November 25, 2010
Ga de bay ye?In the Telegaph Philip Johnson has been musing on how the Prime Minister will go about measuring happiness.
And today, David 'just call me Dave' Cameron has officially launched his 'happiness index' - although, technically, he's renamed it the 'wellbeing' index to show solidarity with his New Labour roots (the ones driving the compassionate conservatism in his head rather than the ones peeping through on top of his head) - which led Yours Truly to do some headscratching about when that very subject last landed on his desk.
And lo, there it was: Five Years of the Happiness Index, produced by qualifications (well, the more vocational type of qualifications anyway) organisation City & Guilds, which rated HR as 13th happiest occupation - alongside journalists and car mechanics.
Yours Truly naturally wanted to find out how well the profession was doing in the latest survey but, alas, it seems City & Guilds lost the will to live back in 2008 as the 'credit crunch' (anyone remember that?) started to bite, and doesn't appear to have revisited the subject since.
Back then, the happiest workers were beauty therapists. Closely followed by hairdressers, soldiers and retail staff.
While not wishing to cast aspertions at these no-doubt hardworking individuals - although it's been a while since he had to put up with the inane warblings of the hair collectors, declines to have his nails polished, avoids armed conflict and must confess to having all goods delivered to his door - Yours Truly is convinced that the PM is relying on this august body of cheery individuals to stand up and be counted and to declare loudly that they "mustn't grumble". Which is exactly what he wants to hear.
Paradoxically, Philip Johnson finds that the happiest people live in Bhutan. Which takes Guru back to his opening remark - Ga de bay ye? - which is Bhutanese for "how are you?"
And the traditional response: "Mas ngrom bal".
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