Peace Be Upon You

[KARL]

An Australian group/think tank has produced its 11th annual report which makes interesting reading:
http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2017/06/GPI-2017-Report-1.pdf
The UK comes in at No.41 and the USA No.114 in the list of most peaceful countries (assessed before the Manchester incident) in the world - Iceland, New Zealand and Portugal are the top three, Iceland holding top position for the eighth consecutive year.
It is the explanation of the basis for the rankings and the wealth of information that comes out in this that to me is interesting. One thing that struck me was the figure for the total cost of violence (of all types, including the military element) - to me it is very high. On the whole though there has been a small worldwide improvement, in spite of everything.

[KARL]

Scooper and Mamyalynne, there are several well recognised and respected lists published covering various aspects/criteria, and the one I referred to is one such. As a result those lists are taken seriously by a range of parties from media to governments. There are those who from time to time find the implications of the information uncomfortable but I have not come across credible attempts to debunk the reputable lists. However, attempts to present "alternative facts" have surfaced. I think it was sometime in the past two years or so that an attempt to present a "competitor" to another of these lists was published. That newcomer list compared countries in how happy their population was (I forget if it was for Europe/The West only or worldwide) and, if I recall correctly, the UK's was listed as the happiest people or at least very near the top. Not that long before, the better known list had been published and I recalled the UK being somewhere in the high teens or a lower rank, quite a contrast, so I started looking into the difference between the two accounts. Fairly quickly I discovered that one lead author of the newcomer list was the UK government - I lost interest at that point. I have not seen any reference to it apart from when it came out and even then the reporting was limited to some of the UK media.

[KARL]

I notice several removed answers on this thread, none of which I saw. Can anyone safely enlighten me as to why they might have been removed, i.e. what they were all about ?

[andy-hughes]

KARL - discussion of deleted posts is not permitted - it takes the thread off course and reintroduces the statements that were deleted in the first place.

[KARL]

Oh, dear - yet another answer removed before I saw it !