Friday 24 July 2015

"Harmful meddling among middle-class over-50s reaching dangerous levels"

From The Guardian:

Medical doctors and university researchers over 50 - who are healthy and highly educated - are more likely to engage in harmful meddling than their less privileged peers, says research.

A study of more than 9,000 self-appointed experts has concluded that prodnosing by the over-50s is a “middle class” phenomenon which thrives on the rush of bossing people about for no reason - a bit like your annoying elder sister when you were a kid - which should be targeted with explicit age-specific restrictions on bullshit output.

Age UK’s chief economist, Professor Jose Iparraguirre, author of the research, published in online journal BMJ Open, writes:

“Our findings suggest that harmful meddling in later life is more prevalent among public sector employees who are chronically overpaid and can't be bothered actually doing their jobs properly. And that's making the generous assumption that there is any point to their jobs in the first place.

"Constantly interfering in other people's lives and passing judgement on them may then lead to health and social problems for the less fortunate. Consequently, and based on our results, we recommend the explicit incorporation of bullshit limits to enable others to live out their lives in a gentle alcoholic haze.”



5 comments:

Tim Almond said...

my first thought was "people who are rich drink heavily? maybe I need to up my drinking".

A K Haart said...

I'm with Stigler on this one - correlation is causation.

Random said...

Seriously off topic but in this post:
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/KLN.%20estate%20agents?m=1
You have labeled "KLN, estate agents"

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, AKH, the BMJ report is completely made up, but they did go to the trouble of thinking up a not very plausible why successful people drink more.

R, well spotted, I have amended.

James Higham said...

Ain't it always the meddling though, in the interests of doing good.