A letter to the EU president.

Dear President Juncker,

I am a 47 year old British citizen and one of the 48% who voted to Remain.

I also have schizophrenia, am living in the community, and have experienced the dreadful cuts to NHS mental health services over the past few years made by the Conservative government. I have had friends who self harmed and some who are no longer with use. I have a blog, http://schizopanic.blogspot.co.uk/ that I have used to  document my experiences.

Whilst I am unable to hold down a salaried position, I find that if I keep learning things, it helps keep the schizophrenia under control. I attend a drop in centre run by http://contactmorpeth.org.uk/, a charity set up to help people with mental health problems, their carers or relatives. I help out on occasion, doing what is necessary.

I feel that whilst not perfect, the EU is worth saving. I voted for the UK to remain – with the intent to vote for reform. Yes, it is nice having two places for the parliament to meet – Strasbourg and Brussels. But it is hopelessly inefficient and expensive. Surely give the advances made in Information Technology, you could have some people work in Strasbourg and some in Brussels and have the two parliaments linked by some kind of video link?

In the UK, It is hard to get good information about the EU. However, some of the EU’s policies have been unhelpful. It would be helpful if the EU developed a website which could be used by the population of Europe to see what the EU is doing. They should be able to see what is going right. They should be able to see what is going to plan and tell their MEP to vote/lobby for change.

Also, MEP elections get scant coverage in the UK’s news organisations. As a result, we end up with people like Nigel Farage, who’s behaviour in the European Parliament has been both unprofessional, appalling and hypocritical.

The EU Referendum in the UK was a fraud. The “Brexit” camp drove a big red bus around the country with the phrase “We send the EU £350 million a week let’s fund our NHS instead”. This was proven to be a fraudulent claim. Immigration was a factor, as well. A significant portion of our population feels that immigrants are unfairly affecting the job market – driving wages down. Also, the economics theories pursued by our government assume the private sector will invest in new jobs and this just doesn’t happen on the scale needed. We have a concept called “zero-hours contracts” where people have to sign up with an employer and only work if the employer needs the staff. This is a disgrace in modern Europe.

Refugees are a challenge. When they arrive in a country, they need housing, help and feeding. Their children need teaching. Simply greeting refugees into Europe is not good enough. Potentially, new towns will have to be developed to accommodate them, plans made to make this work and given a sensible budget to make things work.

Despite the tempting claims made by Brexit, a full 48% voted to say within the EU. This means that nearly half the people who voted wanted to stay in Europe, despite the flaws in Europe.

I am writing to beg of you and your fellow European counter-parts, please don’t write us off. Please, find a way to let the half of the UK who want to remain EU citizens to do so. We share your beliefs and values and we want to be an active, positive, contributing part of the EU. Give us a life line, an option, anything. Please.

Best wishes,

Ian Bruntlett

We've lost!

Well, how the Remain in the EU vote was lost will be discussed in documentaries for years to come.

Here are some observations from Northumberland...

* Our nationwide media just reported EU activity as a figure of fun or evil dictatorship.

* There is a culture of "Us" vs "Them". A lot of people in the UK regard the EU as a joyless, bumbling elite bureaucracy or as a completely united group of countries "just over the channel". Don't know what the EU think of us but our media has a tendency to quote them as if the EU was a teacher telling a naughty pupil (the UK) how to behave properly.

* The EU wasn't open enough. Given the poor coverage of EU activities, couldn't they (the EU) have an easily understood website about what they were trying to achieve, how things worked out and admitting when they got things wrong?

* However, technology marches on. In particular, I've been using Google to find things out since about 1999 (I think). Google has become better and better at finding things for me. So I used it to find out how the EU was helpful for the North East - their fund (ERDF - European Regional Development Fund) has spent lots of money supporting poorer regions in the EU - and here is some information about their support of England. Warning - various politicians are entertaining but that page is just plain information.

* The EU was too distant. It operated at the level of governments and international bureaucrats. It ignored the concerns of the people. Consider immigration - many people in the UK faced or perceived unequal competition for jobs from immigrants. The people in power called them racists, incompetent etc. No wonder they voted exit.

* The younger part of the population voted to Remain. Part of me feels that eventually the young will have their way and we'll become part of Europe again.

* I voted Remain because I felt that we should be part of the EU and, in particular, we should play a role in reforming the EU.

* To quote Johnny Vegas, "Leaving Europe is like telling your parents you want independence, and then you move into the garage“.

* New word - brexopanic. Where you panic thinking about the consequences of the UK's EU referendum.

* And... people are saying this referendum as an advisory referendum.  Who knows what will happen in the coming months?

Brexit

Last night I went to bed hoping for Bremain.

I felt uncertain about the future. I was wondering how the future would work out for me. Last time I felt like that was when I'd been readmitted into Hospital.

Now it seems that more than 50% of the UK population should be sectioned under the mental health act.

An episode

Some time earlier this year, I started becoming unwell. In fact, I was paranoid about a certain thing so I hid the episode from people. Looking back it was probably a psychotic episode. After coming through the episode with no-one hurt I was ecstatic. Next time I might not be lucky.

Getting in touch

I don't know how to edit the top of this blog.

For the moment, if you need to contact me, don't e-mail schizopanic@hotmail.com, please email IanBruntlett@hotmail.com

A bit more code

And here is the brains behind my stufftar backup (Bash) script...

# perform_backup
# $1 - stub of .tar.gz filename
# $2 - name of log file e.g. "scripts/stufftarlog.txt"
# $3 - directory to do the tarring in
# $4 onwards - files/directories to put in .tar.gz file relative to $3
function perform_backup()
{
  if [ $# -lt 4  ]
  then
    echo "Error perform_backup() insufficient no of parameters";
    return 1;
  fi;

 FILENAME_STUB=$1
 DESTINATION_FILENAME=$1`date "+_%d_%B_%Y.tar.gz"`
 LOGFILE=$2
 TAR_DIR=$3
  if [ $STUFFTAR_VERBOSE -gt 0 ]
  then
    echo $0 $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9 ${10} ${11} ${12} ${13} ${14} ${15} ${16} ${17} ${18} ${19} ${20}
    echo DESTINATION_FILENAME=$DESTINATION_FILENAME e.g. Desktop_28_December_2014.tar.gz
    echo FILENAME_STUB=$FILENAME_STUB
    echo LOGFILE=$LOGFILE
    echo TAR_DIR=$TAR_DIR
  fi
  CURRENT_TIME=`date "+%H:%M:%S"`
  cd $TAR_DIR
  echo_and_log $LOGFILE $CURRENT_TIME Backing up key $TAR_DIR $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9 ${10} ${11} ${12} ${13} ${14} ${15} ${16} ${17} ${18} ${19} ${20}files to $DESTINATION_FILENAME

  /usr/bin/time -f "%E mins:secs " tar -czf $DESTINATION_FILENAME $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9 ${10} ${11} ${12} ${13} ${14} ${15} ${16} ${17} ${18} ${19} ${20}
  exit_if_failed $? "perform_backup to " $DESTINATION_FILENAME
  echo File count:-
  tar -tvf $DESTINATION_FILENAME | wc -l
  ls -lh $DESTINATION_FILENAME
  echo
  cd;
  return 0;
}

A friend asked me today: what is your star sign? After a moment of thought, I replied: "a radio telescope".

Done my first function in bash.

Been doing a lot of Linux system's administration studies recently. Finished reading "Linux Pocket Guide (2e)" from cover to cover for the first time ever.

Am returning to "Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5".

In the meantime, here is a function newly written for my stufftar backup shell script...

function echo_and_log()
{
  if [ $STUFFTAR_VERBOSE -gt 0 ]
  then
    echo echo_and_log : parameter count $#, logfile $1, text $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9
  fi
  if [ $# -lt 2  ]
  then
    echo "Error echo_and_log insufficient no of parameters";
    return 1;
  fi;
  if [ ! -f $1 ]
  then
    echo WARNING $1 does not exist. Creating it now.
    touch $1
  fi;

  echo  `hostname` $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9
  echo  `hostname` $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9 >> $1

} # end function echo_and_log

Improved script file "synclamp"

Initially synclamp (described elsewhere) tried to create its destination directory if it did not exist. I decided to check for its existence and exit synclamp with an error message.

Here is the old code:-
echo Ensuring destination directory $FILES_STICK exists
mkdir -p $FILES_STICK

Here is the updated code:
# August 2014. If memory stick not found then exit with error message
 if [ ! -d $FILES_STICK ] ; then
    echo "Please insert missing memory stick $FILES_STICK";
    exit 1;
fi;

Done a little bit of (shell) programming

Here it is...

#!/bin/bash
# Script file to synchronise LAMP files. Ian Bruntlett July 2014
FILES_LAMP=/var/www/html
FILES_STICK=/media/$LOGNAME/DARWIN/lamp/html
FILES_CP_OPTS="-irvua"
echo Running $0
ls -lh $0
echo Ensuring destination directory $FILES_STICK exists
mkdir -p $FILES_STICK
echo Copy files from live LAMP directory to memory stick
cp $FILES_CP_OPTS $FILES_LAMP/* --target-directory=$FILES_STICK
echo Copy files from memory stick to hard disc
cp $FILES_CP_OPTS $FILES_STICK/* --target-directory=$FILES_LAMP
echo $0 done

Business as usual

Had a routine blood test today - just one bottle.

Am trying to lose weight. I might not be eating properly because if I skip breakfast (porridge, skimmed milk and honey) I get dizzy spells. So instead of eating sandwich, salad and toast all the time, I'll also be eating other things - tinned food - that can go in the microwave.

Operating Systems

As most people know, Windows XP and Office 2003, both produced by Microsoft, both used by many people around the world, are no longer supported. This means bugs won't be fixed, support for new types of hardware won't be provided and security problems will go unaddressed. There are a number of options here. One is to buy a new/replacement PC with a new license of Microsoft Office.  Another is to continue using your old hardware and get either Ubuntu or lubuntu Linux installed on your computer, along with a copy of LibreOffice to replace Microsoft Office. Ubuntu Linux and lubuntu Linux are free - all you need is someone to install them. Ubuntu requires better hardware and is more avant garde. lubuntu runs on very modest systems and is more familiar looking for people used to running Windows XP.

I was helping a friend with her Windows 8 laptop. I had a look at it and tried to help but had to return it to her to take to a Windows 8 specialist to fix things and upgrade to Windows 8.1.

Not many people are aware of a problem with people using old Ubuntu Linux systems. This only applies to people running Ubuntu Linux on computers with less than 700MB of RAM (memory). Earlier versions of Ubuntu Linux ran fine on PCs with 512MB of RAM. However, if your PC has less than 700MB of RAM, Ubuntu will try to struggle through and still work. The result has been described as slow and occasionally prone to crashing. My solution to this is to install lubuntu Linux (essential Ubuntu Light) on said systems as it requires 128MB of RAM. Personally I'd go for systems with at least 256MB RAM.

Contact has leaflets about 1) free software and 2) lubuntu.

Paula's cat, Alice, had to be put down. Rest in peace. She is survived by Geraldine.

Cooking

For the first time in over a decade I've cooked some stir-fry. It was lovely :)

Linux Voice

A new Linux magazine has arrived - Linux Voice. Looks very interesting. They are going to re-license their content within 9 months of it being published.

Very nice :)

Been to a Christmas Carol service, thinking of you Dad.

Money saving tip - memory cards etc

I was recently given some memory sticks by a friend (EH) for fixing her laptop (thankyou, EH). So I started looking on Amazon UK for dedicated USB memory stick pouches but all the suitable pouches were £16+. So I had a think. And I remembered I had some spare transparent pencil cases (which I previously used to hold unit cards when I was playing the Babylon 5 : A Call to Arms wargame).

It turns out the cases are cheap and better (you can see what's inside without having to open the case).

To coin a phrase - abandonment anxiety...

... is what people with mental health problems often have regarding their care in the community.

Miniatures

For the first time in years I have started to paint miniatures for RPGs. This time it is the Judge Dredd figures by Mongoose Publishing.

Relaxation

Have taken this weekend off from doing C++ stuff.

Yesterday was all 3 Jurassic Park films.

Been listening to BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge 2013 today.

Luxury :)