How Do You Pick Yours ? Elections & Voting

Every year in Tamworth we have elections whether that be Borough/District, County, General or in recent times referendums and this means for me delivering leaflets and knocking doors. This year during April I walked 100.1 miles on the 'campaign trail', and as in every year on polling day I spoke to a voter who told me they had not had a leaflet of anyone (I delivered that street myself so I know they did). This and seeing many variations of signage on doors stating 'No cold callers', 'we do not need...', 'No junk Mail', 'posted mail only' etc made me think more and more about how people in 2017 decide who to vote for?
(This is not a politically motivated way of improving my campaigning its a genuine thing I've pondered.)

The picture has changed so much in a relatively short time, I remember electrons when some areas always returned councillors from a particular party and some parties even stopped producing leaflets for these areas. Now I feel society seems to be engaging again in politics and as a result campaigning has changed. It's not only society becoming more engaged there have also been some significant changes, the onset of 24 hour news and of course social media.
24 hour news is a great thing, well I say that. Recently I had a job where I worked nights and slept very little this exposed me to many hours of BBC and Sky news, the repetition was mind numbing and then in a way to stretch the news further there's the whole raft of opinion or editorial pieces thrown in often without clear identification. So no we have opinion and discussion drip feeding into the news and of course discussion and opinion is to an extent reliant on speculation.

Let's not forget the influence of social media!!!! Social media can be a great tool to get a message out to a large number of people. What social media doesn't do is discriminate, anyone can post anything they like via a variety of platforms and once that has been shared a couple of times it's difficult to control and becomes perpetuating, we saw so much incorrect information during the with referrendum and the US presidential election the messages of the conpaigns were often lost but this still influences people's vote.

Just 2 more points I'd like to share before finishing for now.
It is said that parents influence the vote of their offspring until on average the age of 24 where the offspring will decide for themselves.
I saw a news stand/box containing The Sun newspaper last year, on this was printed "The Sun, for Entertainment,gossip,sport". It never mention news anywhere!

I don't want to go into solution mode as I would like to know what other people's thoughts are on voting influence. What makes you vote a particular way?
Leaflets ?
A knock at the door ?
Ever read a manifesto ?
National papers ?
Radio & TV ?
Friends?
Family?
Social media?

Cheer up it's Blue Monday

This morning I woke up late and had to rush to get to work on time.
My first thought as I left the house was "oh it's still raining"

Little did I know until I turned the radio on that today was "Blue Monday", the most depressing day of the year apparently. Now I have got few things done this morning and I feel quite pleased with my achievement satisfied even but the mass media and social media are telling me I should be depresses. Well not telling me more making me feel alienate by not being depressed.

Yes the weather is grim outside, it is winter,  but I'm inside !  so that's not affecting me.

I thought I'd Google this day of depression and see whether it was born from a particular alignment of astronomical bodies playing havoc with or magnetic fields or aura or linked to ancient druid or pagan ritual or even earlier....

  NO of course its not !!!!

The third Monday in January has been known as blue Monday since ...2005 !!!! yes that date a long time ago when the world as very different place you remember before Donald Trump was elected, before Brexit entered our dictionaries. Facebook was less than a year old, Twitter was possibly conceived but had not been born,

And guess who or what type of company created it, Yes you've got it a Travel agent selling holidays. Sky Travel,

Yes i need to make a payment on my holiday. There are many many times throughout the year that I look out of the window and think I'd love to be out of this office and on a nice hot beach and those thoughts are generated by all sorts of things from the weather to a crappy email to just feeling tired, not because we've just had Christmas and now we are a bit skint. I think I wrote a blog entry about not pending too much at Christmas.

So what can I do to  resist the drive of a marketing ploy and now the mass media not to become depressed on blue Monday ?

First thing I have have to do is say every time I write blue Monday i think of the New Order tune Blue Monday, so I no have that playing in the background on Youtube as I write this. actually that has lifted my spirits.

   There we go get a 1980's disco going where ever you are, go on click the above link I dare you.

I often wonder how much the media guides and controls us as individuals.

I use the example often of the channel 4 program "Kill it Cook it Eat it". which i am sure was aimed at not educating but attempting to produce repulsion of the met industry, turned out it was quiet interesting and amazingly clean process. Then there was the horse meat scandal, was this about labelling or as this about eating leaner higher protein meat but judges by a couple of journalists and once the story gathered momentum others had a choice join in or be out in the cold. HOLD ONE I'm beginning to moan again , see its that bloody Blue Monday again.

I will acknowledge mentally those who are struggling with all sorts of challenges from wars to illness and when we talk of Blue Monday and feeling down remember those who are actually depressed ad have something to be down about.

Today I am going to do the things I need to, have a good day achieving things and organising the rest of the week being grateful for the good health and well being of my family and friends,

Enjoy..

I'm off to make a brew x

Fake News, Read all about it!

Since Donald Trump was announced President Elect the media and pollsters have been running round trying to work out how it happened and whilst I do not necessarily agree that one of their conclusions was correct I do think there's something to this story. The election was affected by fake news particularly fake news shared on facebook.

  I don't think it had much of an impact but every vote counts as it did with brexit. The difference was that either side were creating the brexit fake news whereas here we see something more sinister. The allegation is that due to the business model of facebook it is profitable to create and have fake news shared. Therefore anything can be said just for the sake of profit and we all know where this is going... the more sensational the story the less it relates to reality the more it will be shared and the more profit is made.

    STOP RIGHT THERE!!! What about the poor gullible teenagers and young people who believe this crap.  I have a daughter who often walks into a room and starts a conversation with -
     "oh my god have you heard about...."
to which my reply is either
     "Where have you been?"   or
     "Really! Where did you read that" or
      "That is complete......"
And then get "it's true I read it on facebook!"

This gets me thinking again does everyone know you can't believe everything you read.

I stopped writing the blog as I was drawn into a conversation with a blogger (like proper blogger, she has 16000 comments on her blog I have 16, www.simplybeingmum.com) a barrister and a university medical lecturer. We were talking about Trump ,brexit and this story.

Can't we believe all we read, the conversation I had assumed everyone knew we shouldn't, and whilst we noted that the printed press is regulated both they and the virtual press or social media have the chance to produce some far fetched stuff. Then there's the situation of a true story but the facts are presented after many would have stop reading. The medical lecturer explained he had recently read a story that he thought simply didn't make sense (here's a link) it wasn't until he got to the last few sentences that his thoughts were confirmed as an expert stated is story was unlikely. But this was a story on the BBC so it must be real, just like the famous War of the Worlds reading or BBC program Ghostwatch.

  I think this reinforces how we should  be careful I do think many believe believe without question something they have read, I've heard people say it's true I read it in the paper on the letters page. Why we are persuaded by text more so than spoken word, I wonder if it's a historical trait from the great philosophers. 

This blog has really gone off at a tangent!!

I think we should all reflect and consider what we read especially in the day and age of social media. And when it comes to politics elections and referendum the best hope you have is the leaflets the candidates produce. Good luck

The 'fake' news that really annoys me is the sort that is repeated so many times the masses believe it, the one in particular is the American view of the ethnic make up of the UK.
throughout the us election we heard it repeated as a fact and I have seen many videos on Youtube stating as a fact that the uk population is 50% muslim ? Firstly so what if it was. Secondly this is simply not correct and woe betide anyone who comments on a youtube video to state its not true as they will get a torrent of abuse.

I think the 2 parts that annoy me with this fake news is the fact that its spread with dark undertones of racism and has no basis, but when senior US campaigners are spreading this what chance has the average american got. The UK is a great place which has been built on diversity and acceptance a place where we have been able to walk shoulder to shoulder with people from different cultures, religions and backgrounds, It annoys me the this can be damaged by scaremongering by the ignorant and the perpetuation allows those who try to use religion as a reason for terrorism to win, Muslims are not terrorist, in the same way Catholics became alienated by the Terrorism of Guy Fawkes.  Terrorist are nothing more than terrorist.

Ok getting excited there, but I will share the figures of the UK's religious breakdown just for any ill informed readers.

Detailed 2015 BSA survey on religion in the UK Affiliation % of U.K. population
Christian 42 %

Church of England 17%

Other Christian 17%

Roman Catholic 8%

Unaffiliated 49 %

Non-Christian faiths 8 %

Muslim 5%

Other Non-Christian faiths 3%

Don't know/refused answer 1%

Total
100 %

The country leaving the EU maybe delayed due to processes on the line

The saga continues around triggering article 50 and Great Britain leaving the EU, this week (as has been the case since the start of the year) the headlines have been dominated by Brexit and a legal challenge.

I have spent most of the week ranting that we had the referendum in June and the government must now implement the exit from the EU. We had a referendum and the result was to leave, since there there has been attempt after attempt to delay or derail our exit.  I voted to remain but the result is to and now want to see all efforts to get our position straight and leave the EU.

  So for the week I've been moaning about the increased legal challenges to our political decisions and this years seems to have had more than others. We had a referendum, we decided, end of story get on a deliver.


And then this morning it struck me the decision of the judges for a parliamentary vote is in fact the right process. We are Great Britain and we have our ways of doing things and we do them properly.
In June we voted in a referendum which gave an indication and i would say an instruction to our Government to leave the EU. It wasn't until this morning that I realised no decision has been made, this choice has not gone thought the governance that our nations decisions have to go through and that is through parliament. The systems we have are the systems that make Great Britain the place it is and until parliament have voted we do not have a sovereign decision. we have to have a decision made by our elected decision makers and they must act in the way they have been instructed by the population, each constituency had a count and so the results are there for each MP to consider as well as the final result.

So this should be simple albeit a pain in the arse.

1. Government get a plan together with a prospective offer,
2.  put it through parliament, 
3. Mp's listen to the referendum result, Don't look for bits of detail to try and delay the inevitable, don't tie this up in scrutiny all that can be done as negotiations take place on individual matters
4.  get article 50 triggered so negotiations can begin.