HOW sad to see that another survey of happiness has made the headlines.

At least this time it wasn’t one of those efforts in which the unlikeliest of places are said to have the happiest people. Generally speaking, when you read the small print, it turns out that such folk are just unenthusiastically content with the fact that no one has assaulted them in a month, their car scraped through its MoT, and their local school buildings haven’t collapsed on the children yet.

In world terms, the incongruence is shown in Denmark, which always comes out top for happiness whereas, as Michael Booth demonstrates in his book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People, the Danes – like all Scandinavians – are a dour and unfriendly bunch who believe that smiling is a sign that Satan has taken possession of your soul.

They’re not happy. They’re just content to live in a safe, socialistic system where everyone is looked after. By the same token, you can see why Britain usually comes near the bottom of such polls.

The latest report controversially concerns Little Big Scotland where, apparently, more people than anywhere else in the UK see achieving happiness as the most important thing in their lives. It all sounds very worthy. But what does it mean?

I’m at my happiest when out in nature, far from the madding crowd, communing with the trees and the flowers and the midges. But I will be candid with you here and say I would be happier if I won a million pounds. Actually, even a hundred would be pretty damned rootin’-tootin’.

However, according to the study by the Martin Roberts Foundation, only 2 per cent of Scots considered becoming a millionaire to be a major life achievement, at least compared to having your health, a supportive family and other such nonsense.

There seems to me to be a confusion of means and ends here. Having your health and a supportive family isn’t going to help make you a millionaire. But being a millionaire will help you have your health and a supportive family of scroungers.

Scots were also more likely to priorities regular holidays as an important life achievement, which is pretty sound. I say that as someone who hasn’t had a proper holiday since 2009, and that was only to Largs (I was meant to be going to Millport but ran out of money for the ferry; stood in the sea and tried to hitch but nobody stopped).

By that criterion, and indeed all the others, my life has been a failure. I am not a millionaire, I don’t get any holidays, I have absolutely no family that I know of (many of them went to South Africa and were never seen again) and, while I have a modicum of health, I find that little consolation.

I suppose I should wake up every morning and say: “Well, at least ah’m no deid.” But that is way too much positive thinking for this top philosopher in the school of Unremittingly Grim Realism.

Ach, I mustn’t paint myself as an old misery guts here. I am capable of great happiness, though usually it comes with the associated risk of being charged with drunk and disorderly. I cheer up when Hearts lose or a matador is gored by a bull.

I guess the real secret, as hinted above with the Danes, is to be content and appreciate what you have. However, probably the most important skill one can cultivate is to lie one’s head off when approached by one of those organisations carrying out surveys of happiness.

GREAT days in political history: on August 3, 2017, Murdo Fraser MSP obtained a 50p toilet roll from Poundworld. You may think this unremarkable. You may think it peculiar that a Tory shopped at Poundworld (or had someone shop there for him). You may think it invidious to even bring it up.

But brought up it has been on yonder internet, where Mr Fraser’s expenses claim for the aforementioned toiletry has been doing the rounds on Twitter. The inference is that he’s a cad out for everything he can get from the public purse while supporting clampdowns on welfare claimants.

Your correspondent was so piqued by the tale that he decided to engage in something highly unusual: research. And, lo, he (that is to say, me) found that three other Mid-Scotland and Fife Tories – Liz Smith, Dean Lockhart and Alexander Stewart – made similar claims for loo rolls obtained on the same day.

The conspiracy was reported in The Herald’s “Unspun” political diary last December but, far from developing into a full Bottomgate scandal, was quietly flushed down the lavatory of controversy.

Until now when, dripping like the monster in Alien, it has come back up the pan to bite Murdo on the bum. Coming after Tory MP Ross Thompson made the cheeky claim that his Scottish colleagues were “asteriskholes”, we’re tempted to go on a roll and say this past week should go down in the anals of political scandal. But that would be scraping the bottom.

THE less comatose among you may recall that, last week, your scribe forensically analysed news that the military was now encouraging unfit and emotionally fragile people to sign on as recruits.

This week, the situation worsened with revelations that the Army is considering a relaxation of its ban on beards.

Prince Harry is being blamed for the morale-sapping development after he got married in his Army uniform while sporting ginger fluff on his chin.

As the disturbing byline photograph decorating this column amply illustrates, beards are a sign of degeneracy and untrustworthiness.

If you would not trust a man with follicles on his face to repay a loan of £10 or to feed your cat when you were away, surely trusting him with the defence of the realm means it can only be a matter of time before we are all speaking Russian and commuting to the gulag for work.