OzTennis

It was reported today that a detailed study by economists in the UK concluded, by the criteria they used for measuring the nation's well being, that 1976 was the best year ever (for UK citizens). It is interesting that it should be all of 28 years ago that Britons never had it so good.

I preferred 1979 (by the Smashing Pumpkins) but that's another story!

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=308712004

So was 1976 really Britain's best year ever?

FRANK O’DONNELL
CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

A YEAR that saw Demis Roussos top the charts, Rocky win best film and inflation spiral to more than 16 per cent was the best ever for Britain’s quality of life, new figures claim.

Economists have ranked 1976 - perhaps best remembered for its long hot summer - as the best on record, according to a new way of measuring the nation’s well-being.

Although only half of the country’s households owned a telephone, industrial unrest was widespread and the Brotherhood of Man’s Save Your Kisses For Me was the year’s biggest chart hit, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) has surprised most people by labelling it a golden age for Britain.

The think-tank has developed a new index - the measure of domestic progress (MDP) - which, unlike the standard GDP figure, takes account of crime, environmental damage and social inequality.

The year that saw the birth of punk and the death of Chairman Mao won points because of its lower crime rate and energy consumption.

It has generally been assumed that Britain’s quality of life has improved year on year. GDP per head has increased three-fold in real terms, for example.

But the NEF report - released ahead of the Chancellor’s Budget announcement today - found that social progress in Britain has become increasingly decoupled from economic growth over the past 50 years, and has stalled completely in the last three decades.

Despite major increases in income over the past five decades, the costs and risks of environmental degradation, rising inequality, social breakdown and the diseases of affluence now threatening advances in life expectancy mean that real progress towards a sustainable society is lagging dangerously behind, the report says.

"The comfortable assumption that economic growth is a good indicator of human progress and well-being is a myth," the report says.

"Economic growth is leading to unacceptable environmental risks, failing to guarantee social progress and doesn't make us any happier.

"Despite improvements in air and water quality, environmental costs have risen 300 per cent in the last half-century.

"Social costs have increased 600 per cent, with a 13-fold increase in the costs of crime and a four-fold increase in the costs of family breakdown."

But economists have already challenged the conclusion that 1976 - when Harold Wilson resigned and Jimmy Carter became US president, a space probe landed on Mars and Starsky and Hutch was still on television and not cinema - was indeed a halcyon era.

Nicholas Crafts, of the London School of Economics, said measures of well-being should take into account improvements in living standards, such as rising life expectancy and opportunities offered by technological progress. Neither is included in the MDP.

Professor Tim Jackson, of Surrey University, who devised the index, said: "There may be intangible benefits of being better qualified and life expectancy has improved a little. But there are all sorts of other intangibles we have tried to look at."

Most people believe they are better off now than they were in the past, but that is because many want to believe it too, he said.

Hetan Shah, the director of NEF’s well-being programme, said: "The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which has never enjoyed the level of economic prosperity in the West, is seeking to replace GDP with Gross National Happiness (GNH).

"We should follow their lead by going back to basics and asking ourselves what exactly it is we are trying to maximise."

OzTennis

Bordy

That Scottish air is going to your head

Grayling

Ah 1976

That was before Thatcher came along and Buggered everything up wasn't it?

G

Jamesy

Dear ol Thatcher, the mistress of privatisation

V fed up just spent 2 hours in a post Budget seminar with a bunch of accountants.. (yes i am one too but hate admitting it) now for the wine and my plans to emigrate!

Don

Depends on your POV. Her start in office pretty much coincides with the time UK stopped crying in the warm beer about lost colonial possessions and a pretended world power status, but started pulling itself together and doing the things UK can do well.

Oh, and coincides with the period when average annual UK GDP increase started to (consistently over 27 years now) exceed OECD average. Ie we all got richer faster than the competition.

Bordy

And we just loved her up in Scotland ........... NOT.

WBB

we had love for her in the valleys too......

Don

You've got to admit, sequestering union assets when they held illegal strike actions was a master stroke.

WBB

dont even go there, they were hard times and thatcher was responsible for the deaths.

Grayling

I will never forget and I, or any of my family,will never vote for the shower of a party she represented.

G

Don

Thatcher was one thing but the general change in approach to work is another. No need to comment on the Thatcher methods.

But who would rather turn the clock back 30 years? Not many.

Pendulums often swing too far each way, but they only swing so far because the alternative was worse and people want to 'get outta this place'.

elbow

No No No. She is not too well liked in the north to this day. No i say!

Amazulu

Good to hear in the budget that Bown is getting rid of 40000 passengers, sorry, civil servants, should have been 100000.

Kentish Man

If only the bloody local councils would follow suite and get rid of the excess baggage maybe council tax wouldn't increase by 17% each year!



As for 1976, I was born that year and things have gone downhill ever since.

Tazzy

Yes, 1976 was a good year. It was the year I was born, so of course it made the world a better place!!

Tazzy