Women are driving record worklessness because of ill health, analysis has found, as a growing number drop out of the jobs market because of neck and back pain.
More than 1.5m women have dropped out of the workforce because of long-term sickness, according to analysis by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which blamed rising NHS waiting lists for the crisis.
The figure marks a 48pc increase compared with five years ago, equivalent to 503,000 women.
This means that women account 59pc of the rise in economic inactivity due to long-term sickness over the past five years, compared with 37pc for men.
Musculoskeletal issues, such as back and neck pain, were the biggest driver of women leaving the workforce due to ill health, with the number of women economically inactive as a result rising by 126,000.
So, we know frpm other sources that Britons are becoming ever fatter. Some of that weight gain will be, in women, in bigger tits. Big tits is a well known – possible, obvs – caise of back and neck pain. Something that can be alleviated by wearing a properly fitted and sized bra.
So, the Worstall solution is the British Bra Service. Checking that the laydeez are indeed properly fitted. It’ll have to be a proper hands on job of course. Willing to help out on that side directly – see the sacrifice I’m willing to make for the public good? – but very selectively of course.
The weird thing here is that actually checkling bra fittings would in fact help this specific problem. Not that we want the British state – or Worstall – to be doing any of it but it would still help.
Well, I doubt that the ladies’d want you or me to check their bras Tim.
But it’ll be interesting to see if bra fitting services expand. And if they actually succeed in sorting out the problem.
“Something that can be alleviated by wearing a properly fitted and sized bra.”
Needs a design expert. So. Are we talking Rigby & Peller, or Harland and Wolff?
The recent “obesity is costing us billions’ furore is just more gaslighting of the population and scapegoating of a section of it as an excuse for more state, more interference and more tax.
The better bra argument sounds OK, but the simple truth is that Britain’s sicknote population is mainly on the skive and the old ‘bad back’ is still very popular despite the increase in the sort of ‘depression’ which doesn’t stop you going to the pub.
I’m not, incidentally, slating anyone with real mental illness any more than I am slating anyone with real back problems. On the mental health front, suicide rates are almost entirely unchanged over the past 5 years, which suggests no increase in serious mental illness.
“ This means that women account 59pc of the rise in economic inactivity due to long-term sickness over the past five years, compared with 37pc for men.”
So what’s the other 4%?
Or is that not the sort of question it’s safe to ask these days?
The general problem being that comfy bras aren’t sexy and sexy bras aren’t comfy.
“Big tits is a well known – possible, obvs – caise of back and neck pain. Something that can be alleviated by wearing a properly fitted and sized bra.”
Or we could ban fat birds from Greggs. 😉
That’ll be why Marks & Spencer offer just such a service, on posters the ladies can’t fail to see.
JG: Why are you going to work dressed to pull?
@ JuliaM
Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH?
Bogan @ 6.40, you would need to pay me a hefty sum to assuage the mental anguish that would result from me handling some of the land whales I see every day.
JuliaM @ 6.55, Howard Hughes designed a cantilever bra for Jane Russell (she never wore it apparently).
JG and Chris, a comment in the paper many years ago from one woman about another woman saying “M & S underwear is so comfortable” : “says a woman a long time single or a long time married”.
A bad back always has been the easiest medical claim to swing the lead. Hard to refute, difficult to fix, often recurrs. This is just equality – more women working means more womem swing the lead.
Remove the welfare element and they’d pretty much all be back at work the next day. (Some few actually with bad backs).
My wife – normally a very sensible and based woman – tryied it on with me the other day, by which I mean she advanced the absurd claim that ‘If men needed bras they’d be a lot more comfortable’.
I pointed out that half of men pretty much do need bras, but also that this was rather sexist of her because it contained the implict suggestion that women were somehow incapable of designing a comfortable bra for themselves.
Her reply was along the lines of ‘You know what I mean… Oh shut up!’
🙂
Checking that the laydeez are indeed properly fitted. It’ll have to be a proper hands on job of course.
For some unaccountable reason we were in a tourist bar in Benalmadena last night. There was a gaggle of rather hefty, well inebriated Brit-bints in there. Take it from me, that would be work only the bravest (or most stupid ) would want to tackle. As I said, last night “Je suis desole, mademoiselle Je ne comprends pas. Je ne parle pas anglais.”
Ove Arup sounds a good name for a brangeneering brand.
We have a friend who is rather well endowed. She started buying hand made bras sometime in the ’90s and reckons its the best thing she ever did, no more neck or back pain.