Sunday, 4 May 2014

Questionnable Criteria.

Somebody has conducted a study to discover the ‘unhappiness quotient’ of ninety countries. They questioned a sample of each country’s population and graded them on a scale of 1-100. The news item in which I read it went on to list the ‘unhappiest’ twenty countries, and this is what surprised me:

Most of them were among the world’s leading centres of violent and volatile socio-political conditions, and yet the primary reason for unhappiness in every single one of them was given as either unemployment, inflation or high interest rates.

And so I wonder just who devised this poll and how they weighted the questions. Could it have been, perhaps, a bunch of academics living a relatively peaceful and prosperous life in the US or Western Europe? Is that why they failed to notice that being ruled, used and abused by vicious gangs, or running the daily risk of being dismembered by a routine bomb in the marketplace, is a greater reason to be unhappy than paying more interest on their overdrafts?

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Maybe later I’ll tell the story of the injured and apparently rejected little lamb which I bottle fed today. Seeing animals, especially baby ones, in distress gets to me, you know? It does. It really does. And it takes me a while to get over it. Besides, I’m fed up with this blog being bloody miserable.

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