Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
It also depends on the equipment, organisational structure and methodology.
If you are working in Agile software development, in a stable project, with a stable team, and you have a high quality setup at home and a high quality VM setup from work - Awesome.
If you are working in a structureless team with piles of paperwork and no methedology, and the only technology is ancient laptops - This will fail as WFH.
Sure, and my estimates were pure guesses. But having a one size fits all policy is daft.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
It also depends on the equipment, organisational structure and methodology.
If you are working in Agile software development, in a stable project, with a stable team, and you have a high quality setup at home and a high quality VM setup from work - Awesome.
If you are working in a structureless team with piles of paperwork and no methedology, and the only technology is ancient laptops - This will fail as WFH.
Though that's a recipe for disaster if everyone is in the office as well.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Yes, I agree. WFH - as we know it, on a large scale - is on the way out
I can see people being allowed to choose to work 4 or 5 days in the office, but below 4 will be seen as a huge perk for senior staff or particular roles. Capitalism will decide this. If you insist on WFH your choice of jobs will be limited and you will be paid less, as companies will think Fuck this, why are we paying you the same as someone who loyally comes in every day (giving us the synergies and corporate team spirit that come from that)
People work together because it works, simple as
HMG needs to get tough on civil servants loafing about
As that BBC report states, WFH has only lasted as long as it has, because employment markets are tight. Unemployment is low. This will not last. Power will return to the employer, and they will want staff in the office 4 days a week minimum
BTW Cities will also demand this. I’ve seen this with my own eyes. Bangkok is throbbing and as lively as it ever has been (it’s great) there is no WFH. The city thrives. Denver Colorado has 90% WFH and it’s a fucking disaster, a bleak deserted downtown with many incalculable negatives arising from this -and much harm to the state economy (and eventually USA INC as a whole)
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
It also depends on the equipment, organisational structure and methodology.
If you are working in Agile software development, in a stable project, with a stable team, and you have a high quality setup at home and a high quality VM setup from work - Awesome.
If you are working in a structureless team with piles of paperwork and no methedology, and the only technology is ancient laptops - This will fail as WFH.
Though that's a recipe for disaster if everyone is in the office as well.
You'd be surprised how much of the world works like that.... No resilience and depends on all kinds of Keepers of The Gate(s)....
The English Football League (EFL) would have no obligation to accept Manchester City in the extraordinary event the club were expelled from the Premier League over alleged breaches of financial rules, Telegraph Sport understands.
Since the EFL – which covers the Championship, League One and League Two – cannot have more than 72 clubs, it is also unclear how City would be accommodated in such a scenario without a change in regulations.
If they are expelled then there is a vacancy in the PL which would presumably be filled by either an extra promotion from the Championship at the end of the season it happens or the next season, or (possibly less likely given the effect on TV contracts?) running the PL with 19 clubs for one year and then relegating only two at the end of it. Either way leaves a vacancy in the EFL.
Expulsion and relegation are not the same thing – the Premier League’s independent disciplinary commission have the power to expel a club but there is no provision in the rules for them to relegate one.
Perhaps technically true, but they can effectively do so by deducting them 100 points.
Quite. The history of football demotions is littered with sides being deducted some very odd points totals - turns out to be the number needed to relegate them that season. My club, Swindon, were initially relegated two divisions in 1990 from 1 to 3, then reduced to just one relegation. Effectively the Play-Off win at Wembley was awarded to Sunderland instead, which was tricky for some. Sunderland had lost to Swindon in the final, Blackburn had lost in the semi-final. Why should Sunderland go up?
Oh the game has a rich history in these matters, as Arsenal supporters can attest:
'When the Football League resumed play in 1919 after World War I, Arsenal—which had finished fifth in the Second Division before the war—was controversially promoted to the First Division over higher-placing Tottenham after Arsenal's chairman argued that his club deserved promotion because of its longer history,'
I think this is generally referred to as 'skilful negotiation', or bribery as they used to say on the North Bank.
It's funny how that story is always portrayed as Arsenal v Tottenham. The reality is that Tottenham finish bottom of the first division in 1915. It's Barnsley and Wolves that were overlooked for promotion at the resumption after the war.
Personally I've always regarded it as evidence that the business was as crooked then as it is now, although probably less incompetent. Don't see it as a Tottenham thing particularly.
No one quite knows what went on, but it's possible that Henry Norris (the then owner of Arsenal) had evidence that Liverpool and Man Utd were in on the fixed match at the end of the 1914-15 season that saw Man Utd avoid relegation (as it happens, Chelsea stayed up anyway, quite possibly because their relegation was due to fixing).
Oh you can see the antecedents of a rich tradition there.
Sepp Blatter, Platini and FIFA are mere beginners.
The English Football League (EFL) would have no obligation to accept Manchester City in the extraordinary event the club were expelled from the Premier League over alleged breaches of financial rules, Telegraph Sport understands.
The question is what would the current PL rights holders - both domestically and internationally - say if City was kicked out? My guess would be that they would see it as a material change in their contracts (given City's dominance) and potentially take the EPL to Court. UEFA might also not be happy given (1) what it means for the Champions League but maybe more importantly (2) City's owners have a massive incentive to then disrupt the current system in the form of joining the ESL.
I doubt media contracts guarantee the participation of any specific club. And surely the PL would say "it's not our fault MCFC broke the rules".
They don't guarantee the participation of any club but it's a fair bet to say that kicking City out knocks the commercial value of the rights, especially when it comes to pubs and clubs.
Not the PL's fault, though - I suspect that's the whole point of the independent commission.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
At the end of the reshuffle and Whitehall Departmental Renaming (for which Britain's stationers and sign makers are no doubt grateful), Raab is still in office. So we can look forward to doing this all again in a few weeks?
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
For a long time, it was against the Planning Religion.
I attended planning meeting consultation in Abingdon, way back. A chap who was a friend of a friend, wanted to open a corner shop in the suburbs. You had to walk forever to get a bottle of milk etc. Nearly everyone drove....
He had a really neat way of converting a house into a live-above shop. Even the way he wanted to do the shutters was much nicer than the usual roll-up uglification.
"But it's a residential area!" was the cry - as if that was a Commandment written on a stone tablet by a random desert deity.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Some years ago, I found myself in Tulsa OK for the weekend during a work trip. I was staying on the fringes of town, so despite the heat I decided to walk in to the city centre on the Saturday morning. On the way, I passed lots of joggers alongside the river, but when I reached the city centre it was totally deserted. No shops, no people. I found a hotel, went into the lobby and asked if they could call me a cab so that I could return to where I was staying.
Fortunately there was a little cluster of shops next to the hotel, so I was able to get some beer to see me through the rest of the day.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Its quite funny to look back a couple of months and all the uproar that chief tw@t was sacking loads of staff and telling the rest get back in the f##king office otherwise you go too and all those freebies, well you might not get free choca mocha ice lattes 24/7 made by a man we specially fly in from Italy anymore as they cost $400 a cup....and it was outrage mob, what an evil man, he doesn't understand tech, its different here, etc etc etc....and now every tech company is laying off loads of unproductive staff, telling them get back to the office and we are cutting back perks.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Yes, I agree. WFH - as we know it, on a large scale - is on the way out
I can see people being allowed to choose to work 4 or 5 days in the office, but below 4 will be seen as a huge perk for senior staff or particular roles. Capitalism will decide this. If you insist on WFH your choice of jobs will be limited and you will be paid less, as companies will think Fuck this, why are we paying you the same as someone who loyally comes in every day (giving us the synergies and corporate team spirit that come from that)
People work together because it works, simple as
Ideally it will create a virtuous circle as those people who like working from home precisely because it allows them to opt out of the trade-offs of city living will demand more local offices, so it might benefit economic life in smaller towns too.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Yes I agree: High St Kensington, Hampstead, Camden town, Jericho, Cowley Road etc. Though in the smaller towns (including Cambridge) it's the proper town centre and that's where more effort is needed to make it work in the bigger settlements. Even more modern places like Reading and Maidenhead, or Coventry for that matter, are giving it a go now though it's really not the same when the residential buildings are apartment blocks by the railway.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Greater London is a city of villages. You might be part of a big city, but your quality of life stems from the good stuff which is on your doorstep. There are any number of nice hubs around which to base a life. The scale works.
Greater Manchester, unfortunately, is a city of towns. There are two big cities in the middle, and a lot of medium sized towns surrounding. The likes of Bolton, Bury, Oldham are the wrong size - both too big and too small. Most people for whom they are the local centre are further from them than walking distance, but they are so big that they prevent the possibility of smaller centres that more people could walk to. But though big, they can't really compete with Manchester. Even where towns do work (Altrincham, Sale, Stockport to some extent) they do so despite rather than because of their size. As Malmesbury says, the bits which work best are villages which have been swallowed up - Didsbury, Chorlton, Gatley, Cheadle.
(Obviously despite this Greater Manchester is perfect. Just in case anyone thought I might be wavering in my parochialism.)
What a shockingly unexpected statement from John Major. I never heard him say anything like that over the past 5 years.
I bet he doesn't take his share of the blame for forcing through Maastricht without the consent of the electorate and kick-starting the entire Eurosceptic movement.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Yes I agree: High St Kensington, Hampstead, Camden town, Jericho, Cowley Road etc. Though in the smaller towns (including Cambridge) it's the proper town centre and that's where more effort is needed to make it work in the bigger settlements. Even more modern places like Reading and Maidenhead, or Coventry for that matter, are giving it a go now though it's really not the same when the residential buildings are apartment blocks by the railway.
As towns grow, they need a hierarchy of "centres" - in London, you have various old village high streets *and* the big shopping zone(s).
This pattern fits well with public transport. You link the local "centres" together.....
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
What a shockingly unexpected statement from John Major. I never heard him say anything like that over the past 5 years.
So he's consistently correct, then?
But to be serious, it's increasingly hard to sell Brexit as anything like a success. Perhaps the arguments should now be about why it's been a short-term failure, rather than over Brexit itself...
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Its quite funny to look back a couple of months and all the uproar that chief tw@t was sacking loads of staff and telling the rest get back in the f##king office otherwise you go too and all those freebies, well you might not get free choca mocha ice lattes 24/7 made by a man we specially fly in from Italy anymore as they cost $400 a cup....and it was outrage mob, what an evil man, he doesn't understand tech, its different here, etc etc etc....and now every tech company is laying off loads of unproductive staff, telling them get back to the office and we are cutting back perks.
Elon was definitely ahead of the curve, something he's done quite a few times now. As I said this morning, I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter goes public in 2026 and gets substantially more than the purchase price after debt repayment.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Its quite funny to look back a couple of months and all the uproar that chief tw@t was sacking loads of staff and telling the rest get back in the f##king office otherwise you go too and all those freebies, well you might not get free choca mocha ice lattes 24/7 made by a man we specially fly in from Italy anymore as they cost $400 a cup....and it was outrage mob, what an evil man, he doesn't understand tech, its different here, etc etc etc....and now every tech company is laying off loads of unproductive staff, telling them get back to the office and we are cutting back perks.
Elon was definitely ahead of the curve, something he's done quite a few times now. As I said this morning, I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter goes public in 2026 and gets substantially more than the purchase price after debt repayment.
Elon was ahead of this curve this time perhaps but ending WFH and coincidentally axing people who did not take the hint was done yonks ago by tech firms like Yahoo and others. It's an old playbook.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
Yes, I agree. WFH - as we know it, on a large scale - is on the way out
I can see people being allowed to choose to work 4 or 5 days in the office, but below 4 will be seen as a huge perk for senior staff or particular roles. Capitalism will decide this. If you insist on WFH your choice of jobs will be limited and you will be paid less, as companies will think Fuck this, why are we paying you the same as someone who loyally comes in every day (giving us the synergies and corporate team spirit that come from that)
People work together because it works, simple as
Ideally it will create a virtuous circle as those people who like working from home precisely because it allows them to opt out of the trade-offs of city living will demand more local offices, so it might benefit economic life in smaller towns too.
You don't need local offices to benefit the local economy, now I can work from home I have moved to devon from the south east and my salary gets spent here rather than in slough
I do think having a department of energy is absolutely the right thing for this country. It's something that has been neglected and deprioritised by the various business secretaries as too difficult or too expensive for far, far too long, at least 25 years, probably longer. I don't see how we've not had one for so long and is why we have such high energy prices.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Turkey and Syria, which being only halfway removed from a warzone is likely to be an even worse place to be trapped under a tower block.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
I believe you refer to the King?
Inter Alia, he has saved Cornwall with this thinking
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
I believe you refer to the King?
Inter Alia, he has saved Cornwall with this thinking
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Yes I agree: High St Kensington, Hampstead, Camden town, Jericho, Cowley Road etc. Though in the smaller towns (including Cambridge) it's the proper town centre and that's where more effort is needed to make it work in the bigger settlements. Even more modern places like Reading and Maidenhead, or Coventry for that matter, are giving it a go now though it's really not the same when the residential buildings are apartment blocks by the railway.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
I believe you refer to the King?
Inter Alia, he has saved Cornwall with this thinking
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Does that proposed expansion include bits of the M25? (To the east, or is it just bad line drawing?) That could be interesting!
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
I think that "London" is a fairly well-defined entity, existing as both a local government area and a statistical region of the UK.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Spot on! That's why we bought a diesel back in 2013.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Most people change their car at least once over a fifteen year period, though. Also, you can still drive a diesel in the ULEZ as long as it is Euro 6 compliant, ie made after 2016 or so.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Wicked! I is here in da North Ilford Ghetto, hangin' wid me bitches
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Does that proposed expansion include bits of the M25? (To the east, or is it just bad line drawing?) That could be interesting!
North Ockendon in Havering is the only settlement in London situated "trans-M25".
I do think having a department of energy is absolutely the right thing for this country. It's something that has been neglected and deprioritised by the various business secretaries as too difficult or too expensive for far, far too long, at least 25 years, probably longer. I don't see how we've not had one for so long and is why we have such high energy prices.
Rolls Royce SMR contract to finally be signed next week?
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Yes I agree: High St Kensington, Hampstead, Camden town, Jericho, Cowley Road etc. Though in the smaller towns (including Cambridge) it's the proper town centre and that's where more effort is needed to make it work in the bigger settlements. Even more modern places like Reading and Maidenhead, or Coventry for that matter, are giving it a go now though it's really not the same when the residential buildings are apartment blocks by the railway.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
It's weird to remember that before she became PM there were a lot of people unsure as to whether Liz was a true believer in right wing economics, people thought she might just be lying to the Tory MP electorate/carefully positioning... well now we know. She's the real deal.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Turkey and Syria, which being only halfway removed from a warzone is likely to be an even worse place to be trapped under a tower block.
I know this part of Turkey well. Recently a lot of quite cheap housing has been thrown up - understandably, as to house millions of Syrian refugees, and others
I fear the worst for the death toll. And still, ominously, no news from Göbekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler…
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
The ones currently run by the cleaner, gardener, the tube driver, the bar manager, the nurse, the electrician who fits your car charging point at home…?
The great crisis of both politics and business in the UK is generally poor management skills. This is a theme that has emerged in the serious UK media in the past few months.
In that light the Brexit fiasco is a rebellion against dishonest leadership, and a desire to bring the political process under more democratic control. Even as a Remainer, I could see the logic of that, and although the dishonesty with which the Brexit mob made their case left me coldly furious, they were not wholly wrong.
Some argue that part of the problem is that there is a "Jack´s-as-good-as-his master" attitude across British society. The British do not, in general, admire success except perhaps acting or music. The stereotype of leaders is negative. Britain is not a particularly fair place, and that many think success is not earned, but acquired through cheating. We show remarkable contempt to our public figures across society, from celebrities to business people.
The media has much to answer for too, Paxman´s "who is this lying liar who is lying to me?", attitude was maybe good entertainment, but not a sane way to find a happier and more prosperous country, However, it also goes hand-in-hand with genuine failure: an Oxford PPE degree is a network, not a syllabus, and that goes for bankers or industrialists or journalists as well as politicians.
Tories are in a a leadership vacuum but the palpable lack of vision on both front benches increasingly difficult to ignore. Changing the party of government will change surprisingly little. For example, it wont reverse Brexit, although that is what polls say the majority of voters want.
The problem for the UK is the system of government has delivered so much failure, of which Brexit is only a part, that it is becoming inescapable that major reform is needed. Our local government tier hollowed out by decades of cuts and mostly bankrupt. Our Parliament is woefully undemocratic- the continuing membership of the hereditary Lords in our Parliament is so sad, it is almost funny. A"safe seat" in the Commons is an insult to democracy. The relationship between the central government in Westminster and national governments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast is rickety, and the failure of local government has destroyed the power of English cities and counties.
Large parts of public administration, from Companies House,the Passport office, to the NHS itself, are in crisis, and the situation is getting worse. We need to talk about these issues. Whether by Royal Commission, Peoples Assemblies or some other public debate, we need to rebuild leadership of, and trust in our system of government.
We need a new national consensus. Who will lead it?
Spoiler Alert: it won´t be Liz Truss.
You’ve hit several nails on the head there.
I am not an optimist. England is now almost certainty in terminal decline. Like Portugal or Argentina, her glory days are behind her, and they will continue to gently (and not so gently) recede into history.
You and I know what the remedies need to be. I am almost certain that they will never be implemented, and I’m sure if you were brutally honest, you’d admit that you know it too.
I do think having a department of energy is absolutely the right thing for this country. It's something that has been neglected and deprioritised by the various business secretaries as too difficult or too expensive for far, far too long, at least 25 years, probably longer. I don't see how we've not had one for so long and is why we have such high energy prices.
Rolls Royce SMR contract to finally be signed next week?
Is it just me or is the Vaughan situation totally ridiculous. It seems there is a lot of doubt if he ever said "you lot" (and then what he could have meant by that), but lets say he did, nobody else is claiming he ever directed anything that could be remotely considered racist, in fact lot of minority players have come out and said he was all round great for them.
Where as it seems clear that Ballance in particular, commonly used racist language, fell out with Rafiq and it spiralled from there.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Most people change their car at least once over a fifteen year period, though. Also, you can still drive a diesel in the ULEZ as long as it is Euro 6 compliant, ie made after 2016 or so.
That's true - but across a city the size of London there are still, what, tens of thousands of cars that date back to before 2006. That's a lot of people to sting for £12.50 a day or the price of a new car. I think I recall a stat that something like 90% of the cars on the road are younger than 10 years old - but that still leaves a lot that aren't. Personally - two car family here with one car dating to 2019 and one to 2009. But the 2019 was a bit of a quirk, replacing a 2014 car which really should still be on the road. Typically I will buy a nearly new car (under 15,000 miles) and drive it until it gets more expensive to fix than its value (which usually happens at around 90,000 miles or more). I don't think that's unusual. And particularly in a city like London where people don't rack up the miles so much, there must be a lot of old cars still about.
Going back for a moment to the discussion Hezza's speech in the Lords, while it was excellent in so many ways it, SFAICS, missed out the difficulties; which are these
1) He lauds the single market. But with the single exception of FoM between countries at very different levels of development the SM was not the big issue in the Brexit debate. SM as regulatory trade harmonisation with an international arbitration system would never have precipitated Brexit.
2) He ignores the repeated Referendum issues. He ignores the political union aspects. He ignored the non democratic elements. he ignores the creeping politicisation of what began as a big trade association.
So while the rhetoric is great, he actually repeats the problem. On the whole the UK wanted half of what the EU had become (mostly about trade) but not the other half (mostly about politics).
But the thrust of his speech was about the undesirability of the regulations bill, and more generally the cluelessness around what Brexit is about, not a call to rejoin.
...Once the decision was taken—I was rather against it—it was important to get on and do something about the new world, because the uncertainty was bound to be burdensome and frustrating. I thought it was absolutely right that the principal Brexiteers were put in charge of the show: Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox. They, after all, presumably knew what the opportunities were, what needed to be done and what was holding us back, so they were in charge. Well, that did not last long. We had Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his Robespierrean fanaticism, and a whole new government department called Exiting the European Union. Let us not get carried away: the nameplate on the door changed. With Robespierrean fanaticism, he threw himself into the task. There was an uncharacteristic lack of history here, because of course Robespierre followed Louis XIV to the guillotine. Well, it is a more generous and kinder world that we live in today. Four Prime Ministers later, Jacob Rees-Mogg is back on the Back Benches. Dozens of Ministers have lost their jobs. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench, “Beware: here today, gone tomorrow”. That has an ominous ring for anyone who becomes mired in this Brexit saga.
The essence, of course, is that, for all the empty generalisations, all the promises and all that new world, there was nothing there. This Bill demonstrates beyond peradventure that they did not know what they were doing. Six years on, they did not know what they were doing. They have now actually created a giant question mark over a whole realm of regulations that are the custodian that separates us from the law of the jungle. They are what defines a civilised society. At a time of economic stress, when we need desperately to increase the levels of investment in our economy, what have they provided? A giant question mark for anyone seeking to know whether to spend a penny piece in the United Kingdom economy. I beg noble Lords not to let this legislation leave this place unscathed...
Yes. But he has consistently ignored the bits of the EU as it developed which were never going to be acceptable to the UK population as a whole; it is this development, under the watch of his generation which makes squaring the circle so difficult now.
Not that the current lot has helped of course. But the great failure of statecraft was from about 1950-2016.
The current failure, 2016 onwards, is in responding the best possible to an insoluble dilemma. (Answer, as always EFTA/EEA).
In which case, abolishing the entirety of EEC/EU derived law by an arbitrary deadline seems like a foolish way forward. What are the odds of the government accidentally breaking something important? Pretty high, I suspect.
Hezza's speech can be summarised as "If you must do this damn silly thing, at least don't do it in this damn silly way".
I do think having a department of energy is absolutely the right thing for this country. It's something that has been neglected and deprioritised by the various business secretaries as too difficult or too expensive for far, far too long, at least 25 years, probably longer. I don't see how we've not had one for so long and is why we have such high energy prices.
Rolls Royce SMR contract to finally be signed next week?
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
I can’t look at the pictures, of homes all crushed up. But the most important thing would be saving people. So I had this thought, what about apartments and homes have a really solid box built into it so that when earthquake starts people go into it for best chance of surviving collapsing building. In the box could be oxygen and homing device they could press to show they are alive in it. And there is nothing you could make it out of that could be really crush or bash proof, but there must be some sorts of metal and construction that could at least give people a better chance. Like a door to a little strong room?
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Most people change their car at least once over a fifteen year period, though. Also, you can still drive a diesel in the ULEZ as long as it is Euro 6 compliant, ie made after 2016 or so.
That's true - but across a city the size of London there are still, what, tens of thousands of cars that date back to before 2006. That's a lot of people to sting for £12.50 a day or the price of a new car. I think I recall a stat that something like 90% of the cars on the road are younger than 10 years old - but that still leaves a lot that aren't. Personally - two car family here with one car dating to 2019 and one to 2009. But the 2019 was a bit of a quirk, replacing a 2014 car which really should still be on the road. Typically I will buy a nearly new car (under 15,000 miles) and drive it until it gets more expensive to fix than its value (which usually happens at around 90,000 miles or more). I don't think that's unusual. And particularly in a city like London where people don't rack up the miles so much, there must be a lot of old cars still about.
Given what we got for an 8 year old CMax with 93,000 miles and a dodgy clutch - I suspect the switch over point is nearer 130,000 to 150,000 miles than 90,000 nowadays (we got £4500 on a zero hassle part exchange towards a not very expensive (cheapest on autotrader by miles car)...
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
I can’t look at the pictures, of homes all crushed up. But the most important thing would be saving people. So I had this thought, what about apartments and homes have a really solid box built into it so that when earthquake starts people go into it for best chance of surviving collapsing building. In the box could be oxygen and homing device they could press to show they are alive in it. And there is nothing you could make it out of that could be really crush or bash proof, but there must be some sorts of metal and construction that could at least give people a better chance. Like a door to a little strong room?
Indiana Jones survived atomic bomb in a fridge.
That sort of suggestion, is how building codes work in places like California.
But in most of the rest of the world, those standards, even if passed by law, would be ignored in practice.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Wicked! I is here in da North Ilford Ghetto, hangin' wid me bitches
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
I can’t look at the pictures, of homes all crushed up. But the most important thing would be saving people. So I had this thought, what about apartments and homes have a really solid box built into it so that when earthquake starts people go into it for best chance of surviving collapsing building. In the box could be oxygen and homing device they could press to show they are alive in it. And there is nothing you could make it out of that could be really crush or bash proof, but there must be some sorts of metal and construction that could at least give people a better chance. Like a door to a little strong room?
Indiana Jones survived atomic bomb in a fridge.
That sort of suggestion, is how building codes work in places like California.
But in most of the rest of the world, those standards, even if passed by law, would be ignored in practice.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Most people change their car at least once over a fifteen year period, though. Also, you can still drive a diesel in the ULEZ as long as it is Euro 6 compliant, ie made after 2016 or so.
That's true - but across a city the size of London there are still, what, tens of thousands of cars that date back to before 2006. That's a lot of people to sting for £12.50 a day or the price of a new car. I think I recall a stat that something like 90% of the cars on the road are younger than 10 years old - but that still leaves a lot that aren't. Personally - two car family here with one car dating to 2019 and one to 2009. But the 2019 was a bit of a quirk, replacing a 2014 car which really should still be on the road. Typically I will buy a nearly new car (under 15,000 miles) and drive it until it gets more expensive to fix than its value (which usually happens at around 90,000 miles or more). I don't think that's unusual. And particularly in a city like London where people don't rack up the miles so much, there must be a lot of old cars still about.
Given what we got for an 8 year old CMax with 93,000 miles and a dodgy clutch - I suspect the switch over point is nearer 130,000 to 150,000 miles than 90,000 nowadays (we got £4500 on a zero hassle part exchange towards a not very expensive (cheapest on autotrader by miles car)...
The dodgy clutch on our SMax was exactly the reason for its untimely early trade-in!
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Wicked! I is here in da North Ilford Ghetto, hangin' wid me bitches
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
I was talking to somebody last week about twitter and they had an interesting take. That all the free speech absolutism was nonsense, its about data. Remember ChatGPT took a load of twitter data for free to form part of it training dataset, Musk has cut that off now. Now everybody wants a LLM and they need data sources....particularly if we want to move to LLM that are much more up to date and take new data streams, parse them and output useful summaries (which is what people have already hacked together on top of ChatGPT, where you manually stream in say an academic paper).
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
I can’t look at the pictures, of homes all crushed up. But the most important thing would be saving people. So I had this thought, what about apartments and homes have a really solid box built into it so that when earthquake starts people go into it for best chance of surviving collapsing building. In the box could be oxygen and homing device they could press to show they are alive in it. And there is nothing you could make it out of that could be really crush or bash proof, but there must be some sorts of metal and construction that could at least give people a better chance. Like a door to a little strong room?
Indiana Jones survived atomic bomb in a fridge.
That sort of suggestion, is how building codes work in places like California.
But in most of the rest of the world, those standards, even if passed by law, would be ignored in practice.
🙁 . .
Sorry, but that’s how things work in most of the world, it’s reality rather than ideology.
Go into the “2nd world”, and you’ll find it’s easy to bribe building inspectors to say that the 200mm concrete pour was 400mm.
Look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy, for a British example of a regulatory failure, not really malicious but from a failure to understand the problem in sufficient depth.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
As of this morning, I was hearing stories that the devastation is just too widespread, and loads of collapsed buildings have no rescuers officially going through them. Some locals trying to rescue people by hand, but it sounds as though the authorities are utterly overwhelmed, and there is not enough machinery. Which, to be fair to the Turkish authorities, can be expected after such a disaster.
The stories that are just coming out through the Turkish motherfia are really tragic.
None of this can be looked at in isolation. If we had voted Remain by 52-48 that too would have been a mistake. So you have to look back in time to the causes of why by 2016 we had exactly two choices - Yes and No, both of which were going to be bad in their effects, and both of which failed to command high levels of consent.
And it is Major's generation of moderate politicians - many admirable including Major himself - who failed to shape the EU in a way which both commanded consent by what it was (basically trade not politics please), and commanded consent by a series of referendums allowing the voters to say Yes, No and Thus Far and Further.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
As of this morning, I was hearing stories that the devastation is just too widespread, and loads of collapsed buildings have no rescuers officially going through them. Some locals trying to rescue people by hand, but it sounds as though the authorities are utterly overwhelmed, and there is not enough machinery. Which, to be fair to the Turkish authorities, can be expected after such a disaster.
The stories that are just coming out through the Turkish motherfia are really tragic.
A thread which credibly claims Göbekli Tepe is OK. Praise be, if so
“The site is unharmed. They shared a very foggy video, it’s very snowy but stones didn’t fall at all. I spoke with the security guard. Unlike the hundreds of buildings near it… #gobeklitepe #Turkiye”
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Its funny how even the academic people I follow on twitter, who were all "i'm off to Mastodon", and they are obviously technically capable of using it (unlike Joe bloggs) and they are all still on tw@tter.
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
Sorry to hear that. Sadly, the reports we are getting out here aren’t any better. It’s a massive disaster.
As of this morning, I was hearing stories that the devastation is just too widespread, and loads of collapsed buildings have no rescuers officially going through them. Some locals trying to rescue people by hand, but it sounds as though the authorities are utterly overwhelmed, and there is not enough machinery. Which, to be fair to the Turkish authorities, can be expected after such a disaster.
The stories that are just coming out through the Turkish motherfia are really tragic.
Hope your wife's folks are OK, Josias.
Thanks. Her parents are, and some relatives in the area were thankfully away from home, visiting Ankara. But there're a few more distant ones that I've never met who (as of this morning) had not been heard from.
But one of Mrs J's friends has all his Turkish family in a block that's down. I think he's currently in the US, and trying to get information.
With respect to Leon, I don't give a damn about Göbekli Tepe. It can be restored or rebuilt. The people cannot.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Its funny how even the academic people I follow on twitter, who were all "i'm off to Mastodon", and they are obviously technically capable of using it (unlike Joe bloggs) and they are all still on tw@tter.
The most amusing part of the whole episode, was the Mastodon group moderator saying “Please can you all stop asking me to ‘ban’ people, there’s an ‘ignore’ function for anyone who upsets you. This isn’t Twitter”.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Its funny how even the academic people I follow on twitter, who were all "i'm off to Mastodon", and they are obviously technically capable of using it (unlike Joe bloggs) and they are all still on tw@tter.
Mastodon is collapsing. As some of us on here - you and I and others - confidently predicted. A doomed Woke circle jerk
“Mastodon now has nearly half a million fewer registered users than it did at the beginning of 2023. It's not likely to be the "Twitter killer" some people thought it was. wired.trib.al/qytkUtF
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I've actually seen some plans for such conversions - the simplest solution seems to be central hot water, provided by a big fuckoff pipe in the services stack, with x number of tanks off that to provide peak capacity.
The biggest issue, in London, will probably be religious opposition to conversion to living space. The City for London used to try and stop any such conversions, on principle.
The CoL is less against it now and actually trying to encourage people to live in the City.
Yeah - as an elector for the City of London, I get the pitches from the would be candidates.....
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
It's one of the biggest no-brainers out there because you only need to look at cities with mixed use and compare with cities with strict zoning for it to be abundantly clear that mixed use makes places more dynamic, more 7-days a week, better for business, nicer to look at and easier to get around.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
Brought up in Oxford, lived in London. The bits that work the best are the villages ingested by the growing towns/cities. So you have the village high street left among the suburban houses.
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Yes I agree: High St Kensington, Hampstead, Camden town, Jericho, Cowley Road etc. Though in the smaller towns (including Cambridge) it's the proper town centre and that's where more effort is needed to make it work in the bigger settlements. Even more modern places like Reading and Maidenhead, or Coventry for that matter, are giving it a go now though it's really not the same when the residential buildings are apartment blocks by the railway.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Mastodon is a terrible site. But Twitter is nowhere near as good as it was in terms of being to immediately access who you have chosen to follow. It works because it remains the only viable one of its kind - and that looks set to continue.
Musk has no doubt secured some savings. But job cuts are made, banked and all you then have is space where previously you might have had expertise. What he needs is sustainable revenue if he is going to have a successful business to IPO.
A thread which credibly claims Göbekli Tepe is OK. Praise be, if so
“The site is unharmed. They shared a very foggy video, it’s very snowy but stones didn’t fall at all. I spoke with the security guard. Unlike the hundreds of buildings near it… #gobeklitepe #Turkiye”
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Mastodon is a terrible site. But Twitter is nowhere near as good as it was in terms of being to immediately access who you have chosen to follow. It works because it remains the only viable one of its kind - and that looks set to continue.
Musk has no doubt secured some savings. But job cuts are made, banked and all you then have is space where previously you might have had expertise. What he needs is sustainable revenue if he is going to have a successful business to IPO.
You’re just so dim you haven’t worked out you need to toggle from “For You” to “Following”
Fuck's sake, I'm voting Labour, this government hates users of the rail system.
Rail fares will fluctuate based on demand, in a similar way to airline tickets, under a trial to be announced by Mark Harper, the transport secretary.
Tickets on some London North Eastern Railway (LNER) services will be more or less expensive depending on how many seats have been filled.
The Department for Transport believes so-called demand-based pricing will help manage capacity while also raising revenue.
Harper will also confirm plans to expand single leg pricing across the entire LNER network, which runs between London King’s Cross and Scotland via the east coast main line.
That means a single fare will always be half the cost of a return. Currently, many return fares only cost marginally more than singles.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
I was talking to somebody last week about twitter and they had an interesting take. That all the free speech absolutism was nonsense, its about data. Remember ChatGPT took a load of twitter data for free to form part of it training dataset, Musk has cut that off now. Now everybody wants a LLM and they need data sources....particularly if we want to move to LLM that are much more up to date and take new data streams, parse them and output useful summaries (which is what people have already hacked together on top of ChatGPT, where you manually stream in say an academic paper).
Yep, there is a lot of potential in data and Twitter already makes a decent amount in licensing what it has, though nowhere near as much as it gets from ads. The trick with data is doing it in a way that does not run foul of regulators while also producing something interesting for potential licensees. If Musk had not gutted his legal department he may have a better chance of squaring the circle.
My guess with Twitter is that its future is largely in the US. Others will carry on using it but everything will be built for and around the US market.
There has been a subtle change in our flexible working guidelines.
Before: 2-3 days per week in the office.
After: Up to 2 days per week at home.
Full disclosure: I will be in the office 1 day this week.
Obviously I know SFA about jobs, offices and all that malarkey but aren't the WFH arrangements part of the recruitment package about which companies have to be competitive?
Absolutely. They must think that 2 days WFH is sufficient inducement, and more than this has a negative impact on performance.
However, when you have individuals whose base office is different from the rest of their team, being in or out makes very little difference.
2 days WFH (in London) is the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within a reasonable daily commute, buy the full season ticket, and maintain a home office.
There’s a massive business opportunity, for the first company to turn a full City tower office block into a £50/night basic ‘hotel’, of 50 sqft rooms with a bed, a shower, and a bar downstairs. The difficult bit is the plumbing, when hundreds of hot showers are required simultaneously at 7am.
I wfh 2 days a week and it's perfect. No season ticket required as I don't live in the sticks.
Indeed, I do 3 days and it's just tap in at East Finchley, tap out at Moorgate and walk for 5 mins through Finsbury Circus. I think it's £7 per day, no need for a season ticket at £21 per week, no need to pay £170 per month.
Oh, 3 days is great for the top 1%, who can afford to live in London. For those on the couple of tiers below, who have no choice but to move out if they want more than a flat with no good schools, it makes a massive difference.
8.9 million people live in London.
That depends very much, on how exactly one defines “London”.
Bring on the expanded ULEZ. Get those awful polluting diesels off the roads.
In defence of diesel drivers, 15 years ago we were beung encouraged to drive diesels for environmental reasons (lower carbon than petrol). We can't be changing our cars every time there's a change of heart in government.
Most people change their car at least once over a fifteen year period, though. Also, you can still drive a diesel in the ULEZ as long as it is Euro 6 compliant, ie made after 2016 or so.
Plus dieselgate was 8 years ago, anyone who bought one after that made a decision to fuck up. It was blatantly obvious the day after that happened that diesels were done.
I do think having a department of energy is absolutely the right thing for this country. It's something that has been neglected and deprioritised by the various business secretaries as too difficult or too expensive for far, far too long, at least 25 years, probably longer. I don't see how we've not had one for so long and is why we have such high energy prices.
Putting an arsehole in charge of it is not much help though.
Very interesting to read on here that Twitter's ad revenues are bouncing back. I have not see where the reports but clearly they are out there. If they're accurate, that's quite a turnaround from three weeks ago when the news was that income was down 40% or so.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
Well, he’s managed to sack 80% of the staff without “destroying the site” as was the prediction of his lefty detractors. So he has presumably made some major savings at least. And made a lot of his haters look like fools
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
Mastodon is a terrible site. But Twitter is nowhere near as good as it was in terms of being to immediately access who you have chosen to follow. It works because it remains the only viable one of its kind - and that looks set to continue.
Musk has no doubt secured some savings. But job cuts are made, banked and all you then have is space where previously you might have had expertise. What he needs is sustainable revenue if he is going to have a successful business to IPO.
You’re just so dim you haven’t worked out you need to toggle from “For You” to “Following”
Is it just me or is the Vaughan situation totally ridiculous. It seems there is a lot of doubt if he ever said "you lot" (and then what he could have meant by that), but lets say he did, nobody else is claiming he ever directed anything that could be remotely considered racist, in fact lot of minority players have come out and said he was all round great for them.
Where as it seems clear that Ballance in particular, commonly used racist language, fell out with Rafiq and it spiralled from there.
And today Ballance got a ton on debut for Zim in the test against the West Indies.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
Not in the public sector. There are far, far too many dossers to work without supervision. The private sector may come to that sort of arrangement but in the public sector we clearly have lost a huge amount of productivity since the pandemic, simply - nothing in the country works any more. If those who don't like it leave, I'd be pretty confident in saying we'd lose very little overall anyway and I think I'd be pretty confident in predicting that very few will leave if a 4 day week was enforced.
I don't see 'dossing' as a private v public sector issue. The people most likely to take the piss given half a chance are those who neither enjoy their job nor see much value in what they do. They can be anywhere. I was one at times despite being VERY private sector.
Fuck's sake, I'm voting Labour, this government hates users of the rail system.
Rail fares will fluctuate based on demand, in a similar way to airline tickets, under a trial to be announced by Mark Harper, the transport secretary.
Tickets on some London North Eastern Railway (LNER) services will be more or less expensive depending on how many seats have been filled.
The Department for Transport believes so-called demand-based pricing will help manage capacity while also raising revenue.
Harper will also confirm plans to expand single leg pricing across the entire LNER network, which runs between London King’s Cross and Scotland via the east coast main line.
That means a single fare will always be half the cost of a return. Currently, many return fares only cost marginally more than singles.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
Not in the public sector. There are far, far too many dossers to work without supervision. The private sector may come to that sort of arrangement but in the public sector we clearly have lost a huge amount of productivity since the pandemic, simply - nothing in the country works any more. If those who don't like it leave, I'd be pretty confident in saying we'd lose very little overall anyway and I think I'd be pretty confident in predicting that very few will leave if a 4 day week was enforced.
I don't see 'dossing' as a private v public sector issue. The people most likely to take the piss given half a chance are those who neither enjoy their job nor see much value in what they do. They can be anywhere. I was one at times despite being VERY private sector.
Yes, but the dossers in the private sector aren’t funded by your taxes.
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
Not in the public sector. There are far, far too many dossers to work without supervision. The private sector may come to that sort of arrangement but in the public sector we clearly have lost a huge amount of productivity since the pandemic, simply - nothing in the country works any more. If those who don't like it leave, I'd be pretty confident in saying we'd lose very little overall anyway and I think I'd be pretty confident in predicting that very few will leave if a 4 day week was enforced.
"There are far, far too many dossers to work without supervision."
The tumbleweed would be rolling through PB if we were all supervised!
Going back to my earlier chat about Twitter, one of the things credited with bringing their dev and feature pipeline back into a solid position was reinstating the 4 day in office week. Disney are also doing likewise, we're mandating a three day week from next FY and all new hires have full time written in as default with flexible working being a company handbook modification. Some people have said they will leave if the the policy is enforced but I'm not afraid to lose them. I think the next PM will have to impose this on the public sector as well, a minimum 4 day working week in office, anyone who doesn't like it can get fucked and find a different job. Chances are they won't leave.
I would guess that for around a third of office jobs, full WFH works well, for a third it's debatable, and for a third it's greatly detrimental. Policy ought to recognise that.
Not in the public sector. There are far, far too many dossers to work without supervision. The private sector may come to that sort of arrangement but in the public sector we clearly have lost a huge amount of productivity since the pandemic, simply - nothing in the country works any more. If those who don't like it leave, I'd be pretty confident in saying we'd lose very little overall anyway and I think I'd be pretty confident in predicting that very few will leave if a 4 day week was enforced.
I don't see 'dossing' as a private v public sector issue. The people most likely to take the piss given half a chance are those who neither enjoy their job nor see much value in what they do. They can be anywhere. I was one at times despite being VERY private sector.
Yes, but the dossers in the private sector aren’t funded by your taxes.
Comments
But having a one size fits all policy is daft.
I can see people being allowed to choose to work 4 or 5 days in the office, but below 4 will be seen as a huge perk for senior staff or particular roles. Capitalism will decide this. If you insist on WFH your choice of jobs will be limited and you will be paid less, as companies will think Fuck this, why are we paying you the same as someone who loyally comes in every day (giving us the synergies and corporate team spirit that come from that)
People work together because it works, simple as
HMG needs to get tough on civil servants loafing about
As that BBC report states, WFH has only lasted as long as it has, because employment markets are tight. Unemployment is low. This will not last. Power will return to the employer, and they will want staff in the office 4 days a week minimum
BTW Cities will also demand this. I’ve seen this with my own eyes. Bangkok is throbbing and as lively as it ever has been (it’s great) there is no WFH. The city thrives. Denver Colorado has 90% WFH and it’s a fucking disaster, a bleak deserted downtown with many incalculable negatives arising from this -and much harm to the state economy (and eventually USA INC as a whole)
The issue, now, is following through on accepting mixed use.
How is China building SO MUCH rooftop solar, SO FAST?
What kind of policy makes this possible?
Do the projects even make money?
If you follow the China power sector, you've probably been wondering these things.
Last weekend, I went to the Shandong countryside to get answers.🧵
https://mobile.twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1622832701131874306
Sepp Blatter, Platini and FIFA are mere beginners.
More widely beyond London it's the solution staring us in the face to the death of the high street. If people won't any longer drive or bus into the town centre to go shopping, have them live in the town centre and walk to the shops.
There are good examples in the UK. Obviously various parts of the West End as well as inner suburbs, but also places like Ludlow, York, Oxford and Cambridge, and various coastal towns.
I attended planning meeting consultation in Abingdon, way back. A chap who was a friend of a friend, wanted to open a corner shop in the suburbs. You had to walk forever to get a bottle of milk etc. Nearly everyone drove....
He had a really neat way of converting a house into a live-above shop. Even the way he wanted to do the shutters was much nicer than the usual roll-up uglification.
"But it's a residential area!" was the cry - as if that was a Commandment written on a stone tablet by a random desert deity.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/31/plans-to-sell-15bn-of-uk-government-offices-based-on-fantasy-say-critics
Strangely, the chap who gets this, is a man who has a specified employee to put toothpaste on his toothbrush each morning. Can't imagine that he pops out to the shops a lot.
Fortunately there was a little cluster of shops next to the hotel, so I was able to get some beer to see me through the rest of the day.
https://t.co/W34ShWYDY5
Greater Manchester, unfortunately, is a city of towns. There are two big cities in the middle, and a lot of medium sized towns surrounding. The likes of Bolton, Bury, Oldham are the wrong size - both too big and too small. Most people for whom they are the local centre are further from them than walking distance, but they are so big that they prevent the possibility of smaller centres that more people could walk to. But though big, they can't really compete with Manchester. Even where towns do work (Altrincham, Sale, Stockport to some extent) they do so despite rather than because of their size.
As Malmesbury says, the bits which work best are villages which have been swallowed up - Didsbury, Chorlton, Gatley, Cheadle.
(Obviously despite this Greater Manchester is perfect. Just in case anyone thought I might be wavering in my parochialism.)
This pattern fits well with public transport. You link the local "centres" together.....
But to be serious, it's increasingly hard to sell Brexit as anything like a success. Perhaps the arguments should now be about why it's been a short-term failure, rather than over Brexit itself...
It's effing awful over there. Some of the second-hand reports I'm getting are absolutely heartbreaking. And we still don't know about some of Mrs J's relatives and friends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Post-war_influence_of_urban_development_and_projects
Inter Alia, he has saved Cornwall with this thinking
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-king-charles-saved-cornwall/
https://twitter.com/Cobylefko/status/1619829546643263489
Not everyone can live somewhere that's grown organically, but you can plan that stuff back in anywhere, with the right set of principles.
Football: pair of EPL tips (both, weirdly, with Ladbrokes).
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/02/epl-7-february-2023.html
Backed Arsenal to win versus City at 2.87, and Leicester/Spurs to score over 3.5 goals between them at 2.8.
It's weird to remember that before she became PM there were a lot of people unsure as to whether Liz was a true believer in right wing economics, people thought she might just be lying to the Tory MP electorate/carefully positioning... well now we know. She's the real deal.
I fear the worst for the death toll. And still, ominously, no news from Göbekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler…
I am not an optimist. England is now almost certainty in terminal decline. Like Portugal or Argentina, her glory days are behind her, and they will continue to gently (and not so gently) recede into history.
You and I know what the remedies need to be. I am almost certain that they will never be implemented, and I’m sure if you were brutally honest, you’d admit that you know it too.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2023/02/07/michael-vaughan-last-man-standing-against-azeem-rafiq-yorkshire/
Is it just me or is the Vaughan situation totally ridiculous. It seems there is a lot of doubt if he ever said "you lot" (and then what he could have meant by that), but lets say he did, nobody else is claiming he ever directed anything that could be remotely considered racist, in fact lot of minority players have come out and said he was all round great for them.
Where as it seems clear that Ballance in particular, commonly used racist language, fell out with Rafiq and it spiralled from there.
Personally - two car family here with one car dating to 2019 and one to 2009. But the 2019 was a bit of a quirk, replacing a 2014 car which really should still be on the road. Typically I will buy a nearly new car (under 15,000 miles) and drive it until it gets more expensive to fix than its value (which usually happens at around 90,000 miles or more). I don't think that's unusual. And particularly in a city like London where people don't rack up the miles so much, there must be a lot of old cars still about.
#ElonMuskShouldRunTheTreasury
Indiana Jones survived atomic bomb in a fridge.
But in most of the rest of the world, those standards, even if passed by law, would be ignored in practice.
The key to sustained ad revenue growth is repeat customers. You need strong renewal rates to form the foundations and from there you can bring in new clients who you then hope to turn into repeat ones. Twitter's challenge lies there. Until they can demonstrate they are doing that I am not sure you can say that Musk is making a success of things. Unless he can find significant new sources of income.
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1622844239074787328?s=20&t=0jpW-1NSPWk-gdgORj7TqQ
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
Hoping Greg Hands gets appointed as Party Chair. We have quite the story about him...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-YYroSudUs
Go into the “2nd world”, and you’ll find it’s easy to bribe building inspectors to say that the 200mm concrete pour was 400mm.
Look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy, for a British example of a regulatory failure, not really malicious but from a failure to understand the problem in sufficient depth.
Anyone remember “Mastodon”? Lol
The stories that are just coming out through the Turkish motherfia are really tragic.
And it is Major's generation of moderate politicians - many admirable including Major himself - who failed to shape the EU in a way which both commanded consent by what it was (basically trade not politics please), and commanded consent by a series of referendums allowing the voters to say Yes, No and Thus Far and Further.
“The site is unharmed. They shared a very foggy video, it’s very snowy but stones didn’t fall at all. I spoke with the security guard. Unlike the hundreds of buildings near it… #gobeklitepe #Turkiye”
https://twitter.com/bosnianbot/status/1622975820049403911?s=61&t=gLKdppXXif4PhqrKKe73NQ
But one of Mrs J's friends has all his Turkish family in a block that's down. I think he's currently in the US, and trying to get information.
With respect to Leon, I don't give a damn about Göbekli Tepe. It can be restored or rebuilt. The people cannot.
Mastodon is collapsing. As some of us on here - you and I and others - confidently predicted. A doomed Woke circle jerk
“Mastodon now has nearly half a million fewer registered users than it did at the beginning of 2023. It's not likely to be the "Twitter killer" some people thought it was. wired.trib.al/qytkUtF
📷: Getty“
https://twitter.com/wired/status/1622936226884976640?s=61&t=gLKdppXXif4PhqrKKe73NQ
Urban planners don't need either his financial resources or his extraordinary influence.
They don't even need to build.
Musk has no doubt secured some savings. But job cuts are made, banked and all you then have is space where previously you might have had expertise. What he needs is sustainable revenue if he is going to have a successful business to IPO.
My guess with Twitter is that its future is largely in the US. Others will carry on using it but everything will be built for and around the US market.
He’s now qualified to play for his home nation.
The tumbleweed would be rolling through PB if we were all supervised!
This is a very interesting law suit:
If your AI is trained on (say) Getty Images, then is your AI breaching copyright by generating new images based on them?