Wednesday, 10 January 2007

Reasons to be made cheerful

There's a debate going on about the extent to which governments can or should try to influence our behaviour. Of course they probably always have tried to ('Your country needs you' posters; don't drink and drive; get a smoke alarm; eat more healthy food; stop smoking, etc etc). But my feeling is that we ain't seen nothing yet.

A while ago I was wondering aloud what happened to social capital in policy: it seems it's turned into wellbeing. The Sunday Times had this article the other day, about a report to the Whitehall Wellbeing Working Group, which suggests that the attempt to quantify a personal “sense of wellbeing” is part of a move by all the main political parties to go beyond purely financial measures of wellbeing in setting goals for policy.

Well anyway, it claims that people who take the time to chat over the fence to their neighbours tend to be happier. I suspect it might even help if the conversation is a good collaborative moan, as long as it's not a fierce argument, eg about the government's Happiness policy. I can think of some people who, if told that the government wants them to be happier, would react with a flat refusal.

10 Jan 2007 08:00:00 | Neighbourhood relations, Social capital

3 Comments

Thanks Richard - I'm midway through it and may post some thoughts presently.
k

Posted by: Kevin Harris | Wednesday, 17 January 2007 at 08:02

"Whitehall Wellbeing Working Group"? So that's what WWW stands for. Doh.

Posted by: Kevin Harris | Thursday, 18 January 2007 at 20:19

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