The good news is, we’re all living longer; the bad news is, we’ll be miserable

Notable people who are quite right-wing live a lot longer than notable people who are decidedly left of centre. This discovery of mine is, you might argue, counter-intuitive; you would expect right-wingers to be eaten away with dyspepsia and choler, the blood vessels on their foreheads popping open every time they read of a mosque about to open, or a wildcat strike about to take place. Whereas lefties, traditionally, possess a communal ethos and are tolerant of the many and diverse ways in which our society expresses itself. Not so, however. They die younger. Of cancer.

I discovered this by means of a random analysis of the obituaries pages in the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian; those people who, having passed away, were subsequently honoured for their lifetime achievement by the Telegraph lived, on average, a full eight years longer than those similarly honoured by the Guardian. Now at first sight this seems to be one of those false correlations I mentioned last week; right-wingers tend to be better off than left-wingers and it is their greater affluence which provides them with a longer life.