Wednesday 30 September 2009

Communication

I prefer it when people speak to me, that they do so in a clear, direct, concise and precise way. All rambling, vague or unclear directions or language does is either confuse me or makes me lose interest. When someone is giving me instructions or speaking, I prefer it if they break it down, so I can digest what they are saying, rather than listen to rambling speech that jumps from topic to topic. This is not because I am stupid, or a GLDer, or rude, but because when I have mentally digested one aspect of what the speaker is saying, I find it hard to switch straight away. I can switch, but am slower at doing so than NT's are.

I prefer language that is free of metaphors, cliches and idioms. I don't take offence at people's frankness if it is clear, constructive, and doesn't mean they are wasting my time. What I find difficult to understand is when someone asks my opinion and I tell them, they then take offence. Why bother seeking an opinion if it offends you? What sort of logic is that? By nature and instinct, I have to say things as they are, rather than what others like to hear. That's who I am and what I am about. I can comform to an extent, but I feel two-faced and hypocritical doing so.

I have listed the Plain English Society's link to my website's list of links http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/

Tuesday 29 September 2009

Gender and Sex

Such is hypocrisy in society about sex. When a man sleeps with loads of women, he is called a stud and a stallion. When a woman sleeps with loads of men, she is called a slag and a tart. What's the difference?

Monday 28 September 2009

Colds and Fitness

In 2006, 2007 and up to June 2008, when I got a cold, it lasted nearly a month, but since June 2008, I haven't had literally one day of illness. Perhaps I have exhausted all my colds in those three years! More seriously, my physical fitness reached its nadir between March 2006 and December 2007.

I have gradually improved it since then. I have lost, so far, 22 pounds in weight since October 2008, so perhaps improved fitness and weight loss has something to do with it. I lost a stone in eight weeks, in late 2008, by cutting out junk food alone. I was at my peak regarding physical fitness between 1994 and 1999. When I got a cold then, it would last three days and that would be the end of it.

I now weigh what I did around the time of my diagnosis, and am hoping to get down to my weight, when I was weighed on Monday 30th November 1998, (Doctors surgery information obtained recently). I am 1.82cm (5-feet-11 and a half inches tall). My physical fitness levels now aren't as good as they were between 1994 and 1999, but they are the best they have been since, again, the time of my diagnosis.

Is there a link, or is it just coincidence?

Sunday 27 September 2009

Sleep and location

I don't know how people can fall asleep on busses, trains and planes. The only place I can truly fall asleep in is my own bed.

Years ago, around 1992, 1993, I used to think Sunday was a totally boring day. It almost certainly would have been in the days when everything was closed and people did nothing but go to Church. However, times change, and I find that I rather like Sundays nowadays. I see it is a day when I can regain my mental equillibrium and relax after the stresses of the week. A routine I usually have is going to bed after dinner on an afternoon, and having a sleep.

Friday 25 September 2009

Now you find the time, for making your mind up

The government tell us that we are all obese and are dying early of heart disease, then they tell us that we are all living too long and there will be no pension money left for us. I wish they would make up their minds!

Thursday 24 September 2009

Symptoms of Asperger's

I find with Asperger's Syndrome, in my experience at least, whilst the core of it has remained in my life, and will very likely remain with me even if I live to be 120 years old, such as routines, obsessions, mental overload, hypersensitivity to touch, sound and taste, monotropic thinking and problems identifying facial expressions and interpreting cliches and metaphors, some of the symptoms have, as I have got older, either reduced in intensity, or even disappeared altogether.

Wednesday 23 September 2009

The first cut is the deepest

Although I have stopped reading the national newspapers, on the BBC, ITN or Internet news, all the talk recently has been of huge government spending cuts across the board, regardless of which party wins the next general election, because we are now in a severe recession.

I saw a headline in a newspaper a few weeks back, before I stopped reading them, declaring that "Bankers face tough spending choices". That headline made me think to myself, "Tough spending choices? Such as what? Whether to buy a Porsche or a Lamborgini?". The latter car sounds like an Italian wine doesn't it? However, on a more serious note, there is something cruelly ironic about the fact that those who have precipitated this recession, fat cats and top bankers, are mainly unaffected by it.

With the proposed spending cuts, DLA may be axed or reduced, along with meals on wheels programs. Libraries will almost certainly have their opening hours reduced and spending on books drastically slashed. Educational Maintenance Allowance might be scrapped, removing an incentive for some students to remain in further or higher education. The Sure Start scheme could go. Council services are likely to be shrunk to a bare minimum, and other welfare benefits hit. The NHS budget downscaled. Free television licences for the over-75's and free bus passes for the over 60's are potential targets in the spending cuts, which all three parties have reached a consensus on.

Another ironic thing is, the government should be trying to prevent unemployment, but making huge spending cuts will cause further unemployment, make the recession worse, and reduce the spending power of those which it has made unemployed by the cuts! If EMA goes, then many people may not get their training to learn a skill or trade or acquire further qualifications, because they might not be able to afford it. However, when that occurs, where will they be placed in the workplace if much of industry is closing down due to the recession? The UK will have a workforce with vastly reduced skills. Where's the sense or logic in that?

Have you noticed though, that it is usually the vulnerable, ill or old are affected when such decisions occur? If I had my way with the spending cuts, which are due to occur, first of all, I would keep Inheritance Tax. To abolish that in a time of recession and economic cutbacks would be cruel, as well as economic insanity.

Inheritance Tax guarantees income for the treasury, and only the richest 6 per cent of estates pay inheritance tax. It creates a class of inheritees who have no incentive to work, since they will be rich no matter what they do. I would close tax loopholes for the rich and super-rich. That would be ALL loopholes, particularly for foreign billionaires and private equity experts. To stop the minority of the super-rich who would actually act on their threats to leave Britain, I would lead an international battle to shut down the world's tax havens.

Following on from this would be a windfall tax on the bloated oil companies. Those earning £150,000 a year will pay 50% in Income Tax from April 2010. Too right that they should. The Government shouldn't apologise or be timid about it. There is something wrong with a taxation system where someone earning £40,000 a year pays the same amount as someone earning £400,000 a year. If I had my way, those earning between £50,000 a year and £99,999 should pay 40%, and those earning between £30,000 to £50,000 35%.

Those earning between £100,000 and £149,999 would pay 45% Income Tax. I would bring in a rate of 55% for those earning between £200,000 and £299,999 per annum, and then a top rate of 60% for those who earn £300,000 or more. When the press loudly praise tax cuts, they are right. They can be a good idea - for low and middle earners. Though I didn't like the Thatcher government, which was in power between May 1979 and November 1990, they had the correct top rate of Income Tax between May 1979 and March 1988, which was 60%. The March 1988 budget was an immoral and foolish budget - foolish because it triggered off the recession between 1990 and 1993, and immoral because it rewarded the idle rich.

There should be a windfall tax on private equity firms, to make up for the tax giveaway they have enjoyed for too long. I would say with regards to immigrants that there is no room at present for them in the UK, because we need to employ British workers. ALL immigration should be frozen whilst the recession is occurring. Times are hard for UK people, so we can't take any foreigners until it ends. I hear the UK gives the EU millions a year. Is it really necessary to do so?

I would also stop UK troops getting involved in wars abroad. ALL the troops should be removed from Iraq, and scaled down from Afghanistan. Foreign Aid programmes would be drastically cut. The Identity cards would go. What's the point in ID cards when you already have personal ID? I would scrap the proposed nuclear trident defence, until the recession ends at least. A fine would come in for any bankers who make reckless and irresponsible gambles with money.

The House of Lords would either be abolished, or if kept, they wouldn't be paid for attending. MP's would give up their 3-month summer holidays and have a six week holiday instead. Thus, I am sure these measures would protect our essential services, namely the NHS, Education and public transport, would minimise the impact of the cuts, and will protect the elderly, ill and vulnerable in society, and ensure that the super-rich pay their share, because they aren't doing so at the moment. If Cameron is elected to power, which looks likely now, it probably would be another Christmas party for them again, whilst we all suffer.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

The Priory beckons....

After the Cancer story, rape claims, and wishing she had never left Peter Andre, Katie Price's next move will be to claim she's got Bipolar, and a spell in the priory or rehab beckons for her. If she doesn't do that, she will perhaps declare herself an alcoholic, or could find "God". In fact, it seems to be fashionable of some stars to say they have got Bipolar, when with a few of them, such as Pete Doherty or Britney Spears, their behaviour or predicament is very likely booze or drug contributed.

Names such as Winston Churchill, Dylan Thomas (Alcoholic certainly - Thomas wrote one of my favourite poems of all time, "Do not go gentle into that goodnight", Cole Porter, Thomas Edison, and Abraham Lincoln are suspected Bipolar sufferers, according to one website.

How do this website know? Have they held a seance with these people? Churchill, Thomas, Porter, Edison and Lincoln are all long dead, like many alleged late, great Aspies, such as Einstein or Newton or Peter Sellers. I accept that some celebs have genuinely had, or do have Bipolar, such as the late Spike Milligan or Stephen Fry, and when that is the case, they have my sympathy.

However, it's in an insult to those who have genuinely lived with the misery of that illness, famous or not, when people claim to have it when they haven't. It is also an insult to say someone had Bipolar when they are long dead and aren't here to diagnose.

The happiest days of your life depend from person to person

It is commonly said that your teen years or school days are the happiest times of your life. "Sweet sixteen" is often referred to. I see this attitude as extremely presumptuous, as other people's values are being imposed on yourself.

Everybody's lives are different. What are happiest times in one person's life maybe not be in another person's life. The happiest times of your life are the ones which are the happiest for you, and the ones in which you feel self-contentment. That applies whether it is in your teens, your schooldays, your 20's, your 30's, your 40's, your 50's, your 60's, your 70's, your 80's, your 90's, or whatever age you have felt the most content. If you won the lottery when you were 35 years old, would you say your teen years were the happiest years of your life then? If you found true love in your 40's and hated school, are those years the happiest in your life?

It is also commonly said by people that when in their late 20's or 30's or 40's, they wish they could go back to being at Secondary School or 16, 17, and that "I wish I knew then what I know now". Why? No-one takes you seriously at that age anyway. I don't wish I was back at Secondary School or 16 or 17 again, with what I know now. If I could, everyone would have thought I was a know-all.

I have also noticed that when someone at 16 or 17 mentions views on subjects, they are told by adults that they don't know what they are talking about, or that they haven't experienced life to know. Yet when you are 22 or 23, and express them, you are taken more seriously. If at 16 or 17 you mention you have depression, you can be told that you shouldn't be depressed, because at that age, you shouldn't even know what it means.

At 22 or 23, you would be taken more seriously. So are your school years or being 16 or 17 such a golden age? At 16 or 17, unemployment benefits are limited. Your employment rights are lower. You can't drink legally, you can't drive legally, until 17. Some golden age.

I'll tell you what, if I live to be 90 or a 100, and providing no major disaster occurs, or if I keep my mental faculties and speech, I will then be able to tell you what were the happiest years of my life.

Monday 14 September 2009

A way of life disappears with smoke

I am not a big alcohol drinker, and I have never smoked in my life, as I find smoking tobacco to be a filthy, expensive and pointless addiction. If I had to stop drinking alcohol for the rest of my life, it wouldn't bother me. I dislike a smoky atmosphere anywhere, though with the smoking ban, they should have segregated pubs, for a smoking and non-smoking area, or fitted extractor fans to remove lingering smoke.

The local pub in villages are now dying off, because of several factors. The recession which we are currently going through is a cause. Another factor is working men's clubs where it has always been cheaper, but chiefly I suspect, buying alcohol cheaply en masse from their local shops/supermarkets which have special offers. The way things are going, there will be many more local pub closures in the next few years, to the extent that the local pub will eventually become a thing of the past.

Friday 11 September 2009

Those who remember will never forget........

Eight years ago today, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were both raised to the ground when two Al-Qaeda hijacked jets were deliberately flown into them. The third jet hit the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania, after some passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control. Over 3,000 people were killed.

When I saw the first plane hit the World Trade center, on TV, I thought that there had been a tragic plane crash. Then, when the second one hit the south tower, I realized that this was a terrorist attack. Like when JFK was shot, (I wasn't here on Friday, 22nd November, 1963, but still..) or when Princess Diana died, on Sunday 31st August 1997, 11 days after my 21st birthday, you never will forget the events of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, or where you were when you heard about it, unless you get Alzheimer's Disease. I watched the horror unfold live on Television.

However, as sad, and as horrible as 9/11 was, if this had happened in some obscure country, such as say, East Timor, Nicaragua or Qatar, I don't think it would have received as much as coverage as 9/11 did across the world. Yet if it had happened there, it wouldn't have been any more, or any less tragic than it occurring in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain or France.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

It doesn't always symbolise what it seems

Have you ever noticed that when you say, for example, Autism to people they often respond with "Rain man", yet no-one ever says "Winston Churchill", "Luciano Pavarotti" or "Buddha" when you talk about someone who is fat, or "David Blunkett", "Stevie Wonder" or "Helen Keller" when you mention blindness, or "Beethoven", when you mention deafness.

Sunday 6 September 2009

Clever in some ways - not so clever in others

If ever asked if I think I am intelligent, I reply "In some ways and at some things yes, but in other ways and other things I am not intelligent". I think that applies to nearly all of the population as well. The more I find out the less I know. Just that the education system writes so many people off or undiscovers talents. It almost makes me think that if the education system did work, there wouldn't be such things as learning disabilties.

Thursday 3 September 2009

Be true to yourself

There's no point in being somebody or something that you are not. You will only get caught out if you do so. I don't act in one way in front of one group of people, and then differently when in the company of another group. Nor do I show off or act like an idiot to impress people. I am who I am, whether people like it or not. If people can't or won't accept me for who or what I am, then it is their loss, and they are not worth knowing. It is also rare when I pretend emotions that I do not feel.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

My AS varies from day to day

I feel that my AS is better some days and worse than others. There are some days when I don't feel too bad and other days it seems to be worse. AS of course, is not a mental illness like Schizophrenia, Bipolar or OCD, but yes, my AS does vary, whilst the core of it is with me each and every day.

Perhaps the environment and what I am doing can contribute to how it is. Like for example, when I am sat alone emailing someone or updating my website or reading, it doesn't feel too bad because I am doing something I am enjoying and not only that, there is little interaction involved. However, when I am late for something or in a place that is packed out or if I feel upset or stressed about something, my condition can be worse.