The researchers of the Spirit Level, in 2010, correlated many negative indicators with inequality including crime and drug abuse.
In particular they noted that more equal countries, like Japan and several in Northern Europe, seem to have fewer people, pro rata, affected by depression and anxiety but increasingly unequal countries, like the US and the UK, had more.
Today, I spotted this fascinating personal case study explaining how that might happen.
Here’s an extract:
Reading that a society that is more unequal will lead to people internalising the society’s evaluation of them made complete sense to me and I could think of many, many instances of this happening in me.
Understanding this new concept freed me from feelings of blame that I’d put on myself, for example, by feeling like a failure for not keeping up with my successful older siblings. It made me see that I couldn’t expect to be fully well, flourishing and fully functioning if the society I live in has an illness – an illness it isn’t even aware of. I felt like I’d woken up to what was going on around me in the same way I’d started to wake up when I first started training as a therapist.
We aren’t encouraged to look up from ourselves and to understand, query or contrast our socio-economic situations with other cultures – and the impact that this is having on us is an epidemic of as yet unprecedented proportions. Our society’s mental distress is at an exceptional level and no one other theory can explain and encompass the cause of it like the conclusions in this book and in The Spirit Level.
Full text at: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/news/blog/how-inner-level-explained-my-mental-distress-guest-blog/
Source for Graph and much more on Spirit Level findings:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.ier.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-Spirit-Level-Slides-R-Wilkinson-June-2011.pdf
Talking-up Scotland 
Also worth reading on this topic are?almost any books by Danny Dorling, professor of Geography at Oxford University, who uses statistics to demonstrate levels if inequality.
Some of the most damning, I came across recently in his ‘The inequality Effect’.. They relate to particularly to maternal and infant mortality. The US and UK are pretty horrifying abd demonstrate completely unacceptable inequalities in these areas for what are regarded as rich countries. Even worse is the fact that the figures he quotes are actually getting rising, while in many third world countries they are improving as health care becomes more widely available.
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More equal countries have better life expectancy. Japan 85, Spain 84. People are healthier and happier. Better life styles and diet.
Life expectancy US 76, UK 79. Poorer health outcomes. Life expectancy going down.
Taking away the winter fuel payment from the elderly and leaving children in poverty.
Multinational foreign companies pay no tax. The EU are making them pay tax in the countries they do business. The US are after them. In the UK they tax evade.
The Irish Republic €38Billion in surplus. €14Billion tax received from Apple under EU guidance. They do not have the resources of Scotland. Yet Scotland is worse off because of Westminster Gov poor, bad decisions.
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“How being chained to the UK makes us unwell”
Yet although we are chained to them and so we are subjected to much of their (bad) political decisions, still they speak of us as if we were an independent country .
But they only do that when they are describing what they see as being supposdley wrong with our country.
However all positivity that they connect to our country they conveniently attribute that as only existing because we are a part of their UK.
Reality shows it to be the opposite.
So if we really want to be and feel so so much better then we need to unchain ourselves from their UK.
Sooner rather then later preferably.
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O/T
1 October online article by Peter Geoghegan (who is now an investigative journalist with OCCRP also he is the author of the book “Democracy for sale: Dark money and dirty politics”)
“Rachel Reeves advisor’s firm lobbies for Shein”
“A lobbyist (Kamella Hudson) who has been working closely with Rachel Reeves is employed by a company that represents Shein, the controversial Chinese fast fashion giant that is attempting to secure a UK corporate listing”.
“Kamella Hudson, a partner at the consultancy FGS, has been working closely with Reeves, prompting concerns about a conflict of interest”.
“Kamella Hudson, a partner at the consultancy FGS, worked unpaid for Rachel Reeves during the election campaign and at the Labour conference”
“Shein is seeking a listing in the UK”.
“Ahead of the GE Labour indicated that it would back Shein listing in London”.
“The listing decision is controversial because of concerns about whether the Chinese company can meet UK corporate rules”.
“UK companies have also raised concerns about Shein’s use of a tax loophole in which small packages sent from abroad directly to customers are not subject to import duties”.
“Labour signalled before the election that it would not be closing this loophole”.
“FGS had donated £17,000 to Reeves by seconding Kamella Hudson ( a partner at FGS) to her in the lead-up to the election, before she worked unpaid for Reeves during the election and at Labour conference”.
“It is also understood that FGS sponsored a reception of 125 business leaders after Reeves’s speech at the conference, including 20 of FGS clients agreed with Reeves’s office. It is understood that the donation will be declared in due course”.
Susan Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “The government needs to work hard to avoid the perception that its policy agenda is being dictated by corporate lobbyists. People need to know that the new government’s policies are being developed in the public interest rather than in the interests of business groups with privileged access to ministers.”
The above was part of a Peter Geoghegan article which is part of a series of articles that he has contributed to in regards to the subject ‘Democracy for sale”.
Also this is where the very much politically compromised MSM who publish and broadcast in Scotland are exposed as those who do not serve Scotland well as a media, as they as a media in Scotland, never dare to venture into any political story (such as this one) that presents Labour as being no different from the Tories or indeed no better than the Tories.
For people like us this is what defines the reality of how there is no actual change with Labour as the new UK government compared to what we were made aware of happening with the Tories when they were in charge of the UK as a government.
Just remember Owen Paterson the Tory MP was made to resign because of a lobbying scandal, even though Boris Johnson as the Tory PM tried to change the standards system to save him, and at the time Sir Keir Starmer had accused Boris Johnson as the PM of “corrupt and contemptible” behaviour in trying to “protect” Tory MP Owen Paterson, after he was found to have broken lobbying rules.
Sir Keir told the BBC that the UK government was “trashing” the UK’s reputation for upholding democratic standards. (surely that was not an actual reality anyway. Ever).
Perhaps he, Keir Starmer, needs to start seeing how both he and his party are also doing their fair share of “trashing” their UK’s reputation in not “upholding (supposed) democratic standards” but also in him and his party both defending and supporting Israel pre and post the 7 of October.
I guess Keir Starmer would say (if challenged by anyone other than the media in Scotland) that in respect to Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves working relationship with the lobbyist Kamella Hudson that this situation was somehow ‘completely different’ and within the rules.
Also known as yet another ‘Nothing to see here. So Move On”
(As happened often with the Tories as the previous UK government and so as a situation one that has not changed with Labour in power).
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