Despite “nervousness” in Downing Street at the prospect of testing the national mood amid deep cuts and last week’s riot in Westminster, the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron’s long-stated ambition of gauging “general wellbeing”.
Countries such as France and Canada are looking at similar initiatives as governments around the world come under pressure to put less store on conventional economic measures of prosperity such as gross domestic product.
British officials say there is still hesitation in some parts of Whitehall over going ahead with the programme during such difficult economic times, but Cameron is said to want to place the eventual results at the heart of future government policy-making.
On 25 November, the government will ask the independent national statistician Jil Matheson to devise questions to add to the existing household survey by as early as next spring.
It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the government’s aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their “life goals”.
The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life.
A government source said the results could be published quarterly in the same way as the British crime survey, but the exact intervals are yet to be agreed.
The source said: “The aim is to produce a fresh set of data, some of it new, some of using existing data sets currently not very well used, to be published – at a frequency to be decided – that assesses the psychological and physical wellbeing of people around the UK. So that’s objective measurements of, for instance, how much recycling gets done around the UK, alongside more subjective measures of psychology and attitudes.”
There are currently different views within the government on whether all indicators should be shrunk into one single wellbeing indicator or simple happiness index.
The government already polls people on their life satisfaction but experts say the innovation is that the new tests will ask more subjective questions and will be put to a larger sample size. The combined wellbeing data set, it says, will have a more central role in policy-making.
A Downing Street source said: “If you want to know, should I live in Exeter rather than London? What will it do to my quality of life? You need a large enough sample size and if you have a big sample, and have more than one a year, then people can make proper analysis on what to do with their life. And next time we have a comprehensive spending review, let’s not just guess what effect various policies will have on people’s wellbeing. Let’s actually know.”
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced last year he intended to include happiness and wellbeing in France’s measurement of economic progress. Sarkozy was responding to recommendations made by two Nobel economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, who called on world leaders to move away from a purely economic concept of gross domestic product, which measures economic production, to wellbeing and sustainability. That report suggested a shift from production to greater attention to household wealth and an assessment of whether countries were growing sustainably or damaging the environment.
Canadian statisticians also poll subjective wellbeing across the country but it is not part of their official data set.
John Helliwell, a member of Canada’s National Statistics Council who has been in talks with the UK on how to measure subjective wellbeing, told the Guardian: “The UK plans are putting into action the two most important elements of the Stiglitz/Sen report: systematically measuring subjective wellbeing as part of a broader national accounting system, and using these data to inform policy choices.”
Over the last two months Downing Street has called on experts, including Sen, to advise it on the policy and keep one eye on Sarkozy’s progress. “We’ve certainly drawn on Sarkozy, we have learnt from them and hope to go a bit further,” a source said.
“There has been scepticism but David Cameron was very clear in opposition this would be what he would do and even in tough times it’s just as relevant an agenda. The purpose of GDP is ultimately to help people lead more satisfactory lives and it is as important during a downturn as during a boom.”
In 2006, just five months into his time as Conservative party leader, Cameron described the task of gauging people’s wellbeing as one of the “central political issues of our time”.
Helliwell said: “Canadian statisticians and researchers also poll subjective wellbeing across the country, but the data have thus far not attracted much policy attention.
“What is or could be dramatically different in the UK is for the government not just to undertake more widespread and thorough collection of subjective wellbeing data, but also to give them a central place in the choice and evaluation of public policies. That would be a global first.”
I honestly thought it would take the official re-introduction of slavery to make me hate this lot as much as the last lot but they are bloody quick studies.
Let’s look, for a bit, at what this means. What makes you happy? Do you enjoy being taken into a dungeon by a lady in fishnets wielding a whip? Many do. Some of them don’t enjoy fly-fishing. You see the fundamental flaw here? Any attempt to measure happiness for a nation of sixty million must first define it for everyone in exactly the same way. Is golf fun? I reckon no. My co-blogger RAB would disagree. So is RAB happier watching the Ryder Cup than I am sticking a Dr Who DVD on the telly?
Not only that but if happiness can be measured by official stats (derived from a Canadian model - dear moose bothering fuck!) then it can be manipulated and is this not fundamentally a way of hiding the fact that decreasing material wealth can now be hidden behind the smoke and mirrors of the Happiness Index. He eats dung and loves it! 24% and climbing love the taste of manure! More of us think the Toyota Pious is more fun to drive than a 911 so it must be true.
I shall tell you the unvarnished truth. I do not like golf. I would greatly prefer a chat with Karen Gillan to seeing Lee Westwood get the winning eagle. But this is personal taste. Indeed it is almost beyond that. It is loving the infinite variety of all of us. What a sad world if we were were all golfers. That is not an anti-golf statement at all. It would be the same if everyone loved Super Mario or Sid Meier’s Civilization series or everyone liked the same books or movies or pizza topping. Can you imagine how grim a world that would be? I’ll tell you a secret. RAB is not the first golfer who has been a pal. Yet I have never played a round in my life (or wanted to). Infidel! Burn him! Except he could say the same of me. Indeed we could all say the same of each other but not doing that and indeed relishing meeting people who are different not because we “tolerate the difference” but actually enjoy meeting with difference is what makes us truly human.
Yes, it is the difference that makes us what we are. And indeed what makes us truly, genuinely, happy. It is not measurable. It can’t be if it is real. The “happiness index” is essentially asking meaningless questions. So is someone happier if they have sex more? Well, call me old fashioned but doesn’t that beg the further question, “who with?”. And how as a species with a tendency to monogamy (and other tropical hardwoods) can that be quantified? I have had sex with women I’ve loved and really fancied many times. So how many Harriet Harmans is that equivalent too? Are we busting the calculus here?
I’ll just add one thing. My new Sony Alpha-55V has a staggering range of features. Yes, it does face detection and moreover it does “shutter on smile” with four levels of smile ranging from Queen Victoria almost being amused to Tony Hopkins maniacally over-acting. Now the camera algorithms can judge this but I ask you, does that really mean anything objective about the internal mental state of the subject? Ultimately the silicon works out a smile quotient. And yes it’s very clever and all that but is it real? No it doesn’t. Because there isn’t anything objective to judge. It doesn’t mean the thing isn’t real but it is not genuinely mappable onto a number. Oh, it’s cute to try but ultimately pointless. Lets say that Britain and Australia adopted exactly the same Happiness Index methodology and it pans out that Aussies are 12.7% happier than Brits. Does that mean I’d be 12.7% happier if I got on a ‘plane to Melbourne? It is meaningless. It is the demented abuse of mathematics purely because everything needs a number attached even if the methodology of calculation is utterly absurd.
They do know how to piss away our money while simultaneously pissing us off, don’t they.
I can sum up exactly how I feel in two short words and one of them is fuck…
Sounds like the Utilitarians’ happiness meter (see Bentham, JS Mill). The logical next step after the virtual panopticon in which we now exist.
Q: Are you happy?
A: I was, until you pitched up with your nosy damn survey.
Yes, scary stuff.
Have you seen that NatWest bank advertisement about how they are working to make us all happy. Is this the latest trend to be issued by the Central Thought Office?
Why can’t they see all they have to do is their job and we will be happy?
I am sure they are intelligent enough to work that out.
Is it because they can’t?
Or that is not what it’s about.
Perhaps they actually want to control, have a working stake in our innermost being?
Slave Owner: “I can’t help noticing you’ve been a bit down in the dumps lately. Is there anything I can do?”
Slave: “You can set me free.”
Slave Owner: “Well, apart from that, obviously…”
John,
Ah the GnatWest! I had way over a grand in an a/c with them and no machine would recognise my card. Why? Because they’d given me a new one (for some reason) and they ballsed-up the issuing of the new PIN. Any idea what it’s like to have four figures in the bank and having to grub down the back of the sofa to buy a Coke? Of course they are owned by RBS who are the very model of financial probity. They are better than HSBC who are just cunts of the first water.
Well, that’ll be another Proggie stitch-up then. I started reading the report, but after a couple of pages of assinine leftist twaddle my despair became absolute and I gave up.
Do we have to be happy? Most often i’m neither happy nor unhappy. That’s how i like to keep things and it’s nobody’s business but mine.
john,
If you aren’t happy they will ensure they make you so. At last as far as the boxes are ticked. Your own happiness your own business… Are you mad? It is iDave and ?Clegg who bring all joy to us! It is their bounty we shall eat after all.
So as the cameras focus in on the meeting of Golfer’s Annonymous, a member rises to his feet (thanks so much for putting me in the frame for this Nicholas!)…
Hi, my Name’s RAB and I’m a Golfer.
I had a handicap of 9, and played 3 times a week, but I havent touched a 7 iron in two years now.
Raptuous applause, some whistling….
Let me say, before I get back to Golf, and a few things about it that may suprise you all, just in case I forget later…
This creepy initiative is NOT about how good we the people feel about ourselves, it is to boost the ego of our Ruling Elite, as to how good they feel about themselves.
Subjective statistics eh? Look you cunts, you cant even get the objective economic ones right can you? So this Happiness index is just pure and utter wank for you to pat yourselves on the back with!
Ok, now the golf bit. Yes I love the game, but I hate Golf clubs and the culture of same, my father did before me.
See I didn’t have much choice about Golf. My dad and his three brothers and one sister were all obsessed with it. They were all single handicappers, including sister Nelly.
My dad was the best of them. His handicap was plus 2, which for those non golfers amongst you (that’ll be most of you then) meant that before he put down his ball on the first tee and drove off, he was deemed to have played two shots already. Yet he always came in under par.
Now dad wanted to be a professional, but my gramp wouldn’t let him. Well it was the thirties and there was no money in it like there is now. You would be flogging clubs and giving lessons, not touring the circuits and getting million dollar appearance fees. He was making vastly more money being a master butcher, but he hated it.
So when I came along the old parental vicariousness popped up as it always does, and he thought I may be the one to fulfill his thwarted dreams, so I have been playing since the age of six.
Now ok, I’m not bad at it, but I never had the dedication to golf that he did, and being the best dad in the world, unlike Tiger Woods father, he could see that I was never going to make the big time, and had ideas of my own as to where my life might take me, so we left it as a social pleasure and deep philisophical inspiration.
Deep philisophical inspiration? Golf?!!
Well yes, because he and it taught me to believe that the individual was the most important thing in this world. You stand or fall entirely on your own efforts in golf. No team players to blame like football. Why didn’t you pass to me? I could have scored. It’s all your fault! Nope, you cant pass the buck with golf.
If you are consistently hooking into the rough, always in the bunkers, then there’s something the matter with you, not everyone else. So you learn to correct your faults or you are doomed to keep repeating them arn’t you?
Golf is one of the main strands in my life that has led me to realise I am a Libertarian.
Now back to the fuckwittery in hand. This is complete gibberish and soon to be forgotten gibberish at that. The wheels are coming off the world economy very soon. The lights and computers will be going out in Britain inside five years because our fuckwit politicians of whatever stripe, who’s scientific knowledge amounts to about enough to re-wire a plug between them, believe that windmills and solar panels can do the job and more! yes and create “Green Jobs” too!
What is going to happen very soon, when we are forced by EU Green directives to shut down our coal and gas power plants and our old Nuclear ones, the replacements for which are nowhere to be seen, is going to make the 3 day weeks and the power cuts of the early seventies that I lived through as a student in Nottingham, look like a mere inconvenience. This time there is very likely to be blood on the streets. Ha and that is nothing to the trillions of debt we cant get out from under.
Yet our wonderful “Dont worry we’re in Charge, trust us! ” politicians are still, like the Tarot card the Fool, whistling happily as the walk blithy over the fuckin cliff!
“A government source said the results could be published quarterly in the same way as the British crime survey…”
I don’t know anyone who has ever been asked to fill this in = anyone know anyone?
If so, it’s likely to be about as well-respected, i.e. not at all….
A “Service User ‘A’” treatment once a week on the NHS will elevate most males’ Happiness Factor.
‘The Happiness Patrol’ is very scary and reminds me of the Monty Python sketch - ‘Happy Valley’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpI9yuv6D8o
Tony - it’s actually a Sylvester McCoy Dr Who story. I am very sad.
“Helliwell said: “Canadian statisticians and researchers also poll subjective wellbeing across the country, but the data have thus far not attracted much policy attention.”
Helliwell? Was she one of the Spice Girls? I mean, their reunion tour did not attract much attention either. Maybe after that debacle, she had to get a sex change and become a miserable statistician?
since we’re mentioning Who
Sad is happy for deep people - Sally Sparrow
Ian B. (and the others) are correct.
Mr Cameron is in the quicksand of absurdity - and he is not there alone. Most of the academics, media people, political types, and YES many business people, are there with him.
This is indeed a “ruling class” problem - but not class in the Marxist sense.
I doubt that there is anything so silly that the true “ruling class” would not try and introduce it - and try and brainwash the general population (via the media and the education system) into supporting.
The happiness survey has already been done. Its conclusion, after wedding together data on one-planet living (sounds gross. Personally, I couldn’t imagine how dire life would be if I couldn’t escape to my pad on Venus at weekends), shoe size, average penis girth, life expectancy, number of beetles found in take-away rice portions during last quarter, availability of knitted teacosies at the local Everything for a Yen, and of course, incidence of Turkish fish shop owners with joined-up eyebrows, the conclusion was that the happiest place on earth right now is Costa Rica. Just so you know. Don’t all barge out at once.
“Do you enjoy being taken into a dungeon by a lady in fishnets wielding a whip?”
I wish, I wish I might have the opportunity to find out before I die.
Oh, by the way. Stinkin’ Stiglitz (mentioned in the article). We get major grief from him over here in Ecuador. As in, our current Prez thinks he’s the cat’s Jimmy Hill beard. From the little I’ve been able to glean from wikipedia, it sounds to me like the Nobel Prize was a bit wide around the waist in his case. I wonder if Mr Marks can provide some background. Is he taken seriously anywhere outside the Bermuda triangle and the ALBA?