John Potts

EVERY now and then television jolts us out of our comfortable existence with pictures of other lands, where the harshness of human existence is quite appalling. But all is not what it seems. So, next time you see thousands of people swept away by floods in Bangladesh, starving in Africa, or dying of disease in India, think of it as a version of Wish You Were Here?

Because, you see, those countries have a "higher level of happiness" than Britain, according to the independent think tank, Demos. People throughout the world have been asked if they are happy, and top of the list comes Iceland (97 per cent), where I have always thought they were exceptionally lugubrious.

Second comes Sweden (96 per cent), which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Britain comes ninth (93 per cent). It is when you come to the second table - level of happiness once income is taken into account - that you find Bangladesh top. Azerbaijan second, Nigeria third, the Philippines fourth and India fifth. We are not in the top ten, nor are we in the bottom ten, unlike Italy and the United States.

Now this strikes me as yet another example of pointless and rather dotty research. I suppose it is possible to be happy on a handful of rice a day if you've never seen anything else and have not had the opportunity to aspire to more.

But anyone who has seen the appalling squalor, disease and poverty, let alone the frequent natural disasters, civil war and corruption which afflict some of these lands will know that to talk of happiness in comparison with those of us fortunate enough to live vastly more comfortable lives is absurd.

There is a serious point to this research, of course. It says that material wealth alone is not enough to guarantee happiness. No argument with that. Many of us remember simpler days when we were happy without the host of gadgets, foreign travel, exotic foods and home comforts which we take for granted today. Even wartime rationing and other privations of the 1940's do not blight my, mostly blissful, memories of boyhood.

But I would not want to go back to those days, any more than I would want to abandon my comfortable, not always stress-free, life in Britain for the joys of Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, or Nigeria. Well, would you?

THE more I read about the goings-on between Lord Cranborne and 10 Downing Street, the more I respect William Hague for sacking the scheming Tory leader in the Lords. Rarely since the days when many of the robber barons earned their peerages has there been such treachery. But nobody should be too surprised. The Tory toffs have never taken kindly to their party being run by proletarian upstarts like Hague, Major, Heath or even the grocer's daughter from Grantham.

When Tory Grandee Harold Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister, the obvious successor was Rab Butler, but the Toffs conspired over the claret to insert the ineffectual Alec (later Lord) Douglas Home. In 1940 they abhorred party rebel Churchill, despite his aristocratic lineage, and wanted Lord Halifax, who as Foreign Secretary to Chamberlain at Munich, would have been a disastrous choice.

Many hereditary peers cannot forget their historic role as king-makers. But William Hague clearly is ready and willing to do so. Good for him. They are on the way out of parliament, despite their shady horse-trading with Blair.

QUOTE of the week (from the father of Nick Faldo's new girlfriend): "He admits he's seen a lot of women, but says it is only because he has been looking for the right one." I see, a process of elimination. Well, that makes it all right, then, doesn't it?

I suppose it's like trying to get one's putting stroke right.

08/12/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.