Monday 7 January 2008

You Wanted a Statement, Mr Higham? You Got One



Well, Mr Higham and his ally seem determined between them to drag my name through the gutter.

It only remains for me to be public and candid.

Mr Higham seeks to convince the blogosphere at large that this blogger is somehow deranged, mad, power hungry and dangerous.

This blogger believes that people read this blog AND READ BETWEEN THE LINES.

But if they don't, I'll fill in the blanks for you NOW.

Because I CERTAINLY have nothing to apologise for.

Before I come to his allegations, some background.
I have made two mistakes in life.
I don't apologise at all for the first.

Did it ruin my life? Too damn right it did.
Did I learn anything from it? Everything.

It will be apparent from close reading of this blog that I made huge cock ups in my early twenties.
Some readers will be aware I have alluded to a period where, after a girlfriend's abortion I basically lived off Ecstasy.

In fact, I used to wonder round with pockets full of them.
Stupid? Yes. I was pretty stupid back then.
I really didn't give a damn.

Until I was arrested at a nightclub with 38 of them in my pocket.
And 50 more back at the flat.

Well, you'll be relieved to know, that whilst 2 years is normal for molesting a twelve year old child, Birmingham Crown Court thought four years was fair in my case, being an evil Ecstasy user who might possibly have been passing pills to other Ecstasy users.

May 14th 2004.
The day my life ended.
It did, no two ways about it.

I'm sure you can see why this isn't something I particularly wanted public.

I'm not a big person. I still look like a little hobbit today. It was never going to be easy, and I knew that.

But the aim always was to get parole, and be out for the 2006 World Cup.
And I did that. And I kept my dignity all the way.

It's dog eat dog in there. Winson Green has an evil reputation, and I lived there for a year. I spent my time there learning the Sciences. I also grafted my parole, by signing up to a Samaritans based programme for providing comfort to vulnerable prisoners.

In a sense, the latter helped a lot, and not just in getting my early D-cat and parole. I saw how the other half lived, people who were damned in life the moment they entered the world. For many people in a place like that, there's no hope. They were born dregs, they live as dregs, they die young, as dregs.

It's squalour. The whole thing is squalid. Not just physically, psychologically so. It's about boredom, frustration, total loss of dignity.

It's about taking abuse from screws who served in the six counties and still think it's OK to abuse Catholics.
You need special skills to survive.

You need to be either big, intelligent, or just good with people.
Two out of three gets you through.

It's about networking and watching your back. It's about making yourself indispensable.
Over time, you can make your life easy, and give yourself the dignity you need to hold your head up high.

Little things, like refusing to wear the claret prison T-shirts and always wearing a visiting shirt, because you, a Blues fan, will not wear claret and blue together.

I have mentioned before how important to me my watch, my crucifix and my Claddagh ring are. The main reason is, I kept them on all the way through. My watch still has the paper clip holding it together that I used as a makeshift repair job after the clasp broke. I'll never get it fixed, it means something to me that I kept a £60 watch on my arm through that Hell hole, and I fixed it with a paper clip.

I learned to shut down every emotion I had and just survive.

But I did more.

Not a day goes by in there, you don't regret. You are watching your life frittered away. They are MAKING YOU wish your life away, making you wish that it is May 2006. Of course you ask yourself over and over again, do I deserve this?

And the answer I always came back to was 'No'
I really cannot see that I did something that terrible.

I don't really want to go into too much of what I saw in there, but trust me, it wasn't very nice.

Getting to Sudbury was a huge change, it's kind of a rest home for good cons. I was lucky here, I had a trusted position, with my own office, to which I had the key. It wasn't so bad.
And I got my parole. Better, I take pride in the fact that I told the parole board I thought the law was an ass on the subject, but I wasn't stupid enough to let it happen again. I'd wasted enough time.

The parole board agreed.

And I was lucky. I walked out with my life in ruins, but I had the skills needed to get my old life back.
No one cares if a salesman has the odd drugs conviction.
In fact, it's not uncommon.

But it's not as simple as that.

All those things you thought you'd missed feel strange.

You missed women, but now you can't relate to them. It took me months to be able to develop normal relations on that front, I just wasn't used to it. Even now, I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable with it.

A lot of things took a while to get used to. Even the pub. I would look around at people laughing, enjoying a pint, and I'd think back to the Green and think 'If only you knew, if only you knew how amazing it is to just have a beer'



The Eloi and the Morlocks.

I'd held myself through all that, I'd shut everything down, cauterised every emotion I had. And now I had to try live again. I'd never thought that far ahead. May 15th 2006. That had been it. Now I was back in the real world, and it scared me. I wanted to go back, back to a world I had grown to understand, a world I felt at home in.

OK, that makes no sense. But it's true.

For about a year, everything remained bottled up, except when I got hammered. That's how me and my flatmate met. I cried on her shoulder, literally.

And my close friends looked after me. They helped me back into dealing with social situations, towards finding myself again. It took a long time.
But in a sense, it never ends. It never will.

Twice, three times a week, I dream of it. Ultraviolet lighting, green walls, the smell of urine, the sounds of clinking, the sounds of boots clamping, whistles blowing, raucous shouting, that permanent sense of tension, of living in a powder keg of male aggression and frustration, where if you ever stop being tensed, like primitive man upon the savannah, you are doomed.

Most people think I haven't changed. Outwardly, I haven't. I'm still as cocky, flirty and hedonistic as I was before.
It's inside there's the difference.
I'll never be the same again. I can't let down the barriers I put up there.
I never, ever will.

So that's me. I died back in May 2004, in a very real way.

But good came out of it.

I had two long years to sit and think.

And I was damn sure by the time I had finished, that I was not wrong about a thing.

I still have somewhere the envelope where, by merging equations that aren't generally merged, I proved to my own satisfaction anyway, that quarks are in fact simply photons trapped in a warp of space created by their extreme frequency.

I was satisfied that pretty much everything was ultimately explainable by the laws of thermodynamics.

Life exists because of those laws. They are a logical consequence.

And I had stripped existence to basic physical terms, stripped society, everything from viewing it in a subjective way.

I now looked at it, as what it was. A movement towards complexity. Because the laws of the universe favour the development of more complex forms.
And that suits us great. But the REASON it suits us great, is because it SUITS THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE FOR IT TO SUIT US.

That's it. No more. That's the riddle of life.

The Universe drives us to breed and flourish, to get more complex.

And standing back objectively, I could see human history as simply being the most recent, and the most brilliant chapter in that story.

And re-reading Marx from this perspective, seeing it as a scientific and not a political tract, reading Nietzche and realising that what he was saying was that Man should learn to love himself, and strive upwards, not accepting any limits to where we as a species might go, I realised, we, the species ARE AT A CROSSROADS.

This really is it. Which happens first?
Blowing ourselves up, or colonising space.
It's that brutal.

Because looking out into that sky, I see no evidence that anywhere nearby, any other species have passed that test.

We CAN.

I don't need to sit around praying for a revolution. It's not going to be like the French revolution, something that might have been averted. We are looking at the inevitable.

The Capitalist system WILL FAIL. I, a Tory voter, came to that conclusion through getting grips with the theory. Marx's laws of economics are as CERTAIN as Darwin's laws of evolution.

The revolution I speak of, is like the Industrial revolution. It will happen, if we succeed.
If it doesn't, it is because we fail as a species.

It WILL bring an end to private property, to corporations, to power matrices such as we are used to. It will be the final phase in the sexual and feminist revolutions. It will bring end to Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, the lot.

It will bring in a society based on logic and logic alone.
The aims of which are satisfying human desires, ensuring our continued technological progress and continually expanding our numbers.

A world geared up to use every human contribution, to satisfy every human desire that does not harm the common good, a world geared up to ensure that each generation leaves behind a world with a better infrastructure, a greater knowledge bank, having reached further into the universe.

I believe in that.

But I know we cannot be complacent.
We are all responsible.

And yes, I feel a moral responsibility.
And nothing else is remotely relevant to me. I don't care. I lost interest in ME, a long time back.

So Mr Higham can misrepresent me all he wants. Mr Higham believes in the Illuminati and Intelligent Design. (He also hints I am employed by these people) Mr Higham also believes a woman who I can provide several Real Life witnesses to prove harrassed this blogger.

Mr Higham is very well aware that his posts are disingenuous, that the ONLY reason I maintained contact with his 'source' after the dates mentioned, was in effort to prevent her publishing any of the above. Mr Higham is aware the personal anxiety all this caused me. He is aware it ALMOST brought me to nervous breakdown, and he uses e-mails sent TO A PERSECUTOR, by the PERSECUTED. Someone living in constant fear, fear of the person sending the e-mails. A person who would literally do anything to stop the torture. How would Mr Higham feel, if months after he had asked an end to contact, contact continued and he felt obliged to continue, SIMPLY TO SAVE HIS BLOG.

Mr Higham does not choose to mention in his misleading post, that ALL e-mails referred to, bar one, are from the same source, and the one that isn't, is someone he really should speak to. She will tell him a very different story to the one he presents. Trust me.

It's a very clever presentation he puts forward, but ultimately disingenuous.

I make no secret of the fact that the purpose of this blog is to outline my theories and make contact with like minded bloggers so debate can be initiated on the future of our species. Do I aim to overthrow the government?

No. It will fall of it's own accord. It wall fall, when the money based system collapses. The whole social order will.

But when it does, I want to ensure that people are actually ready to take their world into their own hands, and not be be mown down in the streets.

I do not want INGSOC to actually happen. Therefore when the system fails, people need to know what's going on and be ready.

Nothing particularly sinister about that.

And of course I want to be anonymous. I don't trust these bastards. I don't think this a free country. I really do believe that if they read this blog, they'd stick me on a list along with Terror suspects. Not really THAT unreasonable a belief.

As for Mr Higham's 'source', what we have here is a woman who cannot understand why it is I do not want her in my life.
A good deal of the mails he quotes are simply trying to be nice, to explain why this blog matters, and she doesn't.

OK. I said a lot of shit to her, because on the phone, she listened to me outline some of the horrors I've lived through. No one had ever done that before. So I said some stupid things.
I've never done that to anyone ELSE.

Now you can MISREPRESENT IT, but see what I ACTUALLY SAY.

I apologise for making her think that I was romantically interested. I got confused. It was gratitude for listening, that I felt. Unfortunately she then raised havoc and tried to ACTUALLY get involved in my life.

Reality is, no one is allowed that close. They never will be. Not unless you are already close. That's my Real Life friends. No one gets closer than them.

I let her close, BECAUSE she was on the end of the phone. Had it been Real Life, I wouldn't have. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.

I'm sorry she never understood anything.

I'm not 'unstable', Mr Higham, but I am pretty bloody fragile underneath, and your 'source' had me living in terror. FACT.

Yes, it is true that I will never sleep properly again, I don't think. It is true, I cannot focus on Television. It is true I suffer from regular panic attacks, especially if left on my own for too long. It is true that I can derive satisfaction in short term pleasure, but will probably never be able to have a romantic relationship. I really can't cope with people trying to get emotionally close, except close friends.

So obsessed with my blog? Too damn right I am.
I lost a son to an abortion in 2001. The feelings I have for this blog ARE those of a father towards his child. I know that.

Do I come online for serious discussion with like minded people? I have stated that.

Do I think an online direct democratic debate forum can be founded here?

Yes, yes I do, Mr Higham, and I want EVERYONE on board.
And yes, Mr Higham, that includes Anarchist bloggers from the Phillipines.

Because it's ALL our future.

And I do not intend to waste my existence.

So you carry on seeing the world through your warped viewpoint.

Yes, I want to get a movement going. We're all part of it already, It's called BLOGGING.

THE BIGGEST DIRECT DEMOCRATIC DEBATING FORUM THE WORLD HAS SEEN.

AND I WANT TO MAKE THE BASTARDS LISTEN.

THIS IS THE WORLD'S REPRESENTATIVE CHAMBER

Because I really cannot see anything else worth doing.

And I leave you with my little red V sign saying what V signs do.



Go f**k yourself, Mr Higham.

I don't what planet you live on, but I hope we colonise it soon.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Me too! Let's go. Firstly prohibition is the dumbarsedest way to control drug use, its ineffective and hypocritical when all the judges and politicians drink alcohol and their wages are paid by the huge taxes on alcohol and tobacco and it has never worked. Looked what Prohibition of alcohol did to the US, created a lot of criminals that's all. So you may have committed a crime, but not a sin. Secondly, jail is a formative experience, anyone who hasn't been to jail is either too slick to get caught or a mindless robot programmed for obedience. Thirdly, who gives a monkey's (haha) what other people are saying about you if its wrong. You said you didn't like romantically linked blogs "demeaning' I think you said. What is you position on bloggodom slanging matches? Ninthly, where is Phillipino anarchist and is she cute? Viva La Revolution!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Mr. Paul S always has a great take. That's just part of being him.

You, likewise, have an angle on things that you go with, one that many people listen to.

Basically, you have a lot to say and people want to hear it. It's an increasingly held opinion that we are headed toward a critical juncture, and you speak of it with obvious charisma and fervor. This is what people who disagree with you absolutely FEAR, your ability to communicate.

Oscar Wilde said it best (a rough quote that I'm sure you are familiar with), "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all."

It's good that you cleared some air with this post, it was probably needed. And if I may, I suggest putting a permanent link to this post under your profile or somewhere on your sidebar with a heading like "In answer to the whirl wind of rumors about this blogger" or "the hottest winds blow around the eye of the storm" or something of the like. You are original, I'm sure you could think of something.

That way you can always refer people to it, and yet do the greatest damage of all: not talking about this guy, as it would probably break his heart.

He's a frustrated politician. That could also be said of you or me or a thousand and ten thousand more other bloggers. But you are at your best when talking about what is in your heart and on your mind, instead of what is on another's agenda.

And what is he doing? Not talking about himself or his own issues--instead, he's talking about you and your subjects of discussion. Politics on the only level he can conduct them.

You are on his mind, so he blogs about you.

Let it end with him blowing hot wind. Keep this post near and direct people to it so they can see what the noise is about and that you have credibility, the kind of credibility that only comes through trial and tribulation at the hands of this system that we live under.
----------------
I've been subject to judgment by my own laws in regards to drug use, so I completely understand where you've been and what you have seen. And it is a shame that they act harsher toward one who alters their own body chemistry than they do at truly sick people who commit crimes against children. That twisted bit of irony has not escaped me, either.

Anonymous said...

I have always thought that you wrote about things you thought important in a simple and direct way and I enjoy reading what you have to say, even when I do not agree.

I did know about the conviction of course and it did not bother me particularly. Its really none of my business, though you have written about prison here in a extremely clear and harrowing way and I have learned from that.

I hope you will continue to write your blog...and will put this row behind you..

Anonymous said...

Do they not do anything to help rehabilitate you back into the world?

Anonymous said...

Like Mutley I do not care about your conviction. You've paid what you owe and learned much along the way. It may sound flippant of me to say but your time was not wasted in prison.

You sound tired, Ingsoc.

Learn to let things go.

Anonymous said...

Lot of words but your own quotes condemn you. Facta are pesky things. Still, you won the first battle. Now let's see what happens next.

Anonymous said...

I don't know about that revolution people are too selfish evil nasty trecherous etc ever to drop those vices you speak of

it always amazed me how the people who were most uptight tended to go the most mentalistly hugsome on E

let the E wear off and they're denying they said any of those things

as for prison everyone I know except me seems to have been in there it is the big reason why I didn't go for a career in shoplifting I couldn't bear to be parted from my drugs even for 12 hours let alone 12 months

i think i know what your name means "crushed by ingsoc" now

Anonymous said...

I have read your post and it seems all rather sad. You sound very angry and mixed up.

I don't know how old you are, but to have feelings for a blog, cannot be anything like a father towards his child...How can they be?? And as for your grandmother not knowing your number or where you are seems rather strange to me..

I think you need to stop blaming the "woman" all she did was to be there for you and listen, also being on the end of the phone is "real life" just because you cannot see a person doesn;t mean they don;t exist.

Anonymous said...

Paul- My argument on prohibition of drugs. If all drugs were treated as alcohol is, my criminal record consists of a caution for saying the 'f' word to a police officer as a student.

No, I never saw it as a sin, and I agree what you say about it being a formative experience.

Oddly, getting through it is one of the things in my life I'm most proud of.

Http://klitorika.blogspot.com. It's in tagalog, so I don't understand it, but I operate a reciprocal links policy. God knows how she found this blog.

I actually with the bits of it I understand for the most part.

Eric- 'This is what people who disagree with you absolutely FEAR, your ability to communicate.' In this case, I think so.

I'm a mixture betwen Jim Jones and Charles Manson apparently.

But yes, a lot of what I believe is because of what I've seen. I learned to stop walking round with my eyes shut.

Mutley- Well, that's what I aim to do. Strip the mystique from thing, look at what's actually happening and show MY conclusion. It's then up to others to offer their conclusions.

Prisin is no good. It's an evil system, and you have to be in it to see how nasty it is. When you actually look at the concept, it really is primarily based on the idea of punishment, eye for an eye.

It ruins lives, it breaks people up and turns people out either broken shells or permanent recidivists.

Yes, I will still continue to blog.

Oestrebunny- Not a lot. And I wasn't exactly a priority. University degree, good CV, graded by the resettlement office as Minimum risk of reoffending, high emplyment prospects.

I was one of those who was dropped from probation supervision early.

The World Cup was my rehabilitation :)

E-K- I don't think it was either. I got really interested in a lot of things, and my study of human power matrices is a lot of it based on watching how they naturally create themselves in such an environment. Believe it or not, I really studied human interaction on the wing.

James- Well, I'm always going to be condemned in your eyes, because of the prism you insist on viewing 'facts' through.
The Nazis did that with Darwin.

'First battle'. You see, my point. I'm having debates with people, you're having battles.

Gledwood- I disagree. This is what people find so hard to grasp about Communism. It didn't work in 1917, because the time wasn't right.

In OUR state of technicaldevelopment, it BECOMES THE SELFISH OPTION.

Once the money system collapses, it becomes THE MORE EFFICIENT system, therefore the one which serves all our SELF interest better.

As for heroin, the gaols are awash with it. It's actually cheaper in there than cannabis, because it's easier to smuggle in.

Anne- I'm not actually that bitter, really. I'm quite lively socially, in fact, that's an understatement.

They are in a sense like feelings for a child. I can remeber how I felt, briefly, about the child I never had.

I've watched my baby grow here, when I count up the hours that have gone into it, it's a lot. It has been a bit like watching a child grow.

My grandmother doesn't know my number, because if she did, she would ring me several times a week. By not having my number, I have complete control of contact with her. I like to keep it that way. I see her in the home as often as I can, but sometimes it can be a couple of months.

I was glad that the woman listened. But unfortunately, she didn't react well to my attempts to gain space. Due to time constraints, I couldn't waste an hour an evening listening to her, not if I was to post, visit blogs, and get out of the flat before ten o'clock.

I guess I thought she would understand, understand why we had to stop contact, but she couldn't and she started using the threat to publish the things I've posted here.
I was forced to keep in contact, when I just wanted never to hear from her again.

Anonymous said...

Now I understand so much. I'm so sorry you felt you had to write this for us all to see.

You're proof of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Keep on keeping on.
regards
jmb

Anonymous said...

Gosh, Crushed, this post must have been incredibly difficult for you to write. I'd gathered before you'd been in prison but I didn't know it had been for so long. All the best people go there!! You have learnt from it and I think reading this will actually help a lot of people. I can understand your feelings about your blog. Dunno about the revolution, though... not in my lifetime , I thinl. but maybe in yours - who knows?

Anonymous said...

I would just like to thank you for explaining it all to me. Now I think I understand.

Anonymous said...

jmb- I often used that quote in there, and I've used a lot since. Generally I found it not wise to talk about Nietzche too much in there. He's not an idea that should be shared with some of those types.

But certainly, it's a bit like the army. It certainly makes a man of you, if it doesn't break you. And like with ex-soldiers, that will always make you different. You've got through stuff most people never face, and knowing that in yourself, empowers you in a funny kind of way.

Welshcakes- Needs must, I guess. It was a long time, certainly. Longer than any relationship I've had, longer than the longest I've worked ny place. Longer than I've lived in the sam place since graduation. Two thirds of my time at Uni, which you never forget, all your life.

At the end of the day, as I used to say in there and most people agreed it was sense 'It's not a game. You can't just wander down to the wing gate and say 'Well, it's been interesting but I think I'll go home now. Not happening. Look at your papers, se when you're going home. Till then, you're doing it, simple as. Get over it.'

Because if you don't do that, it WILL be hell. But the thing is, you can still have a laugh and joke, play backgammon, word association games, chess, still read, still get caught up in a good film. Life goes on, even in there, and sometimes, you laugh so much even in there, you laugh breathless.

OOh, and don't you just love it when you can treat yourself to a jar of coffee and a cigar!

You learn from everything, though what can vary. In this case, some very interesting things indeed.

Anne- Glad to have been of assistance.
The world is never simple and nor are people.
That's partly why life is so interesting :)

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, Crushed. I've never been to prison but I know it must be a miserable experience.

Anonymous said...

I feel like I need to take a few deep breaths after reading that.
Thanks for having the courage to open up. I know that all of this drama has forced you to open up about a lot, probably a lot more than you would have chosen if gotten the opportunity.

I admire the fact that after having your name raked in the mud, you open up to your faults, and keep on, because you truly believe in what you're saying. And even if I, or others, don't always agree in the content, that conviction is something to be admire, and no one can take that.

Anonymous said...

Okay, after being nosy and reading up further on this drama...
... why have you never tried to seduce me or recruit me into your cult, Crushed?
I feel a little rejected that I haven't even been deemed a suitable minion.