idler

Ripley, a slacker and a con man grinding out a living in postwar New York, is sent to Italy to try to persuade a trust-funded idler to come home and take over the family business.

There is an almost continuous succession of scenes in which Nicholson sketches this idler, lover, jokester, manipulator, con man, gambler, loner.

Among other things, the authors described Britons as “among the worst idlers in the world.”

In 2012 he contributed to a more overtly political tract called “Britannia Unchained” — a paean of praise to free markets that described the British as “among the worst idlers in the world.”

A decade ago they were co-authors of the political treatise “Britannia Unchained,” which notoriously included the claim that British workers are “among the worst idlers in the world.”