UK falls to lowest ever position in ranking of world’s happiest countries

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/world-happiness-report-uk-finland-league-table-b1217781.html

by tylerthe-theatre

40 comments

  1. Is anyone surprised? Even the messaging we get is ‘things can only get shitter’. Serious and radical changes are needed to make things better but not a single party seems to have any interest in anything other than manged decline.

  2. Where are the promised sunlit uplands? Bojo? JRM? Raab? Anyone?

  3. Not surprising from a country that gets a Tory government even when the Tories are voted out

  4. meh happiness is overrated. And also how would you know what happiness even is if you haven’t dealt with misery?

  5. Are they surprised when no political party actually/accurately represents their people ? Are they really surprised that when they punish the disabled and promise jobs – that aren’t there for those that are unskilled. It’s a fucking joke and it needs to change

  6. Is anyone surprised when the government have been out to purposely make our life considerably worse for the last 20 years? 

  7. I’ve been driving for over a decade, and never experienced  much grief on the roads at all. I’m an experienced, considerate and safe driver (you’ll have to take my word for it) – but I’ve noticed so much road rage in recent weeks. Loads more beeping and gesticulation (either at myself or others). Drivers looking for an excuse to vent (accelerating hard towards someone pulling out so they can slam on the breaks, lean on the horn and stick up a finger). 

    People’s unhappiness seems very apparent in their behaviour on the roads 

  8. Something I really wish I could do a study on is selfishness and happiness.

    My general hypothesis is that as individual selfishness increases, overall happiness decreases.

  9. Something for us to moan about. People will get excited about that! Wait…

  10. The past 12/18 months have been some of the happiest of my life personally. I think it is important to focus on your own situation and what you can control, and stop stressing about the bigger picture.

  11. A constant drip feed of negative headlines im sure gives people a higher sense of things are shitter than they’re

  12. Shortage of meds and mental health consultations on the NHS can explain that

  13. I think the weather is a huge contributor to this. I feel trapped inside when it’s bad, like last summer. It’s depressing.

    I like the idea of living in Scotland, but can’t because the weather is too bad

  14. Surely it does so every February and then it picks up again in august

  15. In our darkest days we get some bangin music in this country, gotta stay positive in some sense

  16. Well the weather is shite, and quite frankly there’s a culture of expressing negative opinions about the country in a way that doesn’t exist in other nations.

    But the main problem is that house price increases have out-sped wage growth for too many years now. In London especially, you practically have to be in a relationship to afford property now.

  17. I’m just going to vote green, maybe something will change idk but at least they care a lot more about the welfare of the people and especially the welfare of the environment

  18. is anyone suprised, 24 hr news, a centralised economy that doesn’t benefit huge parts of the country, austerity, labour basically doing austerity lite, cost of living crisis, food prices going up, zero investment, lack of housing, shit weather, lack of jobs, class system, wealth inequality, war in ukraine, brexit, feeling alone in a world where we’re being left out of alliances and groups and just generally the whole country feels like it’s continuing to get worse.

    the only time i like this country is a walk in the countryside, that’s it, that’s the last bastion of ‘patriotism’ i have for this country

  19. In other news, a bear shat in the woods today.

    All that said, I could be living (well, existing) in Gaza, or Kursk, or Sana’a, or Pyongyang. I could be a Rohingya in Myanmar or a Uighur in China. Or my national leader could be a crooked orange tantrum baby. The NHS might be on its arse, but if I get run over tomorrow, or a cancer diagnosis, I’ll still get world-leading care without paying a penny. Climate change is a massive worry, but I’m doing what little I can, and neither the weather nor the wildlife in this country are likely to kill me anytime soon unless I do something stupid. I don’t live somewhere that has endemic Ebola, or Anthrax, or hantavirus, and if I get flu or chicken pox neither I nor my kids are at significant risk of dying.

    Things are significantly shitter in the UK than they’ve been for as long as I can remember, and I’m as guilty as anyone of catastrophising sometimes, but a bit of perspective is sometimes not a bad thing for one’s mental health. The grass always seems greener elsewhere, as demonstrated by the number of seemingly thoroughly miserable billionaires with yachts and private islands in the world, and things could undoubtedly be better here. But they could also be exponentially worse – they really, really are in a lot of the rest of the world – and sometimes it’s worth considering that.

  20. Yeah I left lol. Nice to visit but genuinely never felt at home here. Nz it is!

  21. Here’s exactly what we need to turn things around.

    1. High cost of living – decrease Income tax for mid to high earners because 40% and 45% brackets are insane! they demotivate the best, they stifle innovation and lead to a brain drain. A consistent 25% tax, and make introduce a 40% after £125k. How do we recoup taxes though? Do exactly what Labour is doing now, reduce benefits, perhaps cut other superfluous spending as well.

    2. Way too much bureaucracy – Deregulate businesses, negotiate trade deals. We need to build more shit and build it faster and cheaper. Net zero and the likes are hamstringing everyone.

    3. NHS is in shambles because we can’t recruit and pay them enough – Pay them more! hire more qualified workers and fund it. Also, tax the hell out of things that lead to drainage on NHS, sugar tax, alcohol tax, push more preventative care.

    4. REMOVE stamp duty for those downsizing houses and FTBs – this is an insanely regressive tax that hurts everyone.

    5. Police need more funding and to be way harsher on criminals.

    6. We need more skilled immigrants here – no every sibling and cousin of refugees or students who come.

  22. Who knew squeezing your middle/lower class majority population to breaking point would cause people to be unhappy. Degrading/unnafordable public services, no disposable income or social mobility, a homogenous center right political class who are indistinguishable from one another. All skimming off the top and continuing to push failed austerity policies on a broken country.

  23. All the money has been bled dry because of overpopulation in some cities. Everything is stretched to breaking point because successive governments see fit to plunge the economy into a false debt created by the wealthy to explain why everything is run down. The UK used to be a rich country, but corruption has killed it.

  24. Cheers Starmer, Looney Labour Have Beaten Britain Into Depression. Mission Accomplised Woke Left PM

  26. A nation wallowing in self-pity and pointing fingers

    We were happier under Thatcher

  27. We know what’s making people unhappy.

    We know what the root cause of this is and there are solutions.

  28. There are lots of decent countries below us on the list. 23rd is still pretty good.

  29. Looks at news and sees man crying as his life is blown away by bombs and his entire family is atomised over some idiotic land grab.

    I’ll take some crap weather and a bit of a rough economy thanks. Things are shit but really, they aren’t that bad.

  30. These happiness surveys are a little deceptive I think.

    I remember being told that Scandinavia was one of the happiest places to live in the world – and then I moved there for 3 years. 

    I saw absolutely no evidence of it whatsoever initially. It seemed no happier than the UK – if anything, it made the UK look like a party at times. A majority of people were pretty self-focused, unsociable, dare I say unkind? It took a lot of effort to find a friendship group and most of my friends were not Swedish, despite being fluent in the language. It was a very lonely place to be for a long time. 

    What these surveys don’t seem to account for is cultural differences. It feels awkward to say, but I found that most people in Sweden had lower standards of satisfaction than us. They were much more satisfied having the basics and everything else was a bonus. I suppose if you have lower demands or expectations in life then you are more likely to be happier. A country that to me seemed fairly miserable considered itself to be happier or more content than my own country. 

    I realised that we have high expectations of life in this country, but I would argue we probably are a little conceited as a nation. Not having what we think we deserve makes us less happier than other countries who might have less than us but are grateful for what they have.

    How much of this surveying is actually simply a measure around the culture of gratitude and perspective?

  31. Not fucking suprised. I was told as a kid if I worked hard and went to university, i could have a house and afford to raise a family. Well i went to university twice, have an MSc level job in my field, and after 4 years of working hard I still can’t afford the downpayment for a mortgage despite working 1 in 2 weekends – mostly due to extortionate rent, council tax and bills hovering up all my earnings for my tiny 1-bed flat that was amongst the cheapest in my area. Just fuck this country. Glad that antidepressants are a thing

  32. Shocking news. In other news the grass is green. More at 10.

  33. Not surprising given that the Labour government arent inspiring an ounce of confidence…

  34. I mean, yes, it’s all a bit shite at the moment, but we still have better living standards and a longer life expectancy than almost every person who has ever lived throughout the history of time, so… there’s that.

    Plus we have joyful things like robins and bluebells and sarcasm and – at this time of year – plum blossom petals drifting in the breeze, which should remind us all that this shite too will pass.

  35. Really? I just watch the burning Teslas and feel much better. Let’s face it, you can live in ignorance or face the facts that we’ve been living in a propaganda campaign for basically all of Gen Z’s lives…

    The 1% are our enemy, they are the ones that can live in luxury while we live in squalor. That’s why the government is running out of money to support everyone since the 1% can afford to just run away to another country to avoid taxes, they are parasites.

  36. The terrible drinking and drugs culture in this country certainly won’t do the happiness charts any favours.

    Also our horrible media environment that makes money off of clickbait and ragebait.

    And a shit economy.

  37. The last good decade we had was in the 90s. Things haven’t gotten better but worse. Cost of Living is that ridiculous that it’s no surprise birthing rates are in the decline as why would you have children where you would struggle to provide them and yourself with a decent life.

    Two-tier policing and even Judges making decisions on their preferences rather than actual following the law. It’s become lawless Britain, and sooner or later, the public will eventually take things into their own hands if not already doing that with the countless cover ups that have unfolded over the last 2 decades.

    NHS Dentists nonexistence with private making up majority of dentists in UK with that being a crisis of dental health. Most are going without and making their health worse due to utter greed. The previous generations’ education was destroyed due to COVID, too. So I am not surprised we have fallen so far down as politicians from every spectrum have failed for decades to sort the issue out.

    And if War comes don’t be surprised when we immediately surrender or take no part in it with majority of the public refuse to volunteer or take part in mandatory army uptake

  38. Why are people so depressed perhaps it’s because of click bait shit like this.

  39. I always find such lists to be pretty ridiculous… I mean Israel… 8th… Seriously?

  40. I can’t help feeling that r/compoface isn’t helping us here.

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