Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

The Lamborghini Muira came out in 1966. Many say it was the first super car. But the 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe coupe might be the first real super car. This particular car was re-built by a company in Ontario Canada.

Created 26 years earlier than the Muira. It set a new level of automotive design. Imagine seeing a Bugatti compared to the Model T Ford car shapes of the time.

Its curved lines seem more like an aeroplane. It was a concept car before concept cars were invented. Only four were made. The Atalante model followed. 17 were made. Why so few?
It was so far ahead of its time that the public didn’t get it. Its aluminium parts were riveted together externally. It had a new chassis and double overhead-cam engine. Unbelievably ahead if its time.

It has six exhausts and sounds like this. The dashboard looks like you could peel it off and wear it out to a smart dinner party. The elegance and art deco shape is like something out of a poster print on your wall. More space age than industrial age.

Enjoy!

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

The events in Nice,France over the last week are shocking and brutal. That a man, a human being would drive the Nice truck into a crowd. Swerving from side to side to kill as many other human beings as possible seems incomprehensible. There is no excuse. No rhyme nor reason.

The perpetrator at the moment looks like a loner with no direct link to any terrorist organisation. Quiet, strange and alone he was a figure to be wary of in his community.
Prone to outbursts of violence against wife & a petty criminal known to the Police but not to the Intelligence services.

So in a way it makes sense. His profile is not that of a terrorist mind. Organisations bent on creating destruction
in the West weed out unpredictable personalities. They are seen not to be safe around guns and bombs! The terrorist is more rational and calculating, believing that they are doing something good for the cause. Charismatic leaders and putting the group before the individual cements this belief as reasonable.

So without a cause or the support of a group what motivates such a perpetrator? People like this don’t access services let alone psychological services. They feel marginalised and outside society. Is this an extreme version of the Brexit vote and why the remain are so frightened?

There is nothing more dangerous than someone who feels it cannot get worse or has nothing to live for. No hope and no future makes people angry and want to hit back violently. The Brexits wanted to destroy the cosy comfort of the Remainers. The leave vote is on its way to creating a political and social environment reminiscent of a precursor to an international war.

Perhaps while we seek out and fear the radical: the hopeless can be more dangerous.
Nice Truck

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
All rights reserved
Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

On the publication of the Chilcot Report Tony Blair is not Sorry Blair. If he had his time again he would make exactly the same decision: to take the UK into the war in Iraq. Blair appreciates that people want him to apologise for his decision. But he cannot say sorry because he would do the same again.

If you look at this more carefully it doesn’t make sense. He’s never going to have to make the decision again. Words are cheap. Why Blair can never say sorry is his particular relationship to shame.

Shame unlike embarrassment and guilt has an internal focus. It comes from within. We are all susceptible to shame from an early age. When we have done something wrong, and it initiates a negative reaction from care givers, shame is created. It is a difficult emotion to sit with due the pain it causes us. We feel less. We feel unworthy. We feel we have less value. We go to great lengths to avoid shame. We bury the experiences & memories that cause us shame.

An added factor is the private education boarding school system. Dislocated from home and parents at an early age, the 7 year old self is barely formed. Immediately put into a competitive system pitted against rivals: failure is not an option. The 7 year old self feels inadequate to deal with the pressure. So he creates an armour to protect himself. This armoured self carries the 7 year old through the separation and pain of the private school experience. The armoured self sense the shame of the 7 year old self but must not connect. The connection would open up the pain, trauma of the shame.

This is why Blair cannot apologise. It has nothing to do with the decision he made. Well it is a bit. The shame of the adult having possibly made a mistake is minimal. Compared to the reservoir of deep early shame that has to remain disconnected. Separate. Untouchable. It can never be accessed. It’s too traumatic.
Decisions are made not on their own merit. But to avoid the shame. Blair can never say sorry. Sorry Blair.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
All rights reserved
Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

In this video documentary in the labour stronghold of Sunderland, it describes a place with no Referendum campaign for Remain and no Labour Party office. It has a large concentration of Leave voters who voted because their lives couldn’t get any worse. There was no hope in voting Brexit. They just wanted change. Unconscious Brexit

The Leave campaign targeted the unconscious. The phrase “take back control” was a master stroke of. It captures the underlying feeling of inadequacy & low self esteem and promises to get rid of it. The underclass ridiculed and mocked by the South were looking for to give a bloody nose, and they gave one. Nobody wants to admit to being perceived as inadequate. It’s buried. But the Leave campaign recognised this, and played on it.

Unconsciously the attraction of Brexit was the self harm it could do. If there is no hope in peoples’ lives then a campaign promising no hope seems attractive. At some deep level familiarity resonates more than health or what is best for us. This is borne out by the Trump campaign in the US. “The Case Deaton effect” shows that rising death rates in white working classes correlates to areas with the greatest support for Trump.

The Referendum campaign was dominated by men. Men taught not to show weakness or uncertainty. Hesitation or pause for thought is not an option. Men unaware and taught by the private education sector to avoid their own unconscious: ie what actually motivates them. It is all a false front. A game. Attention seeking, ambitious, until the male politicians get the result they wanted.
Then unable to deliver – they drop out. Caught out by their own unconscious desires making up for the lack of attention they never had as little boys. They realise its gone too far. They are adults now. And there is a big cost to the acting out of their unconscious desires. Unconscious Brexit.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
All rights reserved
Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

So the Brexit leavers have their referendum result. Against all expectations the Remains lost the vote to stay in the EU. Anecdotally two Brexit voters were heard in the supermarket queue saying they didn’t think they were going to win. But now they had – they were frightened about what they had done. Beware! Referendum

The trouble is that voters don’t see the difference between referendums(a) and elections. Voters have used this referendum as a protest vote like a protest vote in an election. The vote won’t count.
Oh dear. So we have we decided our national fate on the whim of a protest vote? Even though that protest is legitimate.
Beware! Referendum

London, Scotland and Northern Ireland all voted strongly to remain. Significantly these three areas unrepresentative of Industrial England. Citizens who benefit from the UK economy, the more wealthy voted to remain. Yet you could argue it was the common man who won out. But?

Beyond whatever the immediate ramifications of the Brexit vote will be Politics will come off worst.
And so it should.
The Prime Minister thinking that the referendum would resolve the European issue. Allowing it to happen in the first place looks foolish and out of control. The Conservative right poised to take over the party, looking traumatised with no plan. Blairite Labour has lost again. The Labour left wing is floundering about not able to represent its core voters. Beware! Referendum

The political system as we know it is in decay. There is nobody or nothing big enough to kill it off. So it stumbles along missing a limb here and there but still manages somehow to grind on.

If it was a protest vote about the heartland of England being ignored then it is understandable. It is a truth that globalisation and the neo-liberal agenda is threatening to kill off a portion of the population. Not because it wants to but because it sees it as unworthy and useless.

Yet  if the bigger picture is not taken into account then something nasty happens in reaction.  See it as a projection. The parts of ourselves we don’t like we blame on the external. In this case immigration. The problem is that the original parts remain unresolved. And what we project onto externally might bite back.

If the intention was to give the ruling elite a bloody nose it is a success. Yet like the projection the bite back might be worse. Compare the austerity of the present middle Tory agenda to the right wing agenda of  privatisation and free market ideals. The wastelands of the North are even less irrelevant in the new right wing free market agenda.

The final irony is that the main Brexit protagonists in victory looked lost and frightened. Their success caught them out. Brexit has now become a poisoned chalice. Nobody can carry out its promises. Nobody can stop it. Whoever touches Brexit is finished. Enter a Fall Person?
Beware! Referendum

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Charles Bowden or Chuck lived life hard in a rude sense. His books related the growth of drug wars on the US Mexican border.   He sucked in life, drinking, smoking and womanising to the harsh desert backdrop of Tuscon Arizona. He took risks with his life and his writing to get a story. He didn’t care about his own life citing he was going to die anyway.

He had an obsession with cheap red wine, reading and writing to reach the truth. He was a frontier man. Rugged, macho, unaffected by the harsh desert elements. But what really stands about him was his rude sense to a life which we are disconnected from. “Chuck’s sensory awareness offered a kind of refuge, a last-ditch hope of an honest connection to a real, living world”
Living in intense heat he hated air conditioning. He wanted to feel and be in the place he lived with a natural bond.

He recommended going into the desert on foot for natural senses to return. Instead of blocking out noises hearing begins to pick up sounds of nature. Hearing as listening to a seashell – you can begin to hear your own blood circulating. Modern digital life demands tunnel vision for digital screens, phones & driving. In the desert peripheral vision returns. Our natural hunting senses evolved over thousands of years begin to re-emerge. Nature begins to show itself as the sight begins to adapt back to the natural environment.

Chuck lived a life of pure sensory perception. To do this you have to deny yourself the information age, and politeness to cut through all the BS to make a connection, to discover truth.
He must have suffered for his art, and relationship to the world. But Chuck must be admired for his ruthless driven rude sense to relate to a harsh world with less hesitancy and fear.
Rude Sense.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Embodying Social Justice is a stand against social injustice in the world. How do we hold onto justice in an unjust world?      
How do we embody Social Justice? What does it mean? How do we stand up for it?

One of the ways to realise – is how we experience and cope with injustice and how this enters our body. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the tattoos we mark on our body denoting being part of a group. Womens’ bodies have long been the property of the state and men. Look at FGM and human trafficking.

The body like the brain holds patterns and habits of behaviour. Parents’ gait is passed onto children who copy the walking style. The body likes certain foods, and patterns of eating started and learnt as a youngster. Parents who experienced rationing, have a particular relationship to food passed on to the next generation. Our bodies are designed to gorge and then starve until the next animal is available. Food and snacking is everywhere which makes weight control impossible.

We are all desensitised to injustice because it is in everything we do. And particularly the way we consume. Value for money is what we are all looking for. But buy something cheap and you are doing someone down the line an injustice. Cheap labour. Using amazon is supporting keeping low paid workers down and out. Buying cheap food in the supermarket means a farmer or producer somewhere has to take a cut. Buying an article of clothing in Topshop is supporting owners asset stripping their companies.

So what we can do? The best thing is to gain an awareness. The awareness that social injustice is pervasive, and embodying social justice is becoming more and more challenging in this neo-liberal age. It can make us helpless. Staying and being with helplessness is a human struggle and a natural part of existence. Staying with helplessness may also energise us into different ways of thinking of being.

Ask yourself how do you spend your money? Who does it go to? Is there a co-operative that you can support in stead? Small steps, make big leaps. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but in generations to come.
Embodying Social Justice

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Mohammed Ali said Cassius Clay was his slave name. So he changed it much to the consternation of the general public. Ironically he was named after Cassius Marcellus Clay an active Abolitionist against slavery. So Mohammed was born to be political. It was in his name. He used his success and fame to be radical and dynamic. Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.

For any athlete at this time to stand up for a political cause was exceptional. For a black athlete it was unique. Nobody did it. Tommy Smith & John Carlos made a silent protest in 1968 at the Olympics in Mexico City. Both were expelled from the US Olympic team and sent home. 30 years later they were both honoured for furthering the Civil Rights movement in America.     

But nobody worked and promoted black politics like Mohammed Ali. He was on a mission. Nothing would stop him. He put himself out there. At the real possibility of being shot he carried on in the name of God.

Wherever he went Mohammed Ali championed the Black People Cause. He wasn’t boxing. He wasn’t gaining publicity. He was fighting for the cause. All the Black leaders had been killed. He felt like he had to carry on the fight. He was a political black athlete in a time when athletes do not speak.
Sport and business are so interwoven in the global age. To be political is to risk upsetting corporations who sponsor athletes. It’s all about the money.
Globalisation stifles political radicalism. Money needs stability. Radicalism urges instability.
Cassius Clay could not be held back by profit.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Sex is big business in the Philippines. The US influence means the population speaks good English and are able to communicate with punters. Families are abusing their children on line streaming over the internet. The children get to hear about it from their friends on the street as it is a profitable business run by families not organisations. Sex stream.

The problem is that nobody thinks it is an issue. Parents or children. In fact children are very angry with the organisations that separate them from their prosecuted parents. Even then it is difficult for the children to understand that there is anything wrong going on.

Prosecuting people who use these sites is also very difficult. There are no trackable images, conversations are live and encrypted, and payments made anonymously.

The theory that whatever we as children experienced we see as normal. Even when we are told that it is not. We are loyal to our parents partly out of love but mainly as a primitive animal who wants to survive. Our parents feed and clothe us. We need them. It is in our make up.

As for sexual abuse. Viewers of sex stream were identified coming from over 70 countries. It seems there is a big need for sex and children. Is this because sex with adults is so distorted in the 21st Century? Commercialised, sexualised, and at the same time taboo? Is it in our nature to be incestuous to be part of a group or tribe? To be close and warm huddled up together on the ice in the cold?
Perhaps the mixture of us being animals, and adapting to modernity is perverse and ultimately we are unable to adapt to it.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
All rights reserved
Disclaimer:This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique