So on Friday all the votes were counted in the UK election. They have a formula of “1st past the post”. The first party to get over half the 650 seats in the House of Commons is the Government for the next 5 years. Sounds fair enough “if you get over half of everyone’s votes you get in right?” WRONG, your votes are not of equal value, it all depends on where you live.

If you want your party to have a seat in government, you have to vote in your area together. That would require talking frankly, freely and clearly about politics in your day to day conversations. People don’t like doing that.

Here is my theory as to why that is. People don’t understand the subject enough to be confident discussing it. Politics is full of irrational/illogical confusion. There is confusion in the language, there is confusion in the “what you are voting for”, it’s even managed to confuse counting! See image above – check out the votes to seats ratio ???????

It’s not just Politicians who use over complication (and over simplification) to confuse the rest of us. Other industries do it to; legal, accounting, design, banking, makers, bakers, crafters, the list is endless. Whether it’s done consciously or not, industries do develop their own language, which can be used to make people just say “it’s too complicated for me, you do it”. The confusion makes people resign their power to another, under the “they know best” or “I don’t have time to learn enough to understand what I’m to do” conclusions.

To take back power ask questions. Ask questions until you understand enough to make a decision you’re happy with. This is not to say you need to get a degree in a subject every time you make a choice or that giving power over to others is a bad thing, just that are you really getting a say in your life if you don’t understand what you are deciding on?

I wrote this blog because it became clear that a friend of mine had voted incorrectly, due to pure misunderstanding of what they were voting for. I can guarantee they were not the only one. Visit The Plain English Campaign for more information on making public communication, accessible and understandable to all.

What have you come across that you’ve felt has caused more confusion than solution? (First person to say this blog post, gets sent into the terms and conditions department of the most complicated company I can find ;-)).