The values of black gang culture are as warped and vile as anything preached in al-Qaeda's terror camps. The death and suffering which follow from its violent, misogynistic dogma are no less devastating.

Just read the background to the murder of 16-year-old Shakilus Townsend if you don't believe me. It makes one weep.

The young man lying in a suburban cul-de-sac cried: "Mummy, mummy, mummy. I don't want to die."

But die he did, with a gaping hole in his stomach where one of his killers had twisted the blade of a knife.

So many aspects of this tale make one catch one's breath:

• the fact that young Shakilus had been led to his gang-land execution by his ex-girlfriend, a 15-year-old schoolgirl;

• the fact that the victim had posted a social networking site profile of himself wearing a stab-vest and holding a knife next to a message in which he warns that if you mess with him he will "slash your face up"

• the fact that two of his killers had "tried hard" to build up a criminal record - the pre-requisite of a true gangster;

• the fact that Samantha Joseph - the girl in the "love triangle" - was prepared to see Shakilus murdered in order to win back gangster Danny Mclean, a man who beat her regularly.

These are the features of a parallel morality, a distorted interpretation of the creed of capitalism where bling is king, where tolerance is weakness, where women are whores, where a criminal record is a badge of honour, where lack of "respect" justifies bullying, torture and even murder.

It is a form of imported fundamentalism as alien to democratic society as the views of the most hard-line Islamists.

When fighting al-Qaeda-inspired terror, the focus is not on the weapons but the ideology. When fighting murderous gang-culture, it seems to me, the focus is not on the ideology but the weapons.

Politicians obsess about knives and guns but do far less to counteract the values which inspire the behaviour.

British gang culture models itself on the criminal underworld of black ghettoes in America. There are, of course, white and Asian youths involved in gang violence and crime here in the UK. But look at its victims. Look at the mug-shots. Overwhelmingly they are black - tragic black youths corrupted by a culture which should have no place here.

So why do we tolerate the preachers of black gang culture? Who is effectively challenging this stuff? I don't mean banning it - that almost certainly wouldn't work.

A better approach might be to mock it - make it appear so unsophisticated and out-dated that no self-respecting young black kid would want to be associated with it.

That was President Obama's strategy, you may recall, when asked on MTV last year to comment about a municipal ban on "saggy-pants", the low-slung trousers designed to echo the beltless clothes of prisoners.

"Brothers should pull up their pants", he said. "There are some issues that we face, that you don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear - I'm one of them."

Gordon Brown couldn't get away with saying something like that, of course. But black British writers, commentators, artists, musicians, designers might.

There are examples of brave individuals who are working hard to fight against the preachers of gangsterism. But too often they are shouting into the wind.

The billions spent on marketing gang culture, by businesses who deny responsibility, blow away the counter messages.

It is that poisonous wind which killed Shakilus Townsend and the hundreds of other young black victims of gang violence over the last few years. It is that toxic ideology that turns shiny-faced young children into murderers.

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"Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth."

I wonder how Gordon Brown reacted when he read these opening words in the Sustainable Development Commission's report Prosperity Without Growth
published in March this year. (The Commission is a public body set up to advise the prime minister on sustainable development.)

And I wonder how he might respond to today's news that, when one compares levels of sustainability and well-being internationally, Britain comes a miserable 74th in the world. Number one is Costa Rica.

The analysis, by the think tank nef, is bound to be controversial because it requires us to reconsider what we mean by progress. If you are reading this and believe that the success of a country is calculated by its wealth, this may prove disconcerting.

What nef, Sustainable Development Commission, UK government, European Commission and even the OECD all appear to agree on is that we need a better evaluation of progress than simple GDP.

It is argued that the measure of a successful nation needs to reflect some measure of life satisfaction and the environmental sustainability of that society. Simply being rich is not the point any more.

So nef has come up with a formula for international comparison: the Happy Planet Index (HPI). First conducted in 2006, today sees the publication of the second round of data, including a map of the world based on the HPI. And here it is.

According to nef, "the results turn our idea of progress on its head". Well, I certainly would not have predicted that the most successful countries on the planet are in Central and Latin America. Indeed, the researchers seem slightly surprised by the results:

"Let's not beat about the bush. The region has had, and continues to have, its fair share of misery: decades of civil wars and coups, the destruction of the Amazon, sharp inequality, and the favelas and slums of metropolises from Mexico City to Sao Paulo. For some, the region represents a sad tale of lost opportunity."

Hmm. Doesn't sound like paradise to me, but despite all of this, nine of the top ten countries in the HPI are in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Here's how nef works it out:

"The HPI is an efficiency measure: the degree to which long and happy lives (life satisfaction and life expectancy are multiplied together to calculate happy life years) are achieved per unit of environmental impact."

So first, one can look at life expectancy around the globe.

The highest life expectancies tend to be in rich developed countries. Western Europe, North America, Japan, Hong Kong and Australasia glow green while, at the other end of the table, Africa is largely red. The coincidence of longevity ratings and continental boundaries makes the world look, fittingly perhaps, like a Risk board.

The next component of the formula is life satisfaction. This is found by asking people what is now the standard question to assess what is called "subjective well-being": All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?

At first glance, it appears that rich Western countries dominate again, but closer inspection reveals that almost a third of the top 35 countries have a GDP per capita of less than $20,000. According to the nef analysis, "the country with the highest reported life satisfaction - and by some margin - is Costa Rica (8.5 on a scale of 0-10, compared with 8.1 for Ireland, Norway and Denmark)".

The final element of the HPI score is the size of a country's ecological footprint. The report explains the thinking like this: "To achieve one-planet living, a country must keep its ecological footprint below the level that corresponds to its fair share given the world's current biocapacity and population - 2.1 global hectares (or gha) in 2005." So a country with a score of 2.1 achieves one planet living. Over 4.2 is two planet living, and so on. Inevitably, rich, consumer societies fare badly on this measure.

The countries with the smallest per capita footprints are among the poorest: Malawi, Haiti and Bangladesh. The clod-hopping countries with the biggest ecological footprints are Luxembourg (10.2 gha), the United Arab Emirates (9.5 gha) and the United States of America (9.4 gha) - all using four times their fair share of global resources. Interestingly, the Netherlands achieve the same level of happy life years as the USA, but with a footprint less than half the size (4.4 gha).

After all the maths has been done, it is Costa Rica and its neighbours which come out top. The researchers put it this way:

"Latin Americans report being much less concerned with material issues than, for example, they are with their friends and family. Civil society is very active, from religious groups to workers' groups to environmental groups.
Some have mocked the high levels of reported life satisfaction in Latin American countries as belying a lack of knowledge of anything better (i.e. Western lifestyles). On the contrary, Latin America is perhaps more exposed to North American culture than anywhere else in the developing world. Yet somehow it has been more resistant to idolising this lifestyle, or at least more able to be happy with its own way of life despite this influence.
Pura vida is a popular expression in Costa Rica which is used somewhat like the English term 'cool'. It translates literally as 'pure life' and represents in itself an attitude to what is important."

Looking at the UK's position below Bosnia and Romania, perhaps we could do with a bit of Pura Vida ourselves?

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Government borrowing is now at record levels and cannot be sustained. What would you do? Raise taxes? Cut spending? Leave things as they are and hope for a miracle?

I have been sent previously unpublished polling data on what voters think. And the answer is... totally inconclusive. It is pretty much a three-way split with no hint of consensus.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn from this chart, it is that we cannot rely on public opinion to guide us through the financial mess. It is for exactly this kind of situation that we elect and pay our politicians: to take the difficult decisions on our behalf, to use their talents and vision so that Britain comes out on the other side as undamaged as is possible

To dismiss them all as power-hungry, money-grabbing crooks at this time really isn't helpful.

The Ipsos Mori poll does offer some clues as to what the public think the government's priorities should be.

Of those who think that some services should be protected, two candidates emerge as serious candidates for the axe - and both of them hit the poor.

Just as hundreds of thousands of people find themselves joining the dole queue, a substantial minority of the country thinks government should cut benefit payments. And just as the global recession risks consigning millions of the world's most vulnerable to total poverty, a slightly larger group think that it is the time to pull the plug on overseas aid.

It is obvious, perhaps. If cuts have to happen, voters want them to happen to others. Self-interest rules the day. Once again, it might be argued, we need smart, professional policy-makers to consider the short, medium and long-term implications of any spending changes.

The question of where to cut is a lot easier if you believe there is substantial inefficiency in the delivery of public services. On this analysis, it is possible to reduce budgets without hitting services.

The Ipsos Mori poll finds a substantial majority of people (79%) think there is so much waste in the system that, if we could only root it out, cuts to real services would be unnecessary. Hallelujah! We are saved.

This running-the-country business is much easier when you don't have to take the risks yourself, don't have to deal with the consequences and don't have to justify your mistakes. I wonder which current services voters regard as a waste of money. Where is the multi-trillion pounds' worth of profligacy and inefficiency hidden? Let me know, and I will post a memo to ministers with the top ideas. Right now, we need all the expertise we can muster.

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