January 1st 2013

I'm sure there is probably a way of changing the date of my posts, but I cannot be bothered to find it.

So take it from me, this should have been written on the 1st of January 2013 (today is actually 20th January 2013 but I wrote most of this on the 3rd January - it's the nature of my illness that has taken this long).

I woke, as I've done so many times over the past 2 years, in my car.

It's where I live!

It's a long story why I live there and I'm sure I will finally put into a blog one day, but for now, take the shortened version as being caused by a catalogue of public sector disasters that started with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) failing to do their job in 2009 and ended with Lambeth Council failing to meet it's duty of care in 2011.

But 2012 was unquestionably the worst year of my life. A year where every turn was blocked and every spark of hope extinguished.

I'm writing this because the worst of all them, worse than companies house erroneously closing my business bank account that they've yet to fix, worse than not being able to see my son for Christmas (he lives with his mother in South Wales), worse than doing the living in the car thing, worse than my ongoing fight with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS or ME) or the issue with Apple inc. and 3 failed computer, worse than all this...

I had my iPhone stolen.

Now in itself, the loss of a phone may sound like a mild annoyance and a trip to the store with a bundle of notes, a few lost contacts and a quick SIM change.

But in MY phone was my entire life for the past 12 years.  As a CFS sufferer I take detailed notes of my daily activities.  It formed the foundation of my existence.  How ever bad my memory gets (on some days I cannot remember what I did an hour ago, let alone a week) I could always rely on turning to this trusty device to recall, arrangements, business meetings, all the way down to did I shower that day.

CFS is a crippling illness and one, if you like sitting around all day doing nothing with your life is relatively manageable. The problem is the majority of people it affects are not like that.  They are driven, striving and looking to leave their mark on this world.

I was always intending to write a book about my experiences and everything that's happened, but  everything was on that phone.

The computer failures, back-up issues and iCloud losses meant this information was nowhere else to be found.

The contrast between living in a car because the state fails you, to ensuring you remain the best Father you can with a son who lives over a hundred miles away.

Mixing with celebrities and yet barely having enough money to feed yourself.

It's a world most people would never have an incling of understanding and why it was so important for me to record.

Since the age of ten years old people said I should write a book about my life, because even by then, I had a story worth telling.  But the last 34 years have added to that.

Without the phone I have snippets.

Going through these blogs helps, but nobody wants to read about the days where nothing happens, where you spend 4 days staring at a screen unable to move.

In part that stuff doesn't get published because of what I do, in the main though, it doesn't get published because people don't care.

So imagine spending 12 years of your life writing a story on a typewriter - each day you'd spend 2 to 3 hours keeping crucial notes of your experiences, your feelings, your health, the issues surrounding just surviving, to how it feels to be doing a job that defines you and then one day watching the whole thing go up in flames.  12 years of effort gone in a blink. That's where I am right now.  You cannot get it back but...

I have so few followers on this blog, I'm going to share things that I wouldn't on Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin as I try to move on with my life.

Without the phone, years of my life have been lost, those moments that change us forever, those snippets of things that enhance our life that are so important to keeping going in a life that sometimes you want to end.

When I was 17, because of my life experiences I genuinely never believed I'd make my 18th year.  With hand on heart I thought the stresses of my life would kill me before then.  I'd already been rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack (another story) and was living in constant fear.

So at 44, I feel I'm living on borrowed time.

The loss of the phone felt like the end of my, life it took away hope.  The failure to get security, the police, O2 or anybody to assist in its retrieval reminded me the kind of society we live in.

For all those people, it was, after all, just a phone. But for me, it was the reason I kept going.

But against that, against my health, against the fact that I started the year alone waking in the passenger side of a Mini (the night before I'd been with some amazing friends - and that's yet another story) I continued an annual tradition a dear friend and I started in 2000.

I got myself to Sommerset House at 09:30 to go skating (it was closed this year even though the Website said it should be open - but the female security guard there made my day), to the London Film Museum to see an exhibition of London Films, onto Trafalgar Square, to watch the New Years Day Parade, to Balcon on Pall Mall, for lunch (but they'd screwed up my booking through toptable - though the manager made up for it in sparkling wine), to the Empire Cinema to watch Parental Guidance, to Planet Hollywood (for the weirdest dinner of my life, a Banana Milkshake, a jacket potatoes and chilli dip - a breakdown in communication with the waitress and no time to fix it) and finally theatre to see Rob Brydon in a Chorus of Disapproval at the Harold Pinter Theatre (that to most Londoners will still always be called the Comedy) and then drove back to my normal spot in my Car to sleep.

Colin (the friend who I started this tradition with) and I, promised each other there would never be a year in London that we would say that we hadn't attended at least one Theatre, Cinema, Restaurant, Exhibition and Walk in the city we both love so much. So we chose to do it all on the 1st of every year, so what ever happened the other 364 days we could alway say we'd done at least one.

This is the stuff I never normally make public, the stuff that would have been written in the phone.  I don't know how much of this I'll get down but I'll try.  Life seemingly wants to eradicate me from history but I'm not keen to go that way. So for at least a while, my experiences will be on the net for anyone who stumbles across them to read.

Who knows, maybe this is where the book will start...

Want a Caring Society? Privatise the Public Sector.

Now I know what's coming, the usual tirade about the private sector being evil, putting money above all else and anybody working in it, is someone who's likely to sell their own grandmother, if it would make them a quid or two.

 The cry in defense of not privatising will be, only the fluffy public sector will care for our elderly, house our poor and look after our children.

 But we all know that is just not true.

 Anybody that's had any dealing with the public sector of late, whether it be a job centre, benefits office, local authority or social services will alert you to this.

 The immediate reaction when you mention privatisation is statements like: “What about A.T.O.S, that's a private company making money from inflicting the misery on disabled Britain's by forcing them off benefits. That's what your privatisation does.” Well, no, it doesn't. You see the problem with A.T.O.S and all other private organisations that are commissioned to run government schemes is that they end up acting and behaving just as if they were the public sector.

 And that's why I genuinely believe that the privatisation of the entire sector is the only way to go.

You see, people in the Public Sector just don't care. It's cultural, it's embedded in every organisation, like words through a stick of rock, the notion of doing the right thing has been either kicked or eroded out of them. Replaced instead with the type of people whose primary interest is job protection & their own salaries, rather than concern for the people they are paid to serve.

 Spend anytime in the waiting room of Westminster Council homeless help centre and you'll see what I mean. No understanding, no compassion. They behave as if they were child soldiers, programmed to kill without guilt or remorse. Ignoring the pleas of hard working mothers on the edge of eviction, to turn away and talk about what happened on X-Factor on Saturday.

 So, it really should come as no surprise when those kind of services are commissioned out to the private sector, that nothing really changes other than (theoretically) reduced cost.

The contracts are drafted by the Public Sector, the measures of success created and monitored by the Public Sector, many of the employees will come from the Public Sector and the whole thing is paid for by the Public Sector.

 So I'm not suggesting we privatise bits of it. I'm saying privatise it all.

 And not with monolith companies either.

For example, run every job centre as a franchise and make the measure of success based on customer satisfaction, not just outcomes.

 Don't think of conglomerate businesses in the private sector, think about chefs, artists, musicians, painters, film-makers, who are all part of that very same sector.

Think about the commitment and passion they invest in their work, the sacrifices they make to produce something great.

 Remember that amazing service you received from a waitress that's probably not even making minimum wage or the trouble your local dry cleaner went to, to ensure that annoying stain was removed and wouldn't dream of making any extra charge for it and you'll start to see what I mean.

 I worked in what was then the D.H.S.S. (or Dole office if you'd prefer) in Cardiff when I was 17/18 and was ostricised for not joining the local trade Union. I was earning more money than some of my friends parents who lived in my home town in the Welsh Valleys. I was on flexi-time so could come in and go pretty much as I pleased, had an index linked pension, guaranteed sick pay and holidays only teachers dream of, all for doing a job a lobotomised monkey could have done in its sleep.

 There was no rhyme or reason for me joining a union. But still, grown “adults” sent me to Coventry and wouldn't speak to me for weeks in the hope they could bully me into becoming one of them.

I didn't acquiesce.

 I was concerned for my claimants, the people who came into my office in need of help. It was they that mattered,

I'd been on the other side of that bazooka proof plastiglass and knew exactly what it felt like, but I was very much in the minority. In an office of 300 people there was only one other who thought and behaved like me. Thankfully, he'd been doing the job for years and between us, we'd often side step some ludicrous blockage to someone getting their benefits, by finding some obscure law, long buried in the regulations, so we could apply common sense rather than just follow policy.

 The last straw came when my Manager (SEO) said I should tell my claimants their cheques were in the post, 4 weeks into one of the biggest postal strikes on record, with post boxes nailed up and cheques siting in our finance office, all because he wanted to avoid the additional paperwork created by handing them over at the counter. I simply walked out of the building and never returned.

 These attitudes have not only not been eradicated, they have worsened over the past 25 years. They are embedded and they are cultural and to eradicate them, we have to change the culture of the organisation and the only way to do that, is start afresh.

 I work in the private sector, I have two film & TV production companies, one for profit and one not-for-profit. And all the people I work with are never interested in money. They do it for the love of the work and in the hope you can make something great. Some even end up forking out their own cash (as do I) to get involved. They are talented, hardworking and committed to improving society through television or film.

 This in stark contrast to the people I have to deal with in the Public Sector. Whether it was the ICO (information commissioners office) taking a year to get Equifax to put right an error on my credit file or Companies House, who failed to get a signature for a recorded letter but continued to act as if they had and suspended my bank account. Everyone's got a hundred stories of dispassion, failure and upset caused by the public sector. Equally, we've all got a hundred stories of people going out their way in the private sector, heres a couple of mine from the past week:

 Katie a waitress at the restaurant Giraffe on Southbank, London, epitomised the difference beautifully. I regularly go in for a Breakfast Special (£5 breakfast selection and a drink) and last Monday was no exception. Unfortunately they had changed the menus and the offer was no longer running. Katie could have easily just informed me of this and forced me to pay the full price (£10). You know the public sector would have done. But she didn't. She went to great lengths to offer me what I'd came in for, side stepping computer systems that wouldn't allow her to put through the deal. She wasn't of the ilk “Computer says no!” oh no. She was “screw the computer, I'm in charge here, I have the power”. Was it against company policy, probably, but what was the end result. I got what I came in for, so I was happy, she got a very pleased customer, so she was happy and Giraffe will be talked about all over town, have my continued custom for life and they'll be happy.

Access storage on hearing I was in hospital and struggling to sort out payments, just suspended them for 3 months, then froze the fees so I didn't get any increases. This is a so called money grabbing business, heartless.

 Yet at the same time I was being treated appallingly by Social Workers & staff in the hospital who were allegedly trying to find me housing as I'd become wheelchair bound. Literally, at one point, just being abandoned on the street unable to move.

Involved were a Nursing Practitioner (earning £58,000 a year) a discharge co-ordinator manager (earning £48,000 a year) and Social Workers (all on salaries over £35,000 a year).

And just yesterday my friend Daphna posted this on her Facebook wall:

"Patient calling dentist: "sorry I just discovered I will not be able to pay for the treatment we've schedualed for today until the next months maybe we should delay the appointment till next month? Dentist: "That's alright, the important thing is that we get that treatment done, sort us out when you can. Do not worry about it" Dr. Vicky Lee, Primrose Hill. Who brought that angel into my life?"

So even in the privatised world of medicine, we are seeing more and more good people than in the public sector.

My brother is a dentist, an excellent one in fact (and no I'm not biased), so good in fact, that he could no longer afford to be an NHS dentist. He'd taught his patients how to look after their teeth, through children's programs, lessons with hygienist etc. and most of his patients don't need treatment.

Rather than be rewarded for these huge savings and community benefits though, the NHS only pays for treatments. So it's not in the interest of an NHS Dentist to offer you good oral care, which may explain the giving of sugar infested lollipops if you got an all clear when you were a child?

So isn't it time we encouraged the caring society, gave great service in all our deliveries and have the users satisfaction above that of incoherent policy. For that, we must privatise the entire public sector and instil the customer focus we are so used to in the best of what the private sector has to offer.

Thanks to chef Mark on The Yacht for providing the Strawberries & cream & Bubbly whilst Ponni Arumugam & I watched Murray win @Wimbledon!

Yesterday saw end of an era. Not with a bang but a whimper. Time to look to future & better times. Happy 4th July to all American friends!

Sadly @TomsKitchens Eggs Benedict not a patch on @TheWolseleyRest aurant. Can any restaurant in London beat them? http://tinyurl.com/ckpqulo

If you haven't heard about my friend Sara Fazlali's new spy venture "Secret Me" check out GQ & try get an invite http://tinyurl.com/c5sl3be

If you haven't heard about my friend Sara Fazlli's new spy venture "Secret Me" check out GQ & try & get an invite http://tinyurl.com/c5sl3be