2nd Unhappiest place to live. UK

[Newtonianmechanics]

m.economictimes.com/nri/latest-updates/uk-is-officially-the-worlds-second-most-miserable-country-these-were-the-happiest-and-unhappiest-countries-of-2023/amp_articleshow/108361220.cms

Clearly it isn't the most scientific test. However....

Unhappier than literal war zones.

Why is this?

Are we just a bunch of entitled grumps and grifters that lack resilience?

Or

Is it the cost of living crisis and the work work society? The disparity between rich and poor. The huge living costs and people not having spare money to fund fun despite earning well.
That things are getting worse not better or a number of other issues?
Childrens time being micromanaged to the nth degree. Too unsafe to play in the street like we used to. Constant pressure.

Why?

The UK I can believe is not doing great but surely better than Yemen. Number 6 Australia?!?! Hahahaha. We are the most over privileged and easy living bunch and if we don’t realise that and tell everyone how hard done by we have it people REALLY shouldn’t believe that in a survey

I think it’s the expectation-reality gap. A lot of British people at some level really do have a sense of entitlement to a life that is ‘superior’ to that of other countries.
They find it very very difficult to cope with the fact that those days are over.
If you expected your life to be difficult, grubbing, and brutish, you would perhaps think the average UK life was pretty good.

I think the shit weather doesn't help. I notice that all the happiest places have better weather than we do.

The Tories have spent the last 14 years making most people poorer, cutting services we used to take for granted and spreading divisive messages. Our newspapers feed us a constant barrage of negativity.
It really isn't like this in most other countries regardless of economic issues or even war.
The UK (as a society) has lost all sense of community and pride in itself.

In comparison to other countries our standard of living is high, but we have a diminishing sense of community. We’ve also got used to having luxuries so we no longer recognise how lucky we are.

At the same time, life is incredibly high stress and fast paced - which means we neglect our health and creativity. We have cut ourselves off from nature. And companies treat us as robots without personal lives most of the time.

Add to that the rapidly increasing gap between rich and poor, social media ‘insta bragging’, and an endless diet of 24/7 bad news being broadcast at us, and it’s not a recipe for happiness.

I dont think its even just that (as if that isnt bad enough) its also the fact that life here isnt vastly different to a lot of other places that we often compare to. We have family abroad, indigenous and UK expats and all they do is moan about all the same things we moan about.

Exactly this. People don’t know they’re born in comparison to how other people in other parts of the world have to live. It boils my piss .

We are incredibly privileged, even people on lower incomes compared to a huge number of other people in the world and yet we constantly want more and more and more.

In the UK I feel like every single interaction is designed to extract as much cash from you as possible in exchange for something low quality. It’s brazen, and feels like exploitation 24/7. In other countries I feel like I pay fair prices for good services. In the UK everything feels like a Glasgow Wonka Experience. That monstrosity was an art piece mirroring the UK back to us, and the angry punters demanding their money back were all of us, sick of being fleeced for under-par bullshit products and services.

It's things going backwards so fast and the inequality that are probably the root of things

Inequality and unfairness actually matters more than people / uk governments ever realise

That's why people 50years ago with ice on the windows food rationing / shortages and outside netty were basically happier than many today

It's all very well saying people don't know how lucky they are because that's exactly the point - what/ who they see on a day to day are those incredibly more lucky than they are

The UK, Australia and Ireland are all in the top 10 unhappiest places on Earth? I call bullshit! Those are three of the wealthiest nations, with public healthcare, decent, free education, social welfare, health and safety, etc. I get that a lot of people in the UK feel fed up, skint, disappointed with how their lives are atm, pissed off with the govt for various reasons. But unhappiest on Earth? Come on! What about Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Syria - all the countries that have populations who all seemingly want to come here!

It’s probably because when you ring on someone’s doorbell they don’t answer and pretend not to be in 😜. I think we’ve lost a sense of community and everyone just focusses on themselves.

Exactly , i mean, who answers these freaking surveys !

This is the thing, people say inequality is getting worse. Is it?

Who would you have been 50 or 100 years ago? I would have been a domestic skivvy, my parents are working class, left school at 15, neither have 'qualifications', my dad worked as a blue collar worker before going into management a few years before being made redundant. That was the end of his career

Ive got 2 degrees (at dodgy polytechnics - one for the teens there) and a professional job and own my own house. Havent had any 'family money' to do all this. Why? Because society gave me the opportunities in a way that would have been unimaginable to my ancestors, even my parents for gods sake!!!

That's the free market everyone for themselves society

But also things like... the health service may be better than many places but it used to be as good as the best and now it isn't

Are you saying we shouldn't be unhappy about it until it's the worst possible health service ?

Or at what points in societal deterioration are we allowed to start feeling pissed off?

Because we are terminally miserable.

People who want to have a moan and say how unhappy they are, probably! People who aren’t unhappy are just out there getting on with their lives.

I agree with all of this.

It’s what you have to compare it to. Quality of life for UK working age and children now is, on balance and overall, worse than it was for the generation before us. That’s not the case in many countries. Quality of life peaked several decades back in the U.K. and it will never reach as high again in our lifetime. And yes I know things were never perfect and every era had it’s bad points and there has always been poverty and suffering.

50 years ago - 1964

You wouldn't have been a skivvy - you may have had a basic manual job but it was basically respected and the people who you knew and socialised with were in the same position as you - you found it easy to keep up with the jones ( even if that didn't mean you had stuff , you all had the same lack )

At that time the factory bosses lived close to their workforce ( cars only just starting to impact society ) so they had more respect and understanding of the lives of- because they were all the same community - they walked to work with the staff . They were paid more , but not the wage gaps we see today

you would be seeing how much better your life and opportunities were compared to your parents and grandparents - free health, education, improving housing

There was inequality but it was far far less than today - think 1 to 10 as opposed to 1 to 500 ( someone has worked it out somewhere ) and it wasn't rubbed in your face

You would believe that you could make it up the social ladder with hard work

I'm in Ireland. I would probably be very unhappy if we hadn't had a lot of help from family to go towards buying our home. It'd be the four of us renting some crappy studio apartment somewhere, struggling to get by. Government has a lot to answer for but I don't see how Sinn Fein would be any better.

This is the thing, people say inequality is getting worse. Is it?

Depends what you mean by inequality. The rich have got a lot richer in the past few decades, but the poor aren't anywhere near as poor as they once were pre-NHS and pre-welfare state - and thank goodness for that.

Yes, food bank usage is at an all-time high, because rent, bills, mortgage payments, etc have all gone up a lot in a very short period of time. But are DC walking the streets with no shoes? No. Are they starving? No. Because there are food banks, breakfast clubs, charities, freecycle, etc. But I think most people, whoever they are, think they should be able to afford to buy stuff new - shoes, clothes, appliances, etc. And they think they should be entitled to a holiday and to days out and to have nice things - whether they work or not. And that's never been the case before. But now it is, because they see so-and-so on social media is living it large in Dubai or Spain or wherever and they think 'Why the fuck is so-and-so doing that when I can't afford it?'. IMO, reality and expectations have been massively skewed by social media.

The people saying the U.K. has lost its pride, that is certainly a major contributing factor but one I feel is mostly pertinent to England specifically. I still see a lot of pride in being Welsh, Scottish or Irish. But there seems to be an air of embarrassment in showing pride in ones Englishness. It’s certainly unfashionable to the least, current trends have long dictated that you must be disparaging about England unless you wish to appear akin to a beer guzzling, football shirt wearing oaf with a bull dog tattoo.

50 years ago - 1964

1964 is 60 years ago ...

I don't see the problem with doing this to cold callers. If you know you have no interest in whatever it is they are pushing, why waste their time and yours?