Much is said about poverty and equality in election cycles, with promises of reform and a better life for those living below the poverty line. The social welfare state is arguably the greatest poverty alleviator of all time, but right now it’s not enough and regardless of who wins today’s election, we all need to play a part in poverty reduction.

Here is a common scenario for downward mobility: In 2013 a father of three lost his job. He became one of the 2.5 million people looking for work but unable to find a job. He was unable to pay his mortgage and support his family so was left with no alternative other than to seek Jobseeker’s Allowance. This barely covered his outgoings so he was forced to take on further debt to bridge the gap.

Who is responsible for giving this person a livelihood?

“We can accomplish great things together when we pool our skills, money and resources to help people to help themselves.”

We assume it’s up to the social welfare state. “It is quite shocking that so few people feel there is an obligation to give,” Dan Corry, chief executive of New Philanthropy Capital, told the Guardian. “We have gone through a phase where we have a welfare state, we pay our taxes and we feel we don’t need to give any more.”.

However, what history has shown is that the state alone cannot solve poverty. Some forces are out of the government’s control: industries shrink, consumer tastes move on and stock markets crash. A government bureau is small in comparison to the size of its population. On numbers alone, it’s the people who are more powerful.

But there are misheld beliefs which are preventing people helping those in need. In 2011, 37 percent of people thought that most people on benefits were taking advantage, and 56 percent believed that most unemployed people could find a job if they wanted one, according to a NatCen report.

We lack awareness of our power as a collective. We can accomplish great things together when we pool our skills, money and resources to help people to help themselves. Common Cause has proved this by connecting people on benefits with the support they need to build their own livelihoods and gain financial independence.

Take Jamilia for example. She has two degrees in history but struggled to find work related to her education. She applied for retail jobs in order to earn enough to support her family, but was disregarded due to her age. She was left sleeping rough in north London. Determined to find a way of supporting her family, she attended a training course with the Aspire Foundation. She was encouraged to build a business from one of her passions, and given the skills and training to do so.

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Jamilia started knitting garments from British wool, but lacked the resources and funding to develop her business. Common Cause has connected her to people who have offered her the support she needed to succeed. She now sells her goods on fashion websites and at markets in London, and is mentoring other people on benefits about how they can build their own livelihoods.

What is the benefit to us? As individuals, research has shown that it feels good to give – volunteering is a long-lasting source of happiness. If we act, we can live in more secure, enjoyable societies where people are more connected and generous with each other.

We need to place the faith in ourselves and come together to take action. Poverty is not inevitable. We can remain indifferent, or we can do something. We can volunteer our skills, we can make use of old equipment, and we can donate money to help people build better lives for themselves and for all of us.

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As we go full steam ahead into the general election on Thursday, I’m calling for people to come together from across the political divide, across ages, religions, ethnicities and genders, to take a moment to reflect. A moment to pause, to breathe, a moment to marvel in our diversity and rejoice in what unites us.

This election campaign has been missing something. Our world is changing: our consciousness is shifting and it’s time to start having different conversations. It’s time for us to ask different questions, to take different approaches and to start questioning every single belief system we have. This includes coming up with new solutions of how we are governed and how our leaders do and see their work. It is time to challenge all our rhythms, to turn it all on it’s head.

Our screens, newspapers and radios have been filled with people point scoring, trying to get one up on each other, and trying to show just how different they are from everyone else. Which politician is using the word love? Which politician is spending time in non-formal attire with the communities they wish to represent? Which politician is owning up to their mistakes? Which politician is telling us they are here to serve? Which politician is highlighting the wonderful policies of their opposing parties?

“Before we enter into another five-year marriage with a new government, let’s agree on our fundamental commonality. We are wonderful, simple, human creatures trying to make sense of our glorious existence.”

I found myself looking at these debates and realising that something was missing in the conversation – something that we have been cultivating at our sober Morning Gloryville raves around the world: a joyful coming together, a sense of unity and an appreciation of one another, an allowing of being heart-centred.

It’s 50 years since ‘flower power’ was coined by iconic beat poet Allen Ginsberg in his essay How to Make a March/Spectacle. The flower power movement coincided with a new era of thinking, being and seeing: Martin Luther King had a dream, women claimed a new liberation and people took to the streets in their millions saying no to the Vietnam war, demanding civil rights collectively, and embracing unity.

The movement and the energy of that time is an inspiration for Morning Gloryville. We brought conscious clubbing and sober raving to the world stage, and that was only the beginning of what we had in mind.

It’s been an incredible journey so far. After pledging my allegiance to queen and country recently, I am now officially a British Citizen. And as a British Citizen I want to make this place I call home as wonderful and as beautiful as it can be. I want to it to be more loving. I want to see us leading the world in how to live as an evolved community – how to upgrade to being a new paradigm future-focussed society. With the challenges that climate change is bringing we must upgrade. This way we will be able to work together harmoniously to solve the problem that is: how do we save our planet?, how do we save our home?

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I’m inviting parliamentary candidates from across the parties, poets, members of churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, the Fabulus of Unicorns, Lyrically Challenged, the Occupy movement, the Girl Guides and the Scouts, musicians, campaigners, flash mobs, LGBT groups, samba bands, and all of our morning ravers, to come down to Speakers’ Corner on the 4 May, to Turn Up and Hold Hands.

Before we enter into another five-year marriage with a new government, let’s agree on our fundamental commonality. We are wonderful, simple, human creatures trying to make sense of our glorious existence. Let’s take a moment to celebrate life in all of its forms, and recognise just how far we have come in the last 50 years. This is not anti-politics, it is a pro-people and pro-planet action.

Turn Up and Hold Hands will take place from 4 – 5pm on 4 May at Spearkers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London.

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On the evening after the Scottish referendum, I was sitting in the pub with my friend Tom chatting about how amazing it had been to see Scottish homes becoming mini debating chambers for a couple of weeks; and how that contrasted with the shell of democracy we see in England.

Earlier in the day David Cameron had stood on the steps of Downing Street, promising to devolve more power to the citizens of the UK. But we all knew that expecting parliamentarians to champion people power is like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas. The Electoral Reform Society has been campaigning for proportional representation for over 100 years and it seems more unlikely now than ever.

What really frustrated Tom and I was the realisation that our MPs don’t even ask for our opinion, despite their very own code of conduct, which says that MPs have ‘a special duty to [represent] their constituents’. All we ever got from our MP was a newsletter telling us how wonderful he and his party were. This went to the heart of how we felt politics had become more a job in sales and marketing than galvanising people. How could an MP possibly fulfil a special duty to their constituents if they never ask us what our interests are?

“Many of today’s issues can only be addressed if we each take responsibility for them.”

Rodda Thomas, the landlord of the Crown and Sceptre pub, suggested that I stand at the election and offer something different. I reminded Rodda that only four independents had won in the UK over the past 60 years and over 90 percent had failed to recover their deposits. He said, and this is when the penny dropped, “Rich, it’s not about winning, it’s about trying to change the system”. And so the MyMP campaign was born.

Now less than a week away from the 2015 general election we have over 100 candidates who have said they would like to work with us during the next parliament. Candidates from all parties and none. Candidates such as Conservative Zac Goldsmith MP; Liberal Democrat Paul Hodkinson; Green Martyn Curzey; and Saquib Ali for Labour. All of them have committed, should they win, at the very least to proactively seek public opinion on key parliamentary votes, and some have committed to experiment with direct democracy, giving their constituents the power to both sack their MP and vote on key decisions when enough of them want it.

At the heart of the MyMP campaign is the question: how can we have a better democracy? We are not claiming to have all the answers, but we are clear that inaction is not acceptable. According to YouGov, no less than 72 percent of people think that ‘politics is dominated by self-seeking politicians protecting the interests of the already rich and powerful’. Over the last 70 years, the proportion thinking politicians put their country above their own interests and those of their party has fallen from 36 percent to just 10 percent. So something does need to be done.

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We also understand that politicians are unlikely to win popularity contests. They have to make hard decisions, and this will make them unpopular. However, things are different today. Politicians no longer have a monopoly on information, the internet has changed that. And in this digital age when we can ask people’s opinion we should.

More profoundly though, many of today’s issues can only be addressed if we each take responsibility for them, be it climate change, care for the vulnerable or the issue of diabetes. If we want to create a more responsible society, then we have to stop being treated as children by our politicians. And, critically, we have to stop behaving towards politicians as if they are some kind of estranged parent.

The shift will not be easy, but 100 brave candidates have said that they are up for it. Not all of us will win, but all of us are now part of a movement laying the foundations for a more mature politics.

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Vote or Vote None is a new campaign to inspire young voters, and to challenge the unheard 34 percent who didn’t vote in the 2010 general election, to take part in the democratic process.

The call is to either vote for a candidate who you trust to work hard for things you believe in, or vote for ‘none’ in protest. The point is that there’s no reason to be silent.

So why now? Unless something significant changes, a third of registered voters may not vote in this election. Moreover, if a single party wins a parliamentary majority, as the two main parties want, it is likely to be with the support of less than a quarter of registered voters. In 2005 Labour won with 22 percent of registered voters, while 38 percent didn’t vote. In 2010 the Conservatives received 23 percent of registered voters.

The figures should be a national scandal, not just for our democracy, but for the lack of legitimacy or mandate for the winning party to implement policies. Yet it all remains invisible, partly because the ‘unheard third’ of the electorate are not included in the results and are dismissed as apathetic.

“It gives us all an opportunity to show that there is political opinion that is not currently represented by the parties.”

The solution is surely not to persuade people to vote when they can’t see the point, or make voting easier or compulsory for new voters. It’s more radical: to engage everyone in making this election work to improve UK politics.

Why vote? In our electoral system, even committed voters feel defeated by the idea that to vote for who they really want would be a ‘wasted vote’. In every election, the two main parties generate fear about the other, and then claim that a vote for any other smaller party is a wasted vote that will just let the other side in. It’s negative politics.

Yet any claim of a wasted vote is undermined if we include all registered voters in the election results. The margin by which the winning party win is usually tiny compared with the number who didn’t vote at all.

So if just some of the ‘unheard third’ vote this time, then almost any result is possible. Suddenly there’s every reason to vote positively for the party or candidate we believe in, rather than just those who did well before.

Why vote ‘none’? Many people consider that none of the parties will make any difference. Russell Brand makes that case strongly on the basis that all the political parties will not, and cannot, challenge the international corporations or undo the international trade deals that create injustice, inequality and environmental destruction.

Younger people in particular are engaged by direct action on issues where party politics says little, or lags behind. Whatever your politics, the issue is whether our democratic process can acknowledge that political opinion exists beyond what is currently represented by the parties. If not, then the most important debates may be left outside the democratic process, and outside parliament and government.

Edward Abbey famously said that “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul”. Indeed, it doesn’t take a psychologist to tell us that if people are denied a democratic voice on the issues that matter most, dissatisfaction can lead to anger, despair and alienation. That is where we are.

In a council election in the UK, faced with an overwhelming public anger at UK politics and determination not to vote, I found myself in despair suggesting that people show it by voting ‘none’. To my surprise, it shifted those conversations into positive discussions about how to improve UK politics.

“I found myself in despair suggesting that people vote ‘none’. To my surprise, it shifted those conversations into positive discussions about how to improve UK politics.”

I realised that whereas not voting can be an end to thinking and engagement, the option to vote ‘none’ can re-engage people in thinking about politics and democracy. With the option to protest, there’s no reason to be silent, and every reason to think about what to do.

In France, Spain and Ukraine for example, the protest vote is an important democratic tradition, included on the ballot. In the US last year, Nevada Democrats picked ‘none of these candidates’ for governor nominations, as a damning comment on all the candidates.

So is there a case for it here? Even as a committed voter, I can recognise that our elections are like the proverbial soviet referendum, where you can only say ‘yes’ to what is on offer. There have been campaigns requesting None of the Above (NOTA) on the ballot for many years. But like the UK campaigns for votes for women in the early 20th century, success doesn’t come just from asking. The demand for NOTA can and should be demonstrated. A political change is better understood, better used, and potentially more powerful if it is demanded from the bottom, not delivered from the top. In this case, potential protest voters already have the vote.

The existing Electoral Commission guidance on counting votes requires that all ballot papers be counted and announced, including those ‘rejected’ for not selecting a candidate. These ‘rejected’ ballot papers must be classified into four categories. Yet political protest is effectively silenced by mixing protest votes with mistakes and others rejected as ‘voter’s intention uncertain’.

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If just some of the unheard 34 percent vote ‘none’ clearly, beyond dispute, then the sheer numbers of ‘uncertain votes’ will be newsworthy and make that classification indefensible. It can establish the protest vote as a healthy barometer of political dissent.

So how do you vote ‘none’ clearly? Write ‘NONE’ across the ballot paper, and put a single line through all the boxes. Don’t just leave it blank, and don’t include a cross or tick or any other writing.

What does it achieve? Why is it better than not voting? Every government needs to claim a mandate to govern based on voters’ support. So voting ‘none’ makes visible the current lack of support for those elected and their lack of mandate. It enables the ‘unheard third’ to act democratically to demonstrate opposition rather than apathy.

“If just some of the unheard third vote ‘none’ clearly, beyond dispute, then the sheer numbers of uncertain votes will make the classification indefensible.”

Most of all, it gives us all an opportunity to show that there is political opinion that is not currently represented by the parties, and that there really is support for different candidates, different policies and potentially different politics.

As with all protest, the ways in which politicians and others then act on it, or ignore it, will become part of the political debate. It changes the debate by adding strength to dissent.

What if ‘none’ wins in a constituency? It should require a new election to inspire different candidates. But ‘none’ doesn’t need to win to achieve those goals.

Whether you vote, or vote ‘none’, we can together make this election work to improve our elected representatives, improve UK politics and so revitalise our democracy. It’s urgent. There is no reason to be silent.

For more information: VoteOrVoteNone.org.uk

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“I’m probably out of keeping with the warp and weft of the world.” That’s what MP Stephen Pound told me when discussing the benefits of engaging with young voters via social media. “Twitter is narcissistic,” he said. “I don’t care about what somebody is having for dinner tonight.”

And I don’t blame him either. Yet, as a Sky News Stand Up Be Counted (SUBC) representative, the point I was trying to get across was that while social media is no substitute for face to face interaction with our politicians, it’s at least a starting point.

Pound soon told me that he was a “dinosaur” and that I had “totally destroyed” his argument. Whether he was just trying to get me to shut up, or whether he actually meant it, I don’t know. Yet I take my hat off to him for recognising that politicians need to make, adapt, and use social media to communicate with voters who have been brought up in a digital age.

This is not to say that they should endorse celebrity politics. I’m not saying they should aim to rack up the followers. They have a job to do, and it shouldn’t involve falling prey to the shallow, self-indulging dangers of social media. But what it should involve is using every channel possible to embrace those typically disconnected with the political process.

“While social media is no substitute for face to face interaction with our politicians, it’s at least a starting point.”

As a trainee journalist I’m always using Twitter to arrange interviews – a quick and easy tool to pre-empt meeting someone in person. To me, the fact of the matter is that people of our generation simply aren’t used to having to email a PA or secretary, wait for two weeks for a response, to hear that “unfortunately [insert name] does not have time for you”. That’s fine. But why not cut out the middleman with a quick tweet to tell us that two weeks prior?

From my perspective, young people often assume that politicians simply don’t have the time or desire to hear from our generation. Sky’s Stand Up Be Counted campaign has capitalised on this sentiment, giving 16-25 year olds the chance to be heard.

It’s all very well reading that Ed Miliband plans to reduce tuition fees to £6,000, or that Nick Clegg wants to introduce postgraduate loans. Yet hearing it from the horse’s mouth, with the chance to ask ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘why is that important for me’, is, and was, a totally different story.

SUBC’s Ask The Leaders event in February was not, as is often the case, a chance for party leaders to spiel off a load of personal achievements completely irrelevant to the question posed. Instead it was an opportunity for 60 young people to grill them; an entirely free rein to hold them to account in accordance with our own agenda, all live on TV.

Green party leader Natalie Bennett was the first up, followed by Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and lastly Prime Minister David Cameron.

I was picked to ask Natalie Bennett to what extent she believes unpaid internships to be justifiable. From personal experiences and with many friends trying to break into competitive industries, this is something I feel strongly about.

As expected, her response was that they’re not, stating that there is a very fine line between work experience and doing the job of a paid staff member, with no financial gain.

I was, however, still left questioning the extent to which it would ever be possible to completely eradicate unpaid internships or work experience placements entirely.

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Only a small handful of those that attended Ask The Leaders, and indeed a small proportion of the voting population, will put a cross against the name of a party leader in May. Yet with the rise of what’s known as ‘presidential politics’ in the UK, a chance to question the figureheads themselves, was invaluable.

For me, it also was an event that helps discredits the myth that young people don’t care about politics. Some 60 people turned up, all passionate about issues ranging from internships to tax evasion.

SUBC is set to continue, with various contributors helping out at various counts on the night of the election. Stay tuned.

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Vote for Policies, an independent online survey, presents users with a list of policies for different areas, such as health, immigration and crime. Individuals then select the ones they most agree with and are then shown which UK political party best matches their choices.

In the last general election, Vote for Policies user preferences didn’t match up with results of the general election, suggesting that UK politics could be very different if people voted based purely on policies.

In 2010 if people had voted based on policies alone, the general election would have been a massive success for the Green Party, results from Vote for Policies suggest. The Green’s policies on crime, health, education and the environment ranking highest.

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Popular policies from other parties included Liberal Democrat policies on the economy and democracy and Labour’s approach to immigration and welfare. Conservatives, who won 307 seats in the 2010 election, came out top only in its approach to Europe.

In the six weeks running up to the 2010 election, more than 280,000 people used the Vote for Policies website. This year, following a crowdfunding campaign, the organisation has set a target of reaching five million voters.

Founder of Vote for Policies, Matt Chocqueel-Mangen, explained to Blue & Green Tomorrow that in the long-term Vote for Policies aims to encourage more voters to engage with politics and create a more “sustainable democracy”.

First published by Blue & Green Tomorrow

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