Pozdravlyayu to Siberia! That’s congratulations, Siberia, if Russian GCSE wasn’t on the curriculum in your day. Best known for its salt mines and exiled criminals, it has been named the happiest place in Russia.
The reason, says the undoubtedly unbiased Siberia Times, is money. Siberia has more than 90 per cent of Russia’s natural gas, so most of its citizens can afford to keep warm by burning roubles. Not for them the Shakespearean wisdom that “Poor and content is rich, and rich enough”.
But does the logic work so well in London? The capital hosts the richest people in the UK, yet a clearly unscientific survey this year to find the happiest place in Britain found 90 per cent of the most miserable parts of the UK were in Greater London.
A stroll around Chelsea this week proved the point. Residents’ £100,000 supercars are nose-to-nose outside their multi-million-pound homes. But most of them look the picture of gloom. This week I watched a young burka’d woan jabbing fingers at three £10,000 handbags that were swiftly taken to the till. Her whole face was contorted into a frown. Or perhaps it was just Botox gone wrong.
Clearly the capital’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken council estates also host their share of unhappiness. But while they may be rich, none of the bankers slumped at their desks in the Square Mile look or sound very content now.
So where are the happiest places in London? Tweeters seem keener to focus on the capital’s misery masts. One points out that “the sun never seems to shine in Elephant & Castle — officially the greyest place in London”. Another proposes Penge as a place of particular gloom. “Not because it’s a bad place or anything but Penge has always struck me as sounding like a venereal disease.” But a resident fired back: “Oi! Do not knock Penge. The culture down here is clearly above you.” Town happiness is clearly a deeply personal affair.
It’s also, according to Samuel Johnson, “a great measure comparative”. Crude as it sounds, psychologists agree that people feel happier if they have a friend with few reasons to smile. Britons are likely see their happiness rise a notch when the French are having a bad time. And perhaps that’s true for the boroughs, too. Scrap rich lists and league tables, we should launch a citywide happiness competition.
David Cameron’s “gross national happiness” index simply reported back with a pointless number of the average Briton’s “life satisfaction” (7.4 out of 10, if you’re wondering). That data should actually be turned to practical purpose. Councils could be funded according to their success at making their citizens smile more. To do so, they’d have to continue most of their current strategies — create decent schools and hospitals, hire enough bin men — but actually work on pleasing citizens rather than hitting political agendas. So parking charges would be scrapped, libraries improved, parks better gardened.
Idealistic? Too expensive? Maybe. But researchers repeatedly conclude that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Happier citizens make harder working staff, ultimately that would boost GDP, making Britain richer. Or maybe Boris Johnson should be sent to Siberia to learn about happiness.
