Crisis UK — Homelessness Charity Resources and Reports

@crisis_uk — illustration by Michael & Josh

I have been a volunteer with Crisis UK in Birmingham since February 2017. I am very impressed with their research and campaigning to end homelessness in the UK. They have a fantastic learning programme to help ‘members’ (our term for homeless individuals) get off the street, out of hostels, B&B’s, sofa surfing, stop sleeping in cars and other places and back into employment and a decent house to live in.

I am creating this blog post with a series of links to reports and resources to assist anyone to understand homelessness better. This way I can just share this link and you can learn more by downloading the reports or listen to the radio programmes, watch the videos etc.

I hope the resources will prove useful for you and your friends and family to better understand the plight of the homeless and maybe you can share a few minutes to create awareness in your network and community, donate a few pennies, spend a few hours per month donating your time for the many charities that exist across the UK. I appreciate your interest and curiosity to learn more. I will continue to add further resources as I become aware of them, so make sure to bookmark this page.

1. 10 year plan to end homelessness in the UK executive summary
2. 10 year plan to end homelessness full report
3. Rough sleepers’ experiences of violence and abuse on the streets of England and Wales
4. An examination of the scale and impact of enforcement interventions on street homeless people in England and Wales
5. The creation and use of better evidence for a world without homelessness — Centre for Homelessness Impact

[embed]https://youtu.be/y5quh1KsCZA[/embed][embed]https://youtu.be/jMy655IncZw[/embed][embed]https://youtu.be/efOpF_SnBMg[/embed][embed]https://youtu.be/zEio-TcQQ_M[/embed][embed]https://twitter.com/i/moments/963088845066637313[/embed]

Michael de Groot

@geraintthomas vs. @geraintthomas86

Tour de France Geraint Thomas — #weeklycartoon — Michael&Josh

A case of mistaken @Twitter identity. Geraint Thomas (Lecturer in Visual Effects at University of South Wales), became overnight famous when @GeraintThomas86 won the Tour de France 2018. He started a #hashtag campaign #imnotacyclist and the whole story inspired our latest cartoon.

Michael de Groot

Marketing is a failing practice?

Hugh MacLeod

Whenever I hear the word ‘marketing’, I hear ‘advertising’. And we all know that advertising sucks. Well it does in my world, nobody truly love the adverts, they are an interruption to your browsing or watching experience and possibly 99% of them are not interesting, they are brainwashing of the highest order.

Ever found yourself buying something you then realise you didn’t actually need after all? We’re exposed to maybe 5000 ads every single day, whether it be on TV, Radio, Web, Podcasts, Billboards, Posters, Bags, Product Placement and many many other methods that we may not even realise are there. They all effect our subconscious mind!

Unfortunately advertising works, because otherwise they would have stopped it a long time ago. Further bad news for the marketers is that the discerning browser and watcher is now switching off from the constant bombardment of ads and switching to places where there are no adverts, Netflix may spring to mind. We’d rather pay for a service we can enjoy instead of getting a free service we don’t enjoy.

In our house if we’re interested in watching a show on TV channel that has adverts, we record it. When we watch it back, our remote allows us to hit the speed play button three times and it skips the 3 minute ads interlude. I can tell you we were overjoyed when we found that button!

So why do marketers continue with the ads instead of sharing stories. The temptation is there I know, everyone is doing it so you have to join the bandwagon for fear of missing out.

Truth is, stories work even better, just look at the movies. They are all stories and we love them. When they write the script they don’t think, where can I fit in an advert or product placement just so the viewer can get distracted.

You can still feature your product or service in your story, but a word of warning, don’t be tempted to explain every single detail, your story is there to make someone curious. Curiosity is so much more effective then telling the viewer or reader everything that you want them to know. They won’t remember anyway, just share a story that is relatable and will make them think a bit further. Leave it up to their own imagination, let them feel and imagine like they are featuring in your story.

Happy storytelling!

Michael de Groot

Donald Trump receives gift from Putin

Trump receives football — #weeklycartoon — Michael&Josh

#DonaldTrump and #Putin finally met to celebrate their master plan. Putin had a gift for Donald. It was a #WorldCup football. It made me wonder what was in it and inspired our latest cartoon. Well after all he had been asking where the server was.

[embed]https://youtu.be/RbkKx8TN2v8[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Do you call yourself a storyteller?

Hugh MacLeod

Yeah, me too, I pretend to be one also.

Allegedly 550k marketers on LinkedIn list ‘storytelling’ in their profiles. And yet creating content, case studies, adverts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest does not qualify you or me as a ‘storyteller’.

I’ve worked with advertising/marketing agencies and they still ask me to create animations that are explainer videos instead of stories. Bizarre and they’re supposed to be the ones that are good at storytelling.

It’s not just about the story either, it’s about how you dress it up. I am a follower of minimalism and one of The Minimalists, Joshua Fields-Millburn did a webinar on writing a few months ago (June 2018) and he explained it the best way I have ever heard it.

The first sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the second sentence, the second sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the third sentence, the third sentence you write is to make the reader want to read the fourth sentence…

You get the idea, every sentence has to be your best sentence in order to keep someone hooked. So when you’re writing a story script it would be a great suggestion to keep that in mind.

Put some characters into the story, real names, real personalities with a life and a mission. Make it relatable to the viewer, know your audience, you have to know your audience, better than they know themselves. If you don’t yet know enough about them then go and find out, lots of them are very happy to talk about themselves.

Happy storytelling!

Michael de Groot

Are business awards fake news?

Hugh MacLeod

Probably…

This question comes up regularly for me and when I received the following message twice in two different social media inboxes, I am convinced they probably are.

Hi. I feel honoured and humble that I have been nominated for ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’. The winner is selected by the public and the public vote is now open until 20th July. I would be grateful if you could please vote for me.

Please click the link and it will take you to the voting page then select, ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’ and vote for me. Please ask your friends, family and contacts to vote for me too. Thank you for your support.

I was especially astounded with the last sentence.

Ask friends, family and contacts!

What?

Not only are you asking me to vote for you, when I have totally no idea if you are in fact ‘The most inspirational person of the year’ and then you ask me to get my friends, family and contacts to vote for you too?

You really can not be serious, can you?

Totally serious, this is how business awards get awarded. Get yourself nominated and then go after your connections and beg them to vote for you.

I will never believe another business award again. In fact I’ve never believed them or taken part for this very reason. In fact I know of organisations that will even ask you to fill out a questionnaire to nominate yourself. Nominate yourself and then collect votes.

So I have concluded that business awards fulfil two needs, number one, the organising event or organisation needs more publicity for themselves and number two the actual individual needs more publicity for themselves. Basically they both need more recognition and appreciation from the public. In a word they need more love.

By getting complete strangers to vote for you, it actually is no different from wishing that people clap, like, comment or heart your content.

As humans we will never self-actualise on the basis that we’re always looking for something outside of ourselves.

My wish for the awards business is to start awarding teams, not individuals, not for the good they do in society or our communities but for the good they do for themselves. Teams that have successfully reinvented themselves despite the hardships they’ve had to endure in years gone by. Real hardships not some made up award category like ‘The most inspirational person of the year!’.

Just be ‘The most inspirational person of the year to yourself’ and avoid needing other people’s endorsement to say so.

Happy voting!

Michael de Groot

Does the sun shine on your web?

Hugh MacLeod

I’m all for creating a positive vibe on the web but I’m astounded by the amount of good news messages that are littering the place. I am not suggesting for a moment that they are fake, but once we’ve witnessed when our contacts are sharing countless selfies, group colleague pics at conferences and award ceremonies, you kinda get the idea.

They just become more content we automatically zone out from.

We must become better all round storytellers instead of content junkies and with junkies I mean addicted to the need to post content. Less is more and so what if people are not active when you’re posting, post when you think of it and ditch the scheduler. Some of you may even be spending good money on those schedulers as I did too. Yes I’m totally guilty!

Now I’m more mindful about what I’m posting, more thoughtful about adding to my overall story, creating a narrative, sharing maybe small insights to my overall mindset and thought process, allowing my connections to get a better insight as to who I am.

But that’s just me, you must do what all the content sheep are doing, read all the books and download all the free content as to how the so-called gurus are doing it.

I totally know that my way is not necessarily the right way, it just suits me to be more authentic, honest and deliberate or on purpose.

Happy scheduling!

Michael de Groot

Every seen a hungry browser?

Hugh MacLeod

Probably not. More like an hangry (combination of angry and hungry) browser. Not hungry for your marketing content though, nobody cares about you. Harsh? But true…

Every marketer is out to put their stamp on the internet. To imagine this, let’s imagine a non-digital world, no internet, no computers, just a stamp, an ink block and a stack of paper.

And all she (he) does is go through that stack of paper at lightening speed and put their stamp on it, stick them in envelopes and send it to prospects. And the prospect would just put them in the bin.

My guess is that when the same marketers do this on the internet, they are just stamping everywhere they can, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube BeBee, WooWoo, Thingymedo etc.

Yes I was guilty, did it work? Maybe a little on Instagram, but I’ve now stopped all Facebook lookalike platforms, thanks to me cutting down and the excuse I’m using in relation to the Cambridge Analytica mistrust scandal.

Happy stamping!

Michael de Groot

They recognised me!

Hugh MacLeod

Actually they didn’t, but I heard someone say this. They were so surprised that they were stopped on the street when recognised by a complete stranger (stalker).

Is that what we’re looking for?

Plastering our happy face all over the web, so someone will walk up to us and say; ‘Hey, aren’t you the girl/guy who talks rubbish on YouTube?’

Surely not? Surely yes!

Most of us on Social would love to achieve that recognition at some level. It’s an endorsement of all the hard work you’ve been putting in day in and day out, just so that a random person somewhere points at you (I’d be quite scared actually) and shouts out to you that they actually know you. And of course they have no idea who you are, all they’ve seen is an alter ego of you on the web, very likely talking complete non-sense.

Happy spotting!

Michael de Groot

Content marketing, really?

Hugh MacLeod

A few years ago, I would have been super impressed with this top 10 list and would be looking for ways to be implementing it asap, in fact some of it I did do, today, I just roll around laughing my head off.

I am visualising all the content marketing experts, taking this list to the head of marketing, who has to take it to the board and ask for big spends to deliver this list.

She will be asked what will she actually deliver when she implements this list and actually, she has no idea.

‘It’s difficult to measure’
‘It works very impressively for (drop a brand name here)’
‘We need to do this to compete’
‘If we don’t we’re going to miss out’
‘Everyone, literally everyone seems to be doing it’
‘Well the top brass in Google say they have evidence’
‘The sales team say they need us to do this too’
‘Customers nowadays expect it’

And here we go again, spending millions of dollars, standing still.

Happy spending!

Michael de Groot

Constant and never ending content

Hugh MacLeod

Hundreds of thousands of us are now creating content, whether it’s cat pictures, birthday pics, holidays and weddings or seriously hard hitting journalism, blogging, clickbait articles or wishing to come across as a serious leading thought leader

It’s never ending…

Does it even matter?

Nope it doesn’t, we’re all living busy lives, I’m sure you agree and I love the falling tree analogy. Very few of us have ever witnessed a tree spontaneously falling over in the forest and of course they definitely do.

The same is true of all the content that’s being posted. It is very likely that this short post won’t be seen by anyone at all, never sees the day of light, it just fell over in the forest and nobody was there to witness it.

Happy contenting?

Michael de Groot

https://styin.me/2lWtY9B — by Statista Inc.

Melania Trump and Jacket

Melania Trump — Michael & Josh — #weeklycartoon

First lady Melania Trump wore a jacket that caused a stir on Social Media as she boarded a plane to Texas on June 21 for a Mexican border visit. She’s starting a new range of jackets and we’ve had an early alert about the next strap line for it. Well you would do the same if you felt like she does, being married to the most powerful man in the world?

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp7pYNQtias[/embed]

Michael de Groot

The Content Dream

Hugh MacLeod

Those of us that are digitally active, dream of the day when our content goes viral. But what does viral actually mean? Does it mean our desire for fame, fortune and celebrity status or does it mean getting noticed by your prospects and achieving more sales for your business?

The dream could also be about how can you make people’s lives better by sharing your content, so it potentially could make a difference in their lives?

We are all the same, we have a need to be loved and that need shows up in many places. It could be that you desire love from your parents, your spouse, your kids or your friends and colleagues and then in the past 9 years we’ve moved that desire to the digital world.

Now we desire love from total strangers, in some way wishing to reach celebrity status in our own world, believing it will makes us happy. Have you witnessed what happens on social media with famous people? They get trolled, abused, harassed by those complete strangers that we wish to be loved by.

There is another word for this, it’s called ‘suffering’.

Happy suffering!

Michael de Groot

Trump admires his balloon

Trump Balloon — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh

The huge baby Trump protest balloon, allowed by London’s mayor, SadiqKhan, will float above Westminster during Donald Trump’s visit during week ending 13th July and yes indeed that is a Friday!

At the time of writing they may have had the OK by the mayor, but air traffic control hadn’t give the thumbs up as yet.

The Brits love a polite protest, which after all it is.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7nPkbSGQVU[/embed]

Michael de Groot

How distracted are you really?

Hugh MacLeod

We give ourselves too much credit for being focussed. It takes about 24 minutes to refocus on the taks in hamd after an interruption. (23 minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact) according to Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine. (23 Jul 2015).

Most of us have the attention span of a fly (if there’s even such a thing) and the concentration of a goldfish. I’m not trying to be rude to the fly and the goldfish, I’m merely trying to remind ourselves that we are so easily distracted these days that we are losing the art of being mindful.

So now you know why ‘Mindfulness’ is getting so much traction these days, most of us are actually realising that we need to re-program our brains to be more mindful, because we’ve lost the art of it.

I went to the Opticians, recently for my 2-yearly eyetest. Good news by the way, my left eye has improved eyesight. Yes it does happen, my wife and eye set an intention years ago that our eyesights would improve and they are actually improving year on year. True story.

Anyway, I was asked to sit in the waiting room and there wasn’t anyone there. Few magazines and newspapers on a table, out of date of course and posters on the wall, advertising stuff and a few people concentrating on their work. I decided to watch this one person who was fixing a pair of eyeglasses working with full concentration on fixing it. It was a marvel to watch her human mind trying to organise parts, screwdrivers and hand movements to remove screws from the eyeglasses, replacing them and getting the lenses back in. So interesting to watch.

Had I sat down and got my phone out, I would have missed all that.

Then a young couple walked in and sat down on the chairs beside me. First thing the male did was get out his phone and started looking at it. He needed the distraction of his phone to allow him to pass time I guess.

So sad to witness.

Whilst driving to the Opticians I ended up in stationary traffic. There was along quque and I noticed a woman behind me in her car with her head down. Ever so often she would look up in a panic, to make sure she didn’t miss the traffic moving on. She did this at least 6 times. It was so obvious that she was looking at her phone and probably texting on it.

Happy mobile watching!

Michael de Groot

Gareth Southgate & Harry Kane vs Sweden

Harry Kane vs Swedish Meatballs — #weeklycartoon Michael & Josh

This weekend is THE most important match in English football history. I heard the other day that the manager Gareth Southgate and his team have been researching for months now the permutations of the different nations they might have been facing in the worldcup. They have gone into great detail to understand every aspect of each nation’s strategy. It inspired our latest cartoon. Good luck England!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6fHKgpKCRE[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Are you lonely?

Hugh MacLeod

Because filling ourselves up with followers makes us feel less lonely, right?

When Social Media first lifted it’s ugly head (we didn’t think so at the time) we followed as many folks as we could on Twitter, because it was almost a dead-cert that they would follow you back and they did, stupidly!

There was an unspoken etiquette. I follow you and you follow me back, we didn’t have to ask for it, most of us just did it. Fast forward to 2018 and whenever we now follow someone on Twitter, we definitely do not get a follow back.

Then when we realised it was all going pear shaped, we didn’t follow people back and they didn’t follow us back, our follower and following tally became out of sync. Twitter limited our ability to follow, I think the number was more than 2000 twits, it then blocked us from following anymore until we ourselves got some followers back. To get the whole thing into balance.

The etiquette no longer exists, everyone is out for themselves and we want our stuff to be seen, never mind about the people we follow, we’re not even bothering to look at them.

The sad state of my Twitter

It doesn’t matter the other way around. You can have hundreds of thousands of followers and you don’t have to follow any of them back. Roll on the celebrity in that case.

Twitter has become the home of celebrities who need social proof that they are loved and even compare the amount of followers they have with each other, like a real-time popularity contest. I’ve even heard Simon Cowell talk about this with his judging team on Britain’s Got Talent.

Happy tweeting!

Michael de Groot

Who’s actually looking at you?

Hugh MacLeod

We’ve become obsessed with self. Our self wants to be loved by complete strangers and social media has made us believe that it’s the only route to achieve that love from strangers.

Wrong!

As everyone is doing exactly the same thing as us, it means the love that we believe we receive via likes, comments, hearts, shares or whatever the new trendy term is that’s being invented by new platforms. We have to conclude that none of it is actually real.

It’s fake!

When we respond to people on social media when people are desperate for our attention, the dopamine hit doesn’t last very long at all. It may not even occur when our last post doesn’t achieve the same amount of interaction as the previous one. We could even conclude that if it hasn’t performed as well, we wonder what’s wrong with us and a small depression hit might actually occur instead of a dopamine hit.

Happy hearting!

Michael de Groot

Wasting your time?

Hugh MacLeod

We’ve all decided to do it, “content, content, content” is the biggest buzzword on the Internet. And we’re all totally petrified for missing out on this trend.

But what if this isn’t the answer, if we know that the average attention span is only 20 seconds, why do we continue publishing so much content, there’s just no proof that it even works.

Everyone’s busy creating content in order to feel that they are becoming a thought leader and that will lead ultimately to customers interested in your products and services, which leads to money and an interesting lifestyle, which potentially will lead to happiness.

And that is the ultimate goal, ‘happiness’.

Happy writing!

Michael de Groot

Why Content?

Hugh MacLeod

I heard a statistic the other day, every day 50,000 new blogs are started. In a working year that amounts to around 13 million blogs. The majority of those blogs are vanity projects, they are unlikely to be seen by anyone or rather be found by anyone.

Unless you are going to spend advertising dollars or pounds to get your blog seen it will probably become your little writing platform and that’s all.

Of course big corporates do spend millions promoting their blog or news channel, they believe that their customers or followers want to read their stuff.

Think about the amount of digital words you read in a day. I’m not talking about the Facebook posts, but you may wish to include that too. Yes, me too, I have no idea but if I were to make a guess it’s likely to be a maximum of 1000 words. That would be the very maximum. And yes I would include in to that any social media, although I’m no longer active on Facebook, so it excludes that, but I am including the Apple news app, which I scan very quickly.

Our attention span is suggested as being only between 8 and 59 seconds. I never understand why they give this spread, are we then supposed to calculate for ourselves the medium?

My personal guess is that it’s realistically around just 20 seconds and that’s exactly why I started creating a weekly cartoon, which is exactly 20 seconds.

Sure I’m still writing, but I have shortened my blogs considerably and yes for me I do believe they are my vanity project. I never wanted to blog, I didn’t consider myself as a writer and as English is not my first language I worried whether I would ever be able to pull it off. I’m pleased to say I have managed to train myself to write regularly now.

I did stop writing on my own blog and instead moved here to Medium as even though I don’t get that much engagement, at least the chances of being seen are greater.

Happy creating!

Michael de Groot