Propaganda (by sarah)

I am starting to come to the opinion that propaganda material should be not banned but discouraged - people need to be informed of choices they do not need one opinion rammed so far down their throats that they can not think.

The way I would do this is by having a leaflet with the urls and library where abouts of the official material for each group/side/party. That way people can choose what to look at. There can bee a phone number for the house bound so that leaflets can be delivered for the parties they want to know more about.

Why do I feel this?

There were lots of leaflets and bill boards saying vote NO so much so that I struggled to keep the phrase out of my head - now I was prepared for this sort of thing but first time voters and much of the population probably didn't even notice the subliminal message sinking in. The YES campaign had similiar things I just didn't see as many. And to make it worse there was a vote NO leaflet in the polling booth which threw me so much I had to recheck I'd done the ballad correctly. Especially with having to put an x next to the choice you want - I always think eek I'm marking it wrong due to x being used to mark things as wrong on childrens homework.

Not everyone in the UK is literate and I've known people who assumed you put the x next to the one you don't want. But that is a differnet matter.

My point is that humans are highly suggestible creatures we are designed to live in groups with some sort of hirachy even if it is only in times of danger. Politicians like any leaders have to know how to tap into the getting people to do things systems it is part of their job. But the thing is with propaganda is that it becomes a game of money - which group can put out enough flyers, adverts and fuzzybugs.

Alaric asked me how having a website with all the information on it was different from a leaflet and I said the thing is you choose to look at the website with leaflets and TV they just sit there even if say they are on the scrap pile looking at you, getting their message to sink in.

Now the thing is I am looking for this sort of thing as just having a baby I know I am highly susceptable to being swayed (it's so you listen to the rest of the group on how to look after babies first time mothers are affected worse) this is why advitising is not supposed to target new mothers.

And yet all those little tricks Darren Brown knows for getting people to vote a certain way/pick a certain box are nothing compared to what the population receives with every election.

Of course the general issue here again is apathy and the fact that most people do not care or worse think they are not intelligent enough to understand or even worse that it doesn't matter what or how they vote everything will still continue to be crap for them. So the issue then is how to get the population motivated to vote without it being a war of money - ie those who can afford the most brain washing techniques win?

I don't really have an answer other than perhapse the leaflets should have been about using your right to vote rather than YES or NO.

Why I am voting Yes (by sarah)

Tomorrow is the referendum about the way we vote - I will be voting for change, voting for Alternative Voting or AV as it is known. Our current system is First Past the Post (FPTP).

Now AV is not the best system it has no proper weightings etc.. but the maths of the more advance systems is beyond a lot of people and if people don't understand they are not going to vote. As it is, lots of people seem to be struggling with this anyway.

The thing is I believe that AV is better than our current voting system because though it is called first past the post it isn't. No, it's not - we vote in constituencies which may not have representatives of all parties and people are voting in mind of which party is going to get one of their members in as Prime Minister. This is where the current system breaks down.

For a start you could have a situation when, say, in Labour seats the Liberal Democrats almost won and in the Conservative seats the Liberal Democrats almost won but though this means over all they or the Green Party or who ever is the thirds/fourth party they will never win. To me this is not first past the post - it's because we are technically only voting for our local MP so it shouldn't matter which party they are in. But it does.

If there were no parties as such this would be ok as the MP's would vote on what they, as individuals, thought was right and there would be no towing party lines even when they grate against the skin. Whether this would lead to a weak government or not is a thorny question.

What this means is that people go out and vote and say they really want to vote for that nice Labour Chap who also does things in that alliance thingy with another party but they won't because the Labour government was sinking and everyone felt it was time for a change and everyone knows that means you have to vote conservative, right?

That's the way it goes in this country; back and forth (of course in the old days it was Lib Dems and the Conservatives until Labour came up trumps).

Now, imagine the winners only had a small majority to get in and then they vote in their Prime Minister - well the result is one of compound error - you are rounding up and forgetting to take that into account before you more onto the next stage of the process. If our political system was a lab report the lecture would be demanding "Where are the error bars!". Of course it's not easy to have a Prime Minister who is only Prime Minister give or take 30%... but you get the idea.

First past the post secures a two party system in this country - something which the powers that be will not want to change (think about it) and I think this is shown most clearly in the leaflets that have found their way through the door.

They have all been "Vote No" ones and, though it says no tax payers money has been used to print them, I wonder who is paying for the time the MP's are spending on this? The objections on the leaflets made me roll my eyes - this like how much it will cost to explain it to people. Well you know most of that's already been done so that money is already spent.

Things like "only three other countries use AV". So something is new/unknown; that doesn't make it bad. Soap was seen as evil when it was first introduced into this country. People believed it washed the protective layer of grime off your hands so you'd get ill.

They say that Australia wants to get rid of it - but where are the studies to back the claim up? The leaflets treat the general public as idiots too - which unfortunately seems to be winning people over. I talk to people and they say they are voting No and just parrot what is on the leaflets. And we're stuck with people not wanting change; they just want tomorrow to be the same as today but with a bit more beer or chocolate please?

I had hoped that the internet and access to free information would alter this but of course we have an aging population so I may be waiting a while. Anyway I'm voting yes to AV because I believe that it is better than the system we've got - it will mean I get to vote more how I feel I should without panicking I'm wasting a vote. They say it will lead to more hung parliaments, but isn't that basically what we've just hand under FPTP anyway?

May’s Challenges (by sarah)

I am going to be taking part in NaPiBoWriWee (National Picture Book Writing Week) again this year - I will be attempting to write a picture book a day for seven days - I am focusing on more Little Books of Poetry as these seem so popular with Jean at least.

I will hopefully have 7 more Little Books by the end of May 🙂 This does however mean 70! poems which I'm not entirely sure is doable - ok they are formulaic and tending towards the rhyming end of things which I find easy but still :/

If I somehow get this done then I will probably expand the challenge to be an hour a day working on children's books. I now have several Little Books of Poetry which I really should make into proper books:

1. The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry (still needs some illustration work and more poems)
2. The Little Book of Festive Poetry (needs more illustrations including front cover)
3. The Little Book of Sparkly Poetry (Poems and illustrations need work)
4. The Little Book of New Baby Poetry (I want to draw 4 more page borders for this and rearrange the text into it so the pages can be double sided and readable in A6 format but it is almost there!)
5. The Little Book of Easter Poetry (Got most of the illustrations done for this one - want to tweak some of the poems too)

I'll be doing write ups on all of this on Orange Monster

So what is my second challenge for the month?

I think I'm going for Flash Fiction writing - I've fallen behind with this so want to aim for a story a day 🙂 They will be appearing on Magenta Monster.