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No sex please, we're British and we're lazier than ever
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by generaldecay | August 10, 2009 at 11:53 am
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We can't be bothered to walk up a few flights of stairs, balk at the idea of running to catch a bus and would rather snooze than have sex with our partners, according to a report published today. Despite a huge government push to encourage healthy living, Britons are lazier than ever, concludes the study conducted by Nuffield Health, a not for profit health organisation.
This is when I once again declare my Irishness. I may live in England but this does not apply to me. No, no, no...(well, maybe some of it does!)
One in six people would rather watch a TV programme they didn't like than leave the sofa to change the channel if their remote control was broken. A third (36%) of the 2,000 adults surveyed for the study said they would not run to catch a bus and more than half (59%) would not walk up two flights of stairs to reach their office, choosing instead to take the lift. More than half of dog owners (52%) did not walk their dogs, and two-thirds (64%) of parents admit to always being too tired to play with their children. The laziness epidemic appears to have spread to the bedroom, with almost three-quarters (73%) of couples saying they regularly do not have enough energy at the end of the day to have sex, with more than half (58%) blaming a lack of fitness.
Come on Brits - move your lazy behinds!
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michaelclements
Adelaide, Australia
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (12)
at 15:32 on August 10th, 2009
And that is why they invented Internet Porn, for the lazy,why go out on a date, buy em dinner, when you can order take in Porn, toss a few off, and go to sleep.
Orwell should be proud.
at 11:37 on August 11th, 2009
Oh the cynic! ;)
at 01:50 on August 14th, 2009
How true! The wife is asleep in bed and we are online watching our fantasies...
In the Philippines I have seen people with a net worth of less than a 100 pesos spend 6 pesos on a motorcycle ride for about 100 yards! Its not just in Britain. Laziness happens anywhere.
Brock MacLean, Coquitlam, BC, Canada
at 23:33 on August 10th, 2009
Yes, many people are too lazy to walk a mile to the papershop, so 'they don't bother' or they 'take a car'. Americans can also be lazy, as I saw a TV programme in which a man took a car to the end of his house to retrieve something from his postbox. It was just a few yards away.
I find it staggering that so called young twenty somethings would rather take a taxi than walk 15 mins to town. Sometimes some older people have a healthier attitude than some of the young ones.
Then Brits often watch sport by 'armchair', instead of playing sport, such as watching football. The computer doesn't help either.
Then they're so lazy they park their car on double yellow lines to get a burger at McDonalds instead of parking round the corner. It is just too much effort for these people. They 'panic' if a place doesn't have parking, so they ring up the venue to make sure. If they can't find a place to park somewhere at the venue, instead of finding another road, they double or treble park,or even park in disabled parking spaces. It beats walking, hey!
Then they take a bus even though it is a pleasant and leafy mile journey or the tube. Buses are often crowded in London. The fare is just a pound on an Oyster card. Sure using public transport is great, but it encourages slobbery and obesity. If your friends are like that, you end up doing the same because they whine if they have to walk.
Then there are those lawyers or executive 'too important to walk' (or too lazy), who will take the cab in London everywhere.
Oh yes, they hate stairs. Even just two flights sets of stairs sets them off. It is too much. You would have thought they were 100 years old and frail or something.
Some Brits are are lazy slobs.
at 11:37 on August 11th, 2009
Thanks for the comments, Beaulieu. Indeed it is a lazy nation.
at 01:55 on September 15th, 2009
Thanks for the insights into our national character.
I guess the dozens of people who jog past my house every day are apparitions of my mind. As are the huge numbers of gyms that have arisen around the country over the last decade. And I suppose the packed swimming baths, five-a-side pitches and cycle tracks are just imaginary. And I must have misremembered those of my friends, family and colleagues who have undertaken months of training to run charity marathons. The people I come across walking in the park, on top of mountains and - yes - doing their shopping in the local market must be illusory as well, I suppose?
So yes, some people are lazy. But it is both unfair to make this a moral issue and to characterise an entire nation on the basis of the actions of some of the population.
I get tired of hearing one section of the population criticising the other for lifestyle choices as if having a beer belly is some kind of external symptom of moral decay. I know a woman, for example, who gives her time freely to the local hospice - helping the terminally ill through the last stages of their life with a compassion and humour I can barely conceive of.
And then she drives the mile home from work and eats burgers every night. But fine, let's castigate her for that. It's a wonderful pastime to mock the fat.
at 02:11 on September 15th, 2009
I'm with the Colonel - since when does anyone have the right to moralise about this stuff? "How about people with dreadlocks - they stink don't they? And don't get me started on people with piercings"
How about a little live and let live - would that be so bad?
at 04:54 on September 15th, 2009
We have to pay for them with our taxes and the NHS has enough to deal with as it is without people not bothering to look after themselves properly. Fair enough to people who have conditions where they cannot help it.
In my village, you only see about a handful of 'charity runners' and often the cycle tracks are virtually empty, in fact many residents even complained about having a cycle track.
Many rural roads have no pavements, so you kind of expect hardly any runners wanting to run on busy roads.
Some of these charity runners choose to run a few miles, not really enough to make a difference to their waste line (but to the charity financially) and as a marathon runner myself, you should see how many runners walked and didn't bother to do much training beforehand. Even charity runners can lazy but that's part of the challenge.
at 05:15 on September 15th, 2009
Everyone's life ultimately has a cost to the rest of us - the NHS is funded by everyone, and deals with all kinds of self-inflicted misery... be it sporting injuries, smoking-related diseases, car accidents, food poisoning, careless sexual activities, forgetting to clean the bread knife and - yes - overeating. Is the answer to privatise healthcare and have a risk-assessed policy premium based on factors like lifestyle and weight? That's the ultimate position we end up with if we make the argument that "we have to pay for them...."
Besides, what a lot of people (read: nearly everyone) doesn't know is that scientific trials have been quietly disproving the supposed link between obesity and health over recent years. For example, this trial of over 14,000 patients showed that:
"obese and overweight patients were at lower risk of CD [death from cardiac disease]over three years than normal weight patients."
And the American Heart Journal published research on 108,000 patients that showed that death rates for the obese were lower than for the general population:
"For every 5-U increase in BMI, the odds of risk-adjusted mortality was 10% lower"
These are real, large scale, peer-reviewed, published clinical trials, based on science not prejudice.
at 23:35 on August 10th, 2009
Some people I know are on diets..,but they are too lazy to even exercise. Once they end their diet, they get fat again, and the cycle continues.
at 05:09 on August 11th, 2009
I think thats the reason for max use of sex toys and webcams in briton. Check this survey for the proof : http://sexadulttoys.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/survey-discovered-that-over-half-of-britons-use-sex-toys-webcams-in-bedroom/
at 21:55 on September 18th, 2009
Men have to start thinking with the big head attached to the shoulders...So very tired of this ridiculousness...Furthermore, we pay for our television priveleges (quite a bit) why can't the companies stop perpetuating the selfishness of one gender? Perhaps they should take a poll and see what each age bracket considers appropriate or does that make too much sense? It would be fair...