People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death.

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year.

Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else will be condemned.

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.

Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP.