O/t but The BBC is reporting that 'Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November's election, officials say.'
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
No. Investors are quite picky about where they invest. Europe is a very hostile environment for capital.
It is a long time since I studied the intricacies of supply and demand economics, although I do detect some subjective wishful thinking in your first sentence, at least. Possibly the second, too.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
You are able to meet indoors in groups of up to two households (anyone in your support bubble counts as one household). This includes inviting people from one household into your home or visiting the home of someone else with members of your own household. You should continue to maintain social distancing with anyone you do not live with or who is not in your support bubble when doing so.
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
No. Investors are quite picky about where they invest. Europe is a very hostile environment for capital.
It is a long time since I studied the intricacies of supply and demand economics, although I do detect some subjective wishful thinking in your first sentence, at least. Possibly the second, too.
London has a lot of advantages in capital markets that aren't related to EU membership. Advantages that aren't easily replicated, European companies will just open branch offices and raise money in London as domestic entities. That's why it's a nothing threat, nothing is stopping European companies from buying a brass plaque in London and using it to raise money as a UK company.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
You are able to meet indoors in groups of up to two households (anyone in your support bubble counts as one household). This includes inviting people from one household into your home or visiting the home of someone else with members of your own household. You should continue to maintain social distancing with anyone you do not live with or who is not in your support bubble when doing so.
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
No. Investors are quite picky about where they invest. Europe is a very hostile environment for capital.
We'll remain much more friendly to Sheikhs and third world despots?
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I agree. But they haven't exactly been encouraged to remain within their "bubble" by HMG over the last weeks.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with food ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
It's 3 households in Scotland I think. Looking at the official advice, I be!ieve the police would only get involved if 16 or more folk and/or from 5 or more households had gathered indoors.
I think the main reason why the Unionist parties in Scotland have failed to gain power for the last 13 years is their continual attempts to delegitimise the SNP as a political party.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
You are able to meet indoors in groups of up to two households (anyone in your support bubble counts as one household). This includes inviting people from one household into your home or visiting the home of someone else with members of your own household. You should continue to maintain social distancing with anyone you do not live with or who is not in your support bubble when doing so.
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
You are able to meet indoors in groups of up to two households (anyone in your support bubble counts as one household). This includes inviting people from one household into your home or visiting the home of someone else with members of your own household. You should continue to maintain social distancing with anyone you do not live with or who is not in your support bubble when doing so.
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
TBH a lot of my friends are. I'm supposed to be a U3a Sub-Group with 6 members on Thursday and I'm reasonably certain it'll be on Zoom, if only because it's a Current Affairs Discussion Group and we don't want to shout at each other any more than necessary.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
Ate at a pub yesterday lunchtime; more people inside than the last couple of weeks.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
No. Investors are quite picky about where they invest. Europe is a very hostile environment for capital.
It is a long time since I studied the intricacies of supply and demand economics, although I do detect some subjective wishful thinking in your first sentence, at least. Possibly the second, too.
London has a lot of advantages in capital markets that aren't related to EU membership. Advantages that aren't easily replicated, European companies will just open branch offices and raise money in London as domestic entities. That's why it's a nothing threat, nothing is stopping European companies from buying a brass plaque in London and using it to raise money as a UK company.
Yes it currently does have advantages, but that MIGHT change after Brexit is fully operational. You are projecting on instinct. Lines of capital credit are available anywhere and everywhere.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
They do not have automatic access to the New York market they had in London when in the EU and which is to be renegotiated post Brexit
O/t but The BBC is reporting that 'Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November's election, officials say.'
A foretaste of things to come?
The nutter Trumpets think terrorists were responsible.
Even in McDonalds they rely on you to manually scan the QR code and put your “track and trace” details in. Nobody prompts you to do it.
I’d love to know the percentage of people who actually do it without fail. Very low I bet. I do my best but as I said there’s been a few occasions where I realise later that I didn’t get round to doing it.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
You are able to meet indoors in groups of up to two households (anyone in your support bubble counts as one household). This includes inviting people from one household into your home or visiting the home of someone else with members of your own household. You should continue to maintain social distancing with anyone you do not live with or who is not in your support bubble when doing so.
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
TBH a lot of my friends are. I'm supposed to be a U3a Sub-Group with 6 members on Thursday and I'm reasonably certain it'll be on Zoom, if only because it's a Current Affairs Discussion Group and we don't want to shout at each other any more than necessary.
My experience is based around those under the age of 35 so I guess attitudes are different.
However I was in Morpeth yesterday and it was the young who were religiously wearing the masks and the old who were not, in fact the old had their noses exposed half the time.
One of the problems with London is that it partly runs on people that do not live there.
It derives much income from commuters, and yet it gives them no say. It is a form of taxation without representation.
WFH has freed many commuters from paying this tithe and being treated like cattle into the bargain.
Why would they go back?
make the London assembly the south east assembly,and the London Mayor the Mayor for the south east. That might help.
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
I think the main reason why the Unionist parties in Scotland have failed to gain power for the last 13 years is their continual attempts to delegitimise the SNP as a political party.
Still, one more push, it'll definitely work this time round.
Reading the reports from Birmingham it looks like the late night social Scene is alive and kicking even after midnight, just the right environment to spread the virus, then all of to grandmas for Sunday lunch today!
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
No. Investors are quite picky about where they invest. Europe is a very hostile environment for capital.
It is a long time since I studied the intricacies of supply and demand economics, although I do detect some subjective wishful thinking in your first sentence, at least. Possibly the second, too.
London has a lot of advantages in capital markets that aren't related to EU membership. Advantages that aren't easily replicated, European companies will just open branch offices and raise money in London as domestic entities. That's why it's a nothing threat, nothing is stopping European companies from buying a brass plaque in London and using it to raise money as a UK company.
Yes it currently does have advantages, but that MIGHT change after Brexit is fully operational. You are projecting on instinct. Lines of capital credit are available anywhere and everywhere.
The scale of the London capital markets is why companies will buy brass plaques and just live with it. The variety of currencies, depth of the markets and flexibility of capital type is unlike anywhere else in the world, not even NY which is a predominantly USD market serving the gigantic domestic market in the US. There's a reason that companies from everywhere in the world come to London to raise capital, not just from the EU.
One of the problems with London is that it partly runs on people that do not live there.
It derives much income from commuters, and yet it gives them no say. It is a form of taxation without representation.
WFH has freed many commuters from paying this tithe and being treated like cattle into the bargain.
Why would they go back?
make the London assembly the south east assembly,and the London Mayor the Mayor for the south east. That might help.
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
Yes I can see that. I am much better off by not commuting. But will London wither without the commuter dollar, even if the tourist dollar returns?
Russian disinformation is a good thing when aligned with the government's wishes, and at least tolerated when our political masters use the same techniques.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
Unless you think we'll soon be able to do away with rail transport all together (a previous error along these lines led to Beeching, whose consequences we're still living with), surely it makes sense that the most important connections should be serviced by modern infrastructure? We understand this when it comes to linking London and the Channel Tunnel, why not for London, Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester?
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
They do not have automatic access to the New York market they had in London when in the EU and which is to be renegotiated post Brexit
Yes, but buying a brass plaque and capitalising a UK branch office is basically a zero cost option. Foreign companies already do it to get access to London's markets. The idea that we wouldn't also allow European companies the same mechanism is ridiculous.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
Not sure if you're being serious, but while that sounds wonderful for the few who'd be able to afford it, only rail can provide the capacity needed.
I think the main reason why the Unionist parties in Scotland have failed to gain power for the last 13 years is their continual attempts to delegitimise the SNP as a political party.
What, beyond independence, would you say was the SNP's political philosophy?
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
Wrong, I have been to a pub six times since lockdown, twice in or near Oxford and once near Epping and twice in Dorset and once in Fareham.
In Oxford and Fareham everyone was drinking outside, barely anyone inside, in Epping and Dorset you were only allowed to eat outside, there were no tables set up inside.
In every pub there was track and trace details required too before you went to your table.
In shops it is not needed but you have to wear a mask.
Does not say much about your area of Newcastle if there is such blatant disregard for the rules and the police should take action on those establishments breaching them
I think the main reason why the Unionist parties in Scotland have failed to gain power for the last 13 years is their continual attempts to delegitimise the SNP as a political party.
Probably, but understandable.
The people who have voted SNP and propelled them to majorities are driven by culture, not politics.
The SNP have not made them richer, healthier, safer or better educated, but they can wave flags.
Brexit is the same, which is why the take over of the Conservative and Unionist Party by the Little Englanders is bad news for good governance and long term benefit.
The Unionists are still trying political arguments in the Scottish Culture war, as Remainers did against Brexit
Both failed, but I would much rather serious politicians continued to try and pursue political aims than our entire polity descends even further into perpetual culture battles where nobody wins (including the apparent victors)
O/t but The BBC is reporting that 'Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November's election, officials say.'
A foretaste of things to come?
This is a spoof account from a mock Trumper, but a good one, indeed a bit too close to reality at times:
I think the main reason why the Unionist parties in Scotland have failed to gain power for the last 13 years is their continual attempts to delegitimise the SNP as a political party.
No, the main reason is there is only 1 Nationalist party on the constituency vote but 3 Unionist parties
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
Not sure if you're being serious, but while that sounds wonderful for the few who'd be able to afford it, only rail can provide the capacity needed.
There are dozens of companies racing to be the first to put these into operation. Uber is among them. In a few years you will be able to whistle up a drone car like you get an uber cab now.
Airport transfer? JFK to Manhattan in 20 minutes. Ditto heathrow to the city.
all these technologies are for the rich only at first. Like holidays by aeroplane were.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
O/t but The BBC is reporting that 'Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November's election, officials say.'
A foretaste of things to come?
The nutter Trumpets think terrorists were responsible.
Nasty whatsit that Neptune. Needs CIA surveillance.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
It's not though, this is the IDS group not understanding how the capital markets operate. If you'd read it you'd know that though.
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
Yes, but the list of things BoZo would be willing (for others) to risk is long. That this is beyond the realms of stupidity is no guarantee he won't try it.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
Not sure if you're being serious, but while that sounds wonderful for the few who'd be able to afford it, only rail can provide the capacity needed.
There are dozens of companies racing to be the first to put these into operation. Uber is among them. In a few years you will be able to whistle up a drone car like you get an uber cab now.
Airport transfer? JFK to Manhattan in 20 minutes. Ditto heathrow to the city.
all these technologies are for the rich only at first. Like holidays by aeroplane were.
Now they are for all.
Uber and their competitors are well established in London, but the TfL network remains a cheaper way to get around.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
Unless you think we'll soon be able to do away with rail transport all together (a previous error along these lines led to Beeching, whose consequences we're still living with), surely it makes sense that the most important connections should be serviced by modern infrastructure? We understand this when it comes to linking London and the Channel Tunnel, why not for London, Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester?
HS2 does not go between Leeds and Manchester, rather it is taking money which could be spent on other rail lines.
But those other rail lines do not go to London so you don't view them as 'most important'.
HS2 is like Hinkley Point C - a 20th century answer to a 21st century world.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
My solution to this problem is 2 phones (which many of my colleagues can't comprehend)
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
One of the problems with London is that it partly runs on people that do not live there.
It derives much income from commuters, and yet it gives them no say. It is a form of taxation without representation.
WFH has freed many commuters from paying this tithe and being treated like cattle into the bargain.
Why would they go back?
make the London assembly the south east assembly,and the London Mayor the Mayor for the south east. That might help.
What is this "tithe"? London's local government is funded by local residents and money from central government, and London residents pay far more in tax to central government than they receive back in government spending. Commuters' rail fares go to the privatised rail firms (mostly subsidiaries of European state rail firms) and to central government in franchise payments. Money paid to Pret goes to Pret - and nobody is stopping you from bringing in a packed lunch. I understand that people don't like commuting - I don't particularly enjoy commuting in from zone 2 either - but the idea that it is all some conspiracy to line the pockets of Londoners is fanciful.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
Wrong, I have been to a pub six times since lockdown, twice in or near Oxford and once near Epping and twice in Dorset and once in Fareham.
In Oxford and Fareham everyone was drinking outside, barely anyone inside, in Epping and Dorset you were only allowed to eat outside, there were no tables set up inside.
In every pub there was track and trace details required too before you went to your table.
In shops it is not needed but you have to wear a mask.
Does not say much about your area of Newcastle if there is such blatant disregard for the rules and the police should take action on those establishments breaching them
Not everyone in the country lives in your lovely South Eastern climate.
How many restaurants in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle etc do you think are seating punters outside?
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Does anyone take a blind bit of notice of the rules anymore? Does anyone know what they are? I’m as confused in Spain now as to which rules are still in force. Would help to have a weekly bulletin.
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
I agree with HYUFD. Quite apart from the politics, understanding the needs of both of, say, Tower Hamlets and the Surrey Hills is a challenge, and it's likely that any assembly purporting to represent them both would struggle to do so effectively. The Surrey County Council bid to abolish all borough councils and centralise power in their offices in outer London is already extremely controverrsial for exactly that reason - many Tory voters in deepest Surrey are not confident that they will be listened to.
Smoothing the impact of economic change, especially change that shifts economic focus between regions, is the job of Government. As Alastair says, it doesn't have to be harmful overall, but of course someone running a little cafe in central London is going to need help to relocate or change professions, paid for from general taxation of those of us who are not hit by random economic change.
Organisations do have very tricky HR considerations in all this. I know of one which has polled its staff and found that 80% are fine with wfh, while 20% are unhappy, some desperately so. It would be possible to have the 20% working in the office with lots of social distancing, but they don't form a cohesive unit, and having a random selection of people in the office who mostly don't work together feels odd. Solutions will be found with part-time attendance etc., but the duty of care is actually very difficult to get right with everyone at a distance.
Will winter change attitudes, I wonder? I don't care if it's light or dark, hot or cold, outside because I'm essentially an indoor type, but I suspect that some of those 80% who are OK with wfh in summer may feel differently if it's cold and dark and drizzly outside. And yet, the pandemic may well be worse in the winter.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
Yup, planes I can deal with because they are miles in the air. Low flying drones which are big enough to carry at least one person. No thanks.
One of the problems with London is that it partly runs on people that do not live there.
It derives much income from commuters, and yet it gives them no say. It is a form of taxation without representation.
WFH has freed many commuters from paying this tithe and being treated like cattle into the bargain.
Why would they go back?
make the London assembly the south east assembly,and the London Mayor the Mayor for the south east. That might help.
What is this "tithe"? London's local government is funded by local residents and money from central government, and London residents pay far more in tax to central government than they receive back in government spending. Commuters' rail fares go to the privatised rail firms (mostly subsidiaries of European state rail firms) and to central government in franchise payments. Money paid to Pret goes to Pret - and nobody is stopping you from bringing in a packed lunch. I understand that people don't like commuting - I don't particularly enjoy commuting in from zone 2 either - but the idea that it is all some conspiracy to line the pockets of Londoners is fanciful.
true but Pret pays wages to people who live in London
bars and restaurants pay wages to the london living bartenders
If you are in London early in the morning you will see buses crammed full of Londoners going to clean and maintain the offices where the commuters work.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
Good for you and it is the sort of rules that need to be in place, but not all companies are as enlightened (yet! ) and there is the danger of creeping encroachment where an "exception" is made once, then another "exception" etc.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
Wrong, I have been to a pub six times since lockdown, twice in or near Oxford and once near Epping and twice in Dorset and once in Fareham.
In Oxford and Fareham everyone was drinking outside, barely anyone inside, in Epping and Dorset you were only allowed to eat outside, there were no tables set up inside.
In every pub there was track and trace details required too before you went to your table.
In shops it is not needed but you have to wear a mask.
Does not say much about your area of Newcastle if there is such blatant disregard for the rules and the police should take action on those establishments breaching them
Not everyone in the country lives in your lovely South Eastern climate.
How many restaurants in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle etc do you think are seating punters outside?
Norwegians for example live in a much colder climate even than those in the North of England and are able to respect the rules.
Plus have pubs in Newcastle and Manchester not heard of outdoor heaters? Marquees and gazebos with open sides can protect against the rain
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
Everywhere I have worked, across multiple industries, nobody, including management, expects you to answer your mobile phone outside of work hours unless an important project is reaching a critical point, or something important is happening overnight.
“Nothing is so urgent it cannot wait until the following morning”.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
Yup, planes I can deal with because they are miles in the air. Low flying drones which are big enough to carry at least one person. No thanks.
They can fly over the HS2 route.
It will be more than four years, as the battery tech isn’t yet up to London/Birmingham, but it will happen this decade. And they’ll be pretty quiet.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
Also most jobs to varying extent require negative conversations - eg being told off by your boss or a customer , being honestly evaluated in appraisals , hard negotiating with suppliers all of which should not happen in peoples own homes. The home is not a substitute for a workplace full time
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Personally I am waiting for the personal jet-pack I was promised when I was a kid. They still have not delivered it, nor the holidays on the moon, nor telepathy and as for the other ludicrous promise of a computer in every house.....
Morning all! A busy day yesterday doing bits of house tidying / maintenance in advance of estate agent valuation next week. Market seems to be booming here at the moment (makes a change) so if we want to do this Scotland move best get on with it. With respect to the WFH discussion if my new contract wasn't WFH then moving wouldn't be an option. How many more people will find themselves with options previously closed to them thanks to the switch to flexible working forced by the pox?
Reached a compromise agreement with the outgoing employer, I know what I need to do for the next 2 months (and how much £££ they're giving me) so have got new computer stuff arriving tomorrow so that I can properly start writing the plan of attack for both of my new business ventures. Appreciate that the economy is tough and going to get tougher. Which makes for opportunity if you can time it right and have a plan
I do most but not all of my work from home. I find it much more productive for the reasons that many do:
- fewer distractions - time saved commuting - less likely to catch other people's colds - not having to pretend to be busy when you're not - not having to wear stupid, expensive, high-maintenance, outdated clothes.
Also it saves a notable amount of money.
"Fitting into teams" is hugely overrated too in what I do, though obviously it is different in other fields. Not particularly liking alcohol or most of my colleagues (though there is the odd exception), it is great not being semi-bullied into bouts of competitive drinking in the evening. And I've never had a problem with learning on the job or integrating new team members.
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
I agree with HYUFD. Quite apart from the politics, understanding the needs of both of, say, Tower Hamlets and the Surrey Hills is a challenge, and it's likely that any assembly purporting to represent them both would struggle to do so effectively. The Surrey County Council bid to abolish all borough councils and centralise power in their offices in outer London is already extremely controverrsial for exactly that reason - many Tory voters in deepest Surrey are not confident that they will be listened to.
Smoothing the impact of economic change, especially change that shifts economic focus between regions, is the job of Government. As Alastair says, it doesn't have to be harmful overall, but of course someone running a little cafe in central London is going to need help to relocate or change professions, paid for from general taxation of those of us who are not hit by random economic change.
Organisations do have very tricky HR considerations in all this. I know of one which has polled its staff and found that 80% are fine with wfh, while 20% are unhappy, some desperately so. It would be possible to have the 20% working in the office with lots of social distancing, but they don't form a cohesive unit, and having a random selection of people in the office who mostly don't work together feels odd. Solutions will be found with part-time attendance etc., but the duty of care is actually very difficult to get right with everyone at a distance.
Will winter change attitudes, I wonder? I don't care if it's light or dark, hot or cold, outside because I'm essentially an indoor type, but I suspect that some of those 80% who are OK with wfh in summer may feel differently if it's cold and dark and drizzly outside. And yet, the pandemic may well be worse in the winter.
So let the market decide?
Britain's best graduates and other workers in demand will make the decision in the end I guess, because companies will need to attract their talent. They will go where they want to work
I suspect companies that have central units for younger workers, but allow part in part out working for experienced staff will prosper.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
Good for you and it is the sort of rules that need to be in place, but not all companies are as enlightened (yet! ) and there is the danger of creeping encroachment where an "exception" is made once, then another "exception" etc.
Yeah we've got very strict rules as to what constitutes an "emergency" and clients haven't made it onto the list which cuts it down to very critical internal problems which don't happen often. People can and do work late when necessary, but it might be something from a client that comes in at 3pm and needs doing before the start of the following day.
The other innovation we've put in place is very, very limited access to the VPN on weekends to stop weekend working.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
It's more difficult when one is dealing intercontinentally; Son 2 deals with clients/customers/suppliers in the US, East & Mid Asia and Oceania but he manages to have down time. Not in quite as regimented a fashion as you can, but effectively.
My wife has friends at the college she used to work at. They are still doing all of their teaching remotely but have suffered isolation as well. Their solution is innovative. 3 or 4 of them get together at each other's houses each work day taking it in turn to host so that they can have a shared work environment WFH.
This wouldn't work for a lot of people but it is certainly working for them.
They can only do that outside, technically only 2 separate households can meet still inside at each others homes
Nobody cares.
Well they should do if we are to keep new cases down
I don’t know a single person who is bothering with the “only 2 separate households can meet inside a home”. For one it doesn’t make any sense considering you can go to a pub with 50 households, or an office with even more.
Well I certainly am, as is my partner and our famililies.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with foods ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Fascinating. Doesn’t change anything.
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
Wrong, I have been to a pub six times since lockdown, twice in or near Oxford and once near Epping and twice in Dorset and once in Fareham.
In Oxford and Fareham everyone was drinking outside, barely anyone inside, in Epping and Dorset you were only allowed to eat outside, there were no tables set up inside.
In every pub there was track and trace details required too before you went to your table.
In shops it is not needed but you have to wear a mask.
Does not say much about your area of Newcastle if there is such blatant disregard for the rules and the police should take action on those establishments breaching them
Not everyone in the country lives in your lovely South Eastern climate.
How many restaurants in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle etc do you think are seating punters outside?
Norwegians for example live in a much colder climate even than those in the North of England and are able to respect the rules.
Plus have pubs in Newcastle and Manchester not heard of outdoor heaters? Marquees and gazebos with open sides can protect against the rain
You’re talking about pubs. I’m talking about restaurants. How many restaurants do you know that have huge outdoor space available for gazebos, etc? Very few. Even in Norway.
Your middle-class leafy Epping perspective with your country pubs with huge car parks is clouding your ability to understand the rest of the country.
I’ve also discussed McDonalds. Not exactly a “dodgy operator”, who is not sitting punters outside, and not enforcing track and trace in my experience. It is optional, in the sense that you have to go out of your way to do it, rather than be refused entry if you do not.. Used by millions.
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
It's more difficult when one is dealing intercontinentally; Son 2 deals with clients/customers/suppliers in the US, East & Mid Asia and Oceania but he manages to have down time. Not in quite as regimented a fashion as you can, but effectively.
Believe me it wasn't easy getting these rules agreed, loads of managers just wanted a free for all but a few of us argued it would absolutely destroy whatever was left of our staff's morale if we didn't let them have any downtime in the evenings and allowed weekend working.
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
I agree with HYUFD. Quite apart from the politics, understanding the needs of both of, say, Tower Hamlets and the Surrey Hills is a challenge, and it's likely that any assembly purporting to represent them both would struggle to do so effectively. The Surrey County Council bid to abolish all borough councils and centralise power in their offices in outer London is already extremely controverrsial for exactly that reason - many Tory voters in deepest Surrey are not confident that they will be listened to.
Smoothing the impact of economic change, especially change that shifts economic focus between regions, is the job of Government. As Alastair says, it doesn't have to be harmful overall, but of course someone running a little cafe in central London is going to need help to relocate or change professions, paid for from general taxation of those of us who are not hit by random economic change.
Organisations do have very tricky HR considerations in all this. I know of one which has polled its staff and found that 80% are fine with wfh, while 20% are unhappy, some desperately so. It would be possible to have the 20% working in the office with lots of social distancing, but they don't form a cohesive unit, and having a random selection of people in the office who mostly don't work together feels odd. Solutions will be found with part-time attendance etc., but the duty of care is actually very difficult to get right with everyone at a distance.
Will winter change attitudes, I wonder? I don't care if it's light or dark, hot or cold, outside because I'm essentially an indoor type, but I suspect that some of those 80% who are OK with wfh in summer may feel differently if it's cold and dark and drizzly outside. And yet, the pandemic may well be worse in the winter.
Agreed, the scrapping of district councils and their replacement by vast new unitary councils is controversial enough without the imposition of an even more vast new London and SE Assembly with little connection to the local area.
On wfh in winter, of course it will increase your heating bills but reduce the need for scarf, gloves and winter coat for commuting
We were discussing Worldometer projections for the US the other day. Did you look into it any further?
They have updated their projection now to 410K. After picking myself off the floor I also noted that they had changed the projection date from 1/12 to 1/1 so not quite as dramatic as it first appeared. However when looking at the graph for 1/12 it has gone up from 317K to 326K.
There is also the lag in projections so you can compare the projection to yesterday against reality. The projection lags reality by 7K. They have consistently under predicted.
What I don't understand, because I don't know the maths, is why they are predicting a big rise to come, but they did predict the current flat period (in fact over predicted).
I also don't understand how they are underpredicting by so much in such short periods of time. How do they get 7K behind the actual, when the prediction is only a couple of weeks out of date.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
It's not though, this is the IDS group not understanding how the capital markets operate. If you'd read it you'd know that though.
Can you explain this bit to those of us who aren’t experts ? ... “We should warn the EU that if they refuse to play ball in the talks, we will scrap our protective shield and rectify the dumping and unfair subsidisation in the way that best protects us.‘
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
Yup, planes I can deal with because they are miles in the air. Low flying drones which are big enough to carry at least one person. No thanks.
They can fly over the HS2 route.
It will be more than four years, as the battery tech isn’t yet up to London/Birmingham, but it will happen this decade. And they’ll be pretty quiet.
Surely the only benefit of these vehicles over high speed rail is their ability to deliver people point to point, in which case they will certainly be flying over people's homes. And "pretty quiet" will I suspect still be pretty loud if they're regularly flying overhead. They won't be able to deliver sufficient capacity to be more than a plaything for the rich, and without mass usage I suspect the regulatory environment will remain highly restrictive.
Morning all! A busy day yesterday doing bits of house tidying / maintenance in advance of estate agent valuation next week. Market seems to be booming here at the moment (makes a change) so if we want to do this Scotland move best get on with it. With respect to the WFH discussion if my new contract wasn't WFH then moving wouldn't be an option. How many more people will find themselves with options previously closed to them thanks to the switch to flexible working forced by the pox?
Reached a compromise agreement with the outgoing employer, I know what I need to do for the next 2 months (and how much £££ they're giving me) so have got new computer stuff arriving tomorrow so that I can properly start writing the plan of attack for both of my new business ventures. Appreciate that the economy is tough and going to get tougher. Which makes for opportunity if you can time it right and have a plan
No way, London is a separate city and South East Tories do not want to have lots of London Labour representatives in an assembly governing them or a potential Labour SE Mayor, nor I imagine do London Labour want lots of Home Counties Tories in their assembly.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
I agree with HYUFD. Quite apart from the politics, understanding the needs of both of, say, Tower Hamlets and the Surrey Hills is a challenge, and it's likely that any assembly purporting to represent them both would struggle to do so effectively. The Surrey County Council bid to abolish all borough councils and centralise power in their offices in outer London is already extremely controverrsial for exactly that reason - many Tory voters in deepest Surrey are not confident that they will be listened to.
Smoothing the impact of economic change, especially change that shifts economic focus between regions, is the job of Government. As Alastair says, it doesn't have to be harmful overall, but of course someone running a little cafe in central London is going to need help to relocate or change professions, paid for from general taxation of those of us who are not hit by random economic change.
Organisations do have very tricky HR considerations in all this. I know of one which has polled its staff and found that 80% are fine with wfh, while 20% are unhappy, some desperately so. It would be possible to have the 20% working in the office with lots of social distancing, but they don't form a cohesive unit, and having a random selection of people in the office who mostly don't work together feels odd. Solutions will be found with part-time attendance etc., but the duty of care is actually very difficult to get right with everyone at a distance.
Will winter change attitudes, I wonder? I don't care if it's light or dark, hot or cold, outside because I'm essentially an indoor type, but I suspect that some of those 80% who are OK with wfh in summer may feel differently if it's cold and dark and drizzly outside. And yet, the pandemic may well be worse in the winter.
Agreed, the scrapping of district councils and their replacement by vast new unitary councils is controversial enough without the imposition of an even more vast new London and SE Assembly with little connection to the local area.
On wfh in winter, of course it will increase your heating bills but reduce the need for scarf, gloves and winter coat for commuting
You southerners with your “heating” and your “scarf and gloves”. Hilarious.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
It's not though, this is the IDS group not understanding how the capital markets operate. If you'd read it you'd know that though.
Can you explain this bit to those of us who aren’t experts ? ... “We should warn the EU that if they refuse to play ball in the talks, we will scrap our protective shield and rectify the dumping and unfair subsidisation in the way that best protects us.‘
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
Yup, planes I can deal with because they are miles in the air. Low flying drones which are big enough to carry at least one person. No thanks.
They can fly over the HS2 route.
It will be more than four years, as the battery tech isn’t yet up to London/Birmingham, but it will happen this decade. And they’ll be pretty quiet.
The regulatory hurdles will be much higher than the technological hurdles.
For example, helicopters in London are permitted only to fly directly over the Thames, unless they are twin jets with two pilots meeting certain operational criteria. They need to constantly liaise with air traffic control at Heathrow and City.
It’s also illegal to fly any aircraft within 500’ (In any direction) of any structure or person unless taking off or landing, a long-standing rule that isn’t about to be changed for some new and untested technology.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that going to send them to New York for finance, until such time a suitable replacement for London can be established in Berlin or Paris?
The idea that the government would be willing to risk a financial crisis in order to get its own way is appalling.
It's not though, this is the IDS group not understanding how the capital markets operate. If you'd read it you'd know that though.
Can you explain this bit to those of us who aren’t experts ? ... “We should warn the EU that if they refuse to play ball in the talks, we will scrap our protective shield and rectify the dumping and unfair subsidisation in the way that best protects us.‘
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
Everywhere I have worked, across multiple industries, nobody, including management, expects you to answer your mobile phone outside of work hours unless an important project is reaching a critical point, or something important is happening overnight.
“Nothing is so urgent it cannot wait until the following morning”.
Are people just afraid not to answer the phone?
Some are afraid, but many people find it utterly impossible to ignore a ringing phone...
@AlastairMeeks writes from Italy and that shows the problem. Employers will take the opportunity to replace expensive Londoners with cheaper Mancunians, Italians and Indians.
(Oh, and I shall be made redundant later this month; my job role has emigrated. For the past several years I've been WFH.)
Be careful what you wish for.
Sorry to hear about the job.
There are tax issues for companies - and individuals - in working from outside the U.K. for prolonged periods. So it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
A thoughtful article from Mr Meeks. The issues it seem to me with WFH are:-
1. How to manage effectively your team, train them, share knowledge and experience etc; 2. Younger members of the team and new joiners; 3. Blurring of the boundaries between work and home. I found it at times immensely helpful, indeed, essential for my sanity to be able to close the door to home and go into the office. Equally, I did resent it when I spent time at home having to deal with work issues because this meant that my space, my time were being invaded my work - and that distinction was something that was important. 4. Serendipity: WFH is good for some jobs but not for others where presence is necessary - and I’m not just talking about the distinction between a lawyer and a plumber, say. The key will be to make sure firms don’t lose what is valuable from physical proximity and the sharing of ideas etc or make the mistaken assumption that a Zoom meeting is always an adequate substitute.
The government should be thinking creatively and imaginatively about what can be done in city centres: that space can and should be used in other ways.
3. Has always been the big one for me personally. Mentally its burdensome to have it encroach. Not that there are no benefits which even I've taken advantage of, there are, but theres a health aspect to having your own space.
The real problem is that you never get leave work. Once your phone is connected to office emails / zoom / etc, then sooner or later when you are out with friends or family an "urgent" situation will arise that you will be expected to deal with there and then. On the beach enjoying the sun? "Bing-bong" - urgent meeting. Having dinner? "Bing-bong" - urgent support call.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
That's not true, I have set Slack to not notify me of any messages after 5:30pm until 8am the following day and emails I only have on my work computer, didn't want them on my phone and we've set up our calendars to put in working hours and mine auto-rejects meetings with go beyond 6pm. We had an early meeting about the rules of engagement between management and employees wrt WFH on a long term basis and basically unless the company is on fire there's no new work added after 5pm until 8am the following morning and all meetings should be finished by 6pm.
It's more difficult when one is dealing intercontinentally; Son 2 deals with clients/customers/suppliers in the US, East & Mid Asia and Oceania but he manages to have down time. Not in quite as regimented a fashion as you can, but effectively.
Believe me it wasn't easy getting these rules agreed, loads of managers just wanted a free for all but a few of us argued it would absolutely destroy whatever was left of our staff's morale if we didn't let them have any downtime in the evenings and allowed weekend working.
I bet wasn't easy, but as you say, got to be worked out somehow. Son 2 was also spending some time teaching his youngest during lockdown where they live. Schools are back there now, so life is easier.
Agree with much of this but HS2 still has to go ahead. People will always need to physically travel between Britain's big cities and they should get to do it on 21st-century infrastructure.
HS2 is 20th century infrastructure.
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
And the electronic flying taxi derived from drone technology. Here in four years. Central Birminham to central london in half an hour.
In four years’ time, it will be at least four years away.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
Good, who wants a constant stream of helicopters flying over their house?
Yup, planes I can deal with because they are miles in the air. Low flying drones which are big enough to carry at least one person. No thanks.
They can fly over the HS2 route.
It will be more than four years, as the battery tech isn’t yet up to London/Birmingham, but it will happen this decade. And they’ll be pretty quiet.
It will be redundant when I patent my Star Trek transporter....
Britain's best graduates and other workers in demand will make the decision in the end I guess, because companies will need to attract their talent. They will go where they want to work
I suspect companies that have central units for younger workers, but allow part in part out working for experienced staff will prosper.
we shall see!
At a macro level and over time I think you're right, though government needs to consider those who are not the "best" too, and merely averagely competent. Most of us are basically fine, but there are some quiet tragedies in the making.
Whilst seeing the individual advantages to WFH for some (there are more perhaps longer term hidden disadvantages as well) I think its fair to say that "front line" jobs (police , teachers, factory work, doctors, nurses , agriculture, plumbing,building houses etc ) cannot be done WFH. Hence most WFH jobs are not front line and therefore I would say are the type of jobs generally that can be phased out or reduced if necessary. (or outsourced to lower wage economies) .
Having a job that means you can work from home because it involves producing nothing tangible but it involves talking , answering emails , writing reports , inputting data is not really going to be deemed vital as a doctor, teacher or plumber when the economy tanks to the extent that hard decisions need to be made.
What you describe has always been the case, but I kind of know what you mean about the powers that be finding it easier to get rid of those now working from home.
How does he think they will pay for teachers, doctors, police etc if there are no people paying taxes. His supposed front line jobs all depend on others working their butts off and paying taxes. If they are not there there will be no doctors, police, teachers etc.
Comments
The BBC is reporting that 'Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November's election, officials say.'
A foretaste of things to come?
If you are in a support bubble you can continue to see each other without needing to maintain social distancing.
Outdoors you can meet in groups of up to six people who you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble.
You can also meet people in groups of more than six people if everyone is exclusively from two households (anyone in the same support bubble counts as one household).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-outbreak-faqs-what-you-can-and-cant-do/coronavirus-outbreak-faqs-what-you-can-and-cant-do
21st century infrastructure will be the self-driving car.
You can only go to a pub with social distancing maintained and enforced with tables clearly divided and 2 metres away from each other and most pub dining and drinking is taking place outside with food ordered on apps, not inside. All pub goers have to give their details for track and trace too.
Most office workers are still wfh or at least not going in 5 days a week and offices have to ensure social distancing measures are in place too
Also a load of b*llocks. Most pub dining and drinking is certainly not taking place outside.
How many pubs have you been to?
There’s also zero enforcement of track and trace. In every shop, cafe, pub, and restaurant I’ve been to its been entirely optional. I’ve forgotten to do it on a number of occasions, and I’m sure many other people have.
It derives much income from commuters, and yet it gives them no say. It is a form of taxation without representation.
WFH has freed many commuters from paying this tithe and being treated like cattle into the bargain.
Why would they go back?
make the London assembly the south east assembly,and the London Mayor the Mayor for the south east. That might help.
I’d love to know the percentage of people who actually do it without fail. Very low I bet. I do my best but as I said there’s been a few occasions where I realise later that I didn’t get round to doing it.
However I was in Morpeth yesterday and it was the young who were religiously wearing the masks and the old who were not, in fact the old had their noses exposed half the time.
Commuters if they are WFH more are building closer links with their towns and villages anyway and spending more there so reducing their connection to London
In Oxford and Fareham everyone was drinking outside, barely anyone inside, in Epping and Dorset you were only allowed to eat outside, there were no tables set up inside.
In every pub there was track and trace details required too before you went to your table.
In shops it is not needed but you have to wear a mask.
Does not say much about your area of Newcastle if there is such blatant disregard for the rules and the police should take action on those establishments breaching them
Those are very tired, middle aged cliches.
The people who have voted SNP and propelled them to majorities are driven by culture, not politics.
The SNP have not made them richer, healthier, safer or better educated, but they can wave flags.
Brexit is the same, which is why the take over of the Conservative and Unionist Party by the Little Englanders is bad news for good governance and long term benefit.
The Unionists are still trying political arguments in the Scottish Culture war, as Remainers did against Brexit
Both failed, but I would much rather serious politicians continued to try and pursue political aims than our entire polity descends even further into perpetual culture battles where nobody wins (including the apparent victors)
https://twitter.com/BrentTerhune/status/1302370759705268229?s=09
Airport transfer? JFK to Manhattan in 20 minutes. Ditto heathrow to the city.
all these technologies are for the rich only at first. Like holidays by aeroplane were.
Now they are for all.
The problem is that customers and bosses regard almost everything as urgent...
But those other rail lines do not go to London so you don't view them as 'most important'.
HS2 is like Hinkley Point C - a 20th century answer to a 21st century world.
Aviation regulation simply doesn’t work at the same speed as technological development, we are a long way away from pilotless drones carrying passengers between cities.
How many restaurants in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle etc do you think are seating punters outside?
Smoothing the impact of economic change, especially change that shifts economic focus between regions, is the job of Government. As Alastair says, it doesn't have to be harmful overall, but of course someone running a little cafe in central London is going to need help to relocate or change professions, paid for from general taxation of those of us who are not hit by random economic change.
Organisations do have very tricky HR considerations in all this. I know of one which has polled its staff and found that 80% are fine with wfh, while 20% are unhappy, some desperately so. It would be possible to have the 20% working in the office with lots of social distancing, but they don't form a cohesive unit, and having a random selection of people in the office who mostly don't work together feels odd. Solutions will be found with part-time attendance etc., but the duty of care is actually very difficult to get right with everyone at a distance.
Will winter change attitudes, I wonder? I don't care if it's light or dark, hot or cold, outside because I'm essentially an indoor type, but I suspect that some of those 80% who are OK with wfh in summer may feel differently if it's cold and dark and drizzly outside. And yet, the pandemic may well be worse in the winter.
How easy is it for you to be traced via credit card payments and how quickly can it be done ?
bars and restaurants pay wages to the london living bartenders
If you are in London early in the morning you will see buses crammed full of Londoners going to clean and maintain the offices where the commuters work.
Plus have pubs in Newcastle and Manchester not heard of outdoor heaters? Marquees and gazebos with open sides can protect against the rain
“Nothing is so urgent it cannot wait until the following morning”.
Are people just afraid not to answer the phone?
It will be more than four years, as the battery tech isn’t yet up to London/Birmingham, but it will happen this decade. And they’ll be pretty quiet.
Reached a compromise agreement with the outgoing employer, I know what I need to do for the next 2 months (and how much £££ they're giving me) so have got new computer stuff arriving tomorrow so that I can properly start writing the plan of attack for both of my new business ventures. Appreciate that the economy is tough and going to get tougher. Which makes for opportunity if you can time it right and have a plan
- fewer distractions
- time saved commuting
- less likely to catch other people's colds
- not having to pretend to be busy when you're not
- not having to wear stupid, expensive, high-maintenance, outdated clothes.
Also it saves a notable amount of money.
"Fitting into teams" is hugely overrated too in what I do, though obviously it is different in other fields. Not particularly liking alcohol or most of my colleagues (though there is the odd exception), it is great not being semi-bullied into bouts of competitive drinking in the evening. And I've never had a problem with learning on the job or integrating new team members.
Britain's best graduates and other workers in demand will make the decision in the end I guess, because companies will need to attract their talent. They will go where they want to work
I suspect companies that have central units for younger workers, but allow part in part out working for experienced staff will prosper.
we shall see!
The other innovation we've put in place is very, very limited access to the VPN on weekends to stop weekend working.
Your middle-class leafy Epping perspective with your country pubs with huge car parks is clouding your ability to understand the rest of the country.
I’ve also discussed McDonalds. Not exactly a “dodgy operator”, who is not sitting punters outside, and not enforcing track and trace in my experience. It is optional, in the sense that you have to go out of your way to do it, rather than be refused entry if you do not.. Used by millions.
https://twitter.com/eartht0talia/status/1301647172811849728?s=21
On wfh in winter, of course it will increase your heating bills but reduce the need for scarf, gloves and winter coat for commuting
We were discussing Worldometer projections for the US the other day. Did you look into it any further?
They have updated their projection now to 410K. After picking myself off the floor I also noted that they had changed the projection date from 1/12 to 1/1 so not quite as dramatic as it first appeared. However when looking at the graph for 1/12 it has gone up from 317K to 326K.
There is also the lag in projections so you can compare the projection to yesterday against reality. The projection lags reality by 7K. They have consistently under predicted.
What I don't understand, because I don't know the maths, is why they are predicting a big rise to come, but they did predict the current flat period (in fact over predicted).
I also don't understand how they are underpredicting by so much in such short periods of time. How do they get 7K behind the actual, when the prediction is only a couple of weeks out of date.
Thoughts Richard (or anyone).
... “We should warn the EU that if they refuse to play ball in the talks, we will scrap our protective shield and rectify the dumping and unfair subsidisation in the way that best protects us.‘
For example, helicopters in London are permitted only to fly directly over the Thames, unless they are twin jets with two pilots meeting certain operational criteria. They need to constantly liaise with air traffic control at Heathrow and City.
It’s also illegal to fly any aircraft within 500’ (In any direction) of any structure or person unless taking off or landing, a long-standing rule that isn’t about to be changed for some new and untested technology.
Schools are back there now, so life is easier.