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In Great Britain, no news is good news

Oh, to be living in modern Britain! Look at the headlines and you will think it is the most gloomy place on earth, where nothing works and everything is collapsing around your ears: the housing market is heading for a crash; public services are in free fall; the BBC is in crisis; personal debts are going through the roof; schools are producing a whole new generation of children unable to count, or write their own names; universities are churning out graduates who are unemp loyable; obesity is growing at an alarming rate; and…

Well, that’s only the front page. Turn over and there will be more grim news: perhaps a new report from a think-tank predicting that by 20-something every second or third or fourth Briton will be suffering from some kind of alcohol-related disease if the current rate of binge-drinking is not checked; a survey claiming that Britain is the worst country in the developed world for children to grow up in; a study showing that a child born in poverty in Britain is more likely to die poor than a child born in poverty in any other developed country; a poll indicating apocalyptic fears about immigration; and...

Go on, read this: “Racially and religiously motivated attacks” are up; a “race bomb” is ticking away; the gun and drugs culture is approaching American proportions; prisons are so overcrowded that rapists and paedophiles are freely roaming the streets; the police force is overstretched; the army is “crippled” by shortage of men and material; health services are struggling, prompting “record” number of Britons to go abroad (including India) for treatment…I can go on, and on.

Reading this, who would think we are talking about 21st century Great Britain — the world’s fifth largest economy, with booming consumption levels, near-full employment, some of the world’s best universities and private schools, and a functioning welfare state. Add to this the constant talk about “venal” politicians, “cynical” journalists, “greedy” businessmen, “bullying” children and a “dysfunctional” royal family and Britain begins to sound more like a living hell on earth than one of the most advanced western nations, sought as much by high-profile international financiers and business tycoons as by desperate immigrants from around the world.

I used to think that as a nation of grumblers and moaners Indians were hard to beat but, clearly, we have competition. Gone are the days when Britons only complained about the weather. Now there is almost nothing that does not provoke their ire. On a train from Heathrow airport to Central London I met a young Briton, just back from a long foreign holiday, and I expected him to be pleased to be back home. But, guess what he said gloomily looking out the window: “Nothing has changed, mate… the same bloody weather, the same everything.”

Judging from an article in The Observer, it seems there are more things that Britons “love to hate,” as the headline put it, than what they actually like. The article discussed the cover story of the Ecologist magazine’s current issue on what it regards as “ugly” manifestations of modern British culture.

It devotes several pages to examples of “ugly” realities of everyday life ranging from “bagged salad” and “bike lanes” to “fake tans” and “new housing estates.” “What they all share, to a greater or lesser extent, is the Ecologist’s judgment of what is wrong with British society: superficiality, selfishness, social fragmentation, hypocrisy, disempowerment and the destruction of nature,” noted The Observer writer Juliette Jowit.

The magazine’s editor Pat Thomas told the paper that the story had struck a chord with readers who responded with their own favourite “ugly” things which, among other objects of their hate, included mobile phones, a curious choice considering that most Britons are glued to their mobiles 24/7.

“It was a conversation that took off like wildfire,” she said, citing the overwhelming response from readers, one of whom wrote: “I’ve been feeling like this, and feeling like a freak for years.” What a relief to know that so many of his fellow countrymen and women felt the same urge to “hate.”

The fact that someone could even think of such an idea for a cover story is a measure of the Britons’ almost obsessive negativism, but the magazine denied that it was wallowing in misery, arguing that, on the contrary, it was a positive exercise.

“You will find that once you start thinking about what is ugly, you will also think about what is beautiful and good in your life, and will be all the more moved to preserve and protect it,” Ms Thomas said.

The truth is that there is a flourishing market in doom and gloom. Some of the best-selling books in Britain are “misery memoirs,” often invented stories of child abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, and hardship. Indeed, there is a view that one of the things that might have tilted the balance in favour of this year’s Man Booker prize winning novel, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, was its relentlessly gloomy and depressing theme. The huge popularity of television shows such as Neighbours from Hell, Hell’s Kitchen, Get Me Out of Here… shows the seductive power of negative emotions.

If it is true, as is often said, that unhappiness is a necessary condition for happiness (you must sink into the depths of gloom in order to discover happiness) then, who knows, the Brits could be headed for some big-time happiness. But until then brace yourself for more grim news from out of London.

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