Defence: Public ignorance, the media, and cutbacks

[A_Van]

pr00ne,

IMHO, the strength of the UK (and some developed countries) is not in the travel scenario you described, but in the fact that the majority of the (UK) population can afford that (except for the office near Whitehall, of course :-) as well as other good things offered by modern civilization.
General "travel attributes" you mentioned are now often available in the 3rd world. E.g., one may arrive in a similar aircraft in Kuala-Lumpur (Malaysia), which airport is, by the way, usually ranked much higher than any European one, take a fast train to the downtown and then enjoy yourself in a pool on a roof of a 5 star hotel with a view on famous twin towers and green parks at 25-30% of the cost of similar accommodation in Europe.The same in Bangkok (though taking taxi, but no queue and fast toll road). But considering that UK people make 60 mln travels abroad per year (with population of 65.5 mln) this means about 1 trip per person per year on average. And what percentage of Malaysians or Thai people can afford trips abroad, even with travel distance like between UK and Spain (the most popular destination for UK citizens)? 1-digit percent, I suppose.

There is another statistics, however: how do people percept all this? We all can see some rich people around us who suffer from depression and are totally unhappy. There is interesting statistics about happiness, which is measured by some aggregated metrics (not just "a warm gun" :-) :

http://worldhappiness.report/wp-cont...17/03/HR17.pdf

There (p.22), UK is in 19th place (of 155) but Costa Rica (!) is in 12th, and some other Latin American folks are ranked close to UK. Surprisingly Japan is in 51-st place.

It's all relative...