As Good As It Gets ?

[KARL]

There are two recent lists showing the rankings of nations that make interesting reading:
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/healthiest-countries/
http://global-perspectives.org.uk/volume-three/infographics/
Unfortunately, but somewhat typically, the UK's ranking is mediocre - but that is surely about to noticeably change (24 days to go) ?

[RobNorth]

Yes, I doubt that we ever came near (or ever will) leading any of these international league tables, for the simple reason of our innate honesty and probity. Ask a set of British people to award something points out of ten, or to set the criteria for marking and they will generally be quite strict, even if it's their own efforts being critiqued.
This not the case with other countries..who will barefacedly report everything at 100% and see no harm in it.
I used to work in a large multinational and was involved with various performance indicators of all kinds. Those from the UK, the US and Canada were used as benchmarks as most of the rest could not be trusted.
Britain has set more International Standards than the rest of the world combined and there is a good reason for this.

[Old_Geezer]

The US expects 100% as otherwise it gives the third degree about what exactly was wrong and can be improved. Has no concept of not wishing to imply nothing can be improved because nothing is perfect anyway. Rate 100% and sooner or later something gets better and one has been proved a liar.

Worse, I've come across surveys where one is told an honest mid range rating will simply be ignored. Only the extremes of good and bad noted so chose one of those. Makes one lose all trust in such pointless surveys.

[KARL]

Rob North, In the UK international comparison lists are probably unpopular (they are almost never published in the UK), especially if they are not compiled in the UK. In the UK such lists, which generally see the UK rated as middling to mediocre, tend to be ignored or even dismissed out of hand as wrong or even anti-British - they appear to be buried, no doubt due to "innate honesty and probity". In the UK everything about the UK is frequently assumed by its people to be the world's best and is defined as such.

Outside the UK the reality/image appears quite different (except undoubtedly within the halls of the Civil Service where the comparisons are no doubt well known and unchallenged, or else they would be screaming over the defamation/lies). Lists produced by number crunching data supplied by or otherwise obtained from sources within the countries themselves by organisations such as the OECD, WHO, UN, EU, think tanks, etc., etc. are not easily dismissed as being untrustworthy - these are not mere opinion surveys/polls. Saying that the data produced by Britain is accurate/truthful while that gathered by/in other countries is barefaced lies simply does not wash.

Self-defining Britain/UK as superior does not make it so, the truth comes out in the statistics. Still, In the UK the UK will remain the world's best and nothing is likely ever to change that - that much the British will perhaps remain "quite strict". The rest of the world does not make that assumption and continues in spite of it, in several cases doing notably (not to say impressively) better than the UK. Those nations which tend to top the lists are the Nordic countries, Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, and occasionally one or two others. Still above the UK but below the top tends to be a collection of other countries, some appearing more than once, others not. Clearly then all of these are habitually falsifying their achievements, liars one and all ?

[KARL]

Old_Geezer, you have hit on something very significant. The point in taking a hard look at the statistics (be careful not to dismiss them as "pointless surveys") is to learn from what is being done elsewhere - how are they getting better results than we. That is how the top performers are consistently at the top, because they avoid the trap of self congratulation (wrongly) over feeling/being beyond the need to improve but instead constantly take a hard look at themselves and their performance. In the UK there is a popular disparaging saying about change for change's sake - in other countries change is actively sought because better is different (but that doesn't work the other way around, tricky !) The absurd thing is that better is already out there, all that is needed is to copy it.

By the way, in most/all the socio-economic comparisons I can remember seeing, the USA shows up as an even worse performer than the UK. I think that is probably due to the huge disparities within US society.