Let’s work together

“It is now safe to return to work in offices,” says Transport Secretary and all round buffoon Grant Shapps. According to one of the Daily Mail’s purveyors of hate, Richard Littlejohn, civil servants who do not return to their offices are “cowards” and are “bone idle” and “content to sit at home on full pay for ever”, adding that “if they don’t return to work, they should be sacked.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know what’s going on here. A full-on campaign to get work shy staff back to work, as if workers themselves are somehow dictating where they should work. It’s a lie and not a white lie. A dirty great black lie.

And from where did Shapps announced the return to work instruction? From his home. And if you scroll down Littlejohn’s woeful polemic he admits that he has worked from home, if writing filth for tabloid scandal sheets is actually work, for the last 30 years. Not only that, he now lives in a gated community in Florida. The hypocrisy of the true establishment is breathtaking.

Now the reality: workers do not choose whether to go into the office or not. Employers hold literally all the cards. People informing their employer, especially if their employer happens to be the government, that they are refusing to go back to their office will find themselves on unauthorised absence. They won’t get paid and they’ll get a disciplinary, ending in the sack. The idea that there is an army of civil servants deciding where, and indeed when, they will work is simply nonsense. The issue that should concern us all is that this tosh is reported as fact in the best selling newspaper in the land. So, is it safe to return to offices and even desirable to do so?

To the first question, the answer is this: it depends. The reason why so many employers have told their staff to work from home is because it isn’t safe. Now that workers have proved that they are often more productive working at home, potentially bringing about huge savings for employers in terms of accommodation and office space, surely we won’t go back to the old ways? The second question is even more complex, but again it depends. For many people, their quality of life has improved by not having to fight their way through traffic to do what they now do at home. Their work life balance – derided by Littlejohn, obviously – is far better. The real reason the government, and its agents, masquerading as journalists, want people back in their offices is because the old inner city economies are suffering.

If people aren’t in town, they aren’t going to Pret. But rather than try to force people back to work, why not encourage companies to change and diversify? It sounds awful harsh, but if the new ways work, with or without a deadly virus then your takeaways and pubs will need to adapt to the new world. I don’t pretend to have all the solutions as to how this is going to work, assuming it can work, but getting things back to how they used to be won’t wash. And being lectured on how we should return to our offices by politicians and third rate junk writers working from home rather makes the point for us.

The heat is on and we will get plenty more of this ‘go back to work’ stuff next week from politicians (Johnson will be next) and from more populist ‘journalists’. But almost everyone is at work, working very hard and getting things done. Working from home is still working.