Well, do ya, punk?

That Brighton tops the poll of residents that feel lucky is well within the bounds of reason. We went there last year and it really is a lovely town. They've even smoothed out the pavements so that the puddle-jumpers, well, don't have to.

Liverpool's second-place is a little more difficult to explain. If you were to consider that Liverpudlians could be counted among the sub-species labelled Human, that is. Liverpool is a dump. Always was, always will be. The only time Liverpudlians are really happy is when they have just got their dole cheque and are sitting in a nice little pub - probably in Brighton - telling everyone what a shit-hole this place is and how wonderful Liverpool is. Liverpool was recently dubbed 'European City of Culture' - a label given to one city a year in the hope that it can drag itself from the medieval mire of it's own making into the 19th century, usually with dismal results. Whoever found culture in Liverpool should be sent to Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction. The Beatles don't count.

Reading coming in third, however, is a statistic too far and another good reason, if one were really needed, to take marketing out the back and kick them in the testicles until their ears pop off. It takes a marketing department to come up with such an inane idea as this survey.

There are only two rational explainations for this result. Possibly, Readingites are so sad, so depressed, so utterly horrified with the misfortune that brought them to such a non-entity of a place that they have evolved 'happy blinkers'. These work by making the wearer believe that they are living in some urban paradise rather than the purtid heap in which they actually reside. They would, of course, have to operate during every waking moment.

The other possibility is that they have had a quick look around - though not nearly far enough, in my opinion - , spotted Maidenhead and Slough through the gloom and figured that things could be a whole lot worse. They would be right, of course, they could be in Beirut but; 'lucky'!