The Daily Novel

Just heard from an old friend that there is a new web site, called

Equilibrium - The Bipolar Foundation

It filled me with the dread disease optimism because it is an interesting new iniative tackling what is an important problem. As Equilbrium says:

Bipolar disorder probably affects up to 254 million worldwide, 12 million in the US and 2.4 million people in the UK….

Bipolar disorder is the currently fashionable label for what used to be called ‘manic depression’. And that includes me, as well as the other 254 million in the world. (How does Equilibrium know that figure is a fact? Have 254 million people actually been diagnosed as ‘bipolar disorder’? What is written in the brackets here is not by Bob Jones, the manic depressive. It is written by Bob Jones, the sceptical journalist. Who has somehow or other found a way of living in the same mind/body entity that is called Bob Jones.)

This is part of the manic depressive diary category of my blog, which has the declared intention of speaking out about how it is to be a manic depressive.

But my keyboard has now been taken over by the sceptical journalist, the other Bob Jones.

First, the positive side. This is Equilibrium’s recommended approach to the treatment of manic depressives, which is the best that I have found on any of the web sites dealing with such matters.

1. tailored to the individual
2. is responsive to the course, development and improvement of symptoms over time and may emphasise different components at different times

In our opinion the ideal approach has to be a collaborative one which usually requires:

• early recognition of symptoms and correct diagnosis
• acceptance of the existence of the problem

There is good clinical evidence for the following tools being used in combination:

• Some form of clear information giving, ‘psychoeducation’ and opportunity of clarification of questions and concerns about diagnosis and treament
• Some type of pharmacological (drug) therapy
• Some form of talking based therapy

The only correction I would suggest to Equlibrium is that their first stage of ‘clear information giving’ should be extended to the partners/parents of the manic depressive.

Negative

There is no mention that I have found on the Equilbrium website about the issues that I have been blogging about in relation to the continuing debate in the House of Lords over the amendments to the Mental Health Bill. There is no mention of the fact that despite the huge advances in the treatment of mental health during my lifetime, in some ways we have gone backwards. The evidence coming out in the House of Lords, and provided in the long research project at the LSE, which resulted in the Layard Report, is that the mentally ill, are a drain on the economy, and that the modern methods of treatment they have received, have mostly not enabled them to get back into the work force.

In other words, the pills that are currently administered to mental health patients of all kinds, can help them to behave as ‘normals, and not upset other people, or at the extreme, harm or kill other people. But pills alone do not help the manic depressive or the bipolars, to earn their own living.

Back in the Stone Age, when my father, who was an undiagnosed manic depressive, was living, things were much worse. His manic depression blighted the life of his family, as well as causing him the most profound unhappiness. But despite that he managed to do a full day’s work right up until the day he retired, aged 65, with far less than the average in ‘days off sick’ which were were never for depression, but just when he caught something like bronchitis, which came from the atmosphere of the Black Country, of which Wolverhampton is a part.

We have advanced hugely since my father’s day.

And, although I have inherited my father’s manic depressive genes, I have also inherited my mother’s genes. She came from a long line of successful small shopkeepers, the same gene stream that produced Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, had my mother been born a generation later, and had she married a successful businessman like Denis Thatcher, rather than a working class manic depressive like my father, she might have ended up as Prime Minister. (This is a joke!) But not entirely because my mother managed our family budget on quite similar principles to those which Margaret Thatcher tried to apply to national and international economies.

My father was never a drain on the national economy. And he lived and died never knowing that he was a ‘manic depressive’ or suffered from ‘bipolar disorder’. His life would have been infinitely happier if he had lived in an age when bodies like Eqillbrium were avalable to help him understand his inner torments.

But I do know, that despite his lifelong ‘black moods, which loomed over my childhood and the childhood of my brother and sister, he died a happy man.

Because I was there. Thanks to the fact that my pay cheque was being paid by prestigious but relatively humane organisations (the Manchester Business School and The Times) I was able to temporarily to drop everything and go back to Wolverhampton to be with my father in the two weeks before he died.

I know he died a happy man because I was there. I was sleeping in the same bed as my father, and when I woke up, he was dead. But I remember our last conversation, which I also wrote down at the time as well).

My father never had any real help with his ‘black moods’. Nor did my mother. Nor did his children. What I realised in the last two weeks I spent with my father was that although all of his family had suffered from his ‘black moods’, our suffering was small in relation to his.

Nothing I have suffered in my life, compares with what he suffered. I have, after all, benefited from my mother’s Thatcher-like genes. And, I have also benefited from what was not available to him, a decent education. Which he enabled me to have, despite his manic depression.

Had my father been treated only with the pills, he would certainly not have blighted his family so much with his ‘black moods’. The pills would have made him feel better. And more able to talk to his family.

But whether he would have then died a happier man I doubt.

Because, of course, he was not only a manic depressive. He was a human being, defined by many other qualities he had, along with his manic depressiion.

That included a determination to give his children, the things that he did not have. Particularly, an education which helped them to develop whatever talents they had. And a determination to think for himself, and act for himself, and to help others, rather than be a burden on them.

Had my father been treated with the best that the 21st century has to offer manic depressives, he might have died even happier than he actually did.

But he might not. Had he been treated, like many of the mentally ill are today only with pills, he would have been able to control his moods better, but he might have ended up, like so many mentally ill today, without a job.

And that would caused him a lot of unhappiness. Because he would have hated taking state benefits or charity. Even when he was so depressed that he could not talk to people, he still managed to drag himself to work every day. And when the depression hit him at weekends, he often retired to the shed, where he exercised his carpentry skills.

That is why I find the approach of Equilibrium so refreshing. Because their starting point is tailoring the treatment to the individual, which requires a lot of talking. And because they are committed to including in the treatment ’some kind of talking therapy’.

This treatment they propose can only be made widely available if the Government and the national health trusts are prepared to spend more on the mentally ill. So I hope Equilibrium will also became a political pressure group, arguing the case with ministers and NHS managers. And building on the Layard Report which demonstrates demonstrates spending more on mental health, will also lead to longer term economic benefits, if it enables the mentally ill to get jobs, rather than depend on state handouts.

I may not be posting another blog today. Because I am trying to fill in my self-assessment tax return online. It has already taken me several hours!

I got help before I entered the government Gateway from a human being using the telephone. A delightful Scottish lady, as it happens. She patiently answered a few queries about what I should write down when I actually got into the online form.

To my astonishment I managed to get into my own account, using the activation number sent in the post a few days ago. And after reading the very full notes, and making a few mistakes, I had completed what I think is most of the form, when I was timed out.

Leaving me worrying whether all the details I had patiently entered were lost forever.

So I opened up a new window and got back to into the Government gateway but it timed me again before I could even get in to my account.

I shall have one more try. And then get back on the telephone.

Yes, I know it’s my own fault, because the deadline is tomorrow, and there must be others who are rushing to the gateway.

My lungs are one hundred years old. That is the verdict of science. Delivered by Norah from Connemara, who also told me that it has been raining there non-stop for twelve weeks. So that is why Camden Town is full of the Irish.

Norah, the spirometry person at the surgery, has just been causing me to puff and blow into a tube connected to a variety of electronic machines. The result is a 2 per cent deterioration compared with the last time I was tested in March. The recommendation is that I give up smoking. And that meanwhile I use an inhaler to aerate my aged lungs. To be precise two inhalers, which will work on different parts of my smoke-filled airways. So now I have to take eight puffs a day. So if only I can get myself addicted to the inhaler I shall not have enough puff left to smoke my customary twenty fags.

But for some reason it made me feel happy. I felt incredibly lucky that my lungs have lasted the equivalent of one hundred years. Perhaps the Queen will send me a telegram addressed to ‘the lungs of Bob Jones’ as soon as she reads this blog.

When I got home I found God waiting for me on the doorstep. Two young me who were concerned about the state of my soul. The first addressed me in what I thought was an American accent. So I thought that it was the Seventh Day Adventists. Quite wrong. The accent, he told me, was Australian and they came from the Jehovah’s Witness regiment of God’s army.

It’s sounds American to me, I told him. ‘You reckon’, he replied. That clinches it, I told him. None of the Australian friends of my youth would have said, ‘You reckon’. You not only drive American cars, you have adopted their accent.

His friend piped up. ‘I’m English. I blame it on the Second World War and the American troops who invaded us.’ I agreed and told him how they had corrupted me with their chewing gum. ‘And as for my sister…’ He interrupted me and said: ‘I know what you mean. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

I went inside rather pleased that for the first time ever I had managed to get the men of God off my doorstep with them delivering their religious message. And that I had managed to deliver a political message to them.

Then, I sobered up, and thought that if the Big Brother cameras had been filming this little encounter, all these of us would have been up before the beaks of popular opinion for inciting racial hatred of Americans.

But at least they could not accuse us of bullying. Because the Americans are bigger than us. And they not only have weapons of mass destruction. They use them. And in doing so they make their use more acceptable. And they incite their political enemies to hit back at them, and their allies, with bombs rather than arguments.

Must stop now. Just realised that I have smoked three or four fags while writing this. And I have not yet got my inhalers out of the box.

Because I am the kind of journalist I am I will begin with what’s right about the new book by Nick Cohen of The Observer, What’s Left?, which has caused quite a stir because it is a denunciation of the British liberal left into which Cohen was born and which he has epoused for most of his working life. Until now.

As Peter Oborne writes in the main review of Cohen’s book in today’s Observer,

‘It is also a moving account of a long personal journey, carried off with wit, verve, considerable literary skill and human compassion.’

I agree. And such it deserves a Daily Novel gong. Cohen tells his own life story and discloses stage by stage how his own personal biography has affected what he has written. He was born into an articulate left wing middle class family and given an excellent liberal education. What drives this present book is what he learnt while working as a journalist in Iraq, when he met many Iraqi’s who had suffered under Saddam Hussain’s regime, several of whom he has stayed in contact with. This caused him to believe that Hussain was indeed a Hitler-like dictator, so he supported the Bush/Blair war to get rid of him.

My own position on these matters was much the same as Cohen’s before the latest war begain and for quite similar reasons.

My first Iraqi student arrived in the early 1980s, the day after the Iran/Iraq war (in which Britain and America supported Hussain). He said rather dramatically as he sat down in his chair, ‘My country is at war’. But as I got to know him he told me quite a lot about what Hussain was actually doing. As did the Iraqi Kurdish refugee student I took on later that year. During the 1980s I had several Iraqi students (and quite a few Iranians) so that long before the main-stream press started talking about him as Hitlerite or evil, I knew what he was like.

I strongly supported an international effort to topple Saddam Hussain. But I was alarmed when Bush, with Blair’s support, by-passed the United Nations, because they said the need was so urgent that action had to be taken immediately and unilaterally.

They advanced two grounds, for which they said they had evidence. (We now know they were lying).

First, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and that our intelligence services had discovered their existence. Untrue.

Second, and less mentioned these days, that Saddam’s Iraq was one of the breeding grounds for the kind of international terrorists responsible for 9/11. The rhetoric of the Iraq war as played to the American public was that this was a demonstration that America would strike back against the forces of evil. The war against terror was intertwined in the Bush mind with the war against terror.

When the American bombs began to fall I felt for the families and friends of my many Iraqi students and all the other innocent civilians killed. I still feel for them in the slaughter of innocents which has gone on daily in the chaos of warfare between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds ever since.

My view is that the Bush/Blair decision to go to war to go to war against Hussain unilaterally was one of the worst mistakes in recent history. It has not only caused the most appalling slaughter of Iraqis and destroyed many of its building and made it difficult for normal life to continue. How can Iraqi students sit down and read their books with all this going on?

But it also provided a recruiting ground for all would-be suicide bombers. And it fuelled the resurgence of the very Muslim fundamentalism that Nick Cohen attacks so trenchantly in his book.

This is certainly the view of the mainstream left. But it is also the view of increasing numbers on the mainstream right.

Which is why Bush’s current rating in the American opinion polls is down to the level of Nixon’s at the height of the Watergate exposures.

But I shall still give Cohen his gong. Because his views, though mistaken are honestly held. And I still have an over-riding belief that it is vital that journalists should seek to write the truth as they see it.

…..Speak out to the people where ever they are and don’t charge them an entrance fee.

Explanation of this below.

Have just picked up the Worblog article about how difficult Tribune is finding it to survive in the blogging era. It refers to an article Paul Anderson wrote on the Gauche website on January 18. One reader has already posted saying the answer is re-invent yourself online.

I agree.

But that is easier said than done. Developing a new web-site, blog site, which is what Tribune needs, takes a lot of time and requires some skilled help.

One organisation which might help is MySociety, which I only came across today. It is all about helping people build up sites that better inform the democratic process. Its stance is determinedly unbiased. But I should think they would be open to the view that the voice of left is a disadvantaged minority!

MySociety seem to have the technical expertise to help Tribune make the huge leap it needs to take from its present web site. And I am sure that it would help the sales of the print version.

Because the web version should be free. Most of your potential readers are short of money. And they are now used to getting the mainstream media free.
And potentially your readers can also be your contributors. But you lot at Tribune have got to make it easy for them to come to you.

I am sure Nye Bevan would agree. And that were he around he would be doing some inspiring PodCasts and Video Blogs for your site.

Get netted. And quick.

There is a well-established practice at City University of management talking to trade union branch representatives on campus to attempt to resolve any disagreements before they escalate. This includes policy and practice. It also includes personal cases where a member of staff feels unjustly treated.

Management and academic union reps used to meet regularly three times a year in a formal body called the Joint Negotiating Committee. This stopped meeting two or three years ago for reasons I do not fully understand. But why it fell into disuse does not matter. The important thing is that it is being revived and will meet later this term. So when Malcolm Gillies arrives in August there will, hopefully, already be a date in his diary for the autumn meeting.

The academic union was the Association of University Teachers (AUT), to which most teachers in the ‘old’ universities belong. Last June AUT merged with the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), whose members mostly work for the former polytechnics, and further education colleges, which are the leaders in such areas as the training of school teachers. It also includes teachers in prisons.

Both unions, as you might expect from a bunch of university teachers, are as much concerned about academic freedom and standards as they are about pay and conditions of work. They oppose the new managerialism, whenever it threatens academic freedom or the effective teaching of the students.

The new union, University & College Lecturers’ Union (UCU) has just published the manifestos of the candidates for the General Secretary of the new union. AUT is the biggest union in higher education, but NATFHE has a much bigger overall membership. Whether the UCU leader is an AUT or NATFHE person is anyone’s guess. The membership may vote tribally. But it may not, because the two unions have been discussing a possible merger for well over ten years, and there have been many meetings between activists of the two unions at national and local level.

At City (and at most other universities) the academic union is much the biggest union on campus. But there is a well established practice of AUT reps meeting regularly with the reps of the unions for the technical, office staff and manual workers. So that the academic union also speaks out on behalf of the other unions.

Something needs to be said about personal cases. These has been in the increase nationally for many years, as more and more Vice Chancellors have been infected with the Thatcher and Blair belief in that private sector managers somehow know more about ‘management’ than public sector managers.

In many personal cases, both the ‘victim’ and the alleged ‘oppressor’, a head of department or a Dean, are quite often both in AUT. So the union is best placed to help to resolve such disputes without the spilling of too much blood.

I should declare my own personal position in these matters. I am a former President of AUT and was a union activist for many years. I am currently on the branch committee with the specific responsibility for equalities, which is concerned with such oppressed groups as women, ethnics, the disabled, the aged and gays.

On the latter, Malcolm Gillies, should know that the AUT was even more forward looking than City University. Last year they elected Steve Wharton as President, the first openly gay person to take the job in the history of the union. Steve has stayed on for an extra year as joint President to help with the work of harmonising the practices of the two constituent parts of UCU.

Wharton became active in AUT as a direct result of what he suffered himself when in his first job in 1994. He was openly gay and doing his research on gay activism, focusing on the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bi-sexuals, and Transgenders). At the end of his probationary period his teaching contract was not renewed. When the decision went to Senate to be ratified, a petition was presented signed by all but two of his colleagues.. His third year students also got together and signed a unanimous letter of support. Wharton then went through an appeal process which took eight months.

He spent eight months not knowing whether his career was in ruins. When he did get re-instated he determined to give something back to the union which had supported him. He will have a further year as vice-president working to harmonise the different parts of UCU and turn it into an effective academic standards, academic freedom and decent pay for the workers.

A Daily Novel gong for Andrew Pierce of The Daily Telegraph for his article this morning on the battle over whether the Catholic adoption agencies should have a special exemption from the equalities legislation. Because he discloses the intimate details of his own life, which is still pretty unusual amongst mainstream male British journalists. I am all for transparency by journalists, particularly when dealing with issues like this whiich raises very powerful feelings and prejudices on both sides of the debate. The most poignant paragraph is this one:

Sadly, I have no memories of life in Nazareth House (the Catholic orphanage in which he lived until the age of two). Nor do I remember Margaret Connolly (his birth mother), who was encouraged by the nuns to visit the son she loved, but could not cope as a single parent in the harsh moral climate of the 1960s.

His article did leave me curious to know more, however. Even the Jesuits say they need to have a child til the age of seven in order to guarantee a lifelong allegiance to the Pope. Was Pierce converted in his later life? Or were this adoptive parents Catholic?

The article was a salutary reminder to me, that my own position on Catholicism and gays is still influenced by the accidents of my personal biography, despite the efforts of my reasoning mind.

My own views on Catholicism are still influenced by my Sundays in the church of my youth, which went through four changes off vicar, which took it from a plain near Methodist place of worship to an Anglo-Catholicism, with all the pomp and circumstance and incense that surrounds the Pope. My father hated the change, because the important thing for him, as self-educated working class, was to think things out for yourself. And to him Catholicism was the antithesis of that.

My views on homosexuality took much longer to form. I truly cannot remember ever have met a homosexual until I was in my early twenties. (Which shows something about my own incredible naivity as well as the taboos of the times.) For a long time I thought that homosexuality was a disease you caught from the English upper middle classes if you got sent to public school.

My awakening came around 1960 when an American made a pass at me in the shower when we weekending in a large house in New Jersey. He was overcome with remorse when he found I was not gay and we became firm friends. It was from him that I got some notion of how it felt to be gay, and the difficulties it produced when growing up in a society which saw homosexuality as either bad, mad or ‘the English disease’.

Tim Yeo’s private member’s bill to give us summer time in the winter died yesterday. It did not get enough votes. Not surprising because many MPs rarely go to the Commons on Fridays. They take the night train up north so they can do their constituency surgeries and spend the weekend socialising with the party workers who will have to do the work to get them back in at the next election. The House of Lords had a go in 2005,and failed, as you can see from Wikipedia.

This is an example of a law which would make life better for all of us, save lives, and cost almost nothing to implement. But governments never make it a priority, although the rational reasons for change increase year by year. It would bring put us on to the same time as the EC, so we would not have to change our watches in the Channel Tunnel and would not be woken up by friends from Frankfurt telephoning at 7 AM our time.

Reason did prevail during the first world war. Sticking with GMT would have meant children walking back from school in the dark in the depths of winter. When it was really dark as night, because the street lights were turned off and the black-out curtains were up. The statistics for the war years show that, while a few more died on the roads in the morning, the net effect was 2,500 fewer road deaths a year.

As soon as victory was assured in 1944 we put the clocks back again. In those days the farmer’s lobby was much more powerful and not a few of the workers were agricultural labourers. Today there is little effective opposition and such a bill could easily be passed with Government support.

I have always regretted this folly. I still remember the thrill of getting up and dressed and eating by bacon and eggs by electric light. It relieved the tedium of winter. And I love September holidays in Britain. Double summer time would give me an extra hour of daylight.

But maybe the majority of those who hold the reins of power like to shame us all by getting up early in the morning.

According to Larry Elliott of The Guardian Gordon Brown is ready to embrace the bloggers of the world. He says Brown, who appeared on the panel with Rupert Murdock, says the days of decision making in smoke filled rooms are over. Politicians had to involve the public and recognise the importance of the internet.

“A few years ago the debate was about whether the media controlled politicians or whether politicians controlled the media.

“Now it is about how we are all responding to the explosive power of citizens, consumers and bloggers.”

I would like to think that the blogging community had ‘explosive power’. But I doubt. I think the big companies, who are well represented at the World Economic Forum, have quite a lot of power over the consumers. And I think the new internet millionaires, including companies like Technorati and Google have a big say in a big say in which blogs get read.

The big companies, including the old media companies, are in a much better position to learn the tricks of meeting the criteria established by the search engines. And they have the money and manpower to attract bigger audiences. The millions of individual bloggers cannot compete in terms of supplying information. They can express their views, opinions and feelings. But how they come to them is still largely dependent on the reports by the mainstream media.

The coolest party was given by Forbes Magazine, which represents old media money. And it is big money. Steve Forbes, the nephew of the man I used to work for, is and he can afford to give away $7 million to political parties.

David Finelstein, columnist of The Times, attacks the ideas put forward in psychologist Oliver James’s new book, Affluenza, which he wrote about in The Guardian yesterday. The gist of James’s argument is that consumer capitalism produces mental illness. After doing his demolition job Finkeltein comes up with a recommendation of a book by Tim Lott, which he says is a moving and funny account of his own mental illness. He summarises the message of the book:

Lott suggests that we tell each other stories about who we are and have trouble coping when reality makes those stories impossible to maintain. This is why bankruptcy, divorce and other traumatic incidents can lead to suicidal breakdown.

Follow the links for a ringside seat at this battle of the giants.

I am not too impressed with either case. I don’t think James add much to Marx’s concept of alienation and false wants, which he came up with about 130 years ago when consumer capitalism was its infancy. Long before he motor car. And Lot’s may be worth reading it does sound like a variation of identity problems, which have long been recognised as one factor in mental illness.

I am in no mood for joining in this debate, because I have just read the manic depressive diary of an Australian woman. It is not at all funny. She writes very movingly about the manic depression she has lived with all her life. And the most recent passages deal with her discovery that she has an inoperable cancer.

It left me feeling humbled. Nothing I have experienced has been anything like as painful. But I am grateful to have read it.