Why I Hate Christmas.

If I tell people I hate Christmas they call me a scrooge and accuse me of being miserable and then they accuse me of winding them up. After several attempts to convince them I’m serious they slink off in a sulk making a mental note never to speak to me again. But I don’t care. I am unrepentant. I am willing to get rid of the irritating ‘cheerful at Christmas’ dimwit for rest of the year as well, just so long as I don’t have to bounce, whoop, drink enormous amounts of alcohol or pretend to smile. It hurts my face. But why do I hate Christmas? For me the reasons are obvious. Because I had terrible Christmases from the year 1995 onwards. No offence to family (bless ‘em), but during these painful years nothing could have broken down my determination to be miserable and to go home early, get into bed at 10pm after having eaten a hundred-weight of chocolate and then rise as late as possible on Boxing Day and then proceed to endure another Christmas-like day but without presents.

Everyone lives in hope of a happy, normal Christmas. But when this doesn’t happen it is crushingly disappointing and quite frankly a failed Christmas is worse than no Christmas at all by quite a long way. The nightmare that is Christmas begins in September and then once the first bit of tinsel, advert, rack of charity Christmas cards appears, the runaway train that is Christmas begins to move slowly and inexorably towards you. Even if you run as fast as you can it will still hit you, despite the overwhelming need to get away, you cannot. You cannot avoid it, because your friends, family, neighbours, TV commissioners, business owners and colleagues are all having such a great time, that I personally have to remind them each and every year that Christmas is in fact shit, but they just haven’t realised it yet. The cultural pressure has brain washed every man, woman and child into believing they’re having a great time, to the point that Hindu’s, Sikhs and Muslims are now beginning to celebrate Wintable. What a crock. Unbelievable. Don’t get me wrong if you’re a devout Christian, Christmas actually means something. In which case get yourself to church for Mass on Christmas Eve and again for the morning service. Don’t buy presents, or tinsel or a Christmas tree. Just praise Jesus to the heavens and remember those less fortunate than yourself and maybe give some money to charity. Other than that what the hell are you doing spending £1500 per child on laptops, mobile phones and toys that move and make lots of stupid noises. You’re a Christian, you should be busily rejecting capitalism at Christmas.

But woe is you if you actually work in retail. You’re not only obliged to be happy at Christmas when you’re not at work, but also supposed to be happy about it at work to customers (who also secretly hate it), and then you’re expected to get your tired, hung over, mentally exhausted self down to work on Boxing Day ready for the ‘January’ sales. You poor bastards. Shop workers also have to listen to Christmas music for eight hours a day. If you changed the venue to a prison cell at Guantanamo, it would considered torture. And let’s not forget that we are now so hooked on Christmas, that every shop along the High Street relies on it to sell us crap for the rest of the year. Christmas actually sustains the faltering economy!

There are some strange and sad facts around Christmas that get rolled out every year along with the same old dreadful Christmas songs. The murder rate goes up and the suicide rate goes down! Yes that’s right, we want to kill each other but not ourselves. How weird we all are. But don’t worry, suicide rates increase by the New Year. It seems we all hold out hoping that this year will be different. When we find it was as bad or worse than last year we finally do it.

But it’s for the children! I hear you cry. Well it ain’t for all children because according to a survey done for BBC’s Newsround, they found that over 16% of children felt that Christmas made them feel sad, nervous or left out. That figure excludes those children who believed that if they criticised Christmas that Santa wouldn’t bring them any presents. And in a poll carried out by Mental Health charity Mind it showed that 19% of adults felt less able to manage their mental health at Christmas and 25% of adults surveyed said that they felt depressed at Christmas. That’s a quarter. The elderly also suffer at Christmas with one in ten spending Christmas alone.

And there’s the month of Sundays in between Christmas and New Year. For me this is the worst bit. If you work very hard the rest of the year, you may enjoy the chance to lay in bed farting until noon and then after a serious arse scratching session, might mope downstairs and watch Star Wars for the fiftieth time. Or you might pick up the celebrity autobiography your wife bought you (oh joy). But the fact is by the sixth empty, pointless day of the holidays we all have to endure, you’re beginning to think you’d be better off at work, particularly as you’ve just lost your rag with your child for being annoying and you’re feeling guilty and a little bit paranoid about being arrested.

I’m still holding out for my ten year old nephew who I almost convinced to join me in a ban Christmas campaign, until he realised he wouldn’t get any presents and withdrew his support. He then called me a Grinch.

Iain Duncan-Smith - Spree Killer.

At least 60 suicides have been attributed to Duncan-Smith's sickness benefits changes. The daily humiliation and uncertainty of having your case reviewed, let alone having your benefits stopped altogether is more than enough to trigger off suicidal people, into successful attempts to kill themselves. To this end I believe that DWP and Duncan-Smith himself have done more than enough to warrant a Police investigation for corporate manslaughter or a wholesale, detailed judge led enquiry into the DWP's role. To this end, this is my video post about this issue. It is graphic, but I wanted to show people the grim truth. Statistics don't deliver a message in the quite the same way as images - albeit animated.



www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk

How High Street Brands Dodge Disability Laws.

Can you tell whether someone has a mental illness just by looking at them? I've been around the mentally ill long enough to tell instantly whether they're ill or not. Their gait, their size, the greyness of their skin, the expression on their faces, all signal either the use of powerful psychiatric drugs, or an intense discomfort at their surroundings. A major problem for me has been depression. When I am depressed I look down, I don't communicate, I look unkempt. And in a few instances, I have been asked to leave a High Street shop, because I have for one reason or another made staff feel uncomfortable. I don't rant and rave at people. I'm not even rude. But at a local coffee shop, as soon as I walk in there is a distinct change in atmosphere among the staff. They look nervous, and they look nervously at each other, as if searching for reassurance, that the other staff know I'm there - safety in numbers and all that.

A number of years ago, I struck up a cordial friendship with a female shop assistant. She seemed to like me. She was friendly and smiled at me, in a way that suggested she was comfortable with me. But as soon as I crossed the line and offered her my phone number, the next time I went in the manager was lurking behind me. As soon as I finished paying for my things he attempted to ban me from the store. I tore a strip off him and accused him of breaking disability laws, not just to release me from the breaking of etiquette of passing a member of staff my number, but because I knew they knew I had a mental health problem. However, I could not prove it. The store manager rescinded his ban, but I never stepped foot in that shop again, until it changed hands a couple of years back. In my dealings with their law department, they were determined that I had 'harassed' staff and because I could not prove what I knew to be true I had to drop it.

I also had my books in the local Waterstones. They had stocked all my books since I started publishing myself in about 2005. I then began to get offered book signings before the current Chief Executive James Daunt took over, who put a stop to them. Now and again I would pop in to check sales. I didn't do this very often, but on the last occasion, I was accused of harassing staff again. I complained to Mr Daunt, again citing disability laws, given the fact that my autobiography detailing my breakdown had been in their shop for a while, in the 'Difficult lives' section. Plus I had been in the local paper commenting on local health issues for years. He appointed a health and safety director to deal with me, but I dreaded the spectre of the corporate lawyer and knew I wouldn't get anywhere. In one of the emails I received he all but admitted his staff didn't want me in the store, checking sales, I'm guessing because I made them feel uncomfortable. The corporate lawyers got involved and that was that, even though I felt I had a real chance in court, I had no representation and I had no resources to fight them.

Two weeks later another bookshop removed my books from their shop - a shop which I had tried and tried to work with to get my book from the back of the store, into a more prominent position.

In other stores, I was followed by panicky store managers and security guards. I suspected my details were being passed around like the details of prolific shop lifters are. Again no proof. And the trouble with disability discrimination laws are... I don't sit in a wheel chair, carry a white stick, or have a severe limp or scars from serious accident or operation. I have a mental condition. It's easy for High Street shops, restaurants and cafe's to claim that they don't know that a customer has a mental illness because it isn't visible. Many of us could claim that they we go through our lives and blend in completely. But those of us with more serious illnesses cannot. We look ill. We look unapproachable - dangerous even, despite the fact that we're nothing of the sort. The solutions being banded about right now, are to have a separate law of discrimination specifically for the mentally ill, remembering that Mind and its colleagues recently won a case against the DWP for the PIP assessments being inadequate for the mentally unwell. Whatever laws may come, the issue of whether an ordinary member of staff working in a High Street shop, can tell, just by looking whether someone carries the great burden of mental illness or not, is a big one. And without some well defined research, that part of the equation is going to be difficult to implement, let alone define in law.

Hope and Fury: The Revealing of Secret Knowledge

Having a mental illness effectively means that if you wish to tell someone about an experience you've had that maybe important, through a vision or a dream or a Revelation or Epiphany, then it will fall on deaf ears. The mentally ill have nothing intelligent to say about any thing, because their minds are compromised and twisted by delusions and fantasy. Where does this leave that one genuine soul who needs to communicate something incredible? I am one of those people, or at least that's what I believe - not that what I belief means anything to anyone else.

I published this book, Hope and Fury, and in it I describe visions and dreams and revelations, that maybe important or may not. But I have had almost twenty years to think about it's relevance. I try my hardest to explain what I have seen and experienced in terms that others will understand, but I would like you to make up your own mind:

http://www.hopeandfury.com

The Dove Sun...

The Dove Sun Synopsis:

The Sun is coming to the end of its life. The rich and privileged use superior technology to leave the Earth and go in search of new planets; their fate unclear. The poor, the uneducated and the sick are left behind in the dust and certainty of death in the face of an expanding, Super Red Sun.

Nathan and Kiren had been a couple since they were children. In the small, dusty settlement where they grew up, they fight for resources with their large chaotic families. When Nathan’s father is injured in an accident, he bargains with the local Imam to send one of his children to the Great Hall to receive a dignified and religious death, in return for medicine. And without a choice, Nathan and Kiren set off for the Great Hall, knowing nothing of the incredible secrets they hold inside them.

ISBN-13: 978-1492129486
ISBN: 1492129488
Author: B.C.Bamber
Imprint: Vagabond Unlimited. http://www.vagabond-unlimited.co.uk

RRP: £5.99.

ISBN: 978-09549691-8-9

Smashwords ISBN: 9781301278336


Print copy:
https://www.createspace.com/4397921
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dove-Sun-B-Bamber/dp/1492129488/


Get your free ebook copy here with this coupon code: ZE28J https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/350949

Meds and Effects

Just started a new forum about medication and the risks and benefits of taking prescription drugs. Please come and visit and add your views: http://www.meds-and-effects.info.

Seeking Advocates for My Book.

Hi - I am giving away free copies of my book The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of Our Law, to anyone willing to read it and then Tweet, Facebook etc about what they think of it? It will be sent to you direct from the publishers if you're in the US or direct from me if you're in the UK.