I don’t know if Alastair Campbell was ever anything like Malcolm Tucker, the vicious In The Thick Of It spin doctor supposedly inspired by him.

But he has said some interesting things since leaving his spin-doctoring behind him.

Earlier in the year, he supported Community Care’s campaign to get a better deal for social workers in the media.

And in his latest blog post he considers whether our economy should be run, like Bhutan’s, on the basis of trying to improve gross national happiness rather than gross national product.

He points out that Bhutan has changed a lot since the introduction of TV ten years ago – with young people’s hero changing rapidly from Bhutan’s king David Beckham to 50 Cent.

I certainly think if we were to go for a G.N.H plan in Britain, there wouldhave to be changes in the media. Quite a lot of the TV two-ways telling us we’reall about to go broke or die of swine flu would have to be reviewed by the GNHCommission. Of course there could be no room for the Daily Mail in a countryinterested in happiness. So bye-bye Mr Dacre. Sorry, as the Evening Standardadverts say.

Yes, that would be fun. Our incredibly negative media definitely has some responsibility for our current sense of gross national unhappiness.