Government Embarks On Fruitless Search For Nation’s Happiness

NASA will be asked if it can point this at Britain for a week or two

The Office of National Statistics is to be sent on a fool’s errand to seek out any remaining traces of the nation’s happiness - fulfilling a meaningless pledge, made when the Tories were in opposition, to base government policies on more than just economic indicators.

“Obviously the economic indicators are now totally shot to buggery,” pointed out NAO spokesman Phil Field. “So the government is hoping to use the nation’s hypothetical sense of wellbeing as a spurious excuse to justify its impending slew of punitive legislation.”

“Unfortunately, our preliminary investigations suggest that it simply doesn’t exist,” he added. “So we’re asking for a bigger microscope.”

“It seems that the only things which mercifully divert half the country from contemplating the soul-destroying wretchedness of the rest of their blighted lives – Ann Widdecombe wobbling about in a tutu, heavily-accented meerkats and starry-eyed nobodies prostituting themselves in front of Simon Cowell – are also the very things which make the other half morosely wonder about taking out a shotgun licence,” he observed sadly. “The result so far is just a big, fat zero.”