Scotland: a land of joy

Maybe the old distinction between a Scotsman with a grievance and ray of sunshine isn't quite so clear cut after all. The Ray of Sunshine reports:

THE traditional image of Scots as dour, doom-laden pessimists was shaken yesterday by a new Europe-wide survey showing them to be among the happiest people in the Continent.

When will people realise? Doom-laden pessimism is fun.

Along with stunning observations on the lines that people with money are happier than those without it, there are various attempts to determine just why the Scots are so cheerful. Disappointingly there has been no attempt to link this study with all the claims one hears that the Scots are among Europe's heaviest drinkers.

She was smiling on the inside.

However, forget from the stuff about a national sense of belonging and the search for political and economic explanations because there's one detail about the methodology that has so far been overlooked.

The Scottish part of the survey was conducted between May and November last year, after the SNP came to power.

I'd need a detailed breakdown of the figures to be certain, but I rather suspect that a certain football match we would otherwise prefer not to mention, but which happened at the end of the survey period might have caused a late surge up the happiness table.