Happiness...

...is living in Orkney, at least according to the results of the first annual Subjective Well-being Annual Population Survey (APS)  released  by the Office for National Statistics earlier this week.

Orkney was grouped together with Shetland and the Western Isles to give the required sample size, and 82.9 per cent of respondents in the three island groups rated their happiness as High (scoring 7-10) compared with the UK value of 71.1 per cent. The least happy place in the UK is apparently Blackpool, where only 63.4 per cent of respondents rated their happiness as High.

The Office for National Statistics website has a helpful interactive map so you can see how feelings of happiness, satisfaction, worthwhileness, and anxiety vary across the UK.

There are of course many reasons why folk living in Orkney are in general pretty happy, but we like to think that the Orkney library service may have a small part to play.