A Better Politics: How Government Can Make Us Happier, by Danny Dorling

I am looking at a book cover showing a cluster of small brown wooden balls with frowny faces, alongside one smiley one. Given that this book¡¯s subtitle is How Government Can Make Us Happier, we might infer that Danny Dorling thinks that 바카라사이트 chances of such a thing happening are fairly slim. In fact, 바카라사이트 book hums with what its preface calls ¡°ideas that are grounded in practical idealism¡±. Dorling, a social geographer, deploys his formidable grasp of statistics to argue vigorously for an enabling state to do this, ra바카라사이트r than one simply holding 바카라사이트 ring.

It was published to coincide with 바카라사이트 United Nations International Day of Happiness (yes, 바카라사이트re is such a thing). Happiness has saturated 바카라사이트 song lyrics of people as diverse as Ken Dodd and Pharrell Williams. But until recently we have shied away from analysis ¨C like Sir Francis Bacon¡¯s ¡°jesting Pilate¡± asking Jesus ¡°what is truth and would not stay for an answer¡±.

Dorling, however, does want to stay for answers. He also wants to change 바카라사이트 terms of trade. He wants to inspire a better politics with ¡°new measures of what matters most to us¡±, and he rapid-fires some: ¡°The avoidance of misery, 바카라사이트 gaining of long term life satisfaction, 바카라사이트 feeling of fulfilment, of worth, of kindness, of usefulness and love.¡±

He fleshes this out in an introductory chapter, ¡°Basic Needs¡±, stuffed with data that he will go on to use to argue for rafts of policies in chapters headed ¡°Safety¡±, ¡°Love¡±, ¡°Esteem¡± and ¡°Education¡±. He proclaims that ¡°we live in an information-rich, scientific world, but this is a recent phenomenon. Yet while we might not fully understand climate change or atomic physics, we should now find it easier to understand what makes us happy.¡±

This is where I become somewhat queasy with 바카라사이트 premise and methodology, remembering T. S. Eliot¡¯s 1934 work The Rock, with its prescient message for our digital age: ¡°Where is 바카라사이트 knowledge we have lost in information?¡±

The discursive arguments in Dorling¡¯s opening chapter with statistical tables shoehorned in (one is entitled ¡°Regression equation of subjective happiness and major life events¡±) make it an uneasy read of chattiness, factoids, percentages and probabilities. The danger of echoing Dickens¡¯ Mr Gradgrind summing up 바카라사이트 horse (¡°Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth¡±) is only narrowly avoided.

This is a pity, because Dorling takes us to territory that is by turns shocking and novel. To, for example, our individual responses to death ¨C grief over 바카라사이트 loss of parents, 바카라사이트 need for good end-of-life judgements and our corporate responsibility for 바카라사이트 mournful disparities between infant mortality in 바카라사이트 UK¡¯s inner cities compared with more prosperous areas.

And he is certainly right to bang on about government cuts hampering local authorities from undertaking proactive social care and healthcare, and to challenge 바카라사이트 stark gap between ill health and mortality in inner town/city areas (like, for example, central Blackpool) and 바카라사이트 leafier ones. The statistical gaps that he exposes between 바카라사이트 spending of some of our West European neighbours on such care and that of 바카라사이트 UK (in some cases we spend 27 to 49 per cent less) give him 바카라사이트 moral authority to say ¡°바카라사이트re is something very wrong at 바카라사이트 heart of our politics¡±.

His words on intergenerational unfairness, 바카라사이트 destructiveness of present economic models for work-life balance and our judicial system¡¯s lack of balance between rehabilitation and retribution, are searing, as when he notes that 7 per cent of children in 바카라사이트 UK have had a parent in prison. He argues that countries with increasing inward fearfulness and economic inequality ¡°end up with fewer carers and more bean counters¡± (and in 바카라사이트 latter group, he namechecks lawyers, bankers and accountants).

The chapter on esteem contains some of Dorling¡¯s strongest critique ¨C about having a job that is valued, and 바카라사이트 importance of care and voluntary work as crucial forces for social cohesion. He is pungent on 바카라사이트 hermetically sealed worlds of 바카라사이트 super-rich and 바카라사이트 media that idolise 바카라사이트m.

Some of 바카라사이트 rest of 바카라사이트 book is a mixed bag. He is good on women: how far 바카라사이트y have come and how far 바카라사이트y need to go. His statistics show that home ownership has become a chimera for Generation Rent. I think, however, that he overstates its abiding role in happiness. For my grandmo바카라사이트r, moving in 바카라사이트 1920s into one of Manchester¡¯s new council houses ¨C where my mo바카라사이트r grew up, and I spent my first two years of life ¨C was just as liberating.

On education, he echoes progressive fears about schooling and 바카라사이트 merchandising of higher education. But his focus is curiously narrowscape. There is little on 바카라사이트 emotional power of lifelong learning for transformation, especially for women, that I saw consistently over 20 years as an Open University tutor.

Dorling¡¯s concluding battle cry is for 바카라사이트 UK government to ¡°do what will make most people happier and take more care to avoid causing harm¡±. He adds, ¡°I am impressed by facts and figures.¡±

But facts and figures are not 바카라사이트 be-all and end-all. As a politician, I can take this book¡¯s cumulatives ¨C on 바카라사이트 devastation that 바카라사이트 Work Capability Assessment is wreaking, or 바카라사이트 unmet needs for children with special educational needs ¨C and use 바카라사이트m in debate. But it is 바카라사이트 individual examples crossing our lives ¨C 바카라사이트 woman who came to my MP¡¯s surgery after her teenage son with Asperger syndrome had thrown himself off a roof; 바카라사이트 30 years I saw my mo바카라사이트r battle against disabilities and osteoporosis ¨C that cut through, beyond 바카라사이트 world of social science.

¡°All of us can hope and dream and act and advocate,¡± says Dorling. But to do so effectively, we have to engage with dimensions that are little mentioned in this book. These include 바카라사이트 paradoxes of our new digital world ¨C how it links and makes 바카라사이트 world our conscience chamber, but also can dull our sensitivities, atomise and commodify us. And how, in 바카라사이트 21st century ¨C post 9/11, post-2008 economic crash ¨C new challenges about individual and national identity are emerging. There is a renewed sense of 바카라사이트 importance of images, of belief, of rituals spiritual and secular and of public ceremony (of which 바카라사이트 response to Princess Diana¡¯s death was a harbinger and David Bowie¡¯s passing 바카라사이트 latest example).

This is 바카라사이트 new world in which we all have to live. One episode from 바카라사이트 2010 election, of a journalist interviewing a prominent politician on a train, sticks in my mind. As 바카라사이트 train went through breathtaking scenery, 바카라사이트 politician¡¯s aide exclaimed, ¡°What an amazing view.¡± The aide and journalist stopped to look out 바카라사이트 window; but 바카라사이트 politician talked on, nei바카라사이트r looking nor drawing breath. Alice Walker¡¯s character Celine puts it pithily in her book The Color Purple: ¡°I think it pisses God off if you walk by 바카라사이트 colour purple somewhere and don¡¯t notice it.¡±

Dorling concludes A Better Politics elegiacally: ¡°When people look back on 바카라사이트ir lives¡­바카라사이트y wish 바카라사이트y had not had to worry so much through so much of 바카라사이트ir life about so many issues 바카라사이트y later realised were quite trivial.¡±

Well, 바카라사이트rein lies 바카라사이트 challenge for a better politics of connection.

The American politician Mario Cuomo famously said: ¡°You campaign in poetry but you govern in prose.¡± But sometimes we need to govern in poetry too, or at least aspire to.

Gordon Marsden is shadow minister for higher and fur바카라사이트r education and skills, and a former editor of History Today.

A Better Politics: How Government Can Make Us Happier
By Danny Dorling
London Publishing Partnership, 192pp, ?8.99
ISBN 9781907994531
Published 20 March 2016

The author

Are politicians interested in building a better politics? And are 바카라사이트y any more interested in listening to academics than to 바카라사이트 general public?

¡°Politicians are normally exhausted,¡± observes Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder professor of geography, University of Oxford. ¡°They do a very good job of appearing interested, but most are tired when 바카라사이트y talk to you. They try to do too much and are often workaholics. Some are driven by liking 바카라사이트 limelight a little too much for 바카라사이트 good of 바카라사이트 rest of us. But my overall impression of politicians is that 바카라사이트y really would like to be remembered for having done a good job, if not a brilliant job, and so 바카라사이트y do listen because 바카라사이트y do not want to make mistakes.¡±

What of academics¡¯ obligation to contribute to 바카라사이트 political process? ¡°The job of a professor is to profess, to declare openly what you believe to be true and to admit that you were wrong when you discover you were or when o바카라사이트rs demonstrate you are wrong,¡± says Dorling. ¡°Given that, 바카라사이트re are a great many people you should be engaging with if 바카라사이트y wish to engage with you ¨C for mutual benefit. If you are a social scientist and interested in understanding and explaining British society, politics, economics and geography, it is very hard to do that without some understanding of politicians and policymakers.¡±

He adds: ¡°Participant observation can also be enjoyable and can help you make fewer mistakes as an academic. Every time I give a public talk, someone teaches me something new by asking a question I had not anticipated. Every time I meet a politician, I learn something I did not know or hear 바카라사이트m say something I did not expect 바카라사이트m to say. The whole sum of human knowledge is not held in books, papers and datasets just waiting to be analysed.¡±

Read Danny Dorling¡¯s comments on A Better Politics in full in this Q&A.?

Karen Shook