“Happiness is important. Statistics are useful. Therefore, statistics about happiness are important and useful.” The logic of this implicit argument certainly doesn’t stand up. (Sex is important. Coffee mugs are useful. Are coffee mugs about sex therefore important and useful?)

The idea of collecting statistics on wellbeing deserves the benefit of the doubt. I worry, though, that every new wellbeing report from the Office for National Statistics just deepens that doubt. This latest is a grab-bag of statistics: income, job satisfaction, carbon monoxide levels. Some are collected by the ONS and some are not. There seems to be no serious analysis.

The?aim, then, is presumably communication. This is awkward; communication?is?really?not the ONS’s strong point. The report makes much of a vague visual similarity between the path of life satisfaction and real household actual income, or RHAI. Type that into the ONS website, and the top five results are all in Welsh, headed by a report titled “O’r gegin i ganolfan brosesu’r cyfrifiad”.