Don't give decent data to hippies

The happiest place on Earth is Vanuata, some South Pacific backwater that considers Prince Phillip as some sort of minor deity - a bit like Virginia Water. The study that presents these results is clearly flawed, the researchers fail to address how a country could possibly be happy without access to commodities like coffee machines, or automatic toilets, or Toyota 4Runners. No sane person would smile in a land without such things. Columbia comes in second, but I suppose having an ample supply of Coca leaves could make up for living in a violent, bloody hellhole.

The United Kingdom didn't do terribly well, so far down the 'Happy Rankings' that I couldn't be bothered to count the position. In all fairness, whilst we are a nation of miserable bastards, I still think we're more cheerful than the Bosnian-Herzegovinians who come in a few places above. They're monumentally dour, more so even than Scottish people, even when they're not burning, raping and pillaging their neighbours (the Bosnians, that is, not the Scots). The most mendacious lie of all though is the USA's ranking, right down the bottom of the list drawing level with the Cote d'Ivoire. The Cote d'Ivoire is a country crippled by a long-running and bloody civil war, whilst the USA has possibly more coffee makers and automatic toilets than almost anywhere else in the world.

Further investigation revealed that the index is based on various psychological parameters and life expectancy, but then divided by the 'ecological footprint'. Basically, they're suggesting that if I were living in a hole in the ground in Lithuania, then although my life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short I would still be happy in the knowledge that I wasn't using up too much of the planet's resources. They have clearly underestimated my aversion to Lithuanian holes in the ground.

This is what happens when you allow a bunch of bunny-hugging wastrels like the New Economics Foundation access to hard data and computers - they try to use it. Data and computers should be restricted to fully-trained, hard-headed research professionals like myself, working in isolated cubicles protected from the public by security passes and unanswerable rhetoric.

Update!

Being a low-lying Pacific island, the mere existence of Vanuata is threatened by rising sea-levels due to climate change. Ha, that should wipe the smiles off their 'ecologically friendly' faces!