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