There I outlined my company’s vision for how we should go about doing this. You can read more about this on the Decoded website.

In the context of the dying days of the 20th Century this was all well and good. The Conservative governments of the 80s and 90s created our service based economy, our world-leading financial centre in London, and paved the way for the decadent orgy of prosperity of the late nineties and early noughties. Everyone was better off, everyone was encouraged by the state to go to uni, and everyone had more money to spend. The state couldn’t possibly pay for 50% of the population to attend university, so tuition fees and student loans were the logical way forward. John Major’s government suggested it with the Dearing Report and New Labour introduced it. Both parties were equally guilty.

But this isn’t about party politics. This is about an entire generation – the baby boomers, and children of the 60s – screwing up the system for all of us. Over the last twenty years we’ve seen an explosion of greed in the city, with hedge fund managers making up algorithms that no one understands that deposit billions of pounds in their and their old school chums’ bank accounts each month. We’ve watched the banking system – a giant Ponzi scheme, borrowing money to lend money – grow bloated and collapse under the weight of its architects’ gluttony. We’ve sat by and watched people "get rich" because they bought a house ten years ago, and then sat in it spending money on the internet that they borrowed from Direct Line. This generation that’s currently in charge thought it was OK for every second advert on telly to be for free money. Because they were watching their houses go up in value, and failed spectacularly to realise that their wallets were being puffed up by a new form of inflation; house price inflation. It’s inflation, duh. It’s bad. But no one spotted it.

People with no shoes on bought sofas from DFS for 999 pounds, walking out of the shop with nothing to pay for a year. We all went on holiday. Gordon Brown announced the end of Boom and Bust.

The rich-poor divide grew more and more extreme. Executives were (and still are!) taking home forty or fifty times what their shop-floor workers were earning. But no one in power vomited and tried to stop it. Even a Labour government! A Labour government let this happen.

Elsewhere in the world people starved. But no one thought to take out a low-interest loan to eradicate poverty, or educate every child in the world. People had Thomson holidays to book.

All the while my generation was growing up. We went to school. In 1997 we got told we couldn’t have a grant to go to university and that we’d have to pay tuition fees. We accepted this. This was two successive governments from each end of the political spectrum, and our parents, and our teachers all telling us this was fine; we could pay it back when we graduated and started making lots of money. "Fair enough", we thought,"they obviously know what’s best for us, they’re older and wiser and they make up the rules. Fair enough."

No! Not fair enough! My generation is the victim of the brainless greed and economic incompetence of the generation above. All those talking heads on the news getting stiff over the value of their houses, all those economy wonks who failed to spot the blindingly obvious because it contradicted their bank balance.

The average house price was ten times the average salary! What planet were you living on?

Now, thanks to the legislation and advice that’s been forced onto my generation by our olders and wisers, we’re all lumped with around £14, 000 of debt, and there’s no jobs. So cheers. Nice one. Thanks a lot.

I have no hope of paying that money off. I’ve got two overdrafts; much more pressing than the student loan that’s ticking away out of earshot. And there are thousands like me, who have a rising debt (they charge interest at a rate fixed before interest rates went down – once again, cheers), with no prospect of ever paying it off.

My generation is the future. We’re the ones who are going to lift the world out of this recession that our parents’ generation started. But they’ve shackled us with a paralysing debt.

When Tony Blair introduced those changes in 1997, everyone was rich, a degree got you a job, so tuition fees and student loans were fair enough. But now it’s 2009, everyone’s poor, a degree is worth shit, and tuition fees and student loans are unjustifiable. The state needs to invest in its own future. A student is an investment. The graduate is the return. If the government is genuinely serious about getting us out of this crisis, they need to make sure graduates provide that return, because we’re not at the moment, and we’re not going to at this rate of interest.

And graduates are doubly screwed. The joke’s on us. Not only has the investment failed, but it was our money (our imaginary money from the future) that we’ve lost. The government can fix this gross injustice by cancelling our debt, and showing that they’re serious about solving the financial crisis.

At the moment the Labour Government is employing quantitative easing. It’s a concept that allows you to print money without calling it printing money. How much would it cost to write off all the student loans in the country? 1 billion? 2 billion? 10 billion? 30 billion? I have no idea. However much it is is irrelevant. The government can guarantee it – it would barely dent the national debt, and suddenly a generation of entrepreneurs would emerge, unshackled from debt, able to make money and generate money, and suddenly we’d see that national debt start to dwindle.

You all got a free education. If there’s any hope for my generation (which there doesn’t seem to be at the moment), you need to cancel the debt you gave us.

On the highstreet of Colchester the other day I had the misfortune to overhear a Christian preacher declaiming against homosexuals. I ended up confronting him and eventually the police got involved; he was given a choice between leaving the town or arrest. So it was a victory for the force of love. But the reason I reference this event is because the basis of his anti-homosexual stance was his perception of homosexuality as unnatural.

"What’s the digestive system for?" he asked me.

"Eating" I replied.

"Exactly," he smugged, his point proven.

"Yes, but haven’t you kissed your wife before?"

He was lost for words. His mainstay argument had been comprehensively undermined. Kissing is of course a ‘natural’ act. But it uses the digestive tract, which is designed for digesting. By his logic, kissing is as unnatural as anal sex.

Having a concept of unnatural is damaging for many more reasons. It doesn’t just justify prejudice. Vital, life-saving stem cell research has been threatened by the argument that it is unnatural. The human-animal embryo debate is a clear example of this. Potentially any scientific endeavour is unnatural. Abortion is unnatural, but surely pro-choice is the only possible human response if we want to avoid criminalising rape victims. Transvestites and homosexuals are unnatural. A wife cheating on her husband is unnatural. A woman having a job is unnatural. Therefore all these things should be deplored.

But a concept of the unnatural can of course be a positive force. Fiddling with children is unnatural. Deforestation is unnatural. Murder, torture and rape are unnatural. Universal acceptance of this leads to justified condemnation of the said acts. So we’re in a bit of a pickle. Our acceptance that the unnatural exists leads to intolerance of both positive and negative acts.

Before we develop this idea further, let’s have a quick look at why nothing is technically unnatural. Even the most horrific act of genocide is a natural act. I’ll explain why: is a bird’s nest unnatural? Of course not. So is a house unnatural? Well, of course not. An animal has manipulated the environment around it to create a nest, albeit with a flat-screen TV and a microwave. But a microwave is a natural object. In the same way that a mole moves mud to tunnel his burrow, the human moves atoms to build his microwave. It’s just slightly more complicated. All human creations are a product of 13.7 billion years of universal development. It’s the journey of life and it’s been a natural journey. It has been enriched by positive acts and marred by negative acts, but nothing about it has been unnatural, because nature is all there is.

If we don’t accept this logic we are saying that human beings are unnatural. And the only way humans could be unnatural is if we accept that we were created in God’s image as his curious little pet project. This is an idea that I reject. We are quite clearly the product of millions of years of evolution. My great great (10 x 27) grandmother was a slug called Dorris who lived in the primordial soup. I am a vertebrate animal, with two eyes, ears, and four limbs. I am a part of the great story of the natural universe. The fact that humans have evolved consciousness and self-awareness doesn’t make us unnatural. We are merely more evolved than everything else.

It is our self-imposed removal from nature that has brought both problems and benefits. It has led us to rape the world of its resources, forgetting that we are part of a delicate web of existence that could collapse under too much strain. (Or too much C02 for example.) But it is also our exile from nature that inspires environmentalists to save the world. From our exalted position of consciousness, we can see the awful consequences that unnatural human acts have on the natural environment. Being unnatural endows us with a profound responsibility to look after the natural world. But ultimately it is consciousness that endows us with this responsibility to look after our world, a world that we are fundamentally part of. We are not unnatural, and therefore we have a duty to protect the environment that sustains our natural life. Because without it, or if it gets damaged, we will all die.

So from both positions (i.e. one where you consider us unnatural and one where you consider we’re not) we can draw a responsibility to be good to the world. But if you’re in the latter position, you’ll do all that good, but will be unable to condemn positive acts that would usually be considered unnatural. So it’s a doubly good position to be in!

From now on, let’s assume we’ve thrown out the concept of the unnatural. We are all natural beings, I’m typing this using my natural keyboard, and locking your daughter in a cellar for twenty-four years is a natural act. Surely society has just been stripped of its moral fabric?! But of course it hasn’t. Human beings are clearly capable of judging whether an act is positive or negative. I don’t want to go into how this works; it’s a massive debate, but the fact that we have a functioning justice system proves that society is capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, between positive and negative. And we don’t need the concept of whether something is natural or unnatural clouding and distorting our view. Joseph Fritzl was not condemned because what he did was unnatural. He was condemned because what he did was wrong; it was negative.

The justice system has, arguably, already rid itself of the natural/unnatural divide. Homosexuality, widely regarded as an unnatural act, is no longer prosecuted. Now it is time for society to rid itself of the distinction. It is a subtle change. It does not affect our morality. But it will have wide-reaching implications for how we look at others and the world, and how we treat others and the world.

Try it. Next time you find yourself thinking, "eurgh, that’s so unnatural" stop yourself and change it to, "eurgh, that’s so negative." Nine times out of ten it will be negative. But there’ll be exceptions:

"That human-animal embryo is so unnatural," you think, turning a page in the paper.

"Oh, hang on, right, that human-animal embryo is so negative. . ."

You stop. You think for a moment.

"Hang on. . . no it’s not. It’s going to produce stem cells to tackle cancer, Parkinson’s disease, leukaemia – gosh it’s actually really positive."

Semantics. That’s all it is. But look at how powerful an impact they have on how we think about things. The substitution of a word and suddenly your brain completely changes its mind. Of course it’s not this black and white. And you can think that something is unnatural whilst being aware that it might be positive. But because we generally shiver with repulsion at unnatural acts, we would do good to be done with the whole concept, and enjoy the clarity that a simple positive/negative divide would bring.

The hate preacher on the street would have no sympathisers. Those Taleban scumbags whipping that woman would be universally condemned. Science could freely work towards protecting us from death. Society wouldn’t tolerate pollution of any kind. And all of us would recognise that the fate of humanity is bound inextricably to the fate of the planet. It’s quite a big deal for such a tiny semantic change. So let’s embrace it.

Walk down any high street nowadays and amongst the shut-down shops and gloomy shoppers you’re bound to find a gaggle of bibbed up chuggers. These smiling faces, with their clipboards and their infectious idealism, inspire in the general public a wide spectrum of intense feeling. Some people don’t mind being asked for a chat and either agree goodnaturedly or walk on by with a smile and a friendly "no thank you". Others get angry. A minority express it with a terse and cutting comment like "there’s too many of you" or "get a proper job" or "get the fuck out of my face" or just "die, chugger!" But the majority walk on by stewing in their vitriolic spite, and go away and comment on the Guardian website in an attempt at catharsis. The thing I struggle to understand is this; how come these people get so wound up by fundraising? What is it in their character that makes them so full of hate?

Some of the answers they would give are as follows:

1. Chuggers don’t actually work for the charity they’re working for.

Well, you’ve got to invest to make a return. Face to face fundraising is a viable and cost-effective way of making a tremendous amount of money for charity. Would that money have been raised otherwise? So sure the charity has paid an agency £200, 000, but the agency gives the charity £2, 000, 000 at the end! And, in fact, some of us do work directly for a charity. I am an employee of Concern Worldwide.

2. Chuggers get paid too much.

We don’t have job security, we don’t get sick pay despite being at a higher risk of flu than you, we don’t get health benefits, or a pension, we don’t have an office with free tea and coffee and a water cooler, we don’t have a working loo, we don’t get to sit down in a comfy chair, we are standing in the street come sleet come snow for eight hours a day, and worst of all, we have to deal with the chugger haters. We deserve every penny after listening to some people’s venomous, racist views.

3. Chuggers invade my personal space.

Well fuck off frankly. Don’t walk in a public place if you don’t want your personal space invaded. For too long now our society has internalised into the individual’s bubble, and we have a radically reduced sense of community than say 200 years ago. People walk around with eyes fixed on the floor or their navel, and daren’t look up and see the stars, or those around them. Compare the British high street to a main road in the developing world – India, say. There, people clamour for your attention as you weave your way past chai stalls and shoe shiners, beggars, preachers, political activists, and hawkers selling everything from their bodies to fabric and tacky plastic crap. Where is that in Britain? That sense of fun and anything goes? Chuggers embody this international approach to human interaction. There’s you, here’s me; why shouldn’t I ask for a thirty second chat?

Ultimately when I’m standing on the high street asking everyone who crosses my path for a chat, I am seeing the broad breadth of humanity. I’ll speak to rapists, saints, murderers, cowards, comedians, poets, fraudsters, lawyers, teachers, corporate blood-suckers, and your mother, I’ll speak to people from every country in the world, from every class or caste, psychos, gypsies, mormons, slaves, people with withered hands and wonky eyes, preachers, policemen, the web-foot cocklewomen and the tidy wives, every one. In a Britain where the public don’t interact in public, the chugger embodies the beautiful diversity of this crazy world, uniting all he speaks to in his presence on the street. Some of us are haters, but the line of human evil cuts through the heart of every human being. . . so who are the ones who express it to a chugger? It’s an interesting question. Are chugger haters more likely to be rapists and murderers? I’m inclined to think they are. Because it’s so arbitrary, chugging, the way you react to this immensely positive profession must reveal something about your heart and your soul. Or maybe people just have bad days. It’s just a thought.

Chuggers are here to stay. We are a fixture on the high street now so why not just get used to us? This world needs to change. We’re happy to go to concerts to ‘make poverty history’ and wear a trendy wrist band, so we should be happy to accept chuggers. We’re just people who are trying to do a good thing in this world, and we don’t care if you don’t sign up! Don’t feel guilty for god’s sake! We just want to have a chat. And if you’re approached five times in a day, don’t see this as a bad thing. See it as five opportunities to do something truly amazing with your day. And, ultimatley, go ahead and take one of them.

Because that’s what chuggers are: an opportunity that gets in your face and facilitates the flow of the good from your heart to the people in this world who need you. A beautiful opportunity. So let’s all stop the hate.

Homosexuality has existed within nature as long as life itself. Instances of gay penguins, giraffes, spiders and hosts of other creatures are widely documented. The bitch labrador of my youth, Sasha, was unequivocally and hilariously lesbian. Sexual attraction to one’s own sex is something the majority of people have experienced at some point in their lives. But we don’t indulge it, because that would be gay.

The idea that human sexuality is a spectrum is nothing new. Some people are fundamentally straight. Others are totally gay. But many of us drift up and down the spectrum over the course of our lives, fancying guys one moment and girls the next. At the moment, what label is there for us? Bi-sexual? It’s not that simple. These terms are too rigid to do justice to the broad, diverse and ever-fluctuating spectrum of human sexuality. They lock people onto a certain section, and people should be free.

This system of categorising people as "gay" or "straight" or "bi" satisfies our human desire to put people in boxes and better understand them. But it is catastrophic for liberal human existence. The word "gay" has been dragged through the muck by the mainstream who use it to mean "bad". Lesbians are all butch dykes and bi people are just greedy. The labels that once liberated now pigeon-hole people instead, and the hole is small, smelly and full of shit.

In a Post Queer Society, many people are "straight" whilst others are "gay" and quite a few are "bisexual". But we don’t label ourselves. There is no such thing as "coming out", because people and parents accept that normality is not heterosexual. People keep an open mind, appreciating the beautiful diversity of humanity. And if someone is "gay" we don’t point and scoff, or shiver with repulsion; our manners are better than that.

Post Queer Theory doesn’t call for massive social change. It simply asks people to be respectful and open minded. Already amongst the liberal youth, Post Queer Theory exists - albeit without a name. It is present in the willing acceptance of diversity that is so commonplace nowadays. The age of labels died when gay couples could legally marry in this country (by the way, can we all start calling Civil Partnerships marriage? The only difference is the name!). Gay people are accepted now after centuries of intolerance. Let’s recognise that we’re all human, all sexual yet all very different. Let’s be open-minded and good mannered; let’s all be Post Queer!

Anyway, I was really just writing this to make sure some content appeared on the Articles Page. I will shortly be writing an article on my Post Queer Theory, as well as one on the dangers of prescribed Ritalin to children. Ultimately anything I find interesting I will tackle, ignoring whether or not I happen to be qualified to discuss that subject. In the meantime, go and explore the site; the Web Design Page is supposed to be excellent!