Heaven knows we're miserable now

Tom Harris MP Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 01:43:11 AM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Bill Bryson’s excellent “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, his autobiographical account of his early life in Iowa.



It’s as funny, charming and wistful as you would expect, full of fantastic imagery of post-World War II consumerism, invention and prosperity. And, of course, it harks back to the innocence of a childhood utopia that probably didn’t actually exist.

But what struck me with the most force was the sheer optimism of the time. Even with the constant threat of nuclear obliteration, with memories of the war still vivid in most adults’ heads, most US citizens seemed to believe the future was brighter than the past. Their country was the wealthiest, the most powerful and, yes, the happiest on the face of the planet. National leaders were respected and even liked (as in Ike). In a pre-Watergate era, politicians, though viewed through a healthy filter of cynicism, were nevertheless acknowledged as local and national leaders, essential to the workings of a democracy that, having been fought for only recently, was still precious.

So where did it all go wrong? In our own country today, despite the recent credit squeeze, our citizens have never been so wealthy. High-def TVs fly off the shelves at Tesco quicker than they can be imported. Whatever the latest technological innovation, most people can treat themselves to it. Eating out - a rare treat when I was a child in the ’70s - is as commonplace as going shopping. And when we do go shopping, whether for groceries or for clothes, we spend money in quantities that would have made our parents gasp.

We’re securer than ever, at least in international terms. There’s no equivalent of the Soviet Union threatening to bury is in a nuclear armageddon. The very real threat of terrorism hasn’t notably altered anyone’s patterns of behaviour or travel (which is as it should be). Job security is felt to be less than in the past, it’s true, but the corollary of that is the tremendous real-terms rises in incomes over the years and the consequent improvements in quality of life.

There are more two-car homes in Britain today than there are homes without a car at all. We live longer, eat healthier (if we choose), have better access to forms of entertainment never imagined a generation ago (satellite TV, DVD, computer games), the majority of us have fast access to the worldwide web, which we use to enable even more spending and for entertainment. Crime is down.

So why is everyone so bloody miserable?

Are our crippling levels of cynicism and pessimism simply part of the human condition? Were we always like this? Or is a consequence of the “instant gratification society” that, having been instantly gratified, we must resent the society that manipulates our desires in this way?

I will, on this one occasion, concede that the mass media can’t be held entirely to blame, just as I hope readers of this blog will accept that our elected leaders are similarly not 100 per cent guilty.

But what happened to that post-war optimism and commitment to common values? Are they gone forever and if so, why? If not, how can we bring them back?

Heavey stuff, I know, but occasionally you want to talk about more than the latest episode of Doctor Who.

 Visit Tom's blog.


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Heaven knows we're miserable now | 30 comments (30 topical)

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#1)

by orzr on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 07:38:11 AM GMT

"So why is everyone so bloody miserable?"

Could it be that all political parties want us to believe that they are going to able to solve our problems, but they always fall short? The state gets more and more involved in the details people's lives but people don't get any happier. Another blog post here a few hours ago says tax the rich and give the proceeds to those earning less than £30k to help them pay fuel bills. Naive suggestions like this contribute to an atmosphere of expectation that the state should be making us happy and inevitable disappointment when it doesn't.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#2)

by CitizenAndreas on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 09:35:33 AM GMT

I could write a long discourse on why exactly you're wrong, but it would be far easier to say..

You clearly don't have a clue.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#3)

by Angiem on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 10:28:33 AM GMT

So why are you unhappy?

I think that it is true that people do have far more materially, far more choices of entertainment and I like Tom Harris grew up in the 1970s and living in fear of the nuclear threat.

To me it seems that peoples expectations are very high also there are high expectations placed upon people, putting them under pressure which does lead to stress and unhappiness.

Other than that I too must be clueless as I am an ordinary person doing an ordinary job. I am a working class person how has not lead a sheltered life. I too fail to see the reason that so many people feel that they are hard done by and that our county is going down the pan.

This county is a far better place than it was in the 1980's. when British people had to migrate to other counties to find work and whole communities where laid to waste.



[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#5)

by CitizenAndreas on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 11:09:27 AM GMT

I'm not particularly unhappy, except at having to hear awful "It's the state intefering in peoples lives" rhetoric from Tories who don't know what they're talking about.

I think Tom is bang on in this case, I really don't get this whole "country's gone to the dogs" mentality that some people seem to have.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#6)

by Angiem on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 11:59:01 AM GMT

Looks like we are more or less in agreement about this. I also find that the people will who complain about interfering will also cry out "The Government should do something when it is something that bugs them"


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#15)

by doktorbuk on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 11:27:33 PM GMT

Highest personal taxes, higher gas bills, 1 cctv camera per 14 citizens, higher petrol costs, increasing unemployment, continued sleaze across all political parties, lack of transport funding, lack of education funding where it really matters, continuted rich/poor divide, more days lost to strikes than in memory, increased reports of recorded crime, massive city bonuses, 42 day detention without charge...

I am 28 years old. I have never been more depressed by the state of the country and the people running it. My Labour MP has never once voted against the Government - this kind of sheep mentality feeds my negativity. What is the point of supporting an MP who never ever finds fault in anything his Party does?


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#22)

by NorthernMonkey on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 03:34:16 PM GMT

more days lost to strikes than in memory

That's quite simply wrong. Strike rates are far, far lower than what they were in the 1970's and 80's.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#17)

by treborc on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 08:04:00 AM GMT

I grew up in the seventies and boy what a time I had, the nuclear threat I cannot believe you said that. It was a great time I was fit healthy and had a good job great bands great music and what a life. Nuclear threats for god sake.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#4)

by Free Radical on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 10:58:01 AM GMT

This is a very interesting question, and one I have wondered about. We have, in this country, historically, unparalled wealth, the highest life expectancy ever, an extraordinary superabundance of food and goods for all but the very poorest.

Well perhaps one answer is that "Man doth not live by bread only." Consumerism has brought all sorts of pressures - many families need two incomes to maintain this "lifestyle," rather than the conventional one income of 40 years ago. People work longer hours, they sleep less and they get stressed, tired and depressed.

It would seem that the consumerism, unleashed in a tidal wave after the war and championed by Thatcher and then by New Labour, has also contributed to an atomisation of society, down to the individual consumer. Now sometimes in an evening you might find a family of four people all in different rooms in house, each watching a different TV programme, or surfing the Web or playing a computer game. Perhaps as we are more individual we are only more remotely connected with the social. Our sense of identity is challenged and fragile - "who am I?" is not a question our forebears would have struggled with.

By and large people want consumerism - cars, TVs computers, clothes, eating out, entertainment - but we seem to pay a heavy price.

What can we do about this? Maybe we, and government, could put more emphasis on the social and less on the individual. Public ownership is not intrinsically bad, public space is a desirable thing, public broadcasting can mean quality. If we let the market (and notions of "choice") dominate every aspect of life we will pay a very high price indeed...

Well, those are my slightly rambling thoughts...


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#8)

by Angiem on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 12:13:28 PM GMT

In addition to the pressure to live a certain lifestyle I do agree with you that the notion of choice is not all it is cracked up to be. Especially when the choice is accompanied by form filing and/or having the view all of the alternatives and then not always getting your choice after all.

I still maintain that ours is a good country to live in and that peoples lives are on the whole quite good even if the work/life balance needs a little tweaking and that we need to become a little less materialistic to achieve this.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#7)

by Floating voter on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 12:13:10 PM GMT

Tom Harris said: " The very real threat of terrorism hasn’t notably altered anyone’s patterns of behaviour or travel (which is as it should be)."

Eh?

Have you travelled by airplane recently?

Have you asked muslims whether attitudes towards them have changed?

 


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#9)

by NB on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 02:13:29 PM GMT

There is not much evidence that wealth, cars etc.. lead to happiness.  Happiness comes from leading fulfilling lives, so stable enduring values, love, community, family and spirituality are major factors.  The massive increases in family breakdown under Labour have been a serious problem. In addition a well-founded belief that political leaders routinely lie to us does tend to engender additional cynicism.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#10)

by snowflake5 on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 02:19:07 PM GMT

I don't think it's anything to do with governments, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown or any of the political parties.

Political Parties are by definition cheerful because they are filled with that minority of people who believe that it is possible to change things (and you need a positive frame of mind to think this way!)

No, this misery is a function of the way the press has changed. Peregrine Worsthorne, ex-editor of the Telegraph, was on Newsnight some years ago, discussing the change in the tone of the press (which he though a bad thing). He said that in his day the function of the Telegraph was to make people feel good about themselves and the country as they ate their breakfast, and the stories were selected for that reason, and when there was bad news to report, it was reported as neutrally as possible so as not to put readers off their cornflakes over issues they couldn't control anyway.

All that's changed. We have less news reported and it is reported emotively rather than factually. And we have more opinion, and the more provocative the article the more the editors like it. You see this on CiF - the provocative articles upset people, start arguments and end up with thousands of hits and comments - and the editors love it. The neutral well-reasoned articles, get hardly any hits at all (though most who read them agree and appreciate them).

Unsurprisingly newspaper sales are dwindling. The John Humpries of the world bemoan the fact that the young won't read newspapers or tune into Radio 4 - but the young are being rational. Why ruin your day over something you can't control? Yes it's good to be informed - but only on neutral terms. However those who still do read newspapers - mainly the elderly who read to pass the time - get stoked into rages and fears.

From what I can tell, only the FT devotes more space to news and facts than opinion - and that's because the business community haven't got time to wade through some columnist's indulgent rants.

You mention Iowa in the fifties - for a contrast you should read Gavin Esler's The United States of Anger  which was written in the mid-90's and describes how in the midst of the Clinton boom, with crime falling sharply, people getting wealthier and freer, there is this cauldron of rage that is being deliberately stoked up by the right-wing talk radios and netwoks. Reading it you get a sense of why America voted for Bush instead of Gore. Funnily I think that America is less angry now than it was - possibly because the consequences of getting worked up over trivia and ignoring the important stuff has been suddenly brought home.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#11)

by TonyH on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 03:25:42 PM GMT

Great blog and great post by Snowflake.

I'd tend to disagree about Government's role - I think, generally, it has a lot to do with who's in charge and the changes they've made to the justice system, the health system, the transport system etc because when they are crap they tamper in a bad way with people's day-to-day lives.

I accept I go on about it too much but it comes back to the political (or civic or national - however you frame it) conversation. People seem to be so miserable because they're holding themselves to a standard of living which is way out of context.

If people took a neutral view about progress in this country then they would acknowledge where serious work needs to be done but also understand what has already been achieved....

...but that's not what we have. News is written to be as emotive as possible. Every victim was a wonderful person and every perpetrator an inherant evil. Out of the 100,000 missing children every year, a blonde haired one get picked out by the cynical media pack every summer to help them sell papers and news shows. And every negative story points people to reason that nothing seems to be going right.  

Ergo, people seem miserable because they are lead to believe things are increasingly shittier than they were.

To take a random (but recent) example. Last week, someone announced they'd invented a washing machine that will be up and selling commercially in a couple of years and only needs two glasses of water per wash. It's a British company doing exactly the same job for the same price as a normal washer but would lead to a massive reduction in energy and water usage.

It was on the Reuters wire - nobody picked it up. Wonderful news (albeit potentially) and nobody covered it. Had it been a note from one minister to another about a possible proposal to tax something - it would've been all over the place, reported as inevitable.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#12)

by snowflake5 on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 03:42:20 PM GMT

I think things will change though. Witness the downward trend in newspaper sales - the public doesn't like it's head being used like a sewer for other people's crap. They would rather not read about it, thank you very much.

How long can the press carry on with their negative stuff if it costs sales? Eventually some of them will go bust, it's the law of the market.  They trouble is that the press have convinced themselves that provocative news sells. But if you analyse the so-called "successful" blogs on CiF, most of the comments come from a small hard-core group, who've been worked up into arguin for hours, while everyone else has been repelled. Though these blogs get lots of repeated hits from this small group, I doubt the advertisers see much benefit from it.

The current news situation will only continue if someone is prepared to subsidize the continuing provocative news. At the moment the Murdoch's and Barclays etc think that it's worth the losses as it buys them influence. And it does, as long as the govt pays attention (even though the public has sensibly stopped reading). 


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#13)

by AngryVoter on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 08:32:12 PM GMT

A small tear of happiness was in my eye when a Labour member spoke of market forces properly. :P

 

In all though, sorry to trot out the phrase, but some of it is perhaps the government being a little more... present than previously deemed as necessary, and sometimes it can be the perception of it that becomes a little suffocating and thus makes one more miserable.

Main gripe? 'Elf n Safety. They seem to be out of control in some cases when a drop of common sense is all that's needed. 

The acceleration of family breakdown [originating back in the 60's but being "fast forwarded" partially by Thatcher and then given rocket boosters under Labour in the last decade with the abolishment of the tax benefits for married couples] also comes along as a problem.

Another problem is perhaps the need to feel one has to walk around on eggshells to talk any more. I just read in the newspaper [which I read rarely these days, focussing on SkyNews and Political blogs] that somebody was accused of racism for including a picture of the "Hear, see, speak no evil" monkies in a cartoon drawing on which the subject letter was about.

The feeling that Britain isn't really "ours" any more, in the drive for an actual equality both the Major and Blair governments have tipped the balance far too quickly in favour of newcomers and immigrants and permitting all and any culture with no thought of the potential of ghettoization and isolated culture "blocs", while outright supressing and not spending money on anything British because it might be viewed as racist.

Questioning the policies in place also saw people shouted down as racist, when their original concerns were then proven correct, and there has been much crunching of gears.

This has also been applied strenously to Europe. One should always be wary of any supa-national organisation because of it's inability to properly comprehend national and local situations.

Apparently Gorbachev questioned why European Democracies were trying to implement Soviet-Style policies in areas where he'd rather sufficently proven they'd failed.

Perhaps then, we do need a big break from this present "post war" generation of politicians.

They didn't have what we have now, so thus have the urge for "more" because they've never had it so good which in turn makes others miserable politically and the heavy criticism and the public more cynical of them.

Seriously, check the "average" age of all Politicians who have really abused, used and even broken the rules on their expenses. You won't find many under 35-40 or so. They all come from the "Baby Boom" post war and perhaps this skews them a little with what they can get.

I beleive, that when my generation [I'm 19] of politicians "come of age" in about 20 years time things will have changed slightly, [Under Cameron or Miliband, I really don't mind] not enough perhaps, but slightly and then it'll be up to us to finally clear everything out and start afresh. Why?

Simple.

We're already having it so good.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#14)

by snowflake5 on Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 09:25:45 PM GMT

"A small tear of happiness was in my eye when a Labour member spoke of market forces properly. :P"

Cheeky! I'll put it down to the fact that you are just 19 and don't yet realize that New Labour are the only ones  on offer who understand market forces properly. You don't get eleven consecutive years of growth by accident, you know!  

Those Tories not only cocked up the economy when they were in power, but they are talking rubbish now - see Osborne talking about reintroducing credit controls, something that only works if you have exchange controls (where you have to get permission from govt to bring or take out money from the country) - credit-controls were tried and discredited in the 70's. If Osborne knew more about economics he wouldn't be coming up with such nonsense. The early Margaret Thatcher (pre-87) understood market forces before she went a bit gaga, but she was a radical abberation in the Conservative party. And Conservatives have reverted back to what they were. 

Regarding your other points about family breakdown - you are very young indeed if you think that couples would stay together if they were given £200 a year in married allowance. Most people don't marry for £200, and they don't stay together for £200 either.

When marriages break down, it's usually because trust between the couple has gone and they literally can't stand the sight of each other any longer. In these cases people are literally willing to spend thousands to get out of the relationship - the expense of setting up separate households (two sets of mortgage/rent), the increased council tax you pay when two people live in two homes, solicitors fees and so on. People in this state would not be deterred by £200 p.a. - they've got to the state where emotional pain is so great they don't care how much it costs to get out of the relationship.

The only thing that will stop marital breakdown is people learning to be kinder and more tolerant of each other's foibles and faults. But this is learnt in the childhood home and from peers and press. It's not something government can teach. I know Cameron thinks he can go into people's households and teach them to love each other better (as well as dictate to them how they spend their own money on domestic fuel), but this is intrusion on an unacceptable scale.

P.S. I leave you with the this link from the ONS. Divorce in England and Wales hit a peak of  180,018 in 1993, when John Major was in power and the married allowance was still in force. It is 18% lower now (despite the population growing). One in five people divorcing in 2006 had a previous divorce - which suggests that a small group of people are serial divorcees, who distort the figures and the majority of married people remain married.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#16)

by NB on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 06:55:07 AM GMT

Thanks, your ONS link is interesting.  Of course the number of divorces in 97 was higher partly because there were more marriages, but even the rate per 1000 marriages has come down recently. I strongly suspect however that the overall rate of "family breakup" has increased, because it is now far more socialy acceptable to be unmarried with children and on average unmarried couples (even with kids) are much less stable than married ones.

Although it seems that marginal financial incentives should have no effect on marriage there is a lot of evidence that they do, especially among poor people for whom £200 is a significant sum.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#20)

by snowflake5 on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 02:03:21 PM GMT

It's true that for poor people, £200 is a lot. The Labour govt took the conscious decision to direct this money towards people with children via the child-tax credit scheme on the grounds that children are innocent victims who should be protected and that the money should help ensure families with children don't feel so stressed.

The Conservatives will scrap the child tax credit and give a blanket marriage allowance, a lot of which will go to middle class couples with no children.

I would have more respect for their proposals if they were solely targetted towards the poor - but they appear to want to take money from poor children and give it to comfortable couples with no children. This despite the fact that the marriage allowance has been proven over several decades to have no effect at all in preventing marriage breakdown.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#25)

by jkitleft on Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 07:13:52 PM GMT

Again, I repeat, you overestimate health and safety, and the myth of 'elf and safety being out of control has been stoked up by the media. I think it's a far greater use of common sense to implement the proposals of REACH, which would place regulations on chemicals in industries that would have an NPV of £187.5 billion over 30 years. Currently, hundreds of workers are dying as the number of health and safety inspectors have been slashed by 40% under this government. A corporate manslaughter act is greatly needed.

Look, the Tories oppose many pro-family measures. Universal childcare being one, and Labour wants to raise maternity leave. There is also a baby bonds policy, introduced after surveys showed that people who owned assets after 18 were more likely to be married and less depressed. What did the Tories do? They opposed it. I don't think that removing the marriage benefits suddenly triggered swathes of divorces though: if this were true, then surely it would be better for a child growing up with parents who love them, rather than in a facade whereby the only thing that keeps couples together is money. This seems to be a rather untrustworthy assessment of the people, coming from the Tories.

If anyone tried to legally enforce PC codes, then I'd be against them. But sometimes when a genuinally racist statement is made, and people rightly criticise it, people start ranting about 'freedom of speech being assaulted'. My freedom of speech gets to criticise the racist views, but not try to censor them, and I think that's what people proud of being politically incorrect seem to think. Why is being politically incorrect seen as a virtue though? Denis Thatcher was praised for this, but there was a reason why he was not in the media spotlight. It was because his views on apartheid, and the working classes would embaress the PM significantly. People are free to be racist, but in mainstream debate, it is reasonable to say that you can't make derogatry comments about someone on the basis of an uncontrollable factor (gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc.)


Europe is necessary for local concerns, but it needs to be more democratic, and less beaurocratic. We can't take unilateral decisions. Efforts on climate change, poverty, and tyranny must be fought as a continent (which I don't think means having our sovereignty being extinguished). This is why the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg have proposed that in the EU, an effor to crack down on company pay is currently being proposed.


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#18)

by treborc on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 08:08:15 AM GMT

Mr Harris of course has an expenses account, but the real problem wages are not the reason why we are having everything, it's personal debt. Now that debt is coming home and we must repay it.

being disabled I have everything a 15 year old TV a computer which is second hand and my son pays for my internet.

I get £6,980 a year in benefits I get sod all free. some life mate.

I've been told to get a job sadly nobody wants a dribbling shitting pissing cripple.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#19)

by snowflake5 on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 01:57:37 PM GMT

Tom, do you realise that your article is featured on AOL under "Miserable Voters Slammed"  It seems that shadow treasury chief secretary Philip Hammond has taken it upon himself to "condemn" you for it!

So much for having a grown-up discussion about why people feel bad in the midst of plenty!


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#21)

by rwendland on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 02:13:41 PM GMT

It is all over the media. e.g. BBC "Minister defends 'miserable' jibe".

Is Tom Harris miserable now?


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#23)

by AngryVoter on Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 04:39:45 PM GMT

It does seem to be a miserable time to be in government :D


[ Parent ]

Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#24)

by otware on Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 12:29:32 AM GMT

This is all over the Guardian lol.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#26)

by jkitleft on Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 07:18:49 PM GMT

Tom I agree to an extent.

Crime has gone down. By 40%. People do have short memories. Everyone remembers the moral panic that Britons descended into in the '90's after the Jamie Bulger murder. And if people don't believe the statistics, claiming they're government spin, ask the golden standard bearer of crime analysers, the BCS.

Public services have improved, especially the NHS, a fact lamented by private health companies, and many private schools.

But the problem with this is not that elements of it aren't true, it's that there is still a lot to do. The reason why Labour seems tired, in my opinion, is that they talk of achievements made 10 years ago. They need to focus on the problems still existing.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#29)

by doctordunc on Sun Jun 22, 2008 at 01:06:59 PM GMT

It is much bigger than a question of the current economic situation or the current government.

It is a very interesting question though.  Psychologist Oliver James has considered it, and he relates it to capitalism.  I would do too.


Capitalism is an inherently selfish economic system in which we are all alienated from each other and from what we do and achieve and from anything's true value.  It is also an economic system which is based on a religion of discontent and dissatisfaction: the essential engine of capitalism is that capitalists will want to keep accumulating capital.  As such, no level of general affluence will be sufficient; capitalism cannot allow it.


So we are miserable for a wide variety of reasons: very many of us are unfulfilled at work; very many of us are over-worked and do not find time to enjoy ourselves and have genuine leisure; very many of us are miserable because of inequality - either our own relative poverty or our feelings of injustice at the poverty or exploitation of others; very many of us are miserable because, despite all the trappings of democracy, we have very little power over the key decisions on our lives.  All of these reasons not to be cheerful are the children of capitalism.


So if we want to be happy...


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#30)

by treborc on Tue Jun 24, 2008 at 12:53:19 PM GMT

What nuclear threats, I was born in the 1950's and I did not have any bad feelings I was to busy playing and enjoying life.

People born the 1970 were worried about a nuclear threats news to me.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#31)

by madasafish on Wed Jun 25, 2008 at 10:53:54 AM GMT

Blaming personal unhappiness on the Government or capitalism or indeed any external influence is just shallow.

Happiness comes from within: either you are happy with your life.. or if not do something about it. Those who moan and do nothing have every right to complain... and deserve no sympathy whatsoever.

After all, most people can do something about changing jobs, partner etc...


Of course if you have been enjoying a lifestyle funded by debt and no longer can afford it, then you have every case to be unhappy: but it's silly to blame anyone lese ... but it is also human.

Individuals are responsible for their own decisions. If they choose to vote in a Government which is autocratic, manifestly incompetent and which breaks its promises, then the solution is in their own hands.

We are of course cynical about politicians cos most of them (All parties) are inveterate liars or crooks or idiots - or all three .. but they merely mirror the society and people who elect them.

Commitment to shared values? When ever did I vote for 2 wars, unrestricted immigration or not having a referendum on the EC?

For any politician to complain of voter cynicism after the arrogant betrayal of UK voters just shows how out of touch they are with the principles of democracy.


Re: Heaven knows we're miserable now (#32)

by treborc on Sun Jun 29, 2008 at 11:52:42 AM GMT

Yes it's mad to want the latest TV the latest  DVD or what ever, especially if your earning £5.25 a hour or worse working part time or worse are disabled, shit forgot all disability are fraud, well perhaps so I get £1.96 a hour on benefits, well work, well actually I've been told I'm to disabled so must do voluntary work, sadly the job I now do, was paid until I came along cheap Labour, well New Labour, I was laid off last month because I looked to unhappy, could be the pain.

Never mind for those that see TV and the adverts they are only for the rich not the  working class.


Heaven knows we're miserable now | 30 comments (30 topical)