Be happy. Go on, do it NOW.

OECD is an organisation that just loves asking questions, do calculations based on the answers to questions and then they like writing shiny reports about it.  In fact, you may have heard the quote "Denmark is the happiest nation on Earth" quite a few times:  it's the OECD who measured that.

They measure happiness every year.  The 2011 Happiness Report is just out, actually, and once again, the Danes are just so annoyingly happy.  The average happy rating across all the countries is 59% - but Denmark is 90%.

So, do we skip down the street, whistling merry tunes?  Do we smile at our neighbours and never complain and moan?  Actually, no.  In fact, we're quite angry at times and we really don't like it when the neighbour buys a new car, especially a shiny one.  And when he does, we bet it's because he's cheated on his tax (shock, horror).

Could it be because the choice of question uses the word "glad" to measure it?  Do they?  Glad means Tilfreds which means satisfied.  It doesnt mean happy.  Still, we are absolutely in agreement that 90% of the Danish population is "tilfreds" because how can you not be "tilfreds" when you have exactly the same as your neighbour has?  No need to be different, just make sure you stay in line and don't draw too much attention to yourself.  If we lose our job, we're okay.  If we have too much, the tax man saves us by taking most of it away again.  We all stay together in a happy "tilfreds" group.

You can read the whole report from OECD here

In short, it will tell you that people in Estonians are really not very happy (24%), whereas Britons are suprisingly non-grumbly at 68%.  Swedes, norwegians and Finns are about as happy as Danes.

Most surprisingly, Holland came out tops at 91%.  They are also taller than the Danes.  We bet they even got a new car.  Pah!  must have cheated on their tax, those Dutch people...

Bronte's Dad is so happy when he walks to work down Hong high street... 

It's the Danish way, after all...