An open letter to Miley Cyrus

Dear Miley Cyrus,

I am very concerned about your reply to Sinead O'Connor's heartfelt advice to you

I don't care if you want to flaunt your sexuality. You are, after all, an adult. You are no longer Hannah Montana, and I can understand that you wish to make that fact known to your millions of fans all over the world.

What I find really disturbing is your attitude towards mental health issues. You show total disregard to your fans who may be struggling with their own mental illness and coming to terms with a psychiatric diagnosis..

October is Mental Health Awareness Month in the UK, and people all over the country are taking part, raising the issue and thus helping to beat stigma, so your comments are especially poignant. I am sure that you know better than to be disrespectful of people's race, religion, sexuality and physical disabilities. So why pick on a debilitating illness? By the way, some types of mental illnesses are also classed as a disability.

By mocking Sinead's and Amanda Bynes because of their battles with psychiatric illnesses, you are  sending the totally wrong message to your fans. After all, it does affect one in four people in case you didn't know. So let me do some maths for you. On your official Facebook page, you have 29 million fans. That means that over 7 million of your fans are currently suffering from mental illness. Some may have been diagnosed. Others will have read your recent tweets and be afraid to seek help because of the stigma you have highlighted so insensitively..

Let me make this clear to you. Insanity, craziness, madness or whatever you want to call it IS an illness. There may not be any visible signs, but that does not mean that it doesn't exist. It does, And it hurts. A lot. It is easy to recover from a broken leg. A heart transplant is now a common surgical procedure. But how do you cure broken mind? Yes, there are medications that help, as well as other types of therapies. But these are just coping mechanisms; there is no 'cure'. There is recovery, but that means learning to live with your symptoms and manage on a day to day basis. This is a lifelong process, and there will be ups and downs.

Unless you or a loved one experiences this, you will have no idea of what it is to live with mental health issues. I suggest that you educate yourself with what happens to those of us who are unlucky enough to receive a diagnosis of psychiatric illness.  I really hope you or someone you love never has to go through this, Incidentally, suicide is the most common cause of death in men under 35. Think of that the next time you are twerking.

Oh and one final word of advice - please put that tongue away. It is not pretty.

Yours sincerely,

A survivor 

My ongoing saga with EDF Energy

I have dual fuel with EDF, and right now I have a massive problem with them which is spiralling out of control because of the sheer and utter incompetence of this company.

It all began after Xmas this year, when I received a huge bill for around £700, even though I had been making regular payments by direct debit. I cancelled the DD because the bill stated that they were going to be taking out the full amount....money I did not owe them and which I did not have in my bank account anyway!

I phoned up EDF who assured me it was an error and my account was in credit. So I thought no more of that and carried on making regular payments via online banking (I did not reinstate the DD,  and I'm glad I didn't now.

Forward on to April and I received another massive bill - queried it again, get told its an error blah blah blah. Thinking back, I should have asked them to put it in writing.

So....when I got another massive bill for around £800 in July - and again with none of my payments being taken into account, I had enough and decided to go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau, and that's when things took a turn for the worse. Fair play to the CAB, they are being marvellous, but there is only so much they can do as they are manned by volunteers and have limited opening hours.

The advisor from CAB phoned EDF on my behalf and requested a full statement on my account, taking into consideration meter readings and payments made. He also pointed out a number of discrepancies in the meter readings, and EDF actually asked me to read my meter every day for a week and send them the readings, which I did.

But....instead of sending me a statement as requested by CAB, the blundering idiots at EDF sent me a 'bill' for the past year for around £1,700 plus a load of incorrect meter readings and none of my payments included - of which I have proof via bank statements. Chap at CAB advises me it's time to make a formal complaint. That was 2 weeks ago.

On Monday I had a call from a company calling themselves Grosvenor Services calling on behalf of EDF about my debt of £1,700. I was absolutely fuming and told the woman that I did not owe this money and I was seeking advice from CAB about this disputed amount. Said extremely rude woman did not appear to listen to a word I said because she kept insisting it was a live debt and I needed to make a payment.....I had to put the phone down in despair.

This evening, I see someone park a black car outside my house and walk up my drive. A hand written envelope with my name and address gets shoved in my letterbox. It's from Grosvenor Services.....threatening to cut off my gas and electric and get a warrant so that they can gain access to my property and recover the money!!!!!!!

I am really really fed up of this whole thing. A few weeks ago I suffered a major breakdown and ended up having an emergency psychiatrist appointment. It has even got to the point where I have contemplated suicide a few times (and the thought has fleetingly crossed my mind today). The fuckwits at EDF are well aware that I am registered disabled because of mental health issues. But I can't let them do this to me or my family. That's the only thought that keeps me going because I'm getting sick and tired of this fight.

Oh well, it's time to start the legal action ball rolling....

Why is fat shaming still socially acceptable?

Trawling through this morning's online edition of the Daily Mail (aka Daily Fail) I came across two very different stories, both on the subject of weight - specifically women's weight.

The first one's headline is :

'You're fat... the ultimate insult: Making a jibe about appearance is more likely to offend than swearing or insulting race or religion'

The article features a photo of a woman taken from behind. This seems to be a habit with the press, and it always makes me wonder if these people have given their permission for their photographs to be used.

Some of the comments made by the readers demonstrate a level of ignorance and insensitivity that is mind boggling. Just for a second imagine the reaction if the word 'fat' was replaced by the word 'black' or 'gay'. There would be an outcry, that is, if those comments would make it past the Mail's moderator, which I doubt very much.

most fat people deserve everything they get, isnt being a glutton a sin?

- frank bull, manchester, United Kingdom, 9/8/2013 5:10

yep that is why I do it.... "You are Ugly" also works..... and for the chicks "I see you have been shopping at thrift shops again"

- bob, China, China, 9/8/2013 7:04

Its amazing to hear how many fat people have a 'Thyroid problem' these days and weird that it was practically unheard of 30 years ago when, funnily enough there were less fat people. The government needs to invest heavily in 'thyroid problem' research and find a cure soon before we're all struck down with acute laziness.

 - Expat Eddie, Sydney, 9/8/2013 7:19 

Some people just can't accept the truth - if they're fat, they're fat! "Fat" is NOT an offensive word nor an insult. Get over yourselves.

- TonyMartin, Berwick, 9/8/2013 7:28

The second story features Emma, a young woman who is a slimming club's slimmer of the year. These sort of stories feature quite regularly in the press, but the headline that grabbed my attention was this:

It appears to make humiliation acceptable. A bit rich from the Mail, seeing as they are also jumping on the bandwagon calling for the ask.fm website to be removed because they believe that cyber bullying has led to children's suicide.

Emma herself describes her experience: 

"I was going to an Asian wedding and I had to get measured for an outfit which was basically a long dress and trousers. The women were measuring me and they said "that can't be right". They couldn't believe I was that size. I was mortified."

No censoring of those women's cruel remark, or how this impacted Emma psychologically. Which brings me to my own experience. A few years ago, I was roughly Emma's weight before she began her weight loss journey. I was suffering from knee pain, something that flares up now and then because of a fall I had over 20 years ago, which resulted in me having surgery and a piece of cartilege removed. Rather than look at my medical history, this doctor assumed that my joints were straining because of the weight I was carrying...ok, I admit that did not help matters. He then told me that if I didn't lose weight I would be a big fat blob by the time I was 60. That's right, he called me a BIG FAT BLOB!!!

I left the surgery in tears, and as soon as I got home, I tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose. The doctor had also ommitted to check my history of mental health issues and suicide attempts before he made that comment. Even thinking back about it now still hurts and brings back feelings of anger.

It did however, trigger me to lose weight. But was this the right approach? If my husband hadn't made me throw up the pills I took that day I wouldn't be here to tell the tale. I would have ended up as a big fat corpse. 

As an end note, we did complain to the surgery about said doctor. It seems that other people had also complained about him, as he is no longer practising there.

Ask fm and the question of censorship

Maybe I am a fuddy duddy but until a few days ago I thought that ask.fm was just a radio station. But then I read this story about a young girl who had apparently committed suicide because of cyber bullying she had received on that site. This has brought up a huge debate over Internet censorship, with calls from politicians and the press for the site to be banned. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum,  the companies which have pulled adverts from the website and the mainstream media, from the Daily Mail to the Guardian, are quick to place the blame on ask.fm, However, no one knows if this poor child had issues that led her to commit suicide. There is also the fact that increasing pressure is being placed on young girls to look and dress a certain way in order to be accepted by their peers.....but that is a subject for a future post.

Coincidentally, a few weeks ago, the government were talking about bringing stricter controls to our Internet content, something that I totally oppose.I consider myself to be a free thinker and censorship is usually an anathema to me. But having a look at the site in question has made me think.

Trawling through the site I don't really see much evidence of cyber bulling, although I did see instances of insults being traded back and forth, much in the same way as normal playground banter. However, the problem as I see it with ask.fm is not bullying  but rather that this site is a paedophile's wet dream come true.

The site appears to be popular amongst young teenagers of school age. They create a profile with a little bit of information about themselves, add pictures and then invite visitors to the site to ask them anything. The person who asks the questions doesn't necessarily have to have a profile, and this is where the problem lies. Below are some screencaps I just took at random from some profiles so that can see for yourselves.

But how can we, as a society, solve this issue without taking draconian measures? The kid in the second screencap makes the suggestion that anonymous posting should be stopped. That is quite a good suggestion, but in reality, it is extremely easy to set up a fake profile, and even use a proxy server to hide your location. In my opinion, we need to look at how we live our own lives and take responsibility for our own actions and that of our children. Why don't parents monitor what their children get up to online? Or is it much more convenient to let your child loose on the Internet whilst you are watching the latest episode of TOWIE?  I will leave you with that thought.....