Monument of Freedom in Riga ( Milda ) and foreigners adventures

what does mean (3) stars on the top of milda?

The mayor of the Latvian capital of Riga says British stag parties will no longer be welcomed with open arms.

Nils Usakovs told Latvian magazine Rigas Laiks the city had run out of patience with unruly British tourists who misbehaved.

Mr Usakovs said: "The only problem is that we have a large share of those British tourists."

Riga is one of a handful of low-cost central and eastern European cities popular with stag parties.

Mr Usakovs said some British visitors were guilty of misbehaving: "Let's not be politically correct - unfortunately, this is their speciality."

He also said if the city had more regular tourists the badly behaving British visitors "would not be as noticeable".

According to the Foreign Office, there were 93,200 visitors from the UK to Latvia in 2008.

The biggest complaint is about tourists who urinate on central Riga's Freedom Monument, which honours soldiers killed while fighting for independence between 1918-20, Mr Usakovs said.

Many visitors have been arrested and fined for relieving themselves on the 138ft-high monument, or climbing on it naked to pose for pictures.

According to The Times, a spokeswoman for Mr Usakovs said Riga's problems began with the arrival of the first low-budget airlines.

She said: "The British first started to make bachelor parties and the most popular thing was using our monument of liberty as a toilet.

"We have a stigma about British tourists. They are probably not the ones we want to see.

"We are thinking about making a tourist police who will be located in the old town and will pay more attention to these tourist issues."

Last year the country's then interior minister, Mareks Seglins, complained about "English pigs" and said they were a "dirty, hoggish people" after a British tourist was sentenced to five days in prison after being caught urinating on the war memorial.

Earlier this year South Wales Police sent two officers to Riga to advise on how to deal with hen and stag parties from Britain.

A survey by Nuffield Health has been finding out our slobbish habits with some shocking results.

Around one in six people said if their remote control was broken, they would continue watching the same channel rather than get up.

More than half of the 2,000 adults questioned (59%) would get the lift rather than climb two flights of stairs to their workplace.

And a third (36%) said they would not run to catch a bus.

"If we don't start to take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to perform even the most rudimentary of tasks," said Dr Sarah Dauncey, medical director of Nuffield Health.

"Ready-meals, remote controls and even internet shopping are all contributing to a dangerously lazy and idle Britain.

"The nation has fallen into a vicious circle of laziness that we must put a stop to."

The Nuffield Health Fitness Report included a top 10 of the laziest cities, based on how many people admitted they do not exercise at least three times a week.

Glasgow topped the table with 75%, followed by Birmingham and Southampton (both 67%), London (66%), Bristol (64%), Leeds and Newcastle (both 62%), Norwich (60%), Manchester (59%) and Cardiff (58%).

The survey did offer some hope with almost three out of 10 (28%) of respondents saying they would be prepared to step up their fitness regime if they felt it would make them more attractive to their partner.