constituents, I was disturbed to read of Prof. David
Nutt's "sacking" by the home secretary. In his letter to Prof. Nutt,
the Home Secretary writes "As chair of the ACMD you cannot avoid
appearing to implicate the Council in your comments and thereby
undermining its scientific independence". The ACMD recommended in 2008 that cannabis remains a class C drug (recommendation 3 of its report on cannabis). The Government states in its reply to the report "In reaching our decision, we have taken into account wider issues such as public perceptions and the needs and consequences for policing priorities" thus justifying its decision to reclassify cannabis as
class B.

There are several important issues at stake:
- the independence of the Government's independent advisers has been
undermined by the "sacking" and it is therefore the Government that is
undermining scientific independence, and not Prof. Nutt's comments
- it is unclear which of Prof. Nutt's comments the Home Secretary has
issue with and how these have undermined the Council's independence
- the recommendation of the Council was for cannabis to remain a class
C drug, and in ignoring the Council's recommendation, the Government
had gone against scientific advice and engaged in political posturing
- more broadly, the vacillation in decision making by the government
without further consultation regarding this issue, and seemingly for
the sole purpose of political expediency, does not reflect well on the
Government as authoritative. This may be to do with the rather rapid
turnover of Home Secretaries in recent years.

I would kindly request that you table a parliamentary question
regarding whether the Home Secretary regards his letter to Prof. Nutt
as undermining scientific independence. To my mind, if the Home
Secretary does not, he lacks significant insight into his position.

Yours sincerely,

Nostalgia and Facebook

I spend my time on Facebook searching for people who make up my past and grasping at them to feed my rumination about the past, sometimes rose-tinted, other times dark like the windows of a hearse limousine. The ballast of "friends" that keeps our ship upright on the cyberseas is what we have collected at many ports on our journey. Our journey is through time, not around the globe, and so even if we course due west for the rest of our lives, we will never circumnavigate the globe and call in our home port again.
This is probably not the journey most people envisage and there are always new shores sighted, but these are rarely the Indies or El Dorado. More often they are an island of savages where we will be able to refill our barrels with fresh water before sailing on. Sometimes we may not even anchor and add the shore to the never finished map before we sail on with a cursory wave.
Until we fall off the edge of the world.

Staring at the sun and losing one's give a shit

Irvin Yalom delivered the distinguished psychiatrist lecture at the APA meeting. He talked of the "terror of death" or death anxiety, a universal human trait that is often not acknowledged by people in therapy or elsewhere.

He starts by quoting the 17^th century French philosopher La Rochefoucauld: “you cannot stare into the face of the sun, or death”. How can we talk about death anxiety? He goes onto discuss how the idea of death can save, whereas it destroys us physically, how “cancer cures psychoneurosis” and how terminal cancer patients talk of losing their “give a shit”. He goes on to talk about ideas for therapy and Epicurean insights. Coming to terms with the mortality of the soul, that we cannot be hurt in death can lead to a freedom from worries and preoccupations, the state of ataraxia. Hydroxyzine carries the trade name Atarax in some countries. Other avenues of discussion could include the nothingness of death, and the apposition of the period before birth with the period after death and their similarity. Underlying his talk is the importance of the healing synergistic relationship between therapist and client, of empathy, and he concludes with “I am human and nothing human is alien to me” from Seneca. There are case discussions and the inspiration as people leave the lecture theatre is palpable.

The rubber chicken

I walk up to the conference centre, and crossing the road I see two men in broad-rimmed hats standing on a traffic island. Both are wearing red noses, one is swinging a rubber chicken above his head and the other is giving out leaflets. As I walk past, I am asked "Are you normal?" and am told "No, you are not normal", and then one of them points to the centre and says "Nobody in there is normal". The leaflet they give out tells of a man in Minnesota who has had 40 forced electroconvulsive treatments as I find out when I read it later. Actually I am surprised that only those 2 are protesting, I was expecting a whole troop of Scientologists. And I must agree, if the story of the man is true, it makes me feel quite uncomfortable, nobody should have 40 ECT treatments against their will, or even without their will.

Rejection

Today we returned from three days away. A spent the time with her grandparents. When we returned, A initially clung onto her grandmother's leg but then came away and wanted to be held by me. However, she gave the cold shoulder to her mother. This continued for most of the day.
Why? Did A feel rejected and wanted to show this? Was she even exacting revenge? It strikes me that she shows little gratitude towards us and I am not sure she even understands the concept. I suppose that a small child expects love and attention, and is only able to retaliate to abandonment with the same. She does show us love and attention usually and I think that could be construed as gratitude at certain times. On the other hand, over a period of three days, the memory of a small child may not remember the love and attention preceding that time but only the lack of it during the time. The revenge was devastating and directed in unrepentant force.