One of the most disturbing statistics I've read for a long time was published this week. T

he Work Foundation claims that job satisfaction in this country has fallen alarmingly. Women's satisfaction level has fallen from 51 percent in 1992 to 29 percent today; men's has fallen from 35 percent to 20. The reason — the long-hours culture and job insecurity.

For my father's generation, work was something that had to be endured so that real life could be maintained. But my generation has been gulled into thinking that work is real life, Most work is not satisfying. Most work stinks. Most work, however well paid, is meaningless and dull. But somehow we've been convinced that work provides self-fulfillment.

Before Mrs Thatcher, we had a famous British attitude to work — the less we did the better. Thatcher introduced the idea that, in a world where identity was so fragile, you could become real through work, through long hours and assiduous consumption, in the small amount of time you had been left after clocking off. Now Blair carries on the crusade, I've got one of the best jobs in the world — sitting in an office by myself all day trying to make up something that someone somewhere will be interested in. But I'd rather be stretched out in front of the TV, or in bed, or playing tennis, or doing just about anything else.

Much of feminist thought has been about getting what men have traditionally had without examining the underlying assumption of whether it was worth having. Feminism never ended up with a life built around creative leisure, instead, women of talent and drive threw themselves into the labour pool, believing that work and its attendant income and power would affect the change of life and consciousness that would liberate them.

Can anything be done？ Only if we're willing to change the way we've been tricked into thinking. Most people now measure their lives primarily in units of currency — money saved and spent. I have a friend who'll travel halfway across London for a shoe sale, without factoring in how much of her precious time has been spent travelling. The most important truth I know is that all we ever own is the time we were given on this earth. We need to seize it back. Now the future has arrived, and we have the means to do it — we just don't have the imagination.

Before the British were persuaded to realize themselves through hard work,______.

A．they had little time left to themselves

B．they had struggled hard for equal treatment

C．they had enjoyed themselves more

D．they had a strong desire to be set free from work