Are we S.A.D? Bring on H.A.P.P.Y

As the British weather continues to confusedly wreak havoc, more and more people are joining the army of those who have just about had enough of these torrential and extremely undecided days. Will it rain, snow, shine or gust? Do we wear a hat, sunglasses, wellies? All of the above?

I, personally, have heard a number of people say; “I swear I’ve got that S.A.D. yano…?!” or something of the like, but are people in Britain really suffering with S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder)? Or do we just love a good moan? As soon as it’s too hot, we love a good whinge then too.

Don’t get me wrong, this weather is cack and it’s gone on for way too long, for my liking. (I love a good moan too).

In the space of all of 5 minutes, a news report on Radio 2 said:

·           This has been the coldest March in 66 years.

·           It was colder than December, January and February.

·           A lot of people have been suffering with sunburn

·           …..ey?!

We’ll soon be getting to work by gondola or skis.

For some, S.A.D is obviously a genuine problem, with symptoms including

·           Depression

·           Sleep problems

·           Social problems

·           Anxiety

·           Loss of libido

·           Over eating

Sounds bloody awful right? And as it seems the start of spring has been cancelled, the misery for the sufferers is prolonged.

As for the rest, we’re not S.A.D, we’re just M.O.A.N.E.R.S. Bring on ‘summer’, with the possibility of some rain, British gondolas, heat waves and undoubtedly BBQs, garden parties and beer gardens at every single possibly opportunity. Heck, I’d even welcome the bees?!

Bring on the British summer, so everyone can be H.A.P.P.Y!

Crisis Management; The art of the impossible in today's 21st century game of Chinese whispers?

 Trying to prevent havoc reeking before the world knows about it now is like trying to ask Kerry Katona to finally do us a favour and draw the curtain on fame; it’s just not going to happen.

News doesn’t primarily come from news papers anymore; we see it on Twitter or Facebook first. Checking social media has become a compulsory procedure for most people before they even get out of bed in the morning!

Take, for example, the horse meat scandal. My twitter feed was filled with endless (and mostly lame) horse meat jokes before I had even switched on the news or picked up a paper. But how awesome is that? Scary. But awesome!

Potentially stories could get dangerously mislead and out of hand before we can even say ‘Crisis Management’. Twitter is like a 21^st century game of Chinese whispers, it’s become a news source, whether reliable, or not, like social media’s answer to Wikipedia.

Twitter has around 500 million users. So, 500 million people could potentially hear your side of the story. Amazing right? Use it! Yes, news of your crisis could break out; in fact, news of your crisis will break out. But your reaction can get out just as quick.

If anything, this horse meat scandal became more of a mockery than a problem; not only were people more bothered about who had the best horse meat joke but most were questioning how big a deal it really was? Why don’t we eat horse? Why don’t we ride cows? I’m sure there are very feasible explanations to both but you get the jist. A quick flick through the paper a couple of weeks later and I saw adverts from Tesco, Aldi and Morrisons, each simultaneously pressing how amazingly fresh and pure their BRITISH meat is, with their customers best interest always at heart. All hail British farmers and that money shaped hole burning through their pockets. Crisis? What crisis?

Twitter provides a platform for topical debates and opinions which could steer towards you in a positive way. Use it! Do not let it use you!

I will leave you with some Twitter Statistics, courtesy of http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

Statistic Verification

Source: Twitter, Huffington Post, eMarketer

Research Date: 9.5.2012

Twitter is an online social networking website and microblogging service that allows users to post and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Launched in July of 2006 by Jack Dorsey. Twitter is now in the top 10 most visted internet sites.

Twitter Company Statistics	Data
Total number of active registered Twitter users	500,250,000
Number of new Twitter users signing up everyday	150,000
Number of unique Twitter site visitors every month	180 million
Average number of tweets per day	55 million
Number of Twitter search engine queries every day	1.6 billion
Percent of Twitter users who use their phone to tweet	41 %
Percent of tweets that come from third party applicants	60%
Number of people that are employed by Twitter	175
Number of active Twitter users every month	100 million
Percent of Twitters who don’t tweet but watch other people tweet	40%
Number of days it takes for 1 billion tweets	5 days
Number of tweets that happen every second	8,900
Twitter Annual Advertising Revenue	Revenue
2013 (Projected)	$399,500,000
2012	$259,000,000
2011	$139,000,000
2010	$45,000,000

Space Hopper Football. Progress? Really?

Did the Paralympics really change our opinions and understanding of disability? Or did they just highlight the abilities rather than disabilities?

It is without doubt, that the Games left everyone amazed and enlightened, leaving even the most cynical person more patriotic than ever. But now they are over, how much has really changed?

Disability is often a taboo subject; people don't know how to react to it, more often than not because they don’t understand it. Hundreds of articles tell us that the Paralympics made a difference but I think this opinion is a bit naïve. Yes, we were impressed, proud, dumbfounded even, by the capabilities of those ‘less able’ to win, in competitions many of us couldn’t possibly imagine doing but now, we are back to reality.

Currently, I am working on a campaign with charity ‘Daisy UK’, whose aim is to get disabled people involved, rather than isolated. Years of evidence shows that society is often ignorant around disability. We think we know it all but we don’t.

One teacher’s idea of getting a blind boy involved, was to replace a football with a space hopper. With an accepting mind, she'd have known all she had to do was get a ball with a bell inside. Instead of allowing the boy to be involved and included, she became the initiator of his isolation.

When we're in a restaurant, bar or shopping centre, do we really now look at a disabled person exactly the same as the person next to them, as we should, simply as a result of the Paralympics, or are we still conscious that our glance could be misconstrued as a stare?

I think the Olympics and Paralympics may have improved and shaped our understanding of disability but to say they changed our understanding was overambitious.

And who says romance is dead?

So, after many months of neglect, I decided to log in to an old Facebook account, mostly out of curiosity really. After delving through the mounting pile of inbox messages… my faith in humanity was put in serious jeopardy.

Well, more specifically, my faith in men.

I will leave said men anonymous for now, for fear of affecting any hope of future ‘romance’ for the charmers. Amongst the mundane, friendly and inconspicuous messages there were a number that stood out;

Male 1 said; ‘hello’. 15 times.

Sometimes he added ‘how are you’, but it was mostly just hello.

Talk about persistence.

Male 2 said;

‘Hello Sophie, how are you doing? Am Dan, loving, loving, honest and clean in thought, I really like your profile and decided to contact you for true friendship’

CLEAN in thought? Eh? Bit sussy that if you ask me! Note the repetition of the word ‘loving’ too. Shudder.

Male 3 said;

‘If it made you an easy £100 would you put your hand over my mouth? X’

I don’t even know what this means? Is it code for something?

And then Finally,

Male 4;

‘Thought id pop the Q can I smash your bk doors in xx’

Ah, classy eh.

Now, as special as these romantic gestures may have made me feel. It saddens me to say I don’t think I am the only one *sobs*

My better judgement would suggest messages like these flow freely and willy nilly from the hands of keyboard warriors and lurchers into the inbox’s of females none the wiser. I say females, because I don’t think the senders are particularly fussy about whom the receivers are.

What worries me, furthermore, is why said messages are still getting sent? Are they just very at ease with rejection or do girls respond in a similar manner;

‘well, now I know you're real loving and clean in thought, let's be true 'friends'

‘I’ve always wanted to put my hand over someone’s mouth yes, pick me, pick me.’

‘In answer to your question, of course you can smash my back doors in babes I thought you’d never ask.’

And who says romance is dead eh? My faith in humanity is surprisingly yet to be restored.

Is It Snowing?

Thanks to the beautiful new world of social media, we no longer have to lift ourselves off the couch or even turn the TV on to learn what is going on in the world.

Our twitter news feed constantly updates us on the weather, news, what people have eaten for tea and how far their baby bump has developed. Is this modern shift in social networking taking the ‘live for the moment’ element out of life? Or is it just bringing us all closer together?

Before we actually taste our beautiful and well presented tea, we have to take a picture of it to show all of our twitter and Facebook friends and when were having such an amazing time on the best night ever, we take a moment to stop the amazing-ness to tell everyone how amazing it is, we no longer have to watch TV as our news feed provides a running commentary and we don’t need to open our curtains to see what the weathers like because a shed load of people will have already been moaning about it.

As well as the Spillers (the spillers of all information), there are also the Moaners. The moaners moan about the spillers spilling everything. This then recurs as much as the topic the spillers spilt did!

Although it’s important to seize the day and all that malarkey, it’s also important to accept that times are a changing and the world of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, retweets, baby scans and food pictures needs to be embraced with open arms.