http://m.bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2012/08/17/bjsports-2012-091122.extract
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Scotland helped invent inactivity"
(16 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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"
Whether it's smoking, drinking or obesity, it's important to try to define where the main burden of responsibility lies between personal choice and state or commercial initiatives in tackling the deep-seated issues of life-limiting illness, especially in a country with the stubborn record of Scotland.
"
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/comment/columnists/the-tipping-point.18642598
Posted 12 years ago # -
I do wish my employer would more actively encourage / promote what the Herald article refers to as "wellness" issues. But we appear stuck in the realm of staff offers on cars and cheap chips and sweets in the canteen.
And a plague of smokers chased out of our grounds but ruining the lovely Paolozzi statue.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"I do wish my employer would more actively encourage / promote what the Herald article refers to as "wellness" issues."
One slightly encouraging thing from that article is that America is doing something - some ideas migrate east eventually...
Though whether it would be enough to counter all the other things that have already been imported!
Posted 12 years ago # -
bad joke alert
Why does nothing happen in Kilmarnock?
because it is inertia (in Ayrshire)
Posted 12 years ago # -
kaputnik, our canteen is great, lots of soups, salads etc - sadly, the porkers can also get chips and curry sauce - or that scottish staple, macaroni cheese, chips and extra cheese...............to go with the diet coke
Same people always appear to get the lift one floor
Posted 12 years ago # -
I get the lift sometimes. 2 floors. But I don't rely on going up and down the stairs as part of my exercise regime, and I'm a lazy b*****d at heart.
We also suffer a canteen that serves everything (including macaroni cheese) with chips. One of the "chefs" (chip cookers, would be more accurate) was amazed when I asked for the hotpot (served covered in sliced potato) with no chips. He explained I got the chips in the price of the hotpot and wouldn't get any extra hotpot if I refuse them. I explained that it's not correct to serve a potato-topped dish with chips. He explained that it was so in Scotland.
We also have "Hoi Sin" pork or "sweet and sour" chicken served to us in a wrap with cheese, salsa and sour cream and topped with tortilla chips. 3 times a week...
Posted 12 years ago # -
@kaputnik, a statement which stuck with me from a long time ago, "people are like water, they'll always take the easiest route". Whilst not 100% accurate, it's pretty close, the vast majority of us are at heart pretty lazy, "we" as a group just mostly make cycling (as an example) the easiest option for us, and get to bask in a healthy righteous glow for our trouble ;-)
Posted 12 years ago # -
@smudge you only have to look at the worn trail in the mud always present at any piece of badly thought out path, to avoid taking the circuitous diversion of right angles that planners seem so enamoured with (instead of the direct line of desire) to see your statement working in practice.
Posted 12 years ago # -
They are indeed called 'Desire Lines'. I think it's a lovely concept, first came across it a few years back. I mentioned it in Copenhagen to our favourite well-dressed cyclist, and he immediately had examples of cycling desire lines that got turned into official cycle routes (there was one near our hotel - the cyclists where cutting across a wide pavement area, so instead of haveing a geographic clampdown on cycling the authorities paintred a lane - I believe my jaw hit the ground at this point).
Posted 12 years ago # -
"
Mark believes unprecedented interest in sport can help Scotland shake off the unenviable “sick man of Europe” label, but insists more needs to be done.He added: “It’s not looking great right now in terms of the European stats.
“If you’ve got a far greater proportion of people getting out and getting active and getting their 30 minutes’ exercise a day that’s fine, but unfortunately there’s the flipside and we still have a real culture of lethargy.
"
Posted 12 years ago # -
instead of haveing a geographic clampdown on cycling the authorities paintred a lane
We won't be having any of that nonsense in the New Town though. Neither will we be having any wheelie bins, thank you. Cluttering the cobbles with 4x4s is acceptable in polite society however.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"he immediately had examples of cycling desire lines that got turned into official cycle routes"
Happens in Edinburgh (occasionally) -
Before
After (photo above shows furthest away path.)
Posted 12 years ago # -
Good thing we helped invent so much other stuff too, then!
Posted 12 years ago # -
@chdot...I have thought that for years. If there is a path cut by people using a cut-through then surely it makes sense that the council actually make it a tarmaced or at least surfaced path. However, common sense as we all know is in short supply.
Yesterday I saw possibly the two fattest people I have ever seen in my life, it was remarkable, in the one area, and yes they were not the same person. How they actually managed to walk was beyond me, and yes once again neither were in wheelchairs or cars but in food shops. This was in marked contrast to a week away in N Ireland where there were some obese folk but not on the scale that I see regularly in and around Edinburgh.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Can't we have some photos of "porkers" so that we can mock them properly? All this text-based contempt isn't really working for me.
Posted 12 years ago #
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