I was listening to a programme on the radio at lunch time yesterday when there was a discussion on social evils. This was prompted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who are conducting a survey on social evils in order to direct their work over the next 10 years.

The first caller to the programme made a very good case for inequality in society being one of the major social evils.

The amount of inequality from it’s richest members to the poorest in society is correlated to many severe problem. In health, heart disease and cancer are both higher in countries with greater levels of inequality, along with other medical problems. Also related are increased levels of crime and drug abuse.

So, even though we are much better off in absolute terms than we were a century ago when Joseph Rowntree set up his trusts, our societies in the UK and the US have problems.

We are less healthy and have more crime and other issues than countries with less inequality. And this may well be getting worse: inequality has shown a striking increase in recent years.

Today means a second early start for me this week. This time I’m off to London for a meeting.  I’m hoping to get some time in the afternoon to take a look around and maybe visit a couple of bookshops in London.

My meeting is scheduled for 11am to 1pm, though I may have to work a little beyond that to catch up with emails.  I’m booked on the train to return at 4pm so I should have a little time to browse around.

I’m an avid reader, have been since I was a child but I don’t bother much these days with fiction, unless it is science fiction.

I haven’t bought a novel in quite some time, though I’ve borrowed the odd one from the library. I’m much more interested in ideas in a range of areas such as psychology and science. I have a pronounced weakness for self-help, books though I’m applying a lot more scepticism to my choices in that area now.

When I got home from work yesterday, I found that my broadband service was down. It was not a disaster, merely an inconvenience. I’d emailed a colleague before leaving that I’d complete a piece of work when I got home. Now it looks like I didn’t bother and will he believe my excuse? Ah well! This is doubly annoying because I very rarely take work home, and people are aware of that.

It’s surprising how quickly we’ve become adapted to the convenience and range of opportunities presented by the internet. It is a development that truly has changed our lives, mostly for the better. Apart, of course, from the ubiquitous spam. And the very real danger of letting work invade even more of our lives.

To be able to enquire about something without having to make frustrating ‘phone calls or trek into town or to the library is terrific.

Of course, we all know that he is, so the question is this: Are Freud’s theories of psychology dead? Probably not, at least not yet. But they do seem to be becoming less influential. More scientifically based explanations for human behaviour are taking centre stage.

Looking back, I find it a liitle strange how large an influence Freud had, and how quickly he achieved it. I say this because I can’t see how he could have done the same in another area of study. Not without having real, repeatable proofs.

Perhaps it was because we are so intrigued by stories and his case studies were full of stories. But the theories he developed had no connection to testable reality. Essentially they too were stories, very good stories.

Is it possible that we are more creative when we are dreaming than we might ever be while awake? I think that might be true, at least for those like me who are not strongly creative by nature. Here is an illustration of that.

I awoke last night with a dream fragment still vivid in my mind. In this dream I’d been burgled and my computer and laptop had been stolen. So far, so ordinary. And indeed the safety of my house at the weekends has been on my mind recently.

But here is the clever idea my sleeping brain came up with. The burglars had substituted a new, modern telephone handset for my old one. The twist is that the criminals made money from every call made from this new phone. By some mysterious dream method the calls were routed so that part of the call charge went into the thieves’ bank accounts.

Now I don’t know about the criminals out there in my area, and though it is far-fetched and unlikely, it seems an inventive idea to me. How it came to me I’ve no idea.