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In Battersea, well perhaps not 😉

This article titled “Where in the world are people most depressed?” was written by Mark Rice-Oxley, for theguardian.com on Friday 8th November 2013 15.56 UTC

For those who think of depression as a byproduct of the vapidity of western materialism, this latest study by researchers in Queensland might come as something of a shock. Depression simply isn’t that picky. And when it comes to depressive disorders, parts of north Africa and the Middle East suffer more than North America and western Europe.

According to the researchers, who gathered pre-existing data on clinical diagnoses up to 2010, Algeria, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan fared worse for the cumulative number of years their citizens lived with the disability of depression (YLD). (For the Middle East countries, bear in mind that this relates to data gathered before the Arab spring turned lives upside down).

Japan fared the best, along with Australia and New Zealand. The researchers caveated their work by acknowledging that data is patchy from some parts of the world. Intriguingly, the UK and US – countries in which reporting on mental illness and cultural reflections of depression are rapidly multiplying – appear to be far less badly afflicted than parts of Africa and eastern Europe.

The second interesting breakdown (no pun intended) of the data concerns age.

YLDs by age and sex for MDD and dysthymia in 1990 and 2010 — YLDs by age and sex for major depressive disorder and dysthymia (milder depression) in 1990 and 2010. Click on the image for a full-size graphic Photograph: info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001547

The gender graph contains few surprises – women appear to suffer about twice as much as men, reflecting most major studies into the incidence of depression. But the age analysis shows the extent to which depression is becoming a young person’s affliction. People aged 20 to 24 suffer most, closely followed by the generation immediately senior to them. By the time you get to 50-year-olds, where existential questions might start to press, rates dwindle. Above 60, they ease off quite sharply. There may be comfort in growing old after all.

So is depression on the rise? Again, you would think so from the proliferation of reporting and analysis about the disease. The researchers say yes and no: depressive illness is the disease with the second heaviest burden on society, with around one in 20 people suffering. But if it is getting worse, they say, it may be down to demographics.

“Whilst burden increased by 37.5% between 1990 and 2010, this was due to population growth and ageing,” they say. “Contrary to recent literature on the topic, our findings suggest that the epidemiology of both major depressive disorder and dysthymia (milder depression) remained relatively stable over time.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Well guess what, they have been pretty unpopular with me for quiteÂ a while so not much change there.

This article titled “The Conservatives are much more unpopular than they realise” was written by Sunny Hundal, for theguardian.com on Saturday 27th April 2013 11.00 UTC

Much of modern politics is based on a series of confidence tricks. After Thursday’s “better than expected” (by 0.2 percentage points) growth figures, the mood around Westminster has changed. George Osborne claims the economy is “healing” and Tory MPs feel more convinced that, with a triple-dip recession avoided, the economy is on its way up. Only 0.4 percentage points the other way and it would have been a disaster. But Conservatives shouldn’t be so self-assured because, outside the Westminster bubble, they are much more unpopular than they realise or accept.

A few weeks ago, on the eve of the budget, a flurry of polls showed Labour had drawn level with the Conservatives on economic competence, and voters were losing faith in the chancellor. In another poll, people were more likely to reject an argument on the economy if Osborne advocated it.

This kind of unpopularity is extraordinary for a chancellor who has been in the job for less than three years. Most leftwingers think they know why (“they’re Tories”), but it’s curious that even conventional Westminster wisdom says Labour should be doing better on economic matters.

But there is no historical precedent for this; in fact Labour should be languishing way behind in the polls.

The key reason is that they were in power during the biggest economic crash of the past 80 years. Voters always blame the party in power for not preventing such big crashes, and take years to forget. The Conservatives were in power when Britain crashed out of the ERM in 1992, and it took the calamity of 2007 for them to be seen as better at managing the economy – a full 15 years later.

So why have people forgiven Labour so quickly? This question is more perplexing, as Labour has made two unpopular accusations against George Osborne since 2010: first that cuts to spending are too hard and too fast, and hit the poor hardest; secondly that austerity is hurting our economic growth and leading to stagnation. Neither of those arguments were popular for Labour to make.

Osborne has argued since 2009 that cuts need to be made to public spending to reduce Britain’s debts. Voters have not liked the cuts but a majority have always accepted their need. In fact more voters have consistently blamed Labour for the cuts than the coalition government. Voters have also mostly preferred more austerity over extra spending on growth. Similarly, on UK’s economic stagnation, most voters blame the previous Labour government, the Eurozone, banks or even higher oil prices for our mess.

If Labour are making arguments that voters don’t agree with, why aren’t more rejecting the party? Maybe the Tories are just feeling midterm blues? But this explanation does not make much sense either: Labour’s reputation for managing the economy increased after they were elected in 1997, and stayed high even during the midterm.

In other words, Labour has pushed ahead with unpopular (if true) arguments in the face of a very hostile media press. Plus, voters very clearly remember they were in charge when the economy crashed in 2007. And yet the Conservative record on economic competence is just barely ahead of Labour. It’s astounding that Labour aren’t languishing in obscurity in the polls.

This suggests to me that the issue here isn’t just the economy but something wider. The speed at which the Conservatives have become so unpopular says less about the cuts they’ve implemented and more about their overall brand. This is the practical impact of the failure of Cameron’s detoxification process, which died in the face of a weak leader unable to take on his own backbenchers. Westminster wisdom downplays Tory unpopularity to mask a hostility so deep that, as Ed Miliband cuttingly said at PMQs a few weeks ago, we were united when Osborne is booed at the Paralympics. It’s only a matter of time before the latest confidence trick also falls apart.

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