I saw an announcement on social media about a new law in the UK, one that in theory will help protect girls and women from harassment. I posted a comment stating that I hoped that this law would be applied regardless of gender.
I was making a simple, but important point: That the law should be applicable to and applied equally, regardless of gender.
I found myself under attack from well meaning women in the comments. I never disagreed that the safety of girls and women is an issue in our society. Nor that boys and men are usually the perpetrators of harassment towards girls and women.
I replied to each comment, encouraging girls and women learn the lesson from the gay civil rights movement. The lesson is this: The gay civil rights movement made changes happen because they gained allies. I encouraged these women to gain allies, rather than go on the attack.
To girls and women: Know that there are many boys and men that are not harassing you. Know that many boys and men don’t share the views, attitudes or behaviours of those that harass you or might do.
Late last week the BBC announced that they had sacked Scott Mills, Radio DJ, due to ‘personal conduct.’ Almost immediate after this announcement, it was reported that his BBC colleagues where shocked by this news.
Since then, there have been countless reports in the media and an infinite number of discussions online about Scott Mills and why the BBC sacked him.
I’ve read a lot of speculation, many assumptions and an awful lot judgements made about both Scott Mills and the BBC. But what I haven’t read are many facts.
I’m not sure why more details haven’t been shared with the public. But this noticeable lack of factual information seems to have led to most people to assume Scott Mills is guilty of something. Many people are assuming that Scott Mills has done something heinous and potentially illegal.
It doesn’t help that the BBC hasn’t got a great track record when it comes to dealing with abuses and crimes by its Talent/Stars. Just think of Huw Edwards & Jimmy Savile as examples of this.
The truth of the matter is that right now, we just don’t know why Scott Mills was sacked. I think that as time progresses more facts will emerge. As facts are disclosed, I hope they justify the BBC’s sacking of Scott Mills and their handling of the situation.
Otherwise, the BBC will be highly criticised and rightly so. If Scott Mills has done nothing wrong, or something very minor, the BBC’s actions could potentially not just ruin his career, but his life too.
I am choosing to reserve any judgement of Scott Mills or the BBC’s actions until I have more information and I suggest you do too.
I am currently writing a book on the topic of happiness, titled FINDING YOUR HAPPINESS, which is due for release later this year (2026). Writing a non-fiction book requires me to do a lot of research and explore my thoughts, opinions and feelings about what the research suggests. This is something I love about writing.
A question that has caused me to do a lot of thinking and feeling recently is the question: Can money buy happiness? I didn’t know the answer to this question, so I looked into the research. In this blog post, I share with you the section I’ve written for FINDING YOUR HAPPINESS, free of charge, because I’ve found it fascinating.
Your Money
The question that I often get asked is:
Can money buy happiness?
Research suggests that having more money does increase the likelihood of a person being happier, up until a certain annual income.
Once a person reaches around £75,000 (around $100,000 USD) per year, money no longer has any impact on how happy the person is, when compared with other people that have the same income.
I would like to acknowledge here that this is a very high level of income and that most people don’t have an income this high. At this point, I am answering the question above based on available research.
This amount of money stated above is correct for the year 2026. This annual income amount is likely to increase year on year, as the cost of living is ever increasing.
According to research, the reasons why more money increases the likelihood that a person will be happier include:
Basic needs are met: Enough food, clean water, decent housing, appropriate clothing, access to healthcare and access to education. This significantly reduces a person’s level of stress and can provide a person with a greater sense of security.
Increased choice and autonomy. The person has more options and freedom of choice in their life.
The person has money for comfort, pleasure, leisure and fun. This includes money for travelling and new experiences.
The person can use money to give them more free time. For example, they could hire a cleaner, cook, pay for childcare, all freeing them up from the time they would have spent undertaking these activities.
Some people who reach this high level of income or exceed and still seek to increase their income. Why do they do this?
One reason could be that they have a strong belief that more money = more happiness. This belief likely comes from their past experiences. Earlier in their career, increases in income probably did contribute to making them feel happier.
Although the research does suggest that more money increases the likelihood of being happier, it also points out that having any amount of money doesn’t guarantee happiness.
You could earn the amount stated above (or more) and still be miserable. You could equally earn a lot less and yet be incredibly happy.
My view is that no amount of money can buy happiness. Happiness is a feeling. A feeling we get through a wide variety of experiences. Yes some of these experiences require money, but others do not.
The best way to keep informed of the release of FINDING YOUR HAPPINESS is to sign up to my newsletter here. You’ll receive just 1 email per month covering: details of my new books/articles as I release them, notification of my latest blog posts and the very occasional special offer. This is not a spammy sales newsletter, but an opportunity to stay up to date.
Write soon,
Antony
My published non-fiction books include:
Funny Emails To My Friend is a collection of emails to a friend. These emails were intended to entertain my friend and also make him laugh. Topics included: Jokes, Puzzles, Inspirational Quotes, Future Technology to Be Excited About, How to Fight A Shark, How to Woo A Turtle, etc.
Ways The Human Body Can Go Wrong is a book about all the ways the human body can go wrong. It includes symptoms and treatments/cures. It also includes some useful learning for medical and nursing professionals.
The Alcohol Therapy Workbook is a therapy-based workbook for people who are struggling with alcohol or have struggled with alcohol in the past.
According to a recent report, AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbots are increasingly lying to users and AI agents are increasingly acting outside of their established parameters.
For those of you who don’t know, an AI chatbot is an AI service that answers human users’ questions. Whereas a AI agent is takes actions to achieve a goal set by human users.
These are worrying trends, given the rush many businesses seem to be in to implement more and more AI within their companies. It’s not just businesses implementing more AI, public sector organisations and charities are doing it too.
AI has benefits, risks and some disadvantages. Here are just some of them:
Benefits of AI
Repetitive tasks can be automated.
Can summarise a lot of information and condense it down in seconds.
It can provide answers to questions quickly, using information available online (this does have a risk of wrong or biased information being given).
It can create visual representations, based on text prompts pretty quickly.
Reduces human errors in some processes.
It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Risks of AI
AI doesn’t fully consider every possible solution to a problem.
AI often doesn’t protect intellectual property or copyright owners.
AI doesn’t have any ethics and very few restrictions to its use.
AI’s application of rules can make creative works feel like they are less enjoyable and lack the same quality as human works.
AI can lead to data breaches, loss of data or loss of access to data.
AI may lead to some job losses or jobs not being created in the first place.
AI use can limit the development of or diminish a human’s ability to think critically.
AI requires a lot of data centres and electricity to power them. This means a greater demand for electricity which will drive up the cost of it and could lead to scarcity.
People often don’t realise that the way companies that offer free use of AI make money is to sell your data or target you with very specific advertising through tracking what you do online.
Disadvantages of AI
Economically, AI may only end up benefiting the super wealthy. Making the incredibly wealthy, even more so. This will increase inequality and will worsen the living standards for most people.
AI appears to be the only future of computer-based technology being considered and developed.
AI can be so compelling that it is difficult to tell whether something is human made or AI generated and sometimesthis really matters.
Overall human critical thinking is likely to decrease as more AI is used.
AI lacks the ability to be flexible to unpredictable changes to circumstances. Especially changes that it hasn’t encountered before or has no/very limited data on.
AI is too reliant on data for answers and solutions to problems. Not everything can be measured. There may be limited or even no data for things that are impossible to measure. Therefore AI can’t provide answers and solutions to problems with very limited or no data.
Some AI could lead to humans being excluded or even discriminated against.
No humans are responsible for the information provided by AI or the actions it takes. In my view, this is clear lack of accountability and all Governments should regulate the sector immediately to provide some accountability for AI services.
AI requires internet access. There are 8.3 billion people in the world today, but only approximately 6 billion people have access to the internet (74%), what about the other 2.3 billion people (26%)?
Some devices may become useless if the internet became unavailable for a time. Many apps on devices require constant access to the internet or access to the internet during use to be functional. Part or all of the internet could go down, it has happened before.
It is getting more and more difficult for people to choose not to use AI. More and more products are including AI, including household appliances, software, etc. Even Windows comes with Copilot AI pre-installed.
It will likely replace some low paid/start of career jobs. AI is likely to create some jobs, but not as many as will probably be lost. The new jobs will likely require specialist knowledge or skills, that current low paid/start of career workers won’t have.
We are working towards AI super intelligence, but we don’t really have a clear vision of what this will look like or what it will mean for humans.
At this time, the benefits of AI seem extremely limited and some of risks are massive. I understand that AI is a developing technology. I know that it is constantly being improved upon to improve its performance and enable it to do more.
The benefits of AI are constantly talked about – along with many promises being made about improved performance, future abilities and how these could benefit humanity as a whole. The risks are often being ignored or talked about in a way that lacks rational thinking and there are likely to be more risks in the future. The disadvantages of AI nobody seems to be thinking about.
If AI continues to develop as it already has, AI may end up resolving the debate around its future use. All it would really take is AI to make a major error that would effect a large number of people across the world. With the increasing rate of AI implementation in businesses and institutions around the world, I fear such an event could easily occur in the near future.
Blog soon,
Antony
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Friday 27 March 2026
About
Antony Simpson - Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.
Author of nine books.
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