delusionofgrandeur

uSwitch.com, a price comparison company has conducted a “Quality of Life Index” survey of 10 Western European countries which found the UK and Ireland to have the worst quality of life.

Spain and France came out on top with long life expentancies and generally lower costs.

The uSwitch survey notes that although the British have the highest net income after tax, they also have to pay some of the highest prices in Europe for fuel and power. Coupled with low expenditure on Education, fewer holidays and a late retirement age, Britain appears to be a pretty awful place to be living as a European.

I have to admit the uSwitch survey does have a rather biased feel for example the wording of:

Emigration: 41,026 Brits fled UK in 2006, the highest number in Europe, with total
emigration increasing by 30% in the UK since 2001.

(emphasis mine)

However, I can’t for the life of me work out the rationale for the bias. Perhaps uSwitch really do want to be ‘consumer champions’ or perhaps they have an ulterior motive.

Also noted is that the CPI figure stated in the survey report was out of date by the time the report embargo lifted (report states 3.3%, actual is 3.8%)

Download uSwitch report [PDF]

Tags: britain, education, european quality of life index, france, fuel prices, ireland, spain, uswitch

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Credit Crunch, Economy, News, Politics.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.