Author Archives: Bobby Dean

How we can tell our modern liberal story

By Bobby Dean | Tue 27th June 2017 - 1:57 pm

Existential introspection is a special process for political parties, usually reserved for the aftermath of major electoral events and therefore, gracefully, at least a few years apart. Well thanks to our third UK-wide trip to the polling booths in as many years, we’re right back here again – and this time with the added excitement of selecting a new leader, for only the second time in three years!

There’s been lots of chat about what’s been going wrong and what we need to do in the future, but I think there’s been a consensus building around at least one idea: we …

Posted in Op-eds | 12 Comments

Opinion: Mental health support is for everyone – we all have brains to look after #MHAW15

By Bobby Dean | Thu 14th May 2015 - 9:02 am

I’m not having a life crisis. I’ve never suffered from depression or any other clinically recognised mental health condition. I’ve taken ownership of things that have happened to me in the past, the way they have affected my behaviour and made changes. Yet I still regularly visit a counsellor – why is that?

Is it because I wear a top-knot, work for a charity and hang out in bars in East London? Just another hipster tosser who cares too much about his own existence?

Well, maybe. But I don’t feel that way.

My backstory isn’t the point here, so I’ll only touch upon it briefly. As a kid in a working class setting, my young parents struggled to bring me and my brothers up and the stresses that came with it destroyed my relationship with them. I ended up kicked out at the age of 15, moved in with my grandparents and spent the best part of the next ten years shutting them out of my life.