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.‘
I wish I could, it's gibberish.
So the threat is nonsense, then ?
Yes, complete nonsense. Non-EU companies already have an easy mechanism to get around being a foreign company in London, EU companies will just use that if this ever came to pass. We'd have to change the rules for everyone to try and bar EU companies from the capital markets but then if we did that the market wouldn't exist.
@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.
International working does require more compromises with the wife, but it’s just about doable if you accept that there will be the occasional 8pm or 6am conference call and you can make up the time later.
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.
Well obviously they’re not going to impact HS2 this decade. Particularly as it won’t have opened...
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.
Yup, Central Newcastle on a cold Saturday night in January. Nary a coat in sight.
Carlotta deploying the dog food saleman, unionists really struggling nowadays. The man is a moron , Scottish Nationalism is not a political party, he is as thick as mince.
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
@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.
International working does require more compromises with the wife, but it’s just about doable if you accept that there will be the occasional 8pm or 6am conference call and you can make up the time later.
Also many people have work contracts that have an office as the place of work not their home. Firms or public sector employers cannot just ignore this and arrogantly assume employees can work from home . they need to provide a place of work away from the home otherwise they are in breach of the contract I would feel. People have not signed up to many a job to work from home. Many people dont want negative work situations brought into their home for other members of the household to potentially hear or have to close off areas of their home to other members. Employers are being arrogant is they think employees can be ordered to work from home
Also many people have work contracts that have an office as the place of work not their home. Firms or public sector employers cannot just ignore this and arrogantly assume employees can work from home . they need to provide a place of work away from the home otherwise they are in breach of the contract I would feel. People have not signed up to many a job to work from home. Many people dont want negative work situations brought into their home for other members of the household to potentially hear or have to close off areas of their home to other members. Employers are being arrogant is they think employees can be ordered to work from home
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?
Boring managerial competence in the Social Democratic tradition.
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.
For now. But we’re talking about a project which won’t be completed this decade, and the (marginal) economic case for which is based on a fifty year projection.
WFH only makes sense for people who are already established in their careers and companies. For established professionals on this website it makes a lot of sense, for those starting their careers it doesn't. A balance will need to be found.
Yes. For example I’m struggling to find any legal work experience or shadowing opportunities because everybody is working from home!
I had a devil that I was training last year. The first half, pre lockdown, went really well with lots of opportunities for us to talk through what was happening and why I was dealing with something in a particular way. The second half post lockdown was not nearly as good. We tried zoom talks and I reviewed his written work but the interaction was much less. My devil is now, along with the rest of his cohort, finding it extremely difficult to get going and pick up work for himself.
David, Is that not more to do with current conditions rather than the difference in your knowledge transfer.
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.‘
I wish I could, it's gibberish.
So the threat is nonsense, then ?
Yes, complete nonsense. Non-EU companies already have an easy mechanism to get around being a foreign company in London, EU companies will just use that if this ever came to pass. We'd have to change the rules for everyone to try and bar EU companies from the capital markets but then if we did that the market wouldn't exist.
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.
City Restaurants can still do takeaways even if they do not have much outdoor space but many restaurants do have tables outside.
McDonalds is mainly takeaway and indoor tables as with inner city restaurants should be socially distanced and at least 1.5 metres apart with ordering of the food by apps ideally.
The police should take action if McDonalds are seating customers for eating and not pursuing track and trace
Re: centralisation/merging of existing democratic levels.
I don't care if Management Consultants given a brief to conclude that centralisation will save money, conclude that they will save money. I don't even care if they are not given such a brief but conclude it anyway. Reorganisations should be undertaken with caution, and with more than just money as a primary consideration.
Democratic decisions should be taken at a level suitable to the affected democratic constituency. It is fair that sometimes there needs to be a right of appeal to a higher, perhaps more strategic body (especially in eg. planning), but that isn't a reason to remove the ability to express democratic views at a more local level.
What happens when you centralise is it becomes easier, indeed often necessary, for politicians to ignore the views and interests of minority constituencies, in order to maintain political power. And in the long run democracy, and the interests of the country is not served by this.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
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.
For now. But we’re talking about a project which won’t be completed this decade, and the (marginal) economic case for which is based on a fifty year projection.
Some were saying it was four years away!
On a 50 year time scale anything is possible, 50 years ago we were just putting a man on the moon, with a fraction as much computing power as you’d find in an average smart watch.
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).
I'm afraid I can't help.
But I suspect any predictions beyond a month are near worthless.
Things can change fast one way or another and things changing themselves lead to different responses.
Also many people have work contracts that have an office as the place of work not their home. Firms or public sector employers cannot just ignore this and arrogantly assume employees can work from home . they need to provide a place of work away from the home otherwise they are in breach of the contract I would feel. People have not signed up to many a job to work from home. Many people dont want negative work situations brought into their home for other members of the household to potentially hear or have to close off areas of their home to other members. Employers are being arrogant is they think employees can be ordered to work from home
Employers being arrogant? Say it aint so!
Hopefully their will be a test case soon on this in that if a worker refuses to WFH (because their contract was for working in a office) what would happen? It might concentrate the minds of those employers who think they can expect WFH
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.‘
I wish I could, it's gibberish.
So the threat is nonsense, then ?
Just more bollox now that BMW and Mercedes are not coming to the rescue, these people really are stupid.
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.
City Restaurants can still do takeaways even if they do not have much outdoor space but many restaurants do have tables outside.
McDonalds is mainly takeaway and indoor tables as with inner city restaurants should be socially distanced and at least 1.5 metres apart.
The police should take action if McDonalds are seating customers for eating and not pursuing track and trace
Sorry mate but you have no idea what you’re talking about.
City Restaurants are alive and kicking again - mainly eat in, not takeaways, and no outdoor seating.
McDonalds, Costa, and many other chains simply ask you to fill in your details. In my experience nobody checks if you have. Nobody asks you to. There are simply signs on the tables.
The original point to all of this was that there’s no logical reason why you can sit 1.5m away from multiple households in an underground restaurant, like I was in central Newcastle a few days ago, but can’t sit 1.5m away from multiple people in my own home.
Hence why it is being ignored. And it is being ignored.
Even the “Boris has killed 60k people” frothers who I know, who work for the NHS, etc, do not care.
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
Good news Rochdale, best wishes for the future, hope you like living in Scotland especially once it is independent.
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.‘
I wish I could, it's gibberish.
So the threat is nonsense, then ?
Just more bollox now that BMW and Mercedes are not coming to the rescue, these people really are stupid.
Like 1970s trade unionists - "Let's shut down the business so we can keep our jobs" - and we know how that turned out ...
I suspect in all the "employee surveys" being carried out, a large number of employees are responding out of self interest or indeed genuine conviction from a personal perspective in asserting that they are working more effectively from home.
It doesn't necessarily follow that the organisation is operating more effectively.
Anyone tried to have any dealings with Utility companies over the last few months...?
Re: centralisation/merging of existing democratic levels.
I don't care if Management Consultants given a brief to conclude that centralisation will save money, conclude that they will save money. I don't even care if they are not given such a brief but conclude it anyway. Reorganisations should be undertaken with caution, and with more than just money as a primary consideration.
Democratic decisions should be taken at a level suitable to the affected democratic constituency. It is fair that sometimes there needs to be a right of appeal to a higher, perhaps more strategic body (especially in eg. planning), but that isn't a reason to remove the ability to express democratic views at a more local level.
What happens when you centralise is it becomes easier, indeed often necessary, for politicians to ignore the views and interests of minority constituencies, in order to maintain political power. And in the long run democracy, and the interests of the country is not served by this.
Any reorganisation of local democracy should be subject to two criteria.
1. That powers move down, with decisions being taken closer to the people affected. 2. That the ongoing cost of maintaining the new structure, is lower than the old structure.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
1 and 2 predominately. The creative destructionism stuff should be music to Cummings’ ears. However, I think the Government knows where the direction of travel is going and realised that many of its natural supporters (home owning middle class professionals ex-London) are about to be hit by a tidal wave of job losses
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)
I've not had a work phone for a couple of years (as the current employer doesn't believe in them. TBH its been ok almost all of the time - simply stop your email syncing when on holiday. Important customers / contacts should be told you're away from the office for a while anyway and don't then pester via phone.
I have considered buying a phone for work purposes now I am setting out on my own, but honestly don't think I will bother.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
I suspect in all the "employee surveys" being carried out, a large number of employees are responding out of self interest or indeed genuine conviction from a personal perspective in asserting that they are working more effectively from home.
It doesn't necessarily follow that the organisation is operating more effectively.
Anyone tried to have any dealings with Utility companies over the last few months...?
I think WFH exposes bad managers, not bad employees. A good manager would (and should) have no problem motivating and coordinating their team remotely. Perhaps they’ve also arranged a socially distanced meet-up on company time.
A bad manager is sitting there frantically entering data into spreadsheets with no idea what their team is doing.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Also. Politicians are by nature extroverts. Their whole life revolves around meeting folk. They literally cannot comprehend that some do not function best that way. And, moreover, do not aspire to. I am sure this aspect is not a conscious one. But I also reckon it is a very heavy, unexamined underlying assumption.
Aside from the obvious Yorkshire Lancashire business. Even the backbenchers are catching "tin ear".
You have to feel sorry for him, Fake Scottish Labour is rotten to the core, the guy is out of his depth. It is full of talentless halfwits, no-one can turn it around. It needs a REAL Scottish Labour party rather than a London outpost manned by sockpuppet halfwits. Until they get real and start thinking about Scotland and policies for Scotland and become democratic they are lost. Helping the Tories has accelerated their downfall.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
Whereas my university - Northumbria - has had the campus locked down due to a cyber attack over a week ago, and all critical systems still down including enrolment and timetabling, etc!
My course starts in 2 weeks and I cannot even accept the offer and enrol!
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Point 1 above, possibly point 2. WFH will gut many business districts and destroy retail jobs. WFH also lead to more BFH - Buying from home - with further guts town centres and retail parks.
I suspect that top Tories still do not like people pointing the finger at 3 million unemployed under Tory govts in the 80s and do not want to be a Tory govt with 3m unemployed in the 20s.
BTW - retailers were complaining the other day of boring Brexit stuff like labelling that will stop them selling stuff to the EU and maybe even anywhere. Apparently the deadline has been missed and there is not enough time left to fix the problem. So, more industrial issues.
It is all piling up into a big pile of poo under Boris. He is the leader, he carries the can. He wanted the job, the power and the glory but he seemed to forget it comes with responsibility too...
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Also. Politicians are by nature extroverts. Their whole life revolves around meeting folk. They literally cannot comprehend that some do not function best that way. And, moreover, do not aspire to. I am sure this aspect is not a conscious one. But I also reckon it is a very heavy, unexamined underlying assumption.
True though Gordon Brown and Theresa May for example are definite introverts, even JFK was supposedly quite reserved in private, Ted Kennedy was the most extrovert of the Kennedy brothers.
What is needed and likely is more a balance of wfh and 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).
I'm afraid I can't help.
But I suspect any predictions beyond a month are near worthless.
Things can change fast one way or another and things changing themselves lead to different responses.
Thanks anyway. Anyone else?
Keen for some feedback on views as I have been using this as my guide as to what has been happening.
I note what Richard says re 1m. Worldometer look at a 4 month period. They do update the forecast regularly. Every update I have seen except one has been upwards.
Also many people have work contracts that have an office as the place of work not their home. Firms or public sector employers cannot just ignore this and arrogantly assume employees can work from home . they need to provide a place of work away from the home otherwise they are in breach of the contract I would feel. People have not signed up to many a job to work from home. Many people dont want negative work situations brought into their home for other members of the household to potentially hear or have to close off areas of their home to other members. Employers are being arrogant is they think employees can be ordered to work from home
Hence why my idea to open a small business hub makes sense. I am reasonably happy with my home office set up but I do agree with the comments about needing interaction with people. So a choice of work stations / small offices with a meeting room, a kitchen area etc. All at competitive prices! And if it doesn't take off the property comes as part of the house we want to buy. It doesn't technically have to generate swathes of income.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Also. Politicians are by nature extroverts. Their whole life revolves around meeting folk. They literally cannot comprehend that some do not function best that way. And, moreover, do not aspire to. I am sure this aspect is not a conscious one. But I also reckon it is a very heavy, unexamined underlying assumption.
True though Gordon Brown and Theresa May for example are definite introverts, even JFK was supposedly quite reserved in private, Ted Kennedy was the most extrovert of the Kennedy brothers.
What is needed and likely is more a balance of wfh and commuting
I think Brown was not necessarily an introvert but devoid of small talk .He loved talking to people ,it was just that the content of the talking would be business not chat.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
And as soon as you turn your back the rules go out the window, someone pops down the off license and before you know it you have a floor or kitchen party as everyone gets to know each other.
Relax citizens, the 𝒞𝐿𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝒮𝒯𝐼𝒩𝐸 𝒞𝐻𝒜𝒩𝒩𝐸𝐿 𝒯𝐻𝑅𝐸𝒜𝒯 𝒞𝒪𝑀𝑀𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝑅 has deployed the Army's flying Israeli surveillance cocks. Apparently operated by a chubby ginger lad with gig-lamps.
They are trying to save various things from the imminent defence cuts by conspicuously deploying them in the Channel. It'll be AS90s on Beachy Head next.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
And as soon as you turn your back the rules go out the window, someone pops down the off license and before you know it you have a floor or kitchen party as everyone gets to know each other.
Yes but with nightclubs still closed and bars limited, you’re limited to house parties in very small student flats. It’s not like in America where they have those huge “frat houses” and the like.
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.
City Restaurants can still do takeaways even if they do not have much outdoor space but many restaurants do have tables outside.
McDonalds is mainly takeaway and indoor tables as with inner city restaurants should be socially distanced and at least 1.5 metres apart.
The police should take action if McDonalds are seating customers for eating and not pursuing track and trace
Sorry mate but you have no idea what you’re talking about.
City Restaurants are alive and kicking again - mainly eat in, not takeaways, and no outdoor seating.
McDonalds, Costa, and many other chains simply ask you to fill in your details. In my experience nobody checks if you have. Nobody asks you to. There are simply signs on the tables.
The original point to all of this was that there’s no logical reason why you can sit 1.5m away from multiple households in an underground restaurant, like I was in central Newcastle a few days ago, but can’t sit 1.5m away from multiple people in my own home.
Hence why it is being ignored. And it is being ignored.
Even the “Boris has killed 60k people” frothers who I know, who work for the NHS, etc, do not care.
They may well be but they still have to comply with the rules, that means tables at least 1.5m apart and track and trace.
If they are not then they are not only increasing the risk of more cases spreading but they are also breaking the law and the police should get involved.
On your broader point unless you live in a vast detached house with a large number of rooms and a huge living room and dining room, the average semi detached or flat is going to have far less room than the average restaurant, even a restaurant in a city which is mainly indoors, so it is far more difficult to keep large groups of people from different households at least 1.5 m apart and socially distanced inside a private home than it is in a restaurant
Relax citizens, the 𝒞𝐿𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝒮𝒯𝐼𝒩𝐸 𝒞𝐻𝒜𝒩𝒩𝐸𝐿 𝒯𝐻𝑅𝐸𝒜𝒯 𝒞𝒪𝑀𝑀𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝑅 has deployed the Army's flying Israeli surveillance cocks. Apparently operated by a chubby ginger lad with gig-lamps.
They are trying to save various things from the imminent defence cuts by conspicuously deploying them in the Channel. It'll be AS90s on Beachy Head next.
When do they start fitting the missiles, HYFUD needs to tell us.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Point 1 above, possibly point 2. WFH will gut many business districts and destroy retail jobs. WFH also lead to more BFH - Buying from home - with further guts town centres and retail parks.
I suspect that top Tories still do not like people pointing the finger at 3 million unemployed under Tory govts in the 80s and do not want to be a Tory govt with 3m unemployed in the 20s.
BTW - retailers were complaining the other day of boring Brexit stuff like labelling that will stop them selling stuff to the EU and maybe even anywhere. Apparently the deadline has been missed and there is not enough time left to fix the problem. So, more industrial issues.
It is all piling up into a big pile of poo under Boris. He is the leader, he carries the can. He wanted the job, the power and the glory but he seemed to forget it comes with responsibility too...
Whilst not a massive fan of covid-19 policy by this government at least the origin of covid-19 was outside the Tories control .Brexit though was pure Tory origin both in the decision to hold the referendum, the ineffective campaign that was REMAIN and now having a PM who wanted brexit to happen. Johnson needs to do something brilliant with Brexit talks or he will rightly be asked to leave the fray.
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.
City Restaurants can still do takeaways even if they do not have much outdoor space but many restaurants do have tables outside.
McDonalds is mainly takeaway and indoor tables as with inner city restaurants should be socially distanced and at least 1.5 metres apart.
The police should take action if McDonalds are seating customers for eating and not pursuing track and trace
Sorry mate but you have no idea what you’re talking about.
City Restaurants are alive and kicking again - mainly eat in, not takeaways, and no outdoor seating.
McDonalds, Costa, and many other chains simply ask you to fill in your details. In my experience nobody checks if you have. Nobody asks you to. There are simply signs on the tables.
The original point to all of this was that there’s no logical reason why you can sit 1.5m away from multiple households in an underground restaurant, like I was in central Newcastle a few days ago, but can’t sit 1.5m away from multiple people in my own home.
Hence why it is being ignored. And it is being ignored.
Even the “Boris has killed 60k people” frothers who I know, who work for the NHS, etc, do not care.
They may well be but they still have to comply with the rules, that means tables at least 1.5m apart and track and trace.
If they are not then they are not only increasing the risk of more cases spreading but they are also breaking the law and the police should get involved.
On your broader home unless you live in a vast detached house the average semi is going to have far less room than the average restaurant, even a restaurant in a city which is mainly indoors, so it is far more difficult to keep large groups of people from different households at least 1.5 m apart and socially distanced in a private home than it is in a restaurant
I don’t know what kind of restaurants you go to, but in my experience they are not large. In fact my girlfriend was eating out in Morpeth the other day and the back of her chair was literally touching the back of the chair of the next table - a huge group of drunk lads. Definitely from many households.
If you consider the average 4 seat table in a restaurant or a pub, a significant number of them will have 4 households per table. People do not care - they are just seeing their friends.
The Restaurants or pubs don’t care how many households you are from. They don’t even ask.
Also many people have work contracts that have an office as the place of work not their home. Firms or public sector employers cannot just ignore this and arrogantly assume employees can work from home . they need to provide a place of work away from the home otherwise they are in breach of the contract I would feel. People have not signed up to many a job to work from home. Many people dont want negative work situations brought into their home for other members of the household to potentially hear or have to close off areas of their home to other members. Employers are being arrogant is they think employees can be ordered to work from home
Hence why my idea to open a small business hub makes sense. I am reasonably happy with my home office set up but I do agree with the comments about needing interaction with people. So a choice of work stations / small offices with a meeting room, a kitchen area etc. All at competitive prices! And if it doesn't take off the property comes as part of the house we want to buy. It doesn't technically have to generate swathes of income.
Been around for a while. There's one near us in an old church which is usually fully occupied. They haven't though, AFAIK, got a meeting room on site. There's another, about 5 miles away in what was once a farm which is similarly full. Find the right site, ensure, as far as possible decent internet access and you should be away.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Also. Politicians are by nature extroverts. Their whole life revolves around meeting folk. They literally cannot comprehend that some do not function best that way. And, moreover, do not aspire to. I am sure this aspect is not a conscious one. But I also reckon it is a very heavy, unexamined underlying assumption.
True though Gordon Brown and Theresa May for example are definite introverts, even JFK was supposedly quite reserved in private, Ted Kennedy was the most extrovert of the Kennedy brothers.
What is needed and likely is more a balance of wfh and commuting
Fair enough. Maybe not all politicians. But the PM certainly falls in the uber extroverts camp. Should also add this theory of mine explains the frantic press antipathy to and besilderment at WFH. Journalists' entire career revolves around asking questions of strangers. Not natural introvert territory.
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?
Boring managerial competence in the Social Democratic tradition.
That's process, not philosophy, in any case if "Social Democratic", why all the middle class bungs?
- Free (sic) prescriptions, before only the middle class paid (the old & poor were free anyway) - Free (sic) University education? Fewer less well off kids are getting to uni while Torquil and Jocasta get it for free.
As Swinney demonstrated this week, when the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
2 If it is a professional job the person doing it still needs to be professionally qualified, even if they live in Eastern Europe or India and can do it cheaper and wfh.
Relax citizens, the 𝒞𝐿𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝒮𝒯𝐼𝒩𝐸 𝒞𝐻𝒜𝒩𝒩𝐸𝐿 𝒯𝐻𝑅𝐸𝒜𝒯 𝒞𝒪𝑀𝑀𝒜𝒩𝒟𝐸𝑅 has deployed the Army's flying Israeli surveillance cocks. Apparently operated by a chubby ginger lad with gig-lamps.
They are trying to save various things from the imminent defence cuts by conspicuously deploying them in the Channel. It'll be AS90s on Beachy Head next.
When do they start fitting the missiles, HYFUD needs to tell us.
The Hermes 450 UAV (on which the Watchkeeper is based) can equip the Martlet LMM missile but the MoD didn't tick that option box to save a few quid.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
And as soon as you turn your back the rules go out the window, someone pops down the off license and before you know it you have a floor or kitchen party as everyone gets to know each other.
No doubt there will be some of that. However, the Uni's have a lot at stake in ensuring this next term works and I think the rules, at least on campus will be enforced as much as possible.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
In my previous career as an engineer I experienced companies trying to offshore engineering talent (to India primarily). The problem is that it doesn’t work very well.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
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?
Boring managerial competence in the Social Democratic tradition.
That's process, not philosophy, in any case if "Social Democratic", why all the middle class bungs?
- Free (sic) prescriptions, before only the middle class paid (the old & poor were free anyway) - Free (sic) University education? Fewer less well off kids are getting to uni while Torquil and Jocasta get it for free.
As Swinney demonstrated this week, when the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
You Tory unionists really hate that the SNP are capable, run the country well and make your donkeys in London look exactly as nasty, crap and mendacious as they really are. Really sticks in your craw. One tip , it cost more to administer charging for those prescriptions than the money it raised , saved money , something the Tories could never achieve. They prefer to borrow and then pretend it was Scotland that spent it. Tick Tock enjoy your tax haven whilst you can.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
In my previous career as an engineer I experienced companies trying to offshore engineering talent (to India primarily). The problem is that it doesn’t work very well.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
That was one of things that went wrong with the NHS IT project twenty or so years ago. Everything, or nearly, anyway, was being done in Bangalore. Consultant 'shop floor' people were being flown out to try things to see if they worked. Nearly went myself, on retirement, but the project was in the process of being pulled by then.
Labour idea on testing is a good idea, Tories will steal it next week
It's a bit cheeky claiming Airport Testing for Covid to be a Labour idea. It's been discussed openly for months and apparently Heathrow is already geared up to do it.
Labour also tried to claim credit for "their idea" that exams next year should be delayed a month or so. That also had been under consideration for some time.
Why do we think that the Johnson Ministry is setting itself against the home-working revolution? I can think of a few possibilities, and I'm interested in what other people think.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
Point 1 above, possibly point 2. WFH will gut many business districts and destroy retail jobs. WFH also lead to more BFH - Buying from home - with further guts town centres and retail parks.
I suspect that top Tories still do not like people pointing the finger at 3 million unemployed under Tory govts in the 80s and do not want to be a Tory govt with 3m unemployed in the 20s.
BTW - retailers were complaining the other day of boring Brexit stuff like labelling that will stop them selling stuff to the EU and maybe even anywhere. Apparently the deadline has been missed and there is not enough time left to fix the problem. So, more industrial issues.
It is all piling up into a big pile of poo under Boris. He is the leader, he carries the can. He wanted the job, the power and the glory but he seemed to forget it comes with responsibility too...
Whilst not a massive fan of covid-19 policy by this government at least the origin of covid-19 was outside the Tories control .Brexit though was pure Tory origin both in the decision to hold the referendum, the ineffective campaign that was REMAIN and now having a PM who wanted brexit to happen. Johnson needs to do something brilliant with Brexit talks or he will rightly be asked to leave the fray.
The management of the Covid crisis and the associated PR is seen by many as being inept. Whether or not that is fair is completely irrelevant. Boris is in charge and therefore he carries the can.
The transfer of elderly from hospital to care homes and the subsequent deaths would bring down ministers, PMs and possibly govts in normal times.
Will Hutton displaying a condescending tone deafness worthy of a PB Scotch expert. Apparently Labour have to own the Edinburgh Tattoo ('One of Scotland’s most emblematic, loved and stirring events'). Will they be sending a cadre of SPADs, precision marching to Things Can Only Get Better, twirling their laptops in unison? I fear that we're only weeks away from a photo op with SKS drinking Irn Bru.
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)
I've not had a work phone for a couple of years (as the current employer doesn't believe in them. TBH its been ok almost all of the time - simply stop your email syncing when on holiday. Important customers / contacts should be told you're away from the office for a while anyway and don't then pester via phone.
I have considered buying a phone for work purposes now I am setting out on my own, but honestly don't think I will bother.
Labour idea on testing is a good idea, Tories will steal it next week
What is their idea?
Testing on arrival at airports, it's not a Labour idea, the Telegraph and travel lobby have been pushing it for months.
I think it's pretty fair to say it has been almost everyone's idea. Apart from HMG.
The issue is that it doesn't work very well yet and it needs international agreement to test on departure and prevent boarding of people who test positive twice in a row.
I take with a sackful of salt any "concerns" about home working reported by the dead tree press. Especially the Evening Standard but also the Mail etc too. These papers should but won't declare an interest here ... They get much of their circulation from commuters.
Trying to urge people into a tin can for 2 to 3 hours per day rather than spending extra time with their family, just to improve the circulation of the dying dead tree press is never going to work. The Government is wise to be ignoring the Siren calls from the press here. I normally am not overly cynical about the press but I am here.
I thought the government were on the side of the ‘dead tree press’ telling people to get back to the office.
Are they? What evidence do we have of that?
We keep getting reports from the dead tree press claiming the government is going to tell people to get back to the office but as I said I'm taking that with a sack of salt.
Have you seen Matt Hancock or Boris Johnson on camera say people should get back to the office even if they can work from home? I've not. Until I see them say it with my own eyes on camera, I don't believe they are saying it. If they wanted to say it, they can easily say it on camera.
No doubt the Tories will steal it and claim it was their idea, next week, PB Tories will be saying it is fantastic then
No, it's just not a very good idea as currently implemented in other countries. It doesn't prevent people with it from boarding and the chance of on aircraft infection is high, but on arrival testing doesn't catch that at all, even testing 5 days later will miss a lot of cases as well.
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.
Well yes and no.
It would send them to New York for finance . . . and then they'd stay in New York.
All it would do is destroy London, it wouldn't establish a presence in Berlin or Paris.
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.
Well yes and no.
It would send them to New York for finance . . . and then they'd stay in New York.
All it would do is destroy London, it wouldn't establish a presence in Berlin or Paris.
No, it wouldn't even do that. EU companies would just use the existing non-EU mechanism for raising cheap money in the same London markets. It's a completely empty threat.
Is there some evidence for that? I may be out-of-date but my understanding was that there didn't seem to be a lot of cases of infection on planes, even when people who travelled created clusters where they arrived. Airflow is pretty great, people don't sit face-to-face, people don't talk that much.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
:
In my previous career as an engineer I experienced companies trying to offshore engineering talent (to India primarily). The problem is that it doesn’t work very well.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
The oncoming train of the latest round of automation, is finally getting rid of the layers between the people who do the quantifiable jobs.
I've worked most of my career in and around the investment banking space - but with a few interesting side voyages.
The staggering thing is how un-automated many jobs are. A trader buys some shares, online. How many humans need to touch that transaction?
What is coming is that such things will be automated, as they would if you designed the system from scratch. Add on a layer of data science - spotting unusual patterns - be it profit opportunities, or catching fraud.... None of this is really new, or rocket science.
A relative set up a delivery business - buy products online, get them delivered extremely rapidly. Being IT minded, he automated the entire setup - to the point of re-ordering algorithms. So the system re-orders stock according to a plan, without intervention (with obvious limits on allowing the computer to spend money unsupervised).
The reaction he got from a warehouse managing pro, he hired from one of the big names was interesting. Apparently his setup is bleeding edge - way ahead of the majors.. The fascinating bit, to me, is how the business can scale. As far as I can tell, each time he adds a warehouse, he will only need one manager. The rest will be stock pickers & packers.
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?
Boring managerial competence in the Social Democratic tradition.
That's process, not philosophy, in any case if "Social Democratic", why all the middle class bungs?
- Free (sic) prescriptions, before only the middle class paid (the old & poor were free anyway) - Free (sic) University education? Fewer less well off kids are getting to uni while Torquil and Jocasta get it for free.
As Swinney demonstrated this week, when the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
If 'Social Democratic' why Universal Benefits?
The first part of the sentence answers the second part.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
2 If it is a professional job the person doing it still needs to be professionally qualified, even if they live in Eastern Europe or India and can do it cheaper and wfh.
On the outsourcing - UK business has been using cheap labour as flesh robots. The reason - no need to manage investments in automation. Which leads us back to a favourite topic of mine.
True labour costs are a function of employee cost x productivity. In the 1980s, the Economist pointed out that a German steel worker cost 19x an Indian steelworker. So why were there German steel workers? Well, perhaps because the German employees produced 21x as much steel per head. They were *cheaper*.
In IT there have been many attempts at using cheap locations. First was getting it done by cheap firms based in places like Mumbai. Then came insourcing - to deal with the sweatshop nonsense and keep control, the companies would setup business units in Mumbai etc. That has staggered along.
The simple truth is that the productivity cost of IT in the UK is the same as India. You can lie to yourself for a few years - costs are down etc, but in the end the productivity thing hits the company.
Similar things have been seen with Chinese manufacturing - their big advantage is now the existing supply chains etc. Factories in the *US* are competitive against them.
Why is that? Well, productivity is a function of the employee, the societal structure they live in and the the company. Quite simply the NHS, roads, laws etc improve productivity. Given the flow of international trade, it is not surprising that wages then float up and down to roughly *effective* parity.
Which brings us to the last part of the outsourcing idea. Bring the cheap workers onshore. This means that you get the productivity benefit of western society, but can try to pay a fraction of the wage.
After a few years, the employees will learn and escape to better jobs. Then you hire more. In the meantime, why do think that people are cramming into houses to the point of adults living in bunk beds?
Labour idea on testing is a good idea, Tories will steal it next week
What is their idea?
Testing on arrival at airports, it's not a Labour idea, the Telegraph and travel lobby have been pushing it for months.
I think it's pretty fair to say it has been almost everyone's idea. Apart from HMG.
The issue is that it doesn't work very well yet and it needs international agreement to test on departure and prevent boarding of people who test positive twice in a row.
Many other countries are asking for a negative test no more than three or four days old, at the departure airport and with the cost bourne by the traveller. No negative test, no boarding the plane.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
2 If it is a professional job the person doing it still needs to be professionally qualified, even if they live in Eastern Europe or India and can do it cheaper and wfh.
On the outsourcing - UK business has been using cheap labour as flesh robots. The reason - no need to manage investments in automation. Which leads us back to a favourite topic of mine.
True labour costs are a function of employee cost x productivity. In the 1980s, the Economist pointed out that a German steel worker cost 19x an Indian steelworker. So why were there German steel workers? Well, perhaps because the German employees produced 21x as much steel per head. They were *cheaper*.
In IT there have been many attempts at using cheap locations. First was getting it done by cheap firms based in places like Mumbai. Then came insourcing - to deal with the sweatshop nonsense and keep control, the companies would setup business units in Mumbai etc. That has staggered along.
The simple truth is that the productivity cost of IT in the UK is the same as India. You can lie to yourself for a few years - costs are down etc, but in the end the productivity thing hits the company.
Similar things have been seen with Chinese manufacturing - their big advantage is now the existing supply chains etc. Factories in the *US* are competitive against them.
Why is that? Well, productivity is a function of the employee, the societal structure they live in and the the company. Quite simply the NHS, roads, laws etc improve productivity. Given the flow of international trade, it is not surprising that wages then float up and down to roughly *effective* parity.
Which brings us to the last part of the outsourcing idea. Bring the cheap workers onshore. This means that you get the productivity benefit of western society, but can try to pay a fraction of the wage.
After a few years, the employees will learn and escape to better jobs. Then you hire more. In the meantime, why do think that people are cramming into houses to the point of adults living in bunk beds?
True and skilled productive workers with good infrastructure make up for higher costs but hence also the votes for Brexit, Trump etc to keep immigration under control
Will Hutton displaying a condescending tone deafness worthy of a PB Scotch expert. Apparently Labour have to own the Edinburgh Tattoo ('One of Scotland’s most emblematic, loved and stirring events'). Will they be sending a cadre of SPADs, precision marching to Things Can Only Get Better, twirling their laptops in unison? I fear that we're only weeks away from a photo op with SKS drinking Irn Bru.
I think WFH exposes bad managers, not bad employees. A good manager would (and should) have no problem motivating and coordinating their team remotely. Perhaps they’ve also arranged a socially distanced meet-up on company time.
A bad manager is sitting there frantically entering data into spreadsheets with no idea what their team is doing.
Lots of staff WFH is very similar to outsourcing.
Good managers can make it work, but there is no doubt that remote resources take longer to get up to speed.
We have some resources outsourced to India, and they open Service tickets when they see brute force login attempts failing on remote firewalls.
We have explained to them multiple times that these failures indicate the systems are working exactly as designed...
Anecdote - I was in the Royal Surrey hospital yesterday for a minor ultrasound test. The five departments that I walked past were utterly empty. I was warned to arrive only 5 minutes early "to avoid crowding in the waiting room". The number of people waiting was zero.
No idea whether this is patient reluctance, GP reluctance or hospital policy (it was Saturday evening, so perhaps always quiet outside A&E?) but it did feel abnormally deserted.
Labour idea on testing is a good idea, Tories will steal it next week
What is their idea?
Testing on arrival at airports, it's not a Labour idea, the Telegraph and travel lobby have been pushing it for months.
I think it's pretty fair to say it has been almost everyone's idea. Apart from HMG.
The issue is that it doesn't work very well yet and it needs international agreement to test on departure and prevent boarding of people who test positive twice in a row.
Many other countries are asking for a negative test no more than three or four days old, at the departure airport and with the cost bourne by the traveller. No negative test, no boarding the plane.
Which is fine, but what we need is reliable rapid testing pre-boarding in all major airports and only allow flights in from places who have implemented the testing. It may end up being a reprieve for the hub and spoke model for a few years until there is a vaccine.
Trump vote in New Mexico little changed from the 40% he got there in 2016 but Biden vote up 6% from the 48% Hillary got as he has picked up most of the 9% of New Mexico voters who voted for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1302483498951901185?s=20
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.
Most teachers and doctors did a considerable amount of work from home even before the SARS-COV2.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
2 If it is a professional job the person doing it still needs to be professionally qualified, even if they live in Eastern Europe or India and can do it cheaper and wfh.
On the outsourcing - UK business has been using cheap labour as flesh robots. The reason - no need to manage investments in automation. Which leads us back to a favourite topic of mine.
True labour costs are a function of employee cost x productivity. In the 1980s, the Economist pointed out that a German steel worker cost 19x an Indian steelworker. So why were there German steel workers? Well, perhaps because the German employees produced 21x as much steel per head. They were *cheaper*.
In IT there have been many attempts at using cheap locations. First was getting it done by cheap firms based in places like Mumbai. Then came insourcing - to deal with the sweatshop nonsense and keep control, the companies would setup business units in Mumbai etc. That has staggered along.
The simple truth is that the productivity cost of IT in the UK is the same as India. You can lie to yourself for a few years - costs are down etc, but in the end the productivity thing hits the company.
Similar things have been seen with Chinese manufacturing - their big advantage is now the existing supply chains etc. Factories in the *US* are competitive against them.
Why is that? Well, productivity is a function of the employee, the societal structure they live in and the the company. Quite simply the NHS, roads, laws etc improve productivity. Given the flow of international trade, it is not surprising that wages then float up and down to roughly *effective* parity.
Which brings us to the last part of the outsourcing idea. Bring the cheap workers onshore. This means that you get the productivity benefit of western society, but can try to pay a fraction of the wage.
After a few years, the employees will learn and escape to better jobs. Then you hire more. In the meantime, why do think that people are cramming into houses to the point of adults living in bunk beds?
Not to get too technical, but I think you're confusing labour productivity with TF productivity.
Anecdote - I was in the Royal Surrey hospital yesterday for a minor ultrasound test. The five departments that I walked past were utterly empty. I was warned to arrive only 5 minutes early "to avoid crowding in the waiting room". The number of people waiting was zero.
No idea whether this is patient reluctance, GP reluctance or hospital policy (it was Saturday evening, so perhaps always quiet outside A&E?) but it did feel abnormally deserted.
I was told by a hospital consultant, when I took my mother-in-law in, recently:
- Massive drop in patients from *some* GPs. Some are doing patient refrerals at close to normal numbers. Some have sent no patients in for months. - Big bump in no-shows for appointments.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
:
In my previous career as an engineer I experienced companies trying to offshore engineering talent (to India primarily). The problem is that it doesn’t work very well.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
The oncoming train of the latest round of automation, is finally getting rid of the layers between the people who do the quantifiable jobs.
I've worked most of my career in and around the investment banking space - but with a few interesting side voyages.
The staggering thing is how un-automated many jobs are. A trader buys some shares, online. How many humans need to touch that transaction?
What is coming is that such things will be automated, as they would if you designed the system from scratch. Add on a layer of data science - spotting unusual patterns - be it profit opportunities, or catching fraud.... None of this is really new, or rocket science.
A relative set up a delivery business - buy products online, get them delivered extremely rapidly. Being IT minded, he automated the entire setup - to the point of re-ordering algorithms. So the system re-orders stock according to a plan, without intervention (with obvious limits on allowing the computer to spend money unsupervised).
The reaction he got from a warehouse managing pro, he hired from one of the big names was interesting. Apparently his setup is bleeding edge - way ahead of the majors.. The fascinating bit, to me, is how the business can scale. As far as I can tell, each time he adds a warehouse, he will only need one manager. The rest will be stock pickers & packers.
Better than that, his initial investment in good systems, will reduce the need for pickers and packers, and make it easier to invest in automated warehousing tools as they get cheaper and more reliable.
Humans aren’t suited to warehouse work, it’s repetitive and boring, easy to introduce errors and make mistakes.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
2 If it is a professional job the person doing it still needs to be professionally qualified, even if they live in Eastern Europe or India and can do it cheaper and wfh.
On the outsourcing - UK business has been using cheap labour as flesh robots. The reason - no need to manage investments in automation. Which leads us back to a favourite topic of mine.
True labour costs are a function of employee cost x productivity. In the 1980s, the Economist pointed out that a German steel worker cost 19x an Indian steelworker. So why were there German steel workers? Well, perhaps because the German employees produced 21x as much steel per head. They were *cheaper*.
In IT there have been many attempts at using cheap locations. First was getting it done by cheap firms based in places like Mumbai. Then came insourcing - to deal with the sweatshop nonsense and keep control, the companies would setup business units in Mumbai etc. That has staggered along.
The simple truth is that the productivity cost of IT in the UK is the same as India. You can lie to yourself for a few years - costs are down etc, but in the end the productivity thing hits the company.
Similar things have been seen with Chinese manufacturing - their big advantage is now the existing supply chains etc. Factories in the *US* are competitive against them.
Why is that? Well, productivity is a function of the employee, the societal structure they live in and the the company. Quite simply the NHS, roads, laws etc improve productivity. Given the flow of international trade, it is not surprising that wages then float up and down to roughly *effective* parity.
Which brings us to the last part of the outsourcing idea. Bring the cheap workers onshore. This means that you get the productivity benefit of western society, but can try to pay a fraction of the wage.
After a few years, the employees will learn and escape to better jobs. Then you hire more. In the meantime, why do think that people are cramming into houses to the point of adults living in bunk beds?
Indeed.
But in your example the steelworker's wages would only have been a small part of the overall production cost.
Very good article Alastair. I hope the poolside is good
:
In my previous career as an engineer I experienced companies trying to offshore engineering talent (to India primarily). The problem is that it doesn’t work very well.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
The oncoming train of the latest round of automation, is finally getting rid of the layers between the people who do the quantifiable jobs.
I've worked most of my career in and around the investment banking space - but with a few interesting side voyages.
The staggering thing is how un-automated many jobs are. A trader buys some shares, online. How many humans need to touch that transaction?
What is coming is that such things will be automated, as they would if you designed the system from scratch. Add on a layer of data science - spotting unusual patterns - be it profit opportunities, or catching fraud.... None of this is really new, or rocket science.
A relative set up a delivery business - buy products online, get them delivered extremely rapidly. Being IT minded, he automated the entire setup - to the point of re-ordering algorithms. So the system re-orders stock according to a plan, without intervention (with obvious limits on allowing the computer to spend money unsupervised).
The reaction he got from a warehouse managing pro, he hired from one of the big names was interesting. Apparently his setup is bleeding edge - way ahead of the majors.. The fascinating bit, to me, is how the business can scale. As far as I can tell, each time he adds a warehouse, he will only need one manager. The rest will be stock pickers & packers.
From a legal perspective, I expect in the long-term my current legal training will be useful in the sense that it will enable me to “understand* the systems that have been, or will end up being automated or at least “process-ised”, and a large part of my role (hopefully!), aside from client and project/file management, will be to implement, develop, and improve these systems and processes.
If it's never been used in an airliner (ie integrating the fuselage function into the wing) and they're proposing to do it at some point n the future, I guess that counts.
As any nerd should kno, the design was actually thought up by those naughty Nazis.
Comments
The man is a moron , Scottish Nationalism is not a political party, he is as thick as mince.
But we’re talking about a project which won’t be completed this decade, and the (marginal) economic case for which is based on a fifty year projection.
McDonalds is mainly takeaway and indoor tables as with inner city restaurants should be socially distanced and at least 1.5 metres apart with ordering of the food by apps ideally.
The police should take action if McDonalds are seating customers for eating and not pursuing track and trace
I don't care if Management Consultants given a brief to conclude that centralisation will save money, conclude that they will save money. I don't even care if they are not given such a brief but conclude it anyway. Reorganisations should be undertaken with caution, and with more than just money as a primary consideration.
Democratic decisions should be taken at a level suitable to the affected democratic constituency. It is fair that sometimes there needs to be a right of appeal to a higher, perhaps more strategic body (especially in eg. planning), but that isn't a reason to remove the ability to express democratic views at a more local level.
What happens when you centralise is it becomes easier, indeed often necessary, for politicians to ignore the views and interests of minority constituencies, in order to maintain political power. And in the long run democracy, and the interests of the country is not served by this.
1. They're focused on the losses from the change - the jobs, business rates, season tickets.
2. They're beholden to special interests with a stake in the status quo, principally commercial property investors.
3. They genuinely think it's a Bad Thing for people's mental health and productivity not to congregate in mass workplaces.
4. It's become symbolic of a return to normality after* Covid, that they believe is necessary to restore confidence.
I don't agree with any of these as justifying opposition to home-working, but they are plausible as explanations for the government's actions, and the latter two, at least, are not so negative as reasons, were they true.
* Putting to one side for a moment that we aren't yet past Covid as a major crisis.
On a 50 year time scale anything is possible, 50 years ago we were just putting a man on the moon, with a fraction as much computing power as you’d find in an average smart watch.
But I suspect any predictions beyond a month are near worthless.
Things can change fast one way or another and things changing themselves lead to different responses.
City Restaurants are alive and kicking again - mainly eat in, not takeaways, and no outdoor seating.
McDonalds, Costa, and many other chains simply ask you to fill in your details. In my experience nobody checks if you have. Nobody asks you to. There are simply signs on the tables.
The original point to all of this was that there’s no logical reason why you can sit 1.5m away from multiple households in an underground restaurant, like I was in central Newcastle a few days ago, but can’t sit 1.5m away from multiple people in my own home.
Hence why it is being ignored. And it is being ignored.
Even the “Boris has killed 60k people” frothers who I know, who work for the NHS, etc, do not care.
Even the backbenchers are catching "tin ear".
It doesn't necessarily follow that the organisation is operating more effectively.
Anyone tried to have any dealings with Utility companies over the last few months...?
1. That powers move down, with decisions being taken closer to the people affected.
2. That the ongoing cost of maintaining the new structure, is lower than the old structure.
1 and 2 predominately. The creative destructionism stuff should be music to Cummings’ ears. However, I think the Government knows where the direction of travel is going and realised that many of its natural supporters (home owning middle class professionals ex-London) are about to be hit by a tidal wave of job losses
I have considered buying a phone for work purposes now I am setting out on my own, but honestly don't think I will bother.
I popped in last week to comment on my son's very detailed information for his start on campus at Hull Uni. In the last week they've sent precise instructions on arrival time, one parent allowed in with him to help move in, definition of household, Freshers Week events rules etc etc. They really do seem to be very well prepared. The other Uni's his mates are going to seem similarly prepared. My sense is that fears about the start of the new Uni term leading to further mass outbreaks of Covid are overdone.
On WFH, presumably workers wanting to stay away from the office no longer justify receiving London Allowance or similar?
A bad manager is sitting there frantically entering data into spreadsheets with no idea what their team is doing.
Politicians are by nature extroverts. Their whole life revolves around meeting folk.
They literally cannot comprehend that some do not function best that way.
And, moreover, do not aspire to.
I am sure this aspect is not a conscious one. But I also reckon it is a very heavy, unexamined underlying assumption.
It needs a REAL Scottish Labour party rather than a London outpost manned by sockpuppet halfwits. Until they get real and start thinking about Scotland and policies for Scotland and become democratic they are lost. Helping the Tories has accelerated their downfall.
My course starts in 2 weeks and I cannot even accept the offer and enrol!
I’m not enthralled.
I suspect that top Tories still do not like people pointing the finger at 3 million unemployed under Tory govts in the 80s and do not want to be a Tory govt with 3m unemployed in the 20s.
BTW - retailers were complaining the other day of boring Brexit stuff like labelling that will stop them selling stuff to the EU and maybe even anywhere. Apparently the deadline has been missed and there is not enough time left to fix the problem. So, more industrial issues.
It is all piling up into a big pile of poo under Boris. He is the leader, he carries the can. He wanted the job, the power and the glory but he seemed to forget it comes with responsibility too...
I would add two other points that have very significant implications on jobs:
1. many firms are using this crisis to push through automation and / or delayering of management structures (the two are often linked). I suspect we are about to see happening to the professional class what happened to blue collar jobs in the 1980s with far more being done by far fewer people;
2. Offshoring of professional jobs. Alister Heath in the Telegraph had a good piece on this a few weeks back. If you don’t need to be in the office, why can’t the job be done overseas (at lower cost) than by a UK professional?
There have really been two barriers to 2, need to be in the office and translation issues (don’t so much of an issue for areas such as IT, hence why many rave about outsourcing their IT functions to Romania and Serbia). The first has been settled effectively. On the second, worth taking a look at the recent merger of two major translation firms and the suggestions as to how their market will grow.
What is needed and likely is more a balance of wfh and commuting
Keen for some feedback on views as I have been using this as my guide as to what has been happening.
I note what Richard says re 1m. Worldometer look at a 4 month period. They do update the forecast regularly. Every update I have seen except one has been upwards.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1301185589044301824
They are trying to save various things from the imminent defence cuts by conspicuously deploying them in the Channel. It'll be AS90s on Beachy Head next.
If they are not then they are not only increasing the risk of more cases spreading but they are also breaking the law and the police should get involved.
On your broader point unless you live in a vast detached house with a large number of rooms and a huge living room and dining room, the average semi detached or flat is going to have far less room than the average restaurant, even a restaurant in a city which is mainly indoors, so it is far more difficult to keep large groups of people from different households at least 1.5 m apart and socially distanced inside a private home than it is in a restaurant
https://twitter.com/vivamjm/status/1302521533345259520?s=20
If you consider the average 4 seat table in a restaurant or a pub, a significant number of them will have 4 households per table. People do not care - they are just seeing their friends.
The Restaurants or pubs don’t care how many households you are from. They don’t even ask.
The policy makes no sense.
But the PM certainly falls in the uber extroverts camp.
Should also add this theory of mine explains the frantic press antipathy to and besilderment at WFH.
Journalists' entire career revolves around asking questions of strangers.
Not natural introvert territory.
- Free (sic) prescriptions, before only the middle class paid (the old & poor were free anyway)
- Free (sic) University education? Fewer less well off kids are getting to uni while Torquil and Jocasta get it for free.
As Swinney demonstrated this week, when the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
I can imagine this change in lifestyle will result in yet another bailout with our tax money.
Biden 50.5% (yesterday 51.5%)
Trump 43% (yesterday 42.5%)
https://election.usc.edu/
I think this is their highest Trump score so far.
It was fine (barely) for CAD and other menial tasks but it did not work very well when it came to the meat of the job, which for most white collar jobs these days is essentially project and people management, even in engineering.
If something goes wrong during manufacture, you can drive to the factory to discuss the problem with the guys on the shop floor. You can then immediately contact the client and discuss any potential solutions. All of this is still possible WFH but within commuting distance. It is not possible from Romania or Serbia or whatever.
One tip , it cost more to administer charging for those prescriptions than the money it raised , saved money , something the Tories could never achieve. They prefer to borrow and then pretend it was Scotland that spent it. Tick Tock enjoy your tax haven whilst you can.
Labour also tried to claim credit for "their idea" that exams next year should be delayed a month or so. That also had been under consideration for some time.
The transfer of elderly from hospital to care homes and the subsequent deaths would bring down ministers, PMs and possibly govts in normal times.
Apart from HMG.
https://twitter.com/bellacaledonia/status/1302557201895129088?s=20
We keep getting reports from the dead tree press claiming the government is going to tell people to get back to the office but as I said I'm taking that with a sack of salt.
Have you seen Matt Hancock or Boris Johnson on camera say people should get back to the office even if they can work from home? I've not. Until I see them say it with my own eyes on camera, I don't believe they are saying it. If they wanted to say it, they can easily say it on camera.
It would send them to New York for finance . . . and then they'd stay in New York.
All it would do is destroy London, it wouldn't establish a presence in Berlin or Paris.
I've worked most of my career in and around the investment banking space - but with a few interesting side voyages.
The staggering thing is how un-automated many jobs are. A trader buys some shares, online. How many humans need to touch that transaction?
What is coming is that such things will be automated, as they would if you designed the system from scratch. Add on a layer of data science - spotting unusual patterns - be it profit opportunities, or catching fraud.... None of this is really new, or rocket science.
A relative set up a delivery business - buy products online, get them delivered extremely rapidly. Being IT minded, he automated the entire setup - to the point of re-ordering algorithms. So the system re-orders stock according to a plan, without intervention (with obvious limits on allowing the computer to spend money unsupervised).
The reaction he got from a warehouse managing pro, he hired from one of the big names was interesting. Apparently his setup is bleeding edge - way ahead of the majors.. The fascinating bit, to me, is how the business can scale. As far as I can tell, each time he adds a warehouse, he will only need one manager. The rest will be stock pickers & packers.
The first part of the sentence answers the second part.
True labour costs are a function of employee cost x productivity. In the 1980s, the Economist pointed out that a German steel worker cost 19x an Indian steelworker. So why were there German steel workers? Well, perhaps because the German employees produced 21x as much steel per head. They were *cheaper*.
In IT there have been many attempts at using cheap locations. First was getting it done by cheap firms based in places like Mumbai. Then came insourcing - to deal with the sweatshop nonsense and keep control, the companies would setup business units in Mumbai etc. That has staggered along.
The simple truth is that the productivity cost of IT in the UK is the same as India. You can lie to yourself for a few years - costs are down etc, but in the end the productivity thing hits the company.
Similar things have been seen with Chinese manufacturing - their big advantage is now the existing supply chains etc. Factories in the *US* are competitive against them.
Why is that? Well, productivity is a function of the employee, the societal structure they live in and the the company. Quite simply the NHS, roads, laws etc improve productivity. Given the flow of international trade, it is not surprising that wages then float up and down to roughly *effective* parity.
Which brings us to the last part of the outsourcing idea. Bring the cheap workers onshore. This means that you get the productivity benefit of western society, but can try to pay a fraction of the wage.
After a few years, the employees will learn and escape to better jobs. Then you hire more. In the meantime, why do think that people are cramming into houses to the point of adults living in bunk beds?
Good managers can make it work, but there is no doubt that remote resources take longer to get up to speed.
We have some resources outsourced to India, and they open Service tickets when they see brute force login attempts failing on remote firewalls.
We have explained to them multiple times that these failures indicate the systems are working exactly as designed...
No idea whether this is patient reluctance, GP reluctance or hospital policy (it was Saturday evening, so perhaps always quiet outside A&E?) but it did feel abnormally deserted.
And is there the capacity for it ?
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1302483498951901185?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1302422515843768320?s=20
- Massive drop in patients from *some* GPs. Some are doing patient refrerals at close to normal numbers. Some have sent no patients in for months.
- Big bump in no-shows for appointments.
Humans aren’t suited to warehouse work, it’s repetitive and boring, easy to introduce errors and make mistakes.
But in your example the steelworker's wages would only have been a small part of the overall production cost.
That's unlikely to apply in other sectors.
We will see.
As any nerd should kno, the design was actually thought up by those naughty Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229