It can get really sickening sometimes writing about happiness, you can see it in the author photos on the backs of some happiness books, the fixed smile is really starting to hurt. You can hear them thinking, "Can't I just be pissed off for one day???" Well, maybe you need the antidote:

http://www.howtobemiserable.org

We don't claim to have all the answers, so if you know of a better way to be miserable - or to make large numbers of people miserable, drop us a line

I've just finished reading Russel Brands Booky Wook and it's made me think about redemption. Basically the standard story is this, mixed with the wrong crowd, did a lot of drugs/crime/booze then finally find redemption through success fame and wealth. Basically, society says, it's OK to go through these kind of things as long as you come out the other side with a book deal and a big house in Berkshire.

Well, Christmas is over and tomorrow we are back to work and back to normal, has the festive season left you more - or less - happy? If you look at it logicaly, Christmas is a time of treat foods, which means lots of white flour, sugar, fat and salt which is absolutely not a recipe for happiness. It's also a time to slob out on the sofa and do nothing - except watch a load of trashy TV and drink too much. You also have the opportunity to read boastful round robins about how much better everybody else is doing than you.

Just read a report about a luxury home for dogs: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/7750192.stm and it made me think about what really makes dogs happy - and that's a loving companion and a nice walk. Dogs are never happier than when they are about to go out for a walk.

One of the best things I've ever done was to take up running and like a lot of things in my life it was a complete accident. My wife Lena volunteered to run the London 10k in March and I said that I would train with her to keep her company, but I wasn't sure I would be able to finish the 10k and places were scarce, so I was just a training partner. She was running for www.ouchuk.org, a charity dedicated to helping sufferers of cluster headaches, which includes her Father, my Father in law.

Obama has several large problems looming: financial crisis, the environment and global terrorism. What he really needs to do is to make everybody happy!

OK, this is a little bit off-topic but what the heck. We are apparently in a recession or a downturn or whatever. There is less wealth around and more poverty. What does that really mean? There is not enough stuff, for example, not enough houses.

That Robert Peston has been busy lately, I reckon he's got a sleeping bag in the BBC Newsroom and is living off pot noodles and BBC sandwiches! Still, it's an ill wind that doesn't blow anybody any good... One thought around is that the banking crisis could set off another "depression" like we had after the Wall Street crash of the late 20's, awful suffering, hardship, privation. Not the kind of thing that BBC Three viewers were looking forward to once they'd got their degree in sociology and moved out of the safety of the family home.

My street doesn't have a central meeting place where people bump into each other. In the old days you would have the well or the pump where people had to go for water - you'd bump into other people there and have a chat and a gossip. More recently there was the corner shop which was a place people popped in on an almost daily basis. I grew up in a corner shop and I remember it as a warm welcoming place where people went to buy stuff but also just to chat, customers would even come in for a good old natter and then leave not being able to remember what they wanted to buy!

The big news today is that economic growth is down to 0%. This is obviously a tragedy, but will it make us less happy... What we really need is an index of national happiness - a measurement of how much happier we are this year than last year. Economics is important, but we are now in a position where there is enough stuff to go round - what we need to do is to manage our affairs in a way that makes us all happier, that would be real success.