Bøger af Tim Watkins

Suppose I told you there was a "pin" which burst every major economic bubble of the industrial age. And suppose that "pin" left a signal in data preceding the ensuing economic crash. Suppose that prior to 1929, 1973, 1980, and 2008, that "pin" appeared months and sometimes years before the crisis went mainstream. In Breakdown: The economic impact of peak oil, Tim Watkins argues that the "pin" was a shortage of the world's primary energy source. In 1927, a global coal shortage caused prices to spike upward, raising costs across the economy and - particularly in the USA - bringing the boom of the "roaring twenties" to an end. The 1929 Wall Street crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s followed. In the late 1960s, as US oil production reached its peak, the Texas Railroad Commission cartel lost its ability to fix world prices. As the oil price rose, inflation hit those western states which had been deficit spending on everything from social programs to wars. The consequence was the end of the post-war currency system and the arrival of the OPEC cartel, whose October 1973 oil embargo gave the west - which was a lot less dependent on oil in those days - a taste of how difficult life would be if the oil stopped flowing. In 1979, it was the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (not St. Paul Volcker) which drove oil prices up, triggering the depression which brought inflation (but not stagnation) to an end.This time is differentThese crises were each temporary. By 1929, the USA was leading the way to the oil age. The developed world would follow between 1945 and 1973. And even with the arrival of OPEC, there was no appetite for depriving the world economy of oil. Indeed, despite the rate of oil production falling after 1973, the volume continued to grow right up to November 2018. But in 2005, conventional crude had peaked, setting in chain the events leading to the 2008 crash... which inadvertently created the conditions for the brief expansion of the US fracking industry. But by the end of 2018, all oil production - including condensates and natural gas liquids - was in decline. Even without the pandemic lockdowns, we would have had a recession. But with growing evidence that we have passed peak oil production, and with no energy-dense alternative power source, not only is a deep recession inevitable, but - barring an energy miracle - the western way of life is over. A shrinking economy is now inevitable.

We have been taught to treat stress as an illness - an enemy to be defeated; a disease to be cured. But how do we square this view with the old saying that "a bit of stress is good for you"? How do we reconcile it with the observation that many high achievers seem to thrive on their stress? It seems that many of the things we have been taught about stress and stress management are wrong. It turns out that negative beliefs about stress are far more damaging than stress itself. Moreover, many of the techniques we have been taught for managing stress provide at best short-term relief rather than a genuine solution. In Good Stress Bad Stress, life coach and trainer Tim Watkins will show you how you can re-calibrate your natural, healthy stress response so that you can employ it positively, helping you to change your life for the better and to start realising your full potential.

Half of us will experience a panic attack at some time in our lives. For those who do, the experience can be quite literally terrifying. For many the experience is so unpleasant that they avoid similar situations in future. Some develop disabling panic disorders and agoraphobia. At several times in his life - especially during a severe episode of mixed anxiety and depression, author Tim Watkins experienced disabling panic attacks. Then, quite by accident, he discovered a secret about panic attacks that led to recovery and to his never having a panic attack again. In this book, he sets out what he - and others - have learned about panic attacks, and how anyone can overcome them... permanently.

We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep. Despite this, very few people know what sleep is and what it does. With 1 in 3 of us experiencing stress-related insomnia, this important Life Surfing guide will give you a good understanding of sleep and - crucially - the steps you can take to improve the quality and duration of your sleep... night after night after night.

Diet is an essential component for mental health and wellbeing. Deficiencies in key vitamins and minerals can cause or exacerbate common mental illnesses like anxiety disorders and depression. On the other hand, a balanced and varied diet that is high in several key vitamins and minerals can play an important part in recovery and sustained personal wellbeing. In this Life Surfing guide we explain how mental health problems can impact on diet, how you can improve your diet by using foods from the helpful lists of good mood foods set out in the guide. We also provide some good mood food starter recipes for anyone who is relatively new to cooking from scratch.

You can't recover from depression without helping yourself. But where to start? This book provides you with 70 self-help techniques covering the seven key areas of your personal wellbeing. We recommend that you start by choosing those areas and techniques that you feel most drawn to.

We dare not talk about this... Politicians dare not discuss it for fear of causing mass panic... North Sea oil and gas production peaked in 1999. The oil bonanza is over - the oil income spent. Britain is once again an energy importer. Worse still, we are increasingly dependent upon imports from the world's trouble spots and hostile regimes - Libya, Nigeria, several Gulf States and Russia.Even worse, successive governments have failed to invest in new electricity generation; let alone a switch from petroleum-powered vehicles. What they have done is closed most of the coal-fired power stations and destroyed the UK coal industry.Just at the point where we - and our EU partners - need to import growing quantities of oil, we face growing competition from fast developing countries such as China and India.Add to these problems the fact that the oil exporting countries are using a growing proportion of their dwindling oil and gas production to grow their own economies, and you have the end of cheap, fossil fuel-based energy.Nobody can predict with any certainty what the world beyond cheap oil will be like. One of the problems with many of the peak-oilers is that they tend to talk about the consequences in apocalyptic terms, as if the entire world will come crashing down around our ears within months of oil production peaking. This is, perhaps, understandable when we consider that the early peak-oilers were oil industry insiders concerned that the world was sleep-walking to a potential catastrophe.One response to this - one I personally hold to - is that if you want to see what a world without cheap oil looks like, go and look out of your window (or look at a newspaper): * A million families using food banks is what a world without cheap oil looks like* The replacement of high-paid/high-skilled employment with low-paid/low-skilled jobs is what a world without cheap oil looks like* The inability of the developed economies to stimulate economic growth is what a world without cheap oil looks like* Governments' (including those pursuing austerity policies) failure to avoid running up massive government debts is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The dramatic slowdown in the Chinese economy (which was meant to be the engine for global growth) is what a world without cheap oil looks like* The multi-trillion pound misallocation of funds to inflate asset bubbles and property speculation (because the real economy has gone into reverse) is what a world without cheap oil looks like.This is, of course, just the beginning. As supplies of cheap fossil fuels dwindle even as humanity's insatiable demand increases exponentially, our life-support systems will begin to fall apart, causing the biggest disaster to hit the UK since the Black Death!

Although a quarter of us will experience mental health problems at some point in our lives, surprisingly little information is available for the family, friends and colleagues of those experiencing problems. In this Life Surfing guide, we explain what mental health and mental illness are, and - crucially - the steps that you can take to help someone experiencing mental health problems or mental illness.

Over the last decade, Tim Watkins has raised more than £600,000 for small charities. He has helped them to develop systems for running their charity effectively. And helped them to win awards in recognition of the work they do.In Smart Fundraising, Tim Watkins shows you the most cost-effective fundraising methods. You will also see how to harness the energy of your supporter, donor and beneficiary networks to develop multiple low-input/high-return funding streams.If you want your charity to survive and thrive, Smart Fundraising is essential reading. (Includes an A to Z of 342 fundraising ideas).

This Life Surfing Guide to depression provides you with an introduction to what depression is, how it is treated, and - crucially - what you can do to help yourself overcome the condition and create long-term personal wellbeing.

The Hidden Epidemic is partly the outcome of a survey of people who had attempted suicide. The survey produced valuable qualitative evidence about how people felt in the period immediately prior to their attempted suicide. This is unusual data, and goes a long way toward humanising suicide. The Hidden Epidemic also draws upon quantitative data from the survey and secondary data from government and academic sources to examine the prevalence of suicide and attempted suicide together with the factors that underlie them. Drawing on the evidence, The Hidden Epidemic examines the way the state, through mental health services, has tried to deal with suicide. In the last chapter, we look at what could be done to promote mental health as a means of reducing the rate of suicide. This is based on the view that the rate of suicide in any particular country is a measure of the general mental health of the overall society. If this is so, then it will require improvements in the mental health of the whole society to bring about significant falls in the rate of suicide.

Anxiety disorders are the most common types of mental illnesses, affecting more than 1 in 5 people at some point in their lives. This Life Surfing guide explains what anxiety is, how it is treated, and - crucially - what steps you can take to help yourself recover and sustain your personal wellbeing.

Charity - the voluntary giving of one's time or money to alleviate suffering, to improve the conditions of our fellows for the common good - has been a key element of civil society for centuries. However, at the beginning of the 21st century a series of scandals has created growing unease about contemporary charities. What's Wrong With Charity sets out why we need to examine the system that creates fraud and mismanagement rather than treating each case as if it were solely caused by corrupt or incompetent individuals. What's Wrong With Charity makes the case that there are six interweaving processes within the contemporary charity sector that are conspiring to create a massive - often bureaucratic - "infrastructure of welfare" that undermines the very notion of charity itself: 1. Poor legislation and a lack of regulation 2. The end of voluntarism and the growth of employment and self-interest within charities 3. Increased fraud and corruption 4. Tax avoidance 5. The creation of "astroturf", "sock puppet" and "moral entrepreneur" charities to hi-jack public discourse and undermine the democratic process 6. The growth of corporate business-emulating charities 7. The problem of charities investing in the corporations and states that cause most of the suffering in the first place.

"We must pay off the debt" "We have to balance the books" "We should have fixed the roof when the sun was shining" The same message has been trotted out time and again by economists and politicians from all parties: Only by cutting public spending can we hope to return to economic growth. But what is clear from the experience of 2010-15 is that austerity has failed to deliver. In 2010, the coalition government inherited a public debt of £0.76 trillion. By 2015, despite savage austerity cuts and an assault on social security, they managed to raise the public debt to £1.36 trillion. The new Tory government will argue that the failure is because we did not have enough austerity. We did not have enough public spending cuts. We shall soon find out what full blown austerity cuts can do to an economy! What if they are wrong? What if austerity causes recession? The early cuts triggered a recession, and economic growth has been anaemic ever since. What if these are the direct consequence of a misguided policy of austerity? In this essential guide to Austerity, Tim Watkins explains how politicians' fundamental misunderstanding of the way money is created has brought about the conditions for the biggest economic crash in human history... and why we should all be worried.

Don't be put off by the numbers! Although sudoku grids use the numbers 1-9, they are not maths puzzles. They are logic puzzles that involve working out the one correct location for each number within the grid (see the rules on page 1 of the book). In this handy-size book of 200 puzzles you will find a range of grids from the very easy - ideal for beginners - to the very tricky - for the old hands.

Eighty-four word and number puzzles: saintly simple crosswords and word searches, tricky code words, word wheels, mazes and sudoku, devilishly devious cryptic crosswords and more...

Sheep must think - if they think at all - that the farmer works for them. He feeds them, shears them, protects them. All seems well, now and forever. Until that day when most of the lambs are herded into trucks and driven away..."Only at this point of real and immediate crisis does the consciousness of sheep expand to contemplate the wider picture. Nevertheless, there is no serious resistance. They are now so conditioned that, despite their fears, the sheep walk meekly to their deaths....Of course, we humans are more sophisticated than sheep are we not?"The Western world stands at a crossroads. Threatened by the impacts of overpopulation, climate change, environmental damage, impending energy shortages and the collapse of the global economy, we face some hard choices. Unfortunately, human psychology and neurobiology predispose us to denial where we desperately need clear, rational thought. We need to pull our heads out of the sand and take a long hard look at the looming crises that await us, together with our in-built tendency to trade our future safety for peace of mind.In The Consciousness of Sheep, sociologist Tim Watkins provides a detailed and thoroughly researched explanation of the current predicament of Western civilisation; the ways in which the crises are likely to unfold; and the progressive responses that are beginning to emerge. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in economics, the environment, and the future of the human race. The message is stark but ultimately positive - it is time for us to develop a sustainable way of life for all of humanity.

What is the basis of all of the wealth in our modern global economy?For some it is merely the product of trade in a free market. The followers of Karl Marx, however, have enshrined the belief that all value, wealth and profit is generated by the working class and then stolen by the capitalist elites. The Marxist "Labour Theory of Value" lay at the heart of the communist revolutions that led to conflict and division throughout the twentieth century.Marx was 90 percent correct when he reasoned that one or more of the inputs into production must be paid far less than the value it generates in order to produce profit or "surplus value" at the end. Marx arrived at the bindingly obvious - and entirely wrong - conclusion that this input was labour.What Marx began to see toward the end of his life was that while labour could be exploited, automation meant that something else must be generating surplus value. In The Energy Theory of Value sociologist Tim Watkins argues that the "something else" that Marx missed was energy - in particular the one-time gift (and curse) of fossil carbon fuels.This understanding leads to a very different - and far more urgent - politics for the twenty-first century.

The Castle in the Air is a parable for the modern age. Set in a fictional kingdom ruled over by a vain young king, it tells the tale of a people lured by the promise of future riches, who slowly undermine the environment that gave them life. Only at the last minute do the people wake up to their folly... perhaps too late? The Castle in the Air gently introduces young readers to the negative consequences of environmental damage, resource depletion, excessive debt, greed and vanity. It also introduces the positive benefits of social capital, well-being and community. Suitable for ages 8 and above (and grown ups; who could sometimes learn a lot from children)

When the Mafia make money they use the same plates, paper and ink as the government. The include the same security features and use the same serial numbers. Even to the most trained eyes this counterfeit currency is physically indistinguishable from the real thing.This being the case, why - exactly - is this Mafia money a crime? Who are its victims? Why should we care?The answers to these questions draw us into the fraud at the heart of our contemporary financial system; a fraud so vast in its scope yet so cleverly disguised that almost all of us treat it as normal while less than one in a million ever sees it. It is the fraud of debt-based money.In The Root of all Evil, social scientist Tim Watkins walks us through the way the debt-based money system operates, and explains the dire consequences that await us if we refuse to change the way our money works.