The one thing that’s guaranteed to make us miserable is this daft Happiness Index!

July 27, 2012 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie

By
Max Hastings

PUBLISHED:

20:00 EST, 25 July 2012

|

UPDATED:

03:55 EST, 26 July 2012

Official data yesterday ‘revealed’ that we British, having been reasonably happy in our teens, start becoming less so in our 20s, and do not start being contented again for another 40 years.

Let us put aside for a moment the question of whether this is true. Let us simply ask what on earth, this side of hell, ‘official data’ is doing, spending our money making studies of who is happy and who is not.

The answer is that, in the midst of a recession, public spending cuts, with Europe’s banks teetering on a cliff-edge and most people having to make every penny count, David Cameron is running a Measuring National Wellbeing programme.

Happiness Index: After their teens, Brits are not contented again until retirement, new official data shows

At a cost of £2 million a year, this mandates the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to quantify our happiness.

Some 165,000 people are regularly quizzed. The latest survey has caused the ONS to announce that we rate our average personal contentment at 7.4 out of a possible 10.

This begs the question: how does one achieve a perfect score?

By sleeping with Angelina Jolie or George Clooney? Winning the Lottery? Being allowed to impale on a bed of red-hot nails George Osborne, Theresa May, Jeremy Clarkson or the man who planted the 30ft high leylandii hedge next door? By never again having to attend a school carol concert?
It is all drivel, of course.

I am one of those who clings, as to a sapling in a typhoon, to a faint hope that our Prime Minister may turn out to be a more substantial fellow than he customarily seems.

But anybody who can waste taxpayers’ cash on an attempt to measure happiness in official statistics seems fit only for secure accommodation or a career in public relations.

David Cameron, pictured with his wife Samantha on Harlyn Bay beach near Padstow in Cornwall, is running a Measuring National Wellbeing programme

Don’t worry, be happy: David Cameron, pictured with his wife Samantha on Harlyn Bay beach near Padstow in Cornwall, is running a Measuring National Wellbeing programme

Nobody has to survey 165,000 people to learn a little about happiness — you need only to have read some good novels or to have covered a few laps in the stadium of experience.

I often tell my children that almost everybody can expect to enjoy a good part of their lives, but not every phase from the cradle to the grave. The important thing is to get the worst bit over quick.

For my part I loathed school. Every day was misery, and the nearest I got to being happy was when not under immediate sentence of chastisement.

The result was that, once I left, almost every day was sunshine without those smelly old beaks and loathsome monitors.

Most of my acquaintances who achieved precocious success and smugness in school-days have since passed lifetimes in failure and obscurity.

Perhaps that is another aspect of happiness: the less Christian of us are warmed by watching old foes roasting over slow fires or being obliged to expose their bald pates at old boys’ reunions.

Pensioner

Teen

Good results: Pensioners and teenagers are the
happiest in Britain, according to results of a Government survey
released today, which is costing £2 million

The official happiness survey claims most people enjoy life when they are young. I am doubtful about that.

Sure, there are some adolescent studs
and sports stars who prosper mightily; but for most of us youth is a
time of doubt, disappointment, insecurity.

The survey found most people are happy as children (posed by models)

We
have little influence over our own destinies, are chronically short of
cash and worry desperately whether we’re going to achieve anything in
life.

Things get better
only we have worthwhile work and learn how to live in relationships;
the second bit takes some of us about six decades, but is hugely
rewarding if we get there.

My
daughter said to me the other day, with mild surprise, that she was
dismayed how much time she spends worrying about money. I said: meet
real life, my darling. I stopped trembling with terror about my finances
only ten minutes ago, and expect to start trembling again as soon as I
need expensive healthcare.

There
are many objections to the Government’s happiness index, but foremost
is that it presupposes politicians might be able to do anything to
improve matters, even if we told their wretched pollsters that we plan
to leap off a cliff.

One of the greatest gifts with which
one can be born — and sadly cannot be acquired — is a talent for being
happy, such as many even of the richest and most gifted people lack.

My
mother, an uncommonly cultured woman, as well as what P.G. Wodehouse
would have called ‘a 20-minute egg’, on her deathbed adapted a quote
from Chekhov, saying to my sister: ‘You are all in black. Are you in
mourning for your life?’

My sister is in reality an
exceptionally jolly girl. It was my mother who never learned how to be
happy, for which I always pitied her. She never discovered the priceless
art of seeing the glass half-full rather than about to be knocked over.
No amount of worldly comfort or success could compensate her for that.

Lots of celebrities are chronically gloomy folk who spend their leisure hours with shrinks.

Play-write George Bernard Shaw once wrote: 'A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.'

Play-write George Bernard Shaw once wrote: ‘A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.’

I
said to one of them recently that he had surely reached a point where
he can admit he is a success. He turned to me a face of infinite gloom
and said of his melancholy: ‘You can’t understand it, unless you have
been there.’

Many people with colossal bank balances are sad enough to make you want to join them in tears. Part of the problem is often their trophy wives, women with fingernails you could use as crampons for climbing London’s Shard skyscraper.

Once again: who needs an official survey to tell them that choosing the right partner, rich or poor, does far more for happiness than winning TV’s Britain’s Got Talent? We need to be a little unhappy sometimes, in order to recognise the good times when they return.

George Bernard Shaw wrote: ‘A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.’

When fishing, I get more of a kick from catching a salmon after hours or even days of barren failure than from casting over some Alaskan or Russian river where one can expect a monster every ten minutes.

Most of us have complicated relationships with money and contentment.

Samuel Johnson wrote: ‘Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.’

Dr Johnson is one of my favourite sages, but this statement seems only a half-truth. Being poor, as he often was, is hellish. But he should have added that our happiness is likely to be increased not by the acquisition of huge wealth — but merely by having enough.

I remember vividly, as many of us do, 40 years ago struggling to meet final demands and even having the odd cheque bounce.

The result is that I nowadays get a touch of satisfaction merely from being unfrightened of bills.

The man behind David Cameron’s silly Measuring National Wellbeing project said yesterday: ‘Understanding people’s view of wellbeing has potential uses in the policy-making process and to aid other decision-making.’

It is a sign of the times that we are governed by politicians who can register human emotions only if these are presented to them by focus groups.

Most of what matters is about love, Prime Minister, and no government can give us that.

Measuring happiness: The survey found that the average level of contentment for British people is just 7.4 out of 10

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

Newest
Oldest
Best rated
Worst rated

As someone who has suffered from depression I am glad the emphasis is shifting from just money.

- Dave, UK, 26/7/2012 12:31

So Cameron is not the statesman you announced in the immediate aftermath of his appointment?

- slessor, ljubljana, 26/7/2012 08:06

and how much public money was wasted on this pointless ativity. Make me happy, take the cost from all MPs pay packet and then see if they agree that it is useful data.

- Gavin, London, UK, 26/7/2012 07:44

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.