He is bipolar, with all the things that come with that.

Today, just as I was leaving my grandma's house he hands me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. He had written this inside: "To Ashton, with lots of love from Uncle Jovi. Be blessed in Jesus' mighty name, Amen."

Most of you will know I'm a staunch atheist, but I really don't know what to make of it. He's happy.

Fucking finally!

Plan is to introduce a British Bill of Rights which would give UK courts primacy in interpreting the ECHR, making the courts in Strasbourg more advisory than binding and limited to the most serious of cases. Tories want to stay in the ECHR, but they have said that if an agreement cannot be made then the UK will leave.

I'm personally glad this is happening; all of this bullshit about giving prisoners the vote and not being able to deport Abu Qatada because of his "right to a family".

I'm perpetually on the verge of losing my shit:

I've seen some rather ridiculous and narrow minded statuses today 

if you really think a party would realistically oppose women's rights in this day and age you're an idiot.
Secondly judging people on who they are voting is too stupid for words. You're just as bad as judging someone on their beliefs or religion. "If you're voting this particular party then delete me" mate you can get deleted, but for writing such an idiotic and discriminate comment.

Is this how far the termites have spread? Criticising people's beliefs are now immoral and discriminatory?

Fuck me.

Social justice must be one of the most pernicious beliefs of our time. Truly, an intellectual trojan horse that has led to significant deprivation through its premises and conclusions. The whole paradigm is simply riddled with errors.

Many progressives find the idea abhorrent that certain groups--be they racial, national, ethnic, cultural, whatever--can have performance deficits relative to other groups. Accordingly, we have what can be called the "discrimination hypothesis"; or the idea that any disparity in economic outcomes for certain groups must be the result of discrimination or even economic oppression. The idea that performance is therefore an individual phenomenon wherein group discrepancies can be explained away by discrimination thus gives rise to cultural relativism.

The idea that no culture is really better than any other; that they're all just equally valid perspectives. Not only does this disregard the fact that the Chinese have historically been objectively better in matters of technology and government--and the Southern Europeans in philosophy and art--but it just seems unbelievable except on the basis of pure dogma. The idea that economic disparities are mainly the result of discrimination--or the unjust agency of some other group--simply doesn't stand the test of time.

People often blame the poor position of many blacks in America to the legacy of slavery, despite the fact that black unemployment was lower than that of whites from 1890 through 1930; only since the expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s--and many rises in the minimum wage--have blacks had endemic unemployment and single-parent, unmarried families. Indeed, the history of Jews in Eastern Europe, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Chinese in Southeast Asia and the Indians of Fiji (all minorities and beneficiaries of economic disparities) casts wide aspersions on the idea that those who do better are the oppressors, and the rest are the oppressed or victims of discrimination.

People often ask why Africa is so poor, and immediately assume the legacies of imperialism and colonialism are to blame despite the fact that the wheel hadn't even been invented in some parts of Africa by the 1880s. The idea that Africa must be a victim is in line with the sort of social justice thinking we see, and yet it discards much more succinct hypotheses focusing around ideas like geography. While the waterways of Europe--like the canals in Great Britain--provide navigable paths, rivers like the Zaire in Africa are practically useless due to cascades and volatile rain patterns. It was useless for the transportation of goods, and thus could never facilitate any kind of economic development.

And we see how geography bleeds into culture and persists over time. The Scottish lowlanders have historically been economically more successful than the Scottish highlanders, even when they were removed from Scotland and placed in America and Australia (pp. 762, 764, 765-9).

Even if we remove the geographical and related cultural considerations, we still run into demographic problems. In an economy increasingly placing emphasis on information and experience, it's no surprise that Jews do better than Puerto Ricans by having a median age which is a decade ahead. Furthermore, there are even differences within families. The National Merit Scholarship separated IQ finalists into first-born and later-born children, with over half of them being first born, even in five-child families. The difference in IQ between children is so substantial as to translate into significant economic differences, with no discernible features when compared with disparities between non-relatives.

We're left wondering how the discrimination hypothesis can account for any of these incredibly consequential trends effecting the performance of certain groups and their cultures. Or how they can even begin to be remedied. When it comes to proposals like income redistribution, such terms are couched in sanctimonious moralism and shallow analysis; it was the eminent Fabian, George Bernard Shaw, who described socialism as "a proposal to divide up the income of a country in a new way". And not only is this misleading in that it implies we have distribution A and must simply move to distribution B, but it's highly intellectually dishonest for somebody to claim to know how much somebody or a service is really worth. If a man pays one dollar for a cup of coffee, and the barista accepts it, then the distributionists must assume one of them is objectively incorrect by foregoing more worth for the reciprocation--a patently ridiculous thing to try and claim.

As mentioned earlier, cultural relativism features heavily in trying to handwave inequalities away. To simply define inequalities out of existence and then blame shortcomings on discrimination. The relativists assert that every culture deserves "equal respect" and in some cases to be preserved, to the point where ebonics is considered a legitimate branch of linguistics instead of an aberration to the English language.

The irony, of course, is that such cultural entrenchment advocated by the relativists and their social justice acolytes usually leads to more poverty. Hispanics who learn English earn a lot more money than those who don't, and we see the success in the willingness to develop culturally in Japan; no country was more painfully aware of how behind the curve they were than Japan in the 1800s. Can you imagine where the Japanese would be now if they had been told that their shortcomings were the result of discrimination, and been shoved into a special little box by the adherents of identity politics.

And, on a very fundamental level, what cuts to the heart of it all is envy. A subtle, malicious form of envy. This idea that the economy is zero-sum, and that the prosperous must be in their position at the less prosperous's expense, and that the rich must accordingly be brought down for the sake of social justice. Studies of poor and primitive societies have found one, all-pervasive cultural more behind such poverty: the fear of inducing envy in neighbours and family through success (chapter 4).

We've seen this attitude of slighting the fortunate simply for the sake of it all throughout history. Following Romania's acquisition of territory after the defeat of the Central Powers, which included culturally German and Hungarian universities, the government made it a top priority to remove ethnically German and Hungarian students from such universities. All despite the fact that the Romanian population at the time were 75pc illiterate, and thus the Germans nor Hungarians were denying them the prospect of higher education.

Again, in the 1960s following Nigeria's independence. Many professionals, entrepreneurs and bureaucrats in northern Nigeria were from southern tribes, and thus northern political leaders made it a goal to remove them from their posts even if that meant accepting the services of European expatriates or having poorer services nonetheless.

And we see it today in this ridiculous "soak the rich" attitude arguing for excessive rates of taxation on the puerile notion that nobody deserves so much money. And this sort of pandering bullshit has even entered into academia with John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, which declares that any initiative to improve society cannot be accepted unless it improves the worst-off also. . . Even if it doesn't make them any worse off than they already are.

Which also highlights the facile nature of proclamations in the name of "social justice", about how the rich oppress the poor and keep them down. It requires a non-factual, static economy to make sense. Not only are definition of poverty inadequate, as 66pc of the "impoverished" have air conditioning, over half own a car or truck and hundreds of thousands have homes valued at more than $150,000, but inhabitance of the poorest quintile is transient at best. Just 3pc of Americans remain in the bottom quintile for as long as eight years.

And, again, this idea that the rich are some kind of aristorcratic oppressors is egregiously facile. A 1996 study found that 80pc of millionaires are first-generation affluent--exactly the same as in 1892. Not to mention, just 3.5pc of the population has a stable net worth of over $1 million dollars.

And indeed, when it comes to the functioning of society, egregious inefficiencies can be introduced when those making decisions are infected by similar attitudes of envy as cultural relativism and social justice promote in tandem. A former Ivy-league admissions officer, for example, encouraged applicants to "deemphasise" their privileged backgrounds just in case they "rub the admissions people the wrong way" (pp. 117-118).

And we see the same in education, when the mentally retarded are "mainstreamed" into normal classrooms simply on the basis that they can't help their disadvantages, with no regard for the trade-off of sometimes substantial costs and imperceptible benefits. It works in reverse too, as a fourth-grader who scored higher than the average high school graduate on his SAT for maths was denied access to higher-level material by the principle on the grounds that it would be "a violation to social justice".

It is exactly through these mechanisms of assigning cultural, geographic or demographic faults to the agency of some sort of "oppressor class" that cultural relativists, adherents to identity politics and proponents of social justice cause the problem of social entrenchment and a regression from the potential of improvement. It's a disgusting idea, and I hope it dies quickly.

Three months.

Was a good run.

People fucking suck. They don't change, they aren't useful, they're duplicitous and they stab you in the back. Fuck people, and fuck all their bullshit that comes with them.

What a fucking nonce. According to him, if you're in Brighton Pavilion you should vote Green, if you're in Scotland you should vote SNP and if you're anywhere else you should vote Labour.

What an intellectually dishonest, uninteresting phenomenon of a drug-addled, narcissistic brain. I knew, fucking knew, he would turn this into some class warfare bullshit between the righteous and open-eared Ed Miliband and the Tory toffs.

Fuck you Russell Brand. Fuck you and all the un-principled bullshit you so happily stand for.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Taking a stand in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz are whistleblowers Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Activists and members of Germany’s Green party unveiled the life-size bronze statues on Friday.

All are considered heroes on the political left for leaking US intelligence documents.

The man behind the work Italian sculptor Davide Dormino explains that he wanted to “represent three contemporary heroes who have lost their freedom for the truth.” He says that they act as a reminder of “how important it is to know the truth and have the courage to know the truth.”

Entitled Anything to Say the sculpture encourages supporters to stand up for freedom of speech and information.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange faces extradition to Sweden to face investigation into accusations of rape and sexual assault, but fears he will be extradited to the US to face questions over his role in leaking secret US documents. He has taken asylum in Ecuador’s London Embassy. US soldier Chelsea Manning (born Bradley Manning) was convicted in 2013 on charges relating to the Espionage Act for leaking US intelligence and military documents to Wikileaks. She is currently serving a 35 year prison sentence. Edward Snowden is currently evading extradition to the US by taking asylum in Russia. He released classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) to journalists revealing the scale of the US government’s global surveillance capabilities.

Their statues will have fewer restrictions on their movements with a scheduled world tour.

As much as I dislike the government at times, intelligence operations are incredibly important for security, and whistleblowers should be prosecuted. Especially when they haven't even read half the shit they released.

Fucking traitors.

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the West Midlands had "significant similarities" with patterns of abuse in Rotherham, a report said.
West Midlands Police's report said 210 young people had been identified as victims or at risk of CSE between January and June 2014.
It was put together last year, but has just been released following a freedom of information request.
Last month, a separate report said the figures could actually be much higher.
Led by Stephen Rimmer, a former Home Office director general, and commissioned by seven local authorities in Birmingham and the Black Country, as well as the police, it found up to 500 children could be at risk.
David Jamieson, West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, said Mr Rimmer's report included more up-to-date figures on victims, although both reports acknowledged abuse was usually "hidden" and the true figure could be much higher.
West Midlands Police published its report after it received an FOI request from the Birmingham Mail.
Multiple abusers
The force has charted CSE victims and offenders over recent years and said there had been a "consistent profile" of both since 2010.
The report said victims were typically white women aged 13 to 16, with about a third living in care.
"There are significant similarities to the Rotherham victim/offender and location profiles," it states.
It also detailed that of those victims living at home, about 25% had lived in care at some point, while up to 60% had a case worker.
Many of the victims were transported across the West Midlands by organised gangs and abused by multiple men, the report found.
Meanwhile, it said suspects and offenders were "typically Asian, of Pakistani heritage and aged from 17 to 40".
However, online abusers are more likely to be white males, it said.
Mr Jamieson said police were working with communities across the area to tackle the problem, while local authorities in Birmingham and the Black Country were now taking a more coordinated approach.
"I totally agree that more could and should have been done in the past, there's no question of that, and that's true right across the country," he said.

So Rotherham and Rochdale, then Parliament, then Scotland Yard and now the West Midlands.

And, as a society, we seem to be more concerned with the non-existent gender pay gap and whether or not to keep the green belt as it is.

I'm genuinely surprised people haven't rioted over this; it really is endemic.

When people rush to the defence of the ailing NHS, they often cite the 2014 Commonwealth Fund Report. Which is legitimate, of course, after reading through it I'm confident in saying that it's a solid paper. However, especially when it comes to healthcare, academic papers still have to make presuppositions; the CF report, for instance, is incredibly biased towards the NHS since it puts so much weight on metrics involving centralised systems, out-of-pocket costs or insurer rejection in some manner; all disregarding actually access to treatment, or the fact that there are around 9,000 unnecessary deaths a year as a result of negligence or inefficiency.

The 2014 European Health Consumer Index spits out a totally opposite result, throwing the NHS to the bottom of the pile behind even Portugal. I find the EHCI report more valid, since it places much less emphasis on principles like who is controlling the deliverance of healthcare or whether somebody is making a profit, and focuses on things like waiting times.

When it comes down to it, however, I think the OECD's healthcare efficiency reports are the best studies into the real efficiency of healthcare, as the OECD even acknowledges: “there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to reforming health care systems. Policymakers should aim for coherence in policy settings by adopting best practices from the many different health care systems that exist in the OECD and tailor them to suit actual circumstances.” Meaning they also judge groups singularly according to the type of system they have.



The UK falls into Group 6, defined as: "Mostly public insurance. Health care is mainly provided by a heavily regulated public system, with strict gate-keeping, little decentralisation and a tight spending limit imposed via the budget process"

The OECD has noted before that the UK could make significant efficiency gains when it comes to cost--in fact, it was in the top three countries for potential efficiency gains alongside Greece and Ireland. And the OECD's ultimate analysis of the UK is that: “The quantity and quality of health care services (in the UK) remain lower than the OECD average while compensation levels are higher. Reinforcing competitive pressures on providers could help mitigate price pressures, e.g. by increasing user choice further and reforming compensation systems.”

The UK could look to be more like Norway in its deliverance of healthcare, which came out as the most efficient in group six, or it could seek to be more like Germany (where less than half of the hospitals are government owned), the Netherlands, Canada or Sweden which all have universal systems with varying methods of funding but with much less restriction, much more consumer choice and much more efficiency.

So, Sandtrap did a post not too long ago about chemotherapy and all that stuff, and there's nowhere near enough discussion about mental illness on Serious. So I figured I'd post a few things, most importantly this TED talk by Andrew Solomon:


And, also, this video:


Depression is something I think most people will experience at least at some point in their lives. Even if they never actually have some form of depressive illness, they'll probably catch a glimpse of what it's like through extreme grief--or something similar enough.

There are, of course, numerous forms of depression. Dysthymia, "minor" and chronic depression; Major Depressive Disorder; or a combination thereof known as "double depression", wherein people are chronically dysthymic with bouts of major depression. All of these besides the cyclical mood disorders like cyclothymia and bipolar disorder.

On a personal level, depression is both difficult to live with and difficult to treat. It often feels as if you are one of the only people capable of perceiving the world correctly, and it sucks the motivation and vitality out of your life. It doesn't so much make you sad, as make you as close to dead as a living person can be besides a coma. The thing about depression, too, is that while it's correlated with certain personality types (Mr. P can probably give a better account of this than I), it can co-exist with either egosyntonic or egodystonic illnesses. People all across the board, from psychopaths and narcissists to the anxious and borderline, can feel depression for prolonged periods of time.

And, even though on an intellectual level you're capable of understanding that help is available and that what you're feeling is ridiculous, you can't shake it. There's a deep delusional undertone to depressive thought and behaviour; fundamental and existential beliefs which are horribly mistaken, and impossible to relieve. It's an illness that truly plagues you for the rest of your life.

And, I think, that is the most important thing to take away from discussions about depression. People who are depressed are not weak, or spineless. Depression is not a problem with an individual's will, but an individual's perception. As piling weights on the back of a man will cause his back to break eventually; so too will the constricted perception of a depressive, in time, cause his will to break as a natural consequence.

Where this idea has come from that Iran is some peaceful nation being bullied by the West I'll never fucking know. Everybody seems content to forget that it tried to procure nuclear contraband while negotiating with the US, purchased embargoed weapons from the Kremlin, actively funds Hamas (and has been arming the Houthis in Yemen since 2009), performing military drills on mock US carriers and intimidating international cargo ships.

And all of this besides the habitual anti-semitism, and "death to America" proclamations. Oh, and let's not forget the escalating demands and obscurantism by Iran during the recent nuclear agreements, and the Iranians' brazen rejection of any international investigations into their nuclear facilities.

All of this from a fundamentalist Shi'a theocracy which actively celebrates terrorism. And yet again, the West will capitulate to these barbarous dogs.

According to some, they may be more efficient when it comes to deterring recidivism:

Private companies are better at running prisons than the public sector, a study by a centre-right think tank says.
Reform said 10 out of 12 privately-run prisons had lower reoffending rates among those serving 12 months or more than comparable public jails.

Last year, the government signalled a move away from wholesale privatisation in England and Wales. Reform says this decision is not backed up by evidence.

Justice Minister Jeremy Wright said the report was a "simplistic analysis".

Privately-managed prisons were introduced in the UK in the 1990s and there are currently 14 private prisons in England and Wales, all managed by one of three firms - G4S, Serco and Sodexo Justice Services (formerly Kalyx).

Value for money

In November, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling set out the government's plan for prison competition and he decided four prisons, including G4S-run HMP Wolds, should be run by the public sector.

Mr Grayling said private firms would be brought in to all public prisons to run maintenance, resettlement and catering, saving up to £450m over six years.

From Ministry of Justice data, it is almost impossible to compare the performance and reoffending rates of one establishment with another

Juliet Lyon, Prison Reform Trust

Policy groups, including Reform, said the decision amounted to the end of competition for prison management between the public and private sector, although Mr Grayling insisted it did not rule out further prison-by-prison competitions in the future.

For its report "The case for private prisons", Reform studied Ministry of Justice statistics for prison operation performance and rehabilitation. Some data was not available for all of the 14 private prisons.

The think tank said private prisons outperformed their public counterparts in the majority of the performance measures used by the Ministry of Justice.

Among the report findings were:

seven out of 10 privately-managed prisons had lower re-offending rates among offenders serving fewer than 12 months

12 out of 12 private jails performed better than the public sector at "resource management and operational effectiveness"

However, seven out of 12 public prisons performed better than private jails at "public protection"

Report author Will Tanner said: "Private contractors outperform comparable public sector prisons on both cost and quality, delivering better value for money for the taxpayer.

"In addition, the vast majority of contracted prisons have lower reoffending rates than similar public sector prisons for both long and short term prisoners, a key government objective."

Reform recommended that all prisons should be subject to competition. It also called for the end to national pay bargaining for prison officers with pay and conditions to be set locally by governors.

Serco and G4S were among 64 firms which provided more than £5,000 in sponsorship for events run by Reform last year, but the think tank said it was "editorially independent" .

Mr Tanner said its external reviewers included former governors of public sector and private sector jails. He added that the data on which its analysis was based was from the government, not the private sector.
'Mixed results'

Justice Minister Jeremy Wright says Reform's "simplistic analysis does not tell the whole story".

This report acknowledges that the private sector is a source of innovation

"A wide range of factors contribute to reoffending including previous criminal behaviour, drug and alcohol dependency and the support offenders receive on release from prison," he said.

"This is why we are committed to introducing significant reforms that will bring down our stubbornly high reoffending rates."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said the report's selective use of data masked "decidedly mixed results".

"Some private prisons have proved innovative and effective, but others have been criticised by the Chief Inspector for their high staff turnover, tendency to cut corners and weaknesses in security.

"From Ministry of Justice data, it is almost impossible to compare the performance and reoffending rates of one establishment with another, partly because prisons hold different categories of offenders and also because prisoners often serve their sentences in a number of different jails."

And Steve Gillan, of the Prison Officers Association told BBC Radio 4's Today programme his trade union was opposed to private prisons in concept and because it believes "it is a duty of the state" to handle justice and not for share holders who would be "gaining from incarceration".

However, Jerry Petherick, G4S managing director of custodial and detention services, said the report had looked at a "wide range" of official performance measures.

"This report acknowledges that the private sector is a source of innovation in areas like reducing reoffending, encouraging employment and fostering an environment which promotes constructive staff-prisoner relationships," he said.

I'll fuck you up.