Best Of

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

You could take up something new, then you'll be better over time.
A new language for instance.
I've taken up bouldering as the kids got into it and in the future, when snowboarding is looking less sensible, I intend to be much better at skiing than I am currently

Ah yes, that's true, and I plan to. A craft, I think. I've been watching Bronowski's Ascent Of Man for the first time, what a beautifully written and presented work, and it made me feel downright unworthy. Need to get these hands working. Owe it to my species.

Me, I'd like to take up Ancient Greek. My school performance wasn't good enough to get to grips with the middle pluperfect or the stylistic issues of the [edit] men/de dichotomy.

I did 2 or 3 weeks ancient Greek at the end of 5th year at school. I was supposed to be studying it the following year but I didn't go back and went to University instead. I can remember thalssa meant sea and that's about it. I regret not getting a better education before I focused on law.

Sometimes I feel that education is wasted on the young and we should do more of it later in life when we can appreciate why we're doing it.

Some people do.

My wife decided to change careers and has started at University this year to qualify for the job she wants. She's absolutely loving it.

Says there's no way she'd have chosen this path at 18 but it suits her now and will still get a good couple of decades of career after graduation.

She'll also graduate about the same time as our eldest is starting her GCSEs and looking forwards to what she wants to do after school, which will hopefully be inspirational.

She is not the oldest on her course.

I am seriosly considering going back to University in my retirement. Something completely different this time, perhaps film studies or African history. No purpose to it at all, just fun.

I do wonder if I would have an unfair advantage over the youngsters as I have watched more films and lived more history.

You'd be good for them ...

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

This kind of policy is up there with dredging rivers to stop flooding and getting rid of bus lanes to reduce congestion as examples of inane facebook-level policy making.

Give me the council worker who can rattle through the paperwork in 3 days and spend the rest of the time looking after their kids or sorting the daffodils out than the useless luddite who can't navigate an excel file without handholding.

I have no qualms with part timers.

If people want to work 3 days, and get 3 days worth of salary, then that's their choice.

Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though.

And if you are showing up for 5 days but not working in them, then standards aren't high enough and should be raised and people should be let go. Not satisfy ourselves with paying full time salaries to part timers.

^ if anyone wants to know why UK productivity growth is so slow, see this post.

If both those workers have the same output then they should be paid the same. If you're going to sack anyone, it's the stagnant full timer that needs to go.

Isn't that what I just said?

Pay the person doing 60% of the job, 60% of the salary.

Sack the full timer who is doing 60% of the job.

Don't pay anyone 100% of the wage for 60% of the job.

Nope. You can scroll up and see what you said. Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though. = precisely the attitude we need to drive out.

If my staff can get the stuff done required by their role in 3 hours then that's brilliant. I then have a real headache because this particular individual is vastly underutilised (and underpaid) - but that's a good problem to have compared to the alternative.

Yes, what I said was right. People who are working 3 days can be paid for 3 days.

We need to drive up standards and productivity and raise the bar as to what is expected for full time work, not lower the bar so low that we tolerate people who are idle or pay part timers a full time salary.

I'd genuinely find it impossible to work with someone like you. Pure presenteeism. No appetite to innovate. No understanding of what productivity is at all.

Good to see it in the wild though, I kinda thought it was a myth.

Whoosh.

Good to see the point is going right over your head. 🤦‍♂️

The point is not presenteeism, the point is raising standards.

Full time wages should be for full time work. Which does not mean presenting for work, but not actually working.

The person who is presenting but not working should be fired. The part timer should get part time wages. Full timers, should be doing actual full time work, not just presenting in those hours.

If you're suggesting that 100% of the work can be done in 60% of the hours then standards are so low that we should be able to cut the headcount by about 40% and pay for 60% of the FTE jobs.

You need people lazy enough to sit around and wonder why they are doing X when doing Y would take half the time.

The 100% presenteeists aren't those people.

The other thing to remember is that the South Cambridgeshire project was partly about giving them a recruitment tool in an area where getting people to work for the council was otherwise insanely difficult.

Also, that part of the plan is to take out the least valuable work from the job as previously defined. I'd put Whitehall micromanaging process stuff like that into that category.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd74lyr094vo

US pauses offshore wind projects over security* concerns

(*Yeah right)

It used to be that those on the left were seen as having their head in the clouds, with no experience of the real world, while conservatives were solid, pragmatic types who knew how to get things done.

But today’s conservatives are fundamentally unserious. It’s all bitter academics convince women not to have babies, wind power is woke, and tariffs don’t cause inflation.

TBF, it's stretching it a bit to call Trump a 'conservative.' Or Truss, for the matter of that. They seem to be much closer to nihilism than conservatism.

A nihilist does not believe in anything and Trump believes, passionately, in himself.

He is an egoist.

Solipsism would suit better than nihilism, but is too philosophical and doesn't cover his mendacity.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

So learn something new. Anything.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

This kind of policy is up there with dredging rivers to stop flooding and getting rid of bus lanes to reduce congestion as examples of inane facebook-level policy making.

Give me the council worker who can rattle through the paperwork in 3 days and spend the rest of the time looking after their kids or sorting the daffodils out than the useless luddite who can't navigate an excel file without handholding.

As someone near to the Somerset levels, it was never dredging rivers that was the issue, it was about dredging the drainage channels that were designed to keep the levels dry, in the face of some who wanted to return the land to swamp. I don’t think that’s inane.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

This kind of policy is up there with dredging rivers to stop flooding and getting rid of bus lanes to reduce congestion as examples of inane facebook-level policy making.

Give me the council worker who can rattle through the paperwork in 3 days and spend the rest of the time looking after their kids or sorting the daffodils out than the useless luddite who can't navigate an excel file without handholding.

I have no qualms with part timers.

If people want to work 3 days, and get 3 days worth of salary, then that's their choice.

Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though.

And if you are showing up for 5 days but not working in them, then standards aren't high enough and should be raised and people should be let go. Not satisfy ourselves with paying full time salaries to part timers.

^ if anyone wants to know why UK productivity growth is so slow, see this post.

If both those workers have the same output then they should be paid the same. If you're going to sack anyone, it's the stagnant full timer that needs to go.

Isn't that what I just said?

Pay the person doing 60% of the job, 60% of the salary.

Sack the full timer who is doing 60% of the job.

Don't pay anyone 100% of the wage for 60% of the job.

Nope. You can scroll up and see what you said. Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though. = precisely the attitude we need to drive out.

If my staff can get the stuff done required by their role in 3 hours then that's brilliant. I then have a real headache because this particular individual is vastly underutilised (and underpaid) - but that's a good problem to have compared to the alternative.

Yes, what I said was right. People who are working 3 days can be paid for 3 days.

We need to drive up standards and productivity and raise the bar as to what is expected for full time work, not lower the bar so low that we tolerate people who are idle or pay part timers a full time salary.

I'd genuinely find it impossible to work with someone like you. Pure presenteeism. No appetite to innovate. No understanding of what productivity is at all.

Good to see it in the wild though, I kinda thought it was a myth.

Whoosh.

Good to see the point is going right over your head. 🤦‍♂️

The point is not presenteeism, the point is raising standards.

Full time wages should be for full time work. Which does not mean presenting for work, but not actually working.

The person who is presenting but not working should be fired. The part timer should get part time wages. Full timers, should be doing actual full time work, not just presenting in those hours.

If you're suggesting that 100% of the work can be done in 60% of the hours then standards are so low that we should be able to cut the headcount by about 40% and pay for 60% of the FTE jobs.

With that attitude we'd all still be working six days a week.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

This kind of policy is up there with dredging rivers to stop flooding and getting rid of bus lanes to reduce congestion as examples of inane facebook-level policy making.

Give me the council worker who can rattle through the paperwork in 3 days and spend the rest of the time looking after their kids or sorting the daffodils out than the useless luddite who can't navigate an excel file without handholding.

I have no qualms with part timers.

If people want to work 3 days, and get 3 days worth of salary, then that's their choice.

Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though.

And if you are showing up for 5 days but not working in them, then standards aren't high enough and should be raised and people should be let go. Not satisfy ourselves with paying full time salaries to part timers.

^ if anyone wants to know why UK productivity growth is so slow, see this post.

If both those workers have the same output then they should be paid the same. If you're going to sack anyone, it's the stagnant full timer that needs to go.

Isn't that what I just said?

Pay the person doing 60% of the job, 60% of the salary.

Sack the full timer who is doing 60% of the job.

Don't pay anyone 100% of the wage for 60% of the job.

Nope. You can scroll up and see what you said. Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though. = precisely the attitude we need to drive out.

If my staff can get the stuff done required by their role in 3 hours then that's brilliant. I then have a real headache because this particular individual is vastly underutilised (and underpaid) - but that's a good problem to have compared to the alternative.

Yes, what I said was right. People who are working 3 days can be paid for 3 days.

We need to drive up standards and productivity and raise the bar as to what is expected for full time work, not lower the bar so low that we tolerate people who are idle or pay part timers a full time salary.

I'd genuinely find it impossible to work with someone like you. Pure presenteeism. No appetite to innovate. No understanding of what productivity is at all.

Good to see it in the wild though, I kinda thought it was a myth.

Whoosh.

Good to see the point is going right over your head. 🤦‍♂️

The point is not presenteeism, the point is raising standards.

Full time wages should be for full time work. Which does not mean presenting for work, but not actually working.

The person who is presenting but not working should be fired. The part timer should get part time wages. Full timers, should be doing actual full time work, not just presenting in those hours.

If you're suggesting that 100% of the work can be done in 60% of the hours then standards are so low that we should be able to cut the headcount by about 40% and pay for 60% of the FTE jobs.

You need people lazy enough to sit around and wonder why they are doing X when doing Y would take half the time.

The 100% presenteeists aren't those people.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

This kind of policy is up there with dredging rivers to stop flooding and getting rid of bus lanes to reduce congestion as examples of inane facebook-level policy making.

Give me the council worker who can rattle through the paperwork in 3 days and spend the rest of the time looking after their kids or sorting the daffodils out than the useless luddite who can't navigate an excel file without handholding.

I have no qualms with part timers.

If people want to work 3 days, and get 3 days worth of salary, then that's their choice.

Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though.

And if you are showing up for 5 days but not working in them, then standards aren't high enough and should be raised and people should be let go. Not satisfy ourselves with paying full time salaries to part timers.

^ if anyone wants to know why UK productivity growth is so slow, see this post.

If both those workers have the same output then they should be paid the same. If you're going to sack anyone, it's the stagnant full timer that needs to go.

Isn't that what I just said?

Pay the person doing 60% of the job, 60% of the salary.

Sack the full timer who is doing 60% of the job.

Don't pay anyone 100% of the wage for 60% of the job.

Nope. You can scroll up and see what you said. Don't expect to work 3 days and get 5 days of salary though. = precisely the attitude we need to drive out.

If my staff can get the stuff done required by their role in 3 hours then that's brilliant. I then have a real headache because this particular individual is vastly underutilised (and underpaid) - but that's a good problem to have compared to the alternative.

Yes, what I said was right. People who are working 3 days can be paid for 3 days.

We need to drive up standards and productivity and raise the bar as to what is expected for full time work, not lower the bar so low that we tolerate people who are idle or pay part timers a full time salary.

I'd genuinely find it impossible to work with someone like you. Pure presenteeism. No appetite to innovate. No understanding of what productivity is at all.

Good to see it in the wild though, I kinda thought it was a myth.

Whoosh.

Good to see the point is going right over your head. 🤦‍♂️

The point is not presenteeism, the point is raising standards.

Full time wages should be for full time work. Which does not mean presenting for work, but not actually working.

The person who is presenting but not working should be fired. The part timer should get part time wages. Full timers, should be doing actual full time work, not just presenting in those hours.

If you're suggesting that 100% of the work can be done in 60% of the hours then standards are so low that we should be able to cut the headcount by about 40% and pay for 60% of the FTE jobs.

You realise you've posted this on PB, right? Merry Christmas I guess.