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

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    43 Comments

    1. Zealousideal-Cry0 on

      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.

    3. BeastMidlands on

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

    4. TraditionPractical72 on

      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

    5. Thanks_For_That_Phil on

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

    6. Upstairs-Hedgehog575 on

      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 

    7. Electricbell20 on

      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.

    8. quarky_uk on

      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. Jaded-Initiative5003 on

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

    12. FeynmansWitt on

      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.

    13. DogsOfWar2612 on

      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

    15. tezmo666 on

      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.

    16. Desperate_Humor7652 on

      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.

    18. Infinite_Crow_3706 on

      A nation wallowing in self-pity and pointing fingers

      We were happier under Thatcher

    19. sober_disposition on

      We know what’s making people unhappy.

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

    21. Arseypoowank on

      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.

    22. PixelThinking on

      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?

    23. Cakeyhands on

      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

    25. ThatGuyMaulicious on

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

    26. hime-633 on

      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.

    27. South_Dependent_1128 on

      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.

    28. coffeewalnut05 on

      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.

    29. LennyDeG on

      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

    30. whatsgoingon350 on

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

    31. LShervallll on

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

    33. shouldbeworking10 on

      We have to do something about the Dutch being in 5th place. Release the carbon emissions

    34. gattomeow on

      I’d guess the happiest countries in the world would be either ones with loads of old people (Japan, Italy) and/or those which are social democracies where it is incredibly difficult to fall into destitution (Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark).

      I’d guess the unhappiest countries in the world are those with actual civil wars where premature loss of life may not be uncommon (e.g. Myanmar, Sudan) or those with a relatively high share of young adults – who tend to be more economically insecure than older adults.

      The UK hasn’t had a civil war (on the mainland) for about 375 years (Scotland excepted) and is a relatively old society (older people are grumpier but usually less actively unhappy than young people since by a certain age older people have accepted their mortality and made their peace with the concept of death) and has a larger welfare state than most countries, so by international standards you would expect it to rank fairly high up.

    36. GlowiesEatShitAndDie on

      Weird, I just saw three Nigerians walking down the street with suitcases and they seemed pretty happy.

    37. pikantnasuka on

      We would probably be happier if we accepted that we aren’t a top class wealthy nation any more

      It’s all very fur coat no knickers these days

    38. LadyMirkwood on

      This is probably the last place anyone wants to hear about Leftist theory, but I’m going to talk about it anyway.

      Antonio Gramsci developed the philosophy of ‘Cultutal Hegemony’. This is when a ruling class shapes the culture, norms and values of society to maintain and grow its own power.

      I think in our case, the ruling class is business. Look at what has been normalised and made desirable, side hustles, giving away our data, spending our lives online and constantly comparing our lives to others (leading to
      ever more conspicuous consumption).

      The 1980s began the cultural shift. We have gone from prioritising cooperation and community to being centred around competition, status, and wealth.

      And so we are becoming more and more atomised, self-contained units that consume more and more to fill the gap left by real connection and meaning. Third spaces are becoming rarer all the time and our leisure has been shaped increasingly around purchasing.

      I appreciate that there are other factors, but I do think the boom in mental health issues bears out that we are living in alienated times. It’s the ultimate irony of the information age, we are constantly connected but feel more divided and lonely than we ever have been.

    39. bynobodyspecial on

      I mean I’m not happy but where do they get this data from, because noone’s asked me.

    40. TesticleezzNuts on

      Can’t possibly imagine why, three terms off Tories, we finally think we have got rid off them and they just changes there tie colour.

    41. TheArctopus on

      Sooo I did a little bit of digging into the numbers, and it isn’t all as doom and gloom as this headline would have you believe. First and foremost: these are 2024 figures, so the tories will have been dragging us down via the ‘social support’ and ‘perceptions of corruption’ metrics. I’d be interested to see the change next year.

      But, tl;dr: we’re pretty equivalent to a lot of our European peers. The only thing really dragging us down is our GDP per capita and crappy social support, which lines up. For context: we’re slightly beating Australia in pretty much every happiness metric (including actual self-evaluation of personal happiness) but they’re ranked 13th for GDP and we’re ranked 20th, which is enough to see them 11th on the table while we’re at 23rd. GDP per capita seems to be weighted pretty highly when calculating overall ranking; whether or not that’s reasonable is a different question.

      If you want to feel better, compare us to the US, who are one position below us with an almost identical score. They’re pretty much just propped up by their GDP. They have crappy life expectancy, rampant inequality and perception of government corruption, and – amusingly – one of the worst rankings for personal freedom at 115th of 147 countries.

      So… our economy is pretty fucked, but we could be doing much, much worse.

    42. i-readit2 on

      Don’t you worry. Just you wait till farage and co get elected. We will all live at the bottom of the garden . Under a big leaf in ding illy dell.

    43. ThatJamesGuy36 on

      Simply find a means of solving wealth inequality and people will feel happier. It’s literally so obvious to anyone who looks at it realistically.

      If people feel safe, comfortable and taken care of with food, necessities, a roof over their head and some spare cash to enjoy something, happiness goes up.

      Keen siphoning all the cash out the middle and working class people just means they all work harder for less, can’t achieve as much and living standards feel lesser which can simply translate to people are less happy.

      I bet if I have 20 Billion under my belt, I’d feel a bit happier with my life 🤷