Some of you may not realize that everyone that completes a survey on Voicebox and leaves us their email address gets entered into a draw to win a dream pass prize.

We were trying to think of what a good prize would be, and we figured the best prize of all would be if you could choose exactly what you wanted to win, right?  We thought you lot deserved a really brilliant experience or something that would really help you out or save you money.  And you know whats best.

Ellie from Hertfordshire is our latest prize winner (see how she smiles in the picture?  That is the smile of a mildly triumphant winner).  She asked us to get her a couple of tickets to the Big Chill festival for her and her boyfriend, and we made it so.  Ellie said, “This is the best prize ever!  I’m much happier with winning a prize that suits me than something I may not particularly enjoy. The choices of prize covers almost all tastes and the chance to do something I normally wouldn’t have the money for is amazing.”

Our two previous winners Daniel and Pippa chose to receive a years cinema pass for them and a friend.  But you can ask for anything… providing its legal, in this country and you’re old enough!

There’s only one more opportunity to win a dream pass, so get on with it and complete the Community survey and you could be creating your own bespoke prize.  Remember you need to submit your email address to be entered into the draw – you’ll be asked for this after you answer a few short demographic questions at the end of the survey.  Have patience.  Its worth it!

We just thought we should explain what happens to all your messages now that The Voicebot has returned to the place that robots come from (in this case, Germany).  Even though the installation in Parliament is over we still want to know what you care about because we will still be using these messages to have conversations with MPs to try and make change happen.  We will be collecting your messages until at least early 2010.  So there is still time to let us know who or what you care about, what worries you or maybe even what the government (or anyone) has done to make you mad.  Tell them what you would like to change and hopefully we’ll start to have some influence.

All the messages that were written out by The Voicebot are not only stored in the results section on this website but also in a Flickr gallery online called The Robot Gallery.  It’s really amazing reading through these, I recommend putting it on the slide show setting.  All of these messages were written by 16-25 year olds or at the very least people who claimed to be this age.

All the messages that were sent by people outside of this age bracket (older or younger) are stored in The Digital Gallery.  They are the same dimensions of a post card but they are computer generated.  The number of bubbles represents the number of words in the message.  Pretty neat.

From now on all messages sent by 16-25 year olds will go into a new and separate digital gallery which you can find here, this way we can continue to build a picture of what 16-25s care about even now The Voicebot has gone.  Sweet.

So my time with Voicebox is over and done now, and I’m off to concentrate on my studies in Anthropology & Sociology at Goldsmiths university. Without wanting to get too emotional and before I start digressing into how much I shall miss you all, I want to thank everyone that has helped to push this project along.  The bottom line is that we couldn’t have got this far without your support and views.

Voicebox lives on and still needs people to complete the surveys and register your opinions (don’t forget its not completely selfless you can win a pretty cool prize if you do!).  The data and views which are collected through Voicebox will be used to inform a bigger piece of research which analyzes young people and their influence on this country of ours (more information on this project will come very soon).  This is going to be used to further advise MPs and policy makers on British youth.

I hope that so far you have found the project thought-provoking and for those that have taken part I hope you feel as though you’ve been heard. We set out to provide a platform for politicians, local authorities, youth workers and young people to get a little closer to one another and I certainly feel that we’ve got a lot closer to achieving this, but there’s still a long way to go and that’s why the Voicebox remains open and online.  It continues to be a place for you to register your views and for anyone interested in the kids and young adults of this country to get a gauge for their opinions on big social issues. UK Youth Parliament’s take over day in Parliament is just another small step on this road for a more efficient and inclusive democractic system.  Keep it coming.

My colleague Charlotte will be taking over the blogging on here once I’m gone, no doubt she will keep you informed of all the stuff that’s going on as and when.

I’ve enjoyed working on Voicebox and I’ve learnt a great deal along the way. I hope you have too. Nice.

I was feeling a bit uncomfortable with all those anti-immigration messages on our blog, so I thought I’d showcase some of the more uplifting, anti-racism messages which The Voicebot also received.  Phew!

The fear and ill-will the BNP breeds is so sad.  Did anyone catch Question Time last week?

I reckon it must have the most watched Question Time ever (or at least in the last year or so!).  People I know watched it out of morbid curiosity, so they could shout at the TV and reel in disbelief at the ignorance displayed by Nick Griffin. It topped the Twitter trends charts that night too – really interesting to trawl through the comments, read them here.

Cassette Boy has also done a funny mash up of his appearance here, but you can view the actual programme here.  Its an eye opener to say the least.

So, I was surprised when I saw the results of our new values theme.  From a representative sample of 16-25 year olds in the UK 41% of 16-25s believe that immigration is not good for the country versus 34% who think it is.  Not a massive statistical difference but a sign of two significant opposing views and to be honest it swung in a favour of the view I was not expecting.

These numbers were then compounded by a number of messages we got through to The Voicebot over the past couple of months, a selection of which I’ll share with you here.

Is this young people regurgitating the views their parents have impressed upon them?  Or the stuff they’ve read in the tabloids?  Is it an indication of a lacking education system?  Or is this genuinely a fresh set of eyes surveying their country and making their own educated conclusions on what is and is not working about our society and economy?

I have to admit I was relieved to see an equal number of messages coming through to The Voicebot with a ’stop the BNP’ stance, otherwise I would have feared we’d traveled back in time.  What’s interesting is the presence of these two equally strong views coming through from a young generation at a time when I really thought we would have moved on.  Is it an indication that perhaps as a country we haven’t struck quite the right balance with immigration yet or simply that ignorance lives on.  It’s easy to look for someone, something… some people to blame if things aren’t going so well in the economy.  So during this period of recession as employment levels are low, perhaps people are lazily and somewhat shortsightedly pointing the finger at the non-British citizens living in this country.  If there’s not enough to go around amongst our nationals perhaps we should defend our assets more?

Its pretty frightening watching the knock-on effects and social implications of the recession unfolding – the BNP are using it as an opportunity to drum up more followers and Nick Griffin has even made it onto BBC’s Question Time.  Who would have dreamed this would have been possible?

The other day one of the volunteers who are looking after The Voicebot during its stay in Parliament met a guy who was in the building on official business, someone who has over 34 years experience as a civil engineer.  They immediately struck some common ground as our volunteer is a graduate with a degree in civil engineering.  Moving swiftly on from the topic of Voicebot the guy from the Olympics went on to ask (interrogate) our volunteer on what he’s doing at the moment (working in a call centre) and why he isn’t doing a civil engineering job.

When our volunteer explained that since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the start of the recession there have been very few jobs for inexperienced civil engineers, the guy suggested he move to another country to find work.  Somewhere like Abu Dhabi.  Flummoxed by this guys complete lack of comprehension of what its like to be a student with a back log of debt and a call-centre wage, our volunteer said nothing.  The parting comment from the man was, ’stop thinking small’.

In some circumstances this conversation would be perceived as a motivational pep talk from someone with more than three decades of industry experience, but on this occasion it seemed to be a pertinent demonstration of the glaring generation divide.  People who graduated from university in 1975 have very little grasp of the struggle for students graduating today.

I can appreciate that there’s no point in giving up or feeling sorry for yourself because times are hard, but I don’t think people should underestimate how difficult it can be for graduates entering the work force this year or next.

I  recently read a [somewhat crazed] headline expressing a stoic disbelief that over half of young voters had yet to decide whom they were voting for in the up and coming general election. Fair enough, I said to myself, but it was written in the same disbelieving tone as a journalist would report a miraculous turn about in the state of Gordon Brown’s eyesight whilst simultaneously gaining a crowd of well respected plaudits. Ridiculous. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for when the general election rolls it’s unwieldy self to my doorstep, I’m not sure if anyone does.

With questions over who this demograph shall vote for, and, indeed, whether they will vote at all, this indecision has political broadcasters all in a kerfuffle – the hugeness of the situation, they seem to feel, is beyond young people’s simple capacity of political understandings. Are we expected to know who we are going to vote for now? Are we supposed to be decided in our voting habits? Again, I look at our politics to endear itself to me and, again, I see little respite from the constant criticism directed at the shapely silhouette of British youth.

With politics currently a buzz word being banded about with an unnerving regularity these days, I’ve began questioning whether Politics has suddenly become ‘cool’. Following on from the launch of the Voicebot in Parliament, people have taken the time to take me to one side and discuss a series of political issues with me – something I would have thought absurd and quite franly laughable only a few months ago. After having a heavy discussion around whether Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize so early on into his presidency, I found myself looking at politics as a genuine subject of interest amongst my wider group of friends and not, as I have often feared, as one of those weird things that they have to put up with in order to let me hang around with them. It has developed into some sort of intellectual conversation starter, replacing football, women and other people’s misfortunes as a legitimate way to begin a chat with a bunch of mates. At the previous ritual post-Uni pub crawl I began a group conversation with ‘who feels sorry for Gordon Brown?’, which went on to digress into a long drunken debate over who was better looking out of a young Tony Blair and the cocky upstart in the form of David Cameron. Someone also admitted to fancying Boris Johnson… And they say we’re apathetic. Pah!

Yesterday v, the National Young Volunteers Service hosted a reception in Houses of Parliament to launch The Voicebot and explain to people what we’re trying to achieve during our time in the building.  Aside from a number of young volunteers and some tasty sandwiches, a number of MPs turned up for the event, including Angela Smith, Minister of State (Third Sector), Tom Levitt, chair of the Community Development Foundation and Tim Loughton the Shadow Minister for Children.

We had lots of positive feedback from them and inspirational words from Tim Loughton (who sponsored The Voicebot exhibition and made it all possible) who said that MPs who don’t pay attention to the messages sent in do so at their peril.  Right on.

This is where I had my lunch yesterday.  As far as views go, this one ain’t bad.

I also discovered that the Houses of Parliament cafe has a fine selection of cakes, including this baby (below), a toffee apple muffin.  I chomped my way through this and took in my surroundings.  It’s good to be in Parliament.