no subject

[peteryoung]

David Cameron MP, leader of the British Conservative Party, wants us to focus not just on the national GNP but also on the much-neglected GWB - "General Well-Being" - of the obviously knackered and depressed British nation.

Sorry, but I simply can't get behind sloganeering that incorporates such an unfortunate set of initials. That is all.

Comments

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I simply can't get behind sloganeering that incorporates such an unfortunate set of initials.

You too, eh? It was my first thought when I heard Dave the C's brightest new idea. Well, after I'd stopped laughing.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Try Health, Work and Wellbeing instead --

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2005/health_and_wellbeing.pdf

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

Too many "W"s to make "HWW" easy to say quickly.

Anyway, what's wrong with the longer-standing, and pretty widely accepted-by-now "Work-Life Balance"?

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

We sort of don't much like 'work-life balance' (though we do use it) because it implies that work is something you do when you're not having a life. In fact, my personal view, and the one implied by the policy, is that work is a key part of healthy adult life. The policy rolls up a whole load of things around work and health that stem from that, and is an example of joint working between DH, DWP and HSE.

Cameron is riffing on work by Richard Layard and others that, while influential, goes rather further than current government policy. The argument is, roughly, that the key overriding role of governments is to make their citizens happier (there is an intergenerational argument that complicates this, but let us set that aside for simplicity). Why this is interesting is that increasing GDP does correlate with happiness, but only until you get to the GDP-per-person of approximately Portugal. Above that, there is no further increase in happiness from increased GDP. So perhaps that shouldn't be what we're about?

Anyway, turns out that one of the things that correlates most strongly with happiness is, ta-da! -- work. Health is pretty high on the list, too, but not as high as work (there is an argument here about whether it needs to be paid work or not, too). So we have a virtuous circle; healthy adults work, which increases their self-esteem and wellbeing, and therefore improves their health.

But, but...

[godelescherbach.livejournal.com]

I thought the UK was one of the homes of The Third Place, sung in praises of social engineers (professors with tenure) as being the model of what we poor colonials lacked--a clear division between Work and Home. So, everybody was happier!

On a related note, a few weeks ago there was Much Ado about a study which indicated that men in the US were not as healthy as men in the UK. It seems we have more cancer, heart disease, etc. Turns out that is probably not the case, it's just that we get tested more (gave blood today for a battery of quarterly tests myself!)