As you vote in the General Election today you will probably have the campaign words ringing in your ears. Words like "change", a "future fair for all" and "a fairer Britain" may be in your head - after all, they are the phrases that have been trotted out time and time and time again over the past four weeks.

Tomorrow, though, after the elation of the winners, the rhetoric will change and the only words that will land on our eardrums will be "cuts", "difficulties" and "mess". Whoever wins - even if we get a hung parliament - the issue will quickly turn from the positive emotions of campaigning to the immense task of how any Government handles a country with over £1trillion of debt.

Nick Clegg is already a hero, no doubt, to his colleagues in the Liberal Democrats. After all, he has - almost single-handedly it seems - taken them from also-rans to the party with the highest proportion of public support. Of course, to the Tories and the Labour Party he is a villain; he has, as far as they are concerned, mucked everything up. Goodness me, he's interfered in their good, old-fashioned knock-abouts; instead of it being a straight fight between two parties, now there are three of them.

Many people actually blame Gordon Brown; after all he agreed to having the Liberal Democrats take part in the TV debate. He could have put his foot down and said, no. it's just me and my mate Dave. But he didn't - and now look at the mess he has created for the Labour Party, struggling along at the bottom of the polls.

We all want to live longer; none of us really wants to pop off. After all, there's work to be done, places to see, people to visit and so on. Death is such an inconvenience.

So, it's not unusual to find advice on how to live a longer life. There are pills, potions, practices we can all use that supposedly make us live longer. Take this vitamin, do that kind of exercise, join this religion - all have been equated with a longer life.

But whenever scientists investigate ageing and death there is often the feeling that it is the happiest people who seem to live longer. Ask any cancer specialist "who survives the disease and who doesn't?" The answer is always the same - "the people with the most positive and cheerful outlook".

Now, new research confirms what many doctors have thought for years, Being happy does make you live longer.

British Airways is in trouble, yet again. The company has been plagued by difficulty, yet according to the company it always bounces back. That rather depends upon what you mean by bounceback. It has lost considerable market share over the past 20 years, it has gone from massive profits to huge losses and it has gone from the "World's Favourite Airline" to the company that gets more negative press coverage than any other. If that's bouncing back, I must be on another planet.

The company appears confident that it will win the dispute with its cabin crews. Willie Walsh continues to portray an up-beat image. Meanwhile, the media is full of stories about the alleged intimidation from management, the intransigence of the board and the authoritarian regime that exists within the company.

Pundits are predicting today that 25,000 local council jobs are likely to be lost, thanks to the state of Government finances. So, the Cabinet has wheeled out its "big guns" to take on this report, produced by a BBC survey.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, Communities Secretary John Denham gave what must go down as one of the worst interviews ever...though I suspect you know of others....! He was asked by the presenter (and economist with excellent connections), Evan Davies, what figures should local councils be thinking of when they produce their financial plans for 2011.