Fairness and Majority.

A real brainteaser to help everyone to take a step back and think about things a little more rationally. A lot of the time when our opinions get awoken, it seems to be that we act and speak on impulse. The idea behind these little exercises are to get you to avoid such things.

Our first case is about Fairness and Majority. If I was to say 'what would make a successful democracy?' you would probably answer back, 'well when the party with the most votes wins.' Simple as that? Indeed it is not, what if the majority does not necessarily mean fairness?

The case being that (for simplicity) 75% of people vote for Party A who support X and the remaining 25% vote for Party Y who support Y (for purposes of simplicity there would be no other options). It would seem you have no problem with saying to an extent that it was fair. However, what about those 25%? should they accept defeat of their preferences because a lot more other people say different.  Such a puzzle gets more difficult when proposing an alternative case. For this instance, 51% of people vote for Party A and 49% of people vote for party B then such a view of fairness and democracy becomes vague. If you say that this makes no difference Party A still wins fairly then you must admit to disregarding to 49% of the population which can be seen as harsh. However, if you say 'no! there's something definitely unfair', well unfortunately you come into problems too. You say there's something wrong with a 51%/49% split but there is nothing wrong with a 75%/25% then you must ask yourself, is there something special about a large majority? Should we allow the majority to rule over our lives? And where do we draw the line at a large majority.

If however, you have read to this point and disagree with everything that I have said, well you are most probably indeed are an anarchist and there are plenty of people like you who disagree with everything that is 'democratic.'

How to build your confidence?

While writing a blog may seem the opposite of building confidence, it can actually be a helping hand. Being able to be confident is translated by what you think and how you express it, therefore it can be shown through anything whether it be writing or speaking. So in this I will explain a few tips how to build your confidence, not egoism, but confidence.

We have all been in the situation where everyone's eyes have been glaring upon you and only you listening to every word that draws from your breath. At the time it can seem nerve-racking and makes you feel vulnerable, causing your confidence to wither down. Sometimes the silence of a split second drifts through the air and you find yourself panic struck trying to fill each silence with words. However, these such moments can be avoided, nerves can be turned into emotion and silences can be transformed into moments for people to reflect. This is about how to build your confidence when it matters most.

While it's not as silly as imaging people in their underwear, it is something remarkably similar. This is to remember, that is to remember that the people in front of you are only human, just like you and myself. There is nothing potentially worrying about talking to your friends but as soon as it's in front of a group of strangers our attitudes suddenly change. For no apparent reason our confidence is knocked and the best way to avoid such things are to follow a few steps. (From my own personal experience.)

·         Try to be calm, take deep breaths and articulate your thoughts slowly.

·         Practice what you are going to say

·         Put a bit of emotion into it, no one likes a droning monotone voice they could fall asleep

·         Who you addressing are only human, (to be cliché) be yourself

·         Know your stuff. If you do, it will all naturally flow.

·         Make eye-contact

·         Use "open" body language

Don't whisper and don't shout...talk at just the right volume.


Hope this has helped and I will keep adding and editing.

A discussion blog

In relation to my previous 'little note' on bloggers, I am starting to introduce topics in my blogs that can also generate opinions. The idea being if you follow my posts (by subscribing/+1) you can follow both my notes on current affairs and any questions that are up for discussion. So if this blog sparks your interest, be sure to comment and share your ideas.

Help to Buy - An obsession with the housing market.

It could be good or it could be bad, who knows? But what we do know is that we as a country are obsessed with the housing market linking it dangerously close to our economy. A house price is seen as a filler in our money bags and shows our wealth increasing year on year. What could possibly go wrong?

Though I ask, have we or do we ever learn from our previous mistakes? Hindsight is clouded in our minds as we forget the years before and see our houses as the knight in white armour coming to pull us from sluggish growth into the boom era again. It seems we have forgotten the credit crunch already and the real root of the cause of it. Our houses as bloated as our minds and our pockets with hypothetical cash fuelled our buy now spend later mind-set.

Although,  you may ask why would encouraging growth in the house market have a negative effect on our economy and what lessons should we have learnt from the credit crisis? Well firstly, in the pre-crisis period the housing market was at its prime with house prices or value skyrocketing each year. This then led people to an illusion in which they think they had more money because their house was worth more. As a result, people had the opportunity to borrow a vast amount of money for personal consumption whether it be reinvestment into their property or general spending. People in all countries were high on getting more than what they earn.  However, while it was easy to spend it was less easy to pay and when the repayments came in the sweet turned soon sour. Their houses devalued, the market drained, pay cuts, pay freezes and redundancies meant they paid the price for easy cash.

So why would help to buy scheme's be a bad thing? While I'm not saying it is a bad thing to help people to buy their own home, it is a matter of wrong timing. Our economy is heavily bloated by the expansion of the housing market which has been clearly shown is and always has been extremely fragile. It is an addiction we have and a short term fix to our economy that we need to be less dependent on. Therefore, we should be addressing other factors of our economy whether it be jobs, education or infrastructure if we are to build a sustainable economy.

Just a little post

This post is just about the small bloggers and how they should be valued. After all, opinions matter and if we conform ourselves to the opinions of a few organisations we would become their slaves of their opinions. Although I have nothing against media, I do think that the large organisations form peoples into divisions. Blogs, especially my blog, is about a range of opinions not just one view that is printed. Everyone is entitled to their opinion (given it is not intentionally offensive i.e. sexist, homophobic etc.) Bloggers are not just the stereotype's that argue furiously and refuse to accept anything but their view. The internet is for everyone to make their opinion count and be valued.

Always wanting more. Why a recession may not be such a bad thing.

By the title you are probably thinking how could you possibly think that? But before I start I would like to say that I empathise with those who are and have been struggling  throughout this hard period. My aim is rather to provide a general overview to why continuous economic growth would not necessarily be best for us.

So wouldn't life be so good if we got more, more and more? Probably not, there inevitably needs to be a limit somewhere and good reason too. If for instance we just kept on growing what are the implications? By imagining a infinitely growing society, there would be greater and greater competition between individuals, so much so there would be a fiercely selfish society that would emerge. Ready to get that extra bit extra on offer, people would become obsessed and disillusioned with no real goal in life.

Following this, it would not only be working life that would be effected but also in our spare time. Continuous economic growth, as shown in the last decade before the credit crisis, would drive people consumerism madness. Without the realisation of risk people would spend without a second thought, saving would be non-existent and consumerism like work would proceed to take over our lives. Sometimes we do need that push back to push us back into reality.

Also, we have to consider that consumer products and growth does not come magically out of thin air, someone and something has to suffer. This would be our environment and developing countries that would suffer. Our quality of life would diminish as we push the lives of those who can be exploited are worked to the death, while our generosity to charities would decrease as we become ever more tight with our money.

Furthermore, while we call it the 'bad times' some of the best ideas and businesses have evolved out of the poor economic climate. Without it we would promote inefficiency as there's no need to innovate and improve. Though this may be short but an important point.

Finally, I shall end by saying that while no one likes the 'bad times', we wouldn't be necessarily better without them. Rather we should take these times as a lesson before we get caught up in the rush of a boom and not to forget that the bad times again may be round the corner. Therefore, growth, work and money isn't everything but it can be over prioritised in the good times and the bad.

Should the unemployed be forced to clean our streets? A rubbish idea.

This is reference to the UK conservative party proposition to make the unemployed in the UK clean up the streets in return for their benefits.

'They are a burden on society, A waste of our taxes and they fuel a something for nothing society'  is what I normally hear when this topic usually arises. However, I believe in a society that is predominately influenced by the more affluent in the country that this view is actually distorted from the reality. I admit that a minority of the population are 'benefit scroungers' and will never be shaken off from society unless we completely dismantle the foundations of the welfare state, which implies more cost than benefit. Although, while the minority are what we name 'benefit scroungers' the majority are those which are not and I will explain why such people should not undergo what I feel is slave labour of the current government.

Firstly, I would like to state that some unemployment is not necessarily bad. Although this may seem surprising at first, a society without unemployment is one that is static and immobile. The reason for this is that unemployment can simply be a transition period for many people between one job and another or one career and another. Let me provide an example to show this, take for instance a working family which one of the adults has got a higher paid job in another city. Now the other adult(s), assuming they want to move, are deemed unemployed until they get a job in that city. Are these people scroungers? Clearly not, they are an example of labour mobility and without such cases the economy would be like I said, static and immobile. The aim should be to reduce employment by promoting work and helping people to help themselves, not to achieve full employment to make the statistics look good.

Furthermore, I would like to say that any policy that targets the unemployed to undergo voluntary full-time work in order to receive benefits would limit people in society. Getting people back into work is not a one-size fits all policy as people have different skills, specialities and interests. Therefore, we should help build upon this through skilled based learning rather than funnelling everyone into one role, one job. Those that are unemployed and seeking work need time to find and get a job and making these people work full-time will limit their motivation to do so, thus limiting their motivations in life.

Finally, 'the unemployed should be forced to clean the streets for their benefits' is a statement that is clearly degrading. For the unemployed? No, for those who work day in and day out to help keep our streets clean, empty our bins and provide a nice environment for all whilst also doing a job that many people may reject. So to say that the unemployed should do this job as a punishment for not having a job already is simply degrading to those who already work cleaning our streets putting them on the same scale as the 'benefit scroungers.'