AW, as it were, naw. How depressing. The results of another happiness survey are in. This latest, compiled by Rightmove (the people who need you never to settle down) put Hexham in Northumberland top of its annual poll. Stirling came first in Scotland.

You have to guess that happiness is a quiet affair, otherwise you’d imagine the good citizens of Hexham and Stirling going around all day with big cheesy grins, or kicking their heels in the air and shouting: “Yaas!”

And, with all due to respect to these fine towns, which at the very least are presumably decent places in which to live – assuming all other things to be equal (income, house, job, personal circumstances) – I’m suspicious of such surveys.

That’s because, rather than being based on psychology, they’re usually based on amenities and ticking boxes to questions like: does your area have a golden eagle/casino/evening class in doily-making? Admittedly, I’m not sure Hexham and Stirling has any of these (I just checked on that internet about casinos in Stirling and got Corral Bookmakers, High Street, Falkirk).

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I mention golden eagles because it’s usually country places, and in Scotland islands, that win these happiness surveys, which is largely because everyone in such communities is a PR officer for the joint. You can’t make sarkie remarks about home, as people in cities do, because the latter are secure in their love and can happily poke fun at themselves or complain.

The mayor of Hexham boasted of his town’s “many sporting events – including a park run, cricket, tennis, squash, golf and rowing”. Sounds hellish. However, “community spirit” and green spaces were other criteria of the survey, the former a nebulous concept dependent on what you put it in for what you get out, and the latter on its own implying that the wide open peat moors of Caithness should top the poll.

The main conclusion of the survey, given other places making the top 10, is that “market towns” are best. I see Stirling defined as such online and also as a “city”, a status granted in 2002 as part of the Queen’s Jubilee. Never understood that desire of small places to be considered cities which I’m afraid, for me, will always be thought of as big places.

Being a town is better anyway, something of which to be proud, and I believe that the criterion of size plays a part in civic or communal happiness. I spent several happy years in a small town and can see why these are deemed good places to live. They’re not small enough to have nothing, and they’re not large enough to have everything.

Not everybody knows your name, which can be a pain, but plenty do, which is fine for saying hello as you stoat doon the high street. They’re just right, and better than big cities where you can walk aboot all day and never have a soul say hello.

That said, you may recall another survey recently – Government sponsored research this time – which found Glasgow to be the saddest place in Britain. Ha-ha. That certainly made Glaswegians laugh. True, they might have genuine grievances about poverty, housing or prospects, but to depict Glaswegians – the friendliest of folk – as sad cases is well wide of the mark. You could say they’re unhappy with conditions, but they’re not unhappy people as such.

I’m not dissing these surveys entirely. Undoubtedly, they tell us something genuine and real about various places, even taking into account rural patriotism and urban cynicism. I also think the Rightmove case for market towns is a good one.

But, ultimately, our attitude to our surroundings is complex. You can have unhappy people in happy places, and happy people in unhappy places. I could be unhappy even in a place that had a golden eagle, a casino and an evening class in doily-making.

Pure dead brilliant

AT last, a surefire way to destroy the Taliban – and it comes from the cookie terrorist outfit itself. Its interior minister has announced that “people of bad character” will be purged from its ranks, as they are giving the controversial organisation a bad name.

Well, it’s arguable, I suppose. The question is: who will be left to carry on the good work? It would be like universities getting rid of woke nutters, newspapers of amoral chancers, football of people who use adjectives as adverbs.

The idea is that only the “pure and sincere” should remain and, be they ever so few, better that than a mass organisation of heid-the-baws. Good luck with that, guys. It’s the latest gambit in an attempted makeover from medieval guerillas to some approximation of a decent or western (though they’d never admit it) civilian administration, motivated by the fear that, if they don’t start acting properly and wearing decent suits, they won’t get any more of our money, which they depend on to fund terrorist operations.

We shall watch developments with a sceptical eye. Western history is replete with incidences of mainly religious loons declaring themselves the most “pure and sincere”. Cue revelations of pants down, hands in tills, and poor personal hygiene.

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