This has been a terrible year for the United Kingdom.

Of course, the word "terrible" is relative. Conditions for people in, say, Ukraine, Syria, a starving Somalia, a flooded Pakistan or an anarchic Haiti and a host of other trouble spots have been infinitely worse than anything experienced or imagined in Northern Europe and/or in Britain in 2022.

So the "terribleness" is strictly in comparison with what the British have been used to in the past — but seen that way, it still makes for a very unhappy list.