Many former commuters seem to be singing “I don’t want to go to work on a train in the rain” to adapt on old pop song parody. It seems increasingly clear that the COVID lockdowns have made something snap in many five day a week train commuters minds. They have discovered they can do much of their job from home.
They have saved serious money on not buying season tickets. Above all they have been spared the difficult local roads to the station, the fight for a car park place and ticket and the lottery of getting a seat on the train.All that strain and worry has gone out of life.
On that busy office day will the train come on time? On the morning when you need to meet the boss will your train be delayed by leaves on the line or the late arrival of the train in front? Will you get drenched walking from the station to the office? Going home might you have one of those nightmare journeys when you are stuck in a stationary train for too long, ringing home to apologise and say you haven’t a clue when you will make it back.
Many commuters with all too many memories of late and cancelled trains, an absence of seats and a dearth of reliable information about what has gone wrong suddenly see the chance to duck out of many of those journeys and opt for a different working life. It looks as if many offices will be adapted for hybrid working with many more people logging in remotely. Employers who may prefer more to come and work in the office will decide that to keep some of the best talent they need to be flexible. They will decide to downsize their floor space to get a property saving out of the change.
All this will knock a big hole in railway revenues. I will look at what government should do with the trains in a later post. The commuter revolt is the result of poor and expensive services over many past years.
August 25, 2021
Indeed, and how very bizarre therefore that a Conservative govt supposedly committed to restoring the public finances thinks its right to blow c. £100 bn+ on the HS2 vanity project, a technology which will be obsolete (as well as un-needed) by the time its complete.
August 25, 2021
It made no sense before Covid slashed demand and made it even less sensible. It must surely be driven only by vested interests, inertia and corruption? What other explanation is there? The Gov. cannot surely be so stupid as to think it makes sense can it?
August 25, 2021
Cronyism almost certainly, that seems to be a problem – as it has been with other recent govts, especially the Blair-Brown govt which stuffed public institutions with its leftist mates.
Probably a large element of the sunk cost fallacy – I believe some £4bn of the £100bn has already been spent. Obviously it makes massive sense to save the other £96bn, albeit it’s embarrassing for those who spent the 4.
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
Sunk costs – as any project manager or accountant would tell us – should be ignored when considering whether or not to cancel a project.
August 25, 2021
It is literally sucking materials out of the building industry, not to mention lorry drivers.
August 25, 2021
must be difficult to swallow after sucking that!
August 25, 2021
Lifelogic :
There are 2 additional possible reasons for building HS2.
Firstly It will be so expensive to that it will be only affordable by the wealthy and those travelling at the tax-payers’ expense, such as MPs and Civil Servants, thus eliminating the inconvenience of travelling with the hoi polloi. It will become the Zil railway line.
Secondly it will provide a fast, long-distance and reliable means of transport for when the rest of us are limping about with our EVs with boots full of spare batteries praying for windy weather and the Government text that we are allowed to re-charge our batteries (or to put on the washing machine).
August 26, 2021
Or it’s a Soviet style grand projet-there to generate something they can put into the spreadsheet as economic activity.Fake money facilitating fake growth and in due course a Soviet-style collapse.
August 25, 2021
+1
Forward planning and joined up thinking was never a strong point (if it existed at all) in career politicians.
August 25, 2021
They want HS2 as a link for their rotten “global cities” so they can sit and mull over global warming (rather than actually helping anyone) in various designated European cities.
Somehow or other they believe that HS2 is constructed to “withstand climate change”…lol.
(They’ve put umbrellas all along the roof!).
August 25, 2021
If politicians could forward think and plan they would opt for a different career.
It’s one of the few well paid jobs where no qualifications are necessary, indeed they are a barrier to promotion. That of course excludes failed lawyers and social workers.
We are governed by a bunch of second rate charlatans our host excepted.
August 25, 2021
Ian Wragg – in full aggreement but you forgot the gold plated index linked pension.
August 25, 2021
The media (from the left, right and centre) are destroying chance of good politicians. There are probably quite a few people who could do a very good job if they entered politics but are put off by the way politicians are hounded by the media – in newspapers, on TV and social media. We need to kick back in some way against the media – how?
August 25, 2021
HS2 is a multi-generational project. It isn’t for you. It is for your children and grandchildren and for their children and grandchildren. It’ll still be used in 2100, 2150 and beyond. Like all large infrastructure it will ultimately pay for itself.
The budget is £100bn which you all claim is too much. The annual budget for your pensions is more than a £100bn which you all claim is not enough.
Keep HS2, axe pensions. Sorted.
August 25, 2021
Rubbish; it will be outdated too soon and be too expensive for most in the meantime. Surely working people are entitled to the pension that they have contributed to for the whole of their working lives?
August 26, 2021
Not if the governments they voted for spent all those contributions in the year they were collected, and didn’t put anything by in the form of investments.
August 25, 2021
At the end of the day; HS2 is just a railway
August 25, 2021
but they carry the General Public….all except HS2 which won’t.
August 25, 2021
I am not a pensioner as it happens, I’m middle aged like you (but unlike you, I don’t bang on about how ‘young’ I am).
We do no favours to our children and potential grandchildren by wasting public money on obsolete technology and railways which will be used (if in future at all) by a tiny minority of relatively affluent people. The money would be far better spent elsewhere (or better still not spent at all).
Still, it would be great if you could get Starmer to put your ideas of abolishing pensions, along with rejoining the EU (current support c. 30%) in Labour’s next manifesto. With policies like HS2 and net zero, we’re going to need all the help we can get to keep a Conservative govt.
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
Ditto and I’m working 60 hour weeks of shifts – literally starting work at 2 am often.
August 25, 2021
“keep a Conservative govt.”
I hope not Richard, not the current batch of good-for-nothing soclib Conservatives.
August 25, 2021
The alternative is worse
August 25, 2021
Pensions are paid for Andy, HS2 isn’t.
August 25, 2021
@Andy – “Like all large infrastructure it will ultimately pay for itself.” Well not if you consider finance costs, running costs and depreciation. For £100 billion to be a sensible investment in a rail track you might expect the users to pay something like £10 billion PA to use it. So if rather optimistically 20,000 use it every day they would have to pay about £1,500 a one way ticket plus running costs on top. You can go by coach now for £3-£7 or take a car of up to 7 people for perhaps £4 each and that goes door to door with no need for taxis at each end. I can think of hundreds of ways £100 billion could be invested with at least 20 times the return it will actually make. The £trillions on net zero is even more insane.
What return did the idiotic Concorde project make? They had to virtually give the planes away to British Airways and Air France. Tony Benn on of the fools responsible then as I recall.
August 25, 2021
@Andy – UK wastes £285m building airport ‘too windy to use’ – so how will this large infrastructure pay for itself?
August 25, 2021
Google : “The Round Table of Industrialists”
😉
August 25, 2021
It will not just be train revenues that will be affected. No doubt restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, pubs and other shops that depend on commuters will be affected too – those, that is, who have survived the lockdown.
August 25, 2021
Indeed and also all hit by lack of most international tourism due to absurdly OTT government restrictions.
August 25, 2021
I would ban all international travel while a global pandemic is happening.
August 25, 2021
Now that COVID is endemic in so many places, hindering international travel makes less sense than it did mid-2020. The government still hinders my going to safe Greece, preferring, I think, that I should go, without testing, to Cornwall, where I am no longer welcome by the locals.
August 25, 2021
Or maybe the Johnson regime are ensuring the country is bankrupted to meet the World Economic Forum’s ultimate aim that ‘you will own nothing and be happy’.
August 25, 2021
+1
Absolutely.
August 25, 2021
Indeed.
August 25, 2021
The dead mezzanine at Waterloo provides ample support to your argument.
August 25, 2021
People will spend their money elsewhere in the economy.
August 25, 2021
Remember IR35 has come in, forcing freelancers to pay for work travel out of taxed income instead of tax free as expenses (like the big consultancies can). Lots of people have decided to retire early, or refuse work which requires travel, or cut down significantly on the amount of travel they are prepared to undertake. These dynamics are a big part of what is going on, they are also part of the reason for shortages of workers in many skills.
August 25, 2021
Indeed endless attacks such as these to damage incentives and productivity. The pension cap and other changes are making many surgeons and other people retire early or work part time when we have 5 million plus on NHS waiting lists and about the same again trying to get on them. Absurd irrational and counterproductive attacks on landlords and indirectly on their tenants too.
August 25, 2021
There’s nothing wrong with attacks on landlords. Housing is a scarce and limited resource – landlords should not be allowed to monopolise it.
August 25, 2021
MW – housing is going to be scarcer as 800+ a day can roll in – plus Afghans, Syrians AND don’t forget Hong Kong.
August 25, 2021
Then we learn that good old Lloyds Bank are getting into owning residential properties to let. Individual landlords being squeezed out no doubt as that bank frightens the government into giving it preferential terms on the threat of having to bail it out if it doesn’t. (Individual landlords don’t qualify).
August 25, 2021
A lot of it is politicians listening to advice from the big consultancies and outsourcing organisations, which of course are heavily biased as they want all the roles taken by freelancers for themselves. The reality is peaks of work which do not justify permanent staff, and very specilist skills, are far more efficiently filled by freelancers than the big consultancies.
It’s social manipulation on a grand scale, to force society into the strange inefficient vision of these people.
August 25, 2021
It’s deliberate and politically driven. Today, all is political. Human beings have become pawns
August 25, 2021
The questions are why? and why now?. Not so long ago (2006) we had A-day and £260k a year per person being payable into pensions, 10% CGT. Carbon dioxide was politically neutral, HS2 wasn’t thought of or needed. Student loans were daft but cheap. Reliance on Chinese manufacturing was daft but recoverable. Afghanistan situation was vaguely in hand.
August 25, 2021
Sorry Dom Human beings have become pawns . . . NON ELITE Human beings have become pawns. Fixed.
August 25, 2021
@Iain gill
Yes IR35 on steroids is a major hidden obstacle you have to experience unlike no other.
As a long distance commuter to London I could only suffer it for a year and had to be pretty fit to avoid burn-out. Again unless you experience it personally …. Productivity obviously is impacted by these hurdles.
August 25, 2021
I see one consultancy has realised that working from home is of immense benefit to them as they are recruiting in Latvia and Lithuania as it’s cheaper for them.
It should be a lesson for all WFM that their job can be done from anywhere in the world.
August 25, 2021
Agreed.
Even if an employer sticks to UK employees there will still be large cost savings by employing those who live in less expensive locations and willing to be paid less either because they have no commuting costs or because they are living in a particular location personally beneficial to them.
The downside to WFM for both employers and employees will be the lack of interaction between staff and consequently the lack of training, the natural passing on of knowledge and experience and the impromptu creation of new ideas.
August 25, 2021
Good Morning,
I’m fed up with the ongoing problem of our railways. The schizophrenic approach of governments, of all shades, is rediculous. If the rail service is expected to perform better in private hands then sell it, ALL of it, to the private sector. If you don’t want, or can’t , sell it, then it’s a public service and should be run to serve the need of the nation. Chose and be done.
August 25, 2021
+10
August 25, 2021
As we all know, the railways were private and as far as I know, very well run.
They had assumed the practices and mantle of about 100 years of a superbly run stagecoach network.
(Organisation at a level that this govt has not the wit to even dream of!).
They were requisitioned during the last war …you know, that emergency! How handy!
Like various tracts of endowed land here…and never properly given back.
They don’t want them now…orders from on high! Get rid.
August 26, 2021
+1
And we had the engineering and manufacturing to support it. And yes, a lot of private farm land was ‘stolen’ and never given back. Like so much else government does. A later day King John.
August 25, 2021
In fairness to the government, there is no easy solution to the railways.
August 25, 2021
If you can do the job from home in, for example Wokingham, then the job will soon be being done in India or similar for under 10% of the cost. Unless it is a state sector “job” perhaps? But even the state sector might perhaps have to cut out some of their appalling waste eventually!
I see the NHS are absurdly wasting money advertising to encourage people who are ill to seek NHS help. I think people know this without these wasteful adverts . The problem is the NHS and GP’s will not see them, treat them, see them promptly or see them at all. GPs pre appointments systems say call 111. 111 then tell you to call you GP. Excess non Covid deaths, at home currently are rather significant due to abject failures of the NHS &GPs to do their jobs properly. “Working” from home perhaps?
Also the NHS wasting money on new expensive electric ambulances and the net zero lunacy. Sorry mate the ambulance is just recharging so we will be with your emergency in about six hours it will be the next shift as we sign off before then. Good luck!
August 25, 2021
Indeed. Employing people overseas should be made illegal.
I was a software developer. I know of several instances where companies outsourced work to India. After months of delays and endless communication issues, I was engaged to sort the mess out. Some companies have outsourced their call centres and then brought them back.
First we outsourced production. Now we are outsourcing services. Great! We don’t have to do any work. Mind you, where do we get the money to pay for the products and services we consume?
August 25, 2021
Mike Wilson :
“Mind you, where do we get the money to pay for the products and services we consume?”
By continuing to sell off all the country’s businesses and assets.
Euphemistically described as “inward investment”.
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
Some of the front line NHS staff who worked 7 day weeks, at the height of the pandemic, not just medical but also supply chain etc have walked away from their jobs. burnt out or disillusioned. I don’t know if they have been replaced adequately by new people coming into those roles. The normal free market dynamics which would fix these things in time in normal businesses is hampered by top down NHS Stalinist command and control.
August 25, 2021
well maybe but GPs typically are no longer front-line. WFH – – get it?
August 25, 2021
@Lifelogic – yes. My Wife spends most of the day in agony, the GP who wont see people said by phone she needs to go and see a department at the Hospital. The Hospital only yesterday says take pain killers, which don’t work, we wont be able to see you this year. We are already 8 months into the problem.
That said the 111 system of appoints did work and work well. The advice was you need urgently to see you GP that was back in February – our GP Practice wont see people face to face. Still in limbo still in pain – that’s Wokingham for you.
August 25, 2021
Nota
Similar experience, family member had their back go into spasm 3 times in 6 weeks for no good reason, about 10 days each time to make any sort of sensible recovery of movement, attempted to contact the local GP surgery, after waiting ages on the phone, got the usual, no Doctor can see you, have you tried the “Push Doctor”, contact details given, and eventually a zoom appointment was made, a Zoom consultation took place (Doctor was working from home in Yorkshire) the explanation suggested, you probably have not been moving about enough because of Covid, lots of people are having these problems, so try these exercises, exercises noted but not satisfied that this was the problem, or indeed the proper solution.
Made a booking with a local physio/chiropractor who the family have used before with good results.
After a hands on diagnosis, the explanation your pelvis has moved out of alignment, massage and manipulation given, sudden improvement, second follow up visit a week later for more manipulation and massage, problem now resolved.
Firstly how come a local Private practice can see people hands on (both wearing masks) but the Wokingham GP surgery cannot, and will not !
So problem resolved at a cost of £120. with a correct diagnosis and treatment, whilst the NHS and GP Local Practice failed miserably.
Never heard of the Push Doctor facility, does it get its name I wonder because you are pushed from pillar to post before you can see virtually anyone.
I wonder how much the GP in Yorkshire was earning offering this service from home, add that onto the salary the local GP got for choosing not to be available, and the NHS has paid out twice. It’s not as if the local practice is small, it has 14 Gp’s registered there and the waiting rooms are empty, which can be clearly seen if you visit the Pharmacy next door.
August 25, 2021
Sorry to hear it.
I saw a consultant (finally) six months after injury – I’d only seen a nurse in all that time. He said I was doing too well to risk surgery even though I should have had it. I have worked hard with a private physio in the meantime – had I relied upon the NHS I pay nearly 10k a year to I would have been a cripple.
August 25, 2021
Nota – – I feel sorry for you and your wife. Just think of those photos that show taxpayer funded ambulances and crews waiting at Dover for the arrivals, to give them their checks after their taxpayer funded ferry ride across the channel. After their NHS checks they are took in taxpayer funded vehicles to taxpayer funded hotels to begin their taxpayer funded lives. Shame our govt doesn’t give a **** about the English speaking non-translator needing, born and bred English taxpayer isn’t it.
August 25, 2021
bigneil – newer comp
Agreed.
August 25, 2021
A common experience for Wokingham and a particularly central GP surgery.
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
I am a great sceptic about this working from home lark. For a start there are far too many distractions for most people at home, the spouse, the children, the pets, the TV and what not and no supervisor/manager to look over one! From what I can see from large organisations when I deal with them little actual work seems to be getting done from home.
Furthermore as there is nothing productive at home (not spinning wheels nor farm animals as in former times) but in the main only communication equipment, I rather think that if a person is able to work from home in most instances he is just doing a bureaucratic non-job that in an efficient society would be eliminated.
August 25, 2021
@Berg
Put simply, you are wrong. I worked from home for 30 years and worked hard. More to the point, a public sector organisation I did some work for has has people working from home for years. On any one day at least 50% are at home. What are they up to? That is very easy to monitor.
Rang my car insurer the other day. Chap I dealt with was working from home. No doubt his employer can see when he is logged in, how long he spends on calls, how much business he places etc.
Numerous studies have shown that in a typical office people are productive about 60% of the time. The rest of the day is spent chatting with colleagues.
August 26, 2021
I suspect you are about right that people in a typical office are only ‘productive’ (or more appropriately in wording, ‘working ‘) only 60% of the time – however I believe apart from the self-employed, most of those ‘working’ from home are actually ‘working’ even less than 60% of the time they should be. Well salesmen may be monitored by results, but mostly for the rest, particularly in the public sector, but not only in the public sector there is next to no monitoring and clearly no close or detailed monitoring .
The times I have been told when telephoning offices that the relevant person is working from home and so is unavailable, so usually the person I talk to will send the person I need to talk to an email(people nowadays send endless emails instead of phoning or actually talking to other people about business) , usually with no result. When eventually I do talk to someone working from home, they say they can’t do this, that or the other because they are from home and can’t do it as they don’t have the facilities outside the office. We are living in the world of the absurd.
August 26, 2021
browsing internet, booking appointments socially, reading stuff, meetings(!) over coffee….etc
August 25, 2021
Not entirely convinced about this .I work in a small zippy company , growing fast ( Paradoxically Brexit provided us with opportunities by culling a few competitors .. ).We had a phase of problem solving and were able to make WFH ..work well . All seemed jolly and , no-one missed trains , shaving or each other’s useless jokes. Productivity soared about 50 % as one change prompted others…all good .
Then we need to employ more people and suddenly it was not so easy . How do you train them? How do you monitor output and quality when relationships are faded ? How do you maintain discipline …
As time has gone on the drawbacks have increased and it is no longer clear the current model is viable, long term. We will probably move to a more balanced hybrid model but we now have a full office plus WFH pepes .
Offices are not dead yet
August 25, 2021
There will be buyers’ remorse when the implications sink in!
Especially the wider implications for our dwindling freedoms when they are added to no, or few cars, no public transport, no shops….
August 25, 2021
Working from home also assumes one’s home is suitable for a working environment. As workers who are home owners in decent accommodation retire, the so-called ‘generation rent’ will be a large section of the workforce. Their homes may be less suitable to long term working from home.
August 25, 2021
Peter – the so-called ‘generation rent’ will be a large section of the workforce. Their homes may be less suitable to long term working from home.
With the govt set to give councils grants ( our taxes ) to buy/build appropriate housing for immigrants with 8/9/10 kids – which WE will be paying the rent for – those will have space for working from home. Whther any of the occupants will actually want to work, when all is free from the govt, is another matter.
Only a few million more to wave in this year.
August 25, 2021
Training staff with experience to do a slightly different role in a different way is quite possible remotely with a bit of physical intervention along the way. Training someone with no experience or a newbie out of University is problematic.
The young will find that their opportunities are hugely curtailed until workers go back to the office. Collaboration and innovations suffers over time too. Workers need to be flexible now and make a few journeys per week.
As Lifelogic writes above, if a job can be done from home, it can be done from Delhi so employees need to show that their jobs need to be office based a couple of days per week.
August 25, 2021
I fully agree with Newmania’s points about the negatives of WFH. While there are certain career paths that can be carried out completely solo, I am hearing from much younger friends – for example – what is happening psychologically to those in the lucrative business of creating video games, and it is not healthy.
August 25, 2021
Agreed, people miss the social interaction, the often casual coffee machine/lunch time chat which can highlight and solve problems, team building, training, mentoring, and expansion can only be efficiently done from a shared space, as can the formation of a company culture.
I certainly agree that partial working from home/office split may work for some, some of the time, but the office is certainly not dead yet.
Those who work in London should be careful what they wish for, as the London weighting allowance may not be thought applicable if you work from home, more than in the office.
August 25, 2021
Yes, that London weighting is really worth the cost of commuting and the 3 hours a day standing in a sweat box, sorry – train carriage – to get there.
August 25, 2021
Yes new trainees need to work next to people they can learn from.
August 25, 2021
Such changes aren’t organic. They are politically driven, they are deliberate and they have suspicious intent.
I’d like to know what the public sector, private sector breakdown is for employees working from home? One suspects it favours the public sector whose unions and their political supporters continually seek more funding and an easier working life.
It all feels very much deliberate, planned, somehow engineered. There’s a force at work and that force does have a moral purpose but a dark political soul
As an aside. It isn’t the ‘people traffickers’ causing the influx of migrants into the UK, it is governments. Please stop trying to deflect blame away from the political centre. Anti-Brexit May revengefully signed us up to a treaty in a final act of Tory virtue signalling to appease the race lobby both domestic and international.
August 25, 2021
‘doesn’t have a moral purpose’
August 25, 2021
No trains …no borders …all part of The Agenda.
Long known about.
Makes one wonder re the true purpose of HS2.
August 25, 2021
HS2 is an EU infastructure, and Boris is just continuing to comply with their instructions/plan
August 26, 2021
Well I believe the rails will sit on a concrete flat base – not sleepers, so when the folly is finally wound up, it could be converted to allow (electric) public transport buses/coaches (remember trolleybuses?) to be driverless in organised spacing. Better than the train nonsense but slower and cheaper.
August 25, 2021
Well half the BBC workforce has been working from home told to do literally nothing. Public sector failures like the financial ombudsman service have descended even further into providing no acceptable service at all.
August 25, 2021
The BBC simply isn’t producing great TV like its brilliant 1995 prod of Pride and Prejudice. It’s too focused on commercial stuff that can be done by commercial broadcasters. I think BBC needs to remain with fee but greatly reduced – and can only be justified if the BBC produces programmes that are original and innovative and cannot really be done by commercial broadcasters. And that also helps to propel the work of new talent in creative writing, art, film and documentary-making etc
August 25, 2021
Everyone I know who works for a blue chip company – lawyers, accountants, bankers, architects, marketers etc – will no longer be working in the office full time. They mostly plan to do 2 to 3 days in the office instead.
Everyone I know who works for the state – teachers, doctors, police officers, transport workers etc – are still going to a place of work everyday.
Reply compare like with like. How many civil servants are going into the office? Where do private sector shop workers, restaurant workers etc work?
August 25, 2021
@Andy,
Its ridiculous to compare Private with Public like this. Yes, we need a Public Sector for those who cannot work under the pressures of Private Sector, in particular busy mothers who still need an extra income for the family and / or don’t want to go on social welfare. But we also need a strong, competitive Public Sector too for those who want to earn more money / a lot more money than in the Private Sector.
And the stronger the Private Sector, the stronger the possibility for a strong public sector.
August 25, 2021
Sorry, I meant we need a strong Private Sector (not other way around).
August 25, 2021
sorry Andy. But the railway can’t exist on 3 days of business a week.
Services and repairs are being cut so chronic overcrowding and slower speeds will ensue. Those three days a week are going to be miserable.
There has to be a cost for closing the country for over two years.
August 25, 2021
you know people who work? Really?
August 25, 2021
+1 on people traffickers.
The Government wants to set up a dedicated ferry service but even they know this would be an admission too far.
August 25, 2021
+1
And they could repeal it and many other laws such as the Climate Change Act, but will not despite an 80 seat majority and an opposition in disarray.
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
I wonder whether it is (more?) about being able to ‘swan about’ unsupervised. Working from home was always a euphemism, same as ‘pulling a sickie’. Until we see output figures we will not know.
At least the private sector has to maintain customer service to keep,it’s business. I read the other day the Department that provides background criminal checks unashamedly extended its delivery times quoting working from home as the reason, so once again businesses that need it quickly can take a jump, need a new passport, anecdotally we hear longer waiting times.
We also read the Government can’t get its civil servants back in their offices. Who is running this bloody country? Certainly not many of the Ministers who are supposed to.
And in other news Boris is now looking to bribe the Taliban, so in less than a week an illegal medieval regime is to be given more of our hard earned and people on long waiting lists for properties will be pleased to know councils are to be given grants to build large properties to house refugees.
With more and more illegals pouring across the channel,despite your hubristic blog a few weeks ago about new legislation , we are truly being dumped upon.
August 25, 2021
Hybrid working looks to be here to stay and should help maintain commercial property values. My current employment experience suggests employers gain much productivity from full or part home working and people don’t resent starting early and/or finishing late if they can avoid a lengthy commute.
August 25, 2021
SJR – Your government told people to stay at home and not go to work, and kept renewing that message month after month. It encouraged the shift online of large parts of people’s lives. It massively expanded the digital economy at the expense of in-person engagement between human beings. It did the same in the educational sphere. At the same time the government was employing dozens of highly paid sociologists and psychologists as ‘advisors’. I wonder if it ever asked them what the psychological consequences of that policy would be. ‘Great, we don’t have to put up with overcrowded trains any more’ was perhaps just the bait – what would the more deeply felt impact be of isolating people from each other? I wonder if Johnson ever asked such questions, or if he just asked his ‘advisors’ how the public could be manipulated.
August 25, 2021
Not sure if the drop in commuter traffic is as severe as some are suggesting. Martins Heron station car park is now back to its pre-pandemic full at 7am and my journeys on the trains (after 9am admittedly) show that loading is approaching similar. Whatever some feeling trains are not safe there are plenty who feel otherwise and are willing to use the trains.
Oh, and yes, there is no magic bullet to keep the trains on time, I have had enough delays on my journeys.
August 25, 2021
If I had a magic bullet I know where it belongs and fast!
August 25, 2021
Yes well, thus far Johnson and crew have succeeded in a part of the globalist agenda. Hooray!
I wonder what the “no trainers” will feel when they realise the true implications of what they now appear to cheer?
Crowded in their titchy houses with their entire family. Forever.
No pets.
No transport at all save shanks pony and maybe a tracked bike
The din of heat exchange systems.
No little outings to anywhere…can not travel anywhere freely!
Nowhere to go anyway.
Meanwhile, The Chilterns ( beloved home of the great and good) will become a National Park…seriously.
August 25, 2021
Some jobs are more suitable for WFH than others, and the future probably involves a combination of both home and office work. The main problem with railcommuting is the cost, both to the commuter and to the train company. And the answer lies in the work being done at my alma mater, Warwick University, in producing a ‘Very Light Rail’ train for Coventry. Google “Coventry Very Light Rail” and learn all about this very exciting project.
The track is cheaper, the carriages are cheaper, the trains can be fully automated and are battery powered. Put the whole together and you have a much, much cheaper system, not dependent on expensive, bolshie, unreliable drivers, safer and environmentally-friendly (thus pleasing Mrs she-who-must-be-obeyed Johnson). Currently a tram project, this is easily upgraded to commuter trains. And no, this isn’t some futuristic pie-in-the-sky project: prototypes are being built now, with innovations such as anti-microbial grab-poles and brand new crash-resistant glazing. If we had a government with a brain they would be planning to develop this rather than wasting over a HUNDRED BILLION pounds of HS2.
August 25, 2021
The new office working will be split shifts. 3 days in 2 days at home or any variation you want. To better utilise the staff and offset the high costs of maintaining offices there will be a slow transformation to 24/7 operation. A lot of the mundane but essential “office work” could be done in the quieter times when the phones and e mails are not pinging.
Daily Commuting as we knew it will be a thing of the past and small satellite offices will appear for team training and regional meetings.
What price now for HS2? The world has moved on and to survival will only come about with real change. Too late and out of date.
August 25, 2021
The government has got to stamp out waste. Waste that they through their lack of joined up thinking they create.
A fellow dog walker telling us her son has never been so well off. As a builder claiming furlough and working all through the lockdown. He told the authorities the majority of his work he was unable to do so he qualified for the scheme. Her parting shot was ” he is on £10k a month and long may it continue.
Yea right.
August 25, 2021
It isn’t just the railway network. Lockdown will have a huge, and probably terminal impact, for many city businesses: particularly those in the catering and hospitality sector plus others providing city services for former office-based staff, like hairdressers.
Then there’s the impact on live entertainment, where people would stay “in town” to go after world.
Realistically, how many people are going to choose to travel into a city in the early evening to go to the theatre or comedy club. Well done Boris. As a former Mayor of London, you will have the legacy of destroying London.
As for commuting/trains: I expect city businesses will settle into a system of splitting their employees’ time between WfH and in the office, which means that trains will be running at less than cattle-class capacity. So in order to make them viable, ticket-prices will have to rise and that, in turn, will reduce the numbers using them.
Meanwhile our Socialist Government is still planning to squander £100+billion on a white elephant train line with its termini in city centres, where people won’t be, to shave a few minutes off a journey which people won’t want to make. It’s absolute lunacy, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from the lunatics in Whitehall and Government.
August 25, 2021
Going home might you have one of those nightmare journeys when you are stuck in a stationary train for too long, ringing home to apologise and say you haven’t a clue when you will make it back.
This sounds like a nightmare relationship where you have to apologise for the train service. I would not expect to have to apologise to my employer for a terrible train service (explain yes, apologise no) so having to apologise in a domestic situation sounds like a horrible domestic situation.
August 25, 2021
I agree, working from home sounds great, but practically, as Newmania describes, won’t work for all. Cheaper labour from abroad is already happening; wages are agreed on the understanding travelling to work will be necessary, will those be slowly reduced? And towns and cities do need customers to keep other businesses open, like cafes etc.
And like Dom says, it does feel there are dark forces driving things, it’s as though someone wants the country to fail. And the WEF are quite open about their endgame, so it’s down to government to reject all this… or not. I think it’ll be down to the people to make government reject it.
August 25, 2021
I think the core of this issue concerns age/experience. I’m one of the lucky ones with teenage children who can manage themselves through the day and enough room to have equipped a home office to the same level as the meeting rooms in our company offices. It’s much tougher for younger people with small children (bless them, but…) or who share a property with others and don’t have a workspace. I suspect that it is these two cohorts of employees who will lead the return to the office.
Hopefully the whole experience will make organizations think more carefully about how they form teams. If a team is all based out of a single place then co-locating them in an office environment allows opportunities for mentoring, coaching and learning. But in my experience senior leaders hate the sight of empty desks, and many organizations have reduced desk space to about 60% of employee headcount. To make this model work it’s common to abandon assigned ‘team areas’ and adopt a bland hot-desking environment in which it’s necessary to find a desk on arrival. My experience has been that most of the time one doesn’t get the chance to sit adjacent to one’s close colleagues, and hence opportunities to listen, advise or coach face-to-face cannot be taken. (And there’s not much to be learned from overhearing the conversations of random colleagues from very different parts of the organization.)
Without a return to assigned team areas in offices, where there’s a guarantee that one’s close colleagues will be found, I expect the allure of the office will continue to be weak for those who have an alternative at home.
August 25, 2021
What horrors we are reminded of here – the ghastly memories are far too fresh – the wasted evenings stood on a train running hours late! – waiting in vain on a freezing platform for a train that had been cancelled!
I commuted to London for far too many years, and when I got a job outside of London that I could easily drive to, that was like magic – a new life, it was wonderful.
Yes – it’s always been a ‘take it or leave it’ service, unfortunately so many of us had no choice … now people have the opportunity to ‘leave it’ – Good for them.
It the railways do not adapt to this new pattern of requirements it will be their own fault – they must do a heck of lot better if they want our cash!
August 25, 2021
The original song – a Barron Knights parody of The Bachelors – continued “So keep buying all our records/Then we won’t clock in again.” Whether the third line might now be better altered to “So permit me work from home” or “So provide the furlough cash” may depend upon whether the job that originally called for the rail commute was materially productive in the first place.
August 27, 2021
Yes, the Bachelors’ mawkish song was “I wouldn’t trade you for the world”, which was also used as the basis for the magnificent “In the canyons of your mind” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
It’s interesting, I think, that John remembered the generally-forgotten novelty record by the Barron Knights after all these years though.
I seem to recall that Mrs. T thought that “Telstar” was great too…
August 25, 2021
If you think trains are bad try getting an appointment to see a doctor. Far from being “saved” by the lockdowns the NHS has been destroyed. This government will be remembered as the one that removed more liberty and caused the death of more people through lack of health care and forcing experimental dna treatments than any British government in history.
Train company revenues are the very least of our worries.
August 25, 2021
Quite simply the World has moved on. Then again just look at the state of commuter trains, uncomfortable, over packed and dirty.
To bring up the old ‘hobby horse’ of clear thinking people – HS2. What was Government thinking the rest of the service were basically unusable on a good day, but rather than update, referb and make things work for the majority – the Government goes off spending ‘billions’ of hard earned taxpayer money so that a very few may get a new experience to go from somewhere they never thought of to another obscure destination. Who does profit from such an arrangement?
I would guess at the time government thought commuters – a captive audience, they have no choice, so who cares! Guess what the choice has arrived and now Government doesn’t like it.
August 25, 2021
When I travel around the South East in off-peak times when the trains are empty and travelling against the prevailing commuting direction anyway the train fare is MUCH higher than if I drove. So I drive. Never mind the problem of turning up at the station to find the next two trains have been cancelled for whatever reason.
August 25, 2021
With a shortage of HGV drivers, may be time that freight gets back on the railways with local distribution in smaller vehicles…
August 25, 2021
KD – if only all those coming from Calais weren’t scientists, surgeons and engineers, but they are – the govt told us so.
August 25, 2021
“The commuter revolt is the result of poor and expensive services over many past years”
Exactly. The railways before the recent re-nationalisation were the epitomy of what goes wrong when strategic infrastructure assets are sold off to foreign shareholders. The asset is then run for the benefit of the foreigners – and not for the benefit of the railway commuters. Railtrack was forced to borrow billions rather than be allowed to charge the railway operating companies a fair whack for using and maintaining the track. As a result there has been insufficient investment in modern signaling or electrification for decades.
With a bit of thought and innovative timetabling, the railways could make up for the reduction in passengers by taking on more freight.
I suspect that the next infrastructure assets that will be forced into re-nationalisation will be the English water/sewage industry and UK electricity generation and distribution.
Reply The service was worse when they were fully nationalised
August 25, 2021
Some sectors will always be troublesome whether private or public. Train is one. Better just accept this stoically and instead save and refocus attention on government helping the private sector to grow high tech / digital sector that will really raise high-quality jobs, productivity, high-quality exports, and diversifying and strengthening our economy in general and so on.
So let the civil servants struggle with how to run the trains as best as possible and let’s instead focus on how to build up our high tech / digital sector even more. Any ideas?
August 25, 2021
The problem is that as soon as a British firm makes good in tech, whether it be chip design, defence, supermarkets or electronics an American hedge fund comes along, buys them up, shuts the factory down and moves the jobs and the intelectual property stateside.
This may benefit the Treasury short term, but it is actually preventing the British commerce revival that after Brexit, we need. World class British firms should be capturing export markets and expanding, not being asset-stripped by predatory American buyout funds
August 27, 2021
@Sakara,
Great comment.
But our country (like most of West) is becoming more and more obsessed by short-term financial gain. Work Ethic and enjoying one’s work is becoming more of a rarity.
Money always flows from work Ethic and enjoying what you do. In fact, there’s an abundance of money (AND happiness!). But the modern world is fast forgetting this and more and more becoming obsessed by money as the over-riding goal. I’d rather be a poor farmer in the Yorkshire Dales, and HAPPY than follow THIS miserable rat-race philosophy.
August 27, 2021
But you don’t have to be a poor farmer. You can still do well financially by focusing on the long-term. I just meant being a miserable rat is not worth it – I’d rather be poor farmer I meant. There is so much misery / sour faces in our GREAT ‘modern’ country because of this modern rat-race philosophy (imported from USA to a degree).
August 25, 2021
REPLY to Sakara Gold :
I was not a fan of British Rail but I think we’re not comparing like with like as there have been enormous improvements in technology which even British Rail would have implemented with consequent service improvements.
The biggest improvment to our railways would be to go driverless.
August 25, 2021
SG
Reply to reply
Hence the old adage “nationalised and paralysed”.
August 25, 2021
I would dispute the service was worse when it was nationalised. I went to school for 7 years – on a British Rail train to Ealing Broadway and then on to the tube. I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I was late for school because of the trains.
When I worked in London, train to Paddington – then the tube – issues were very rare.
There were strikes, though. They caused me a 10 mile bike ride to school.
reply Punctuality and usage improved in the early years of privatisation.
August 25, 2021
The prime minister’s first mother-in-law, Gaia Servadio, has died and left behind a most valuable comment, which I think we should never forget. “For him,” she said of Johnson, “the truth does not exist”.
August 26, 2021
wonderful quote. I wonder how long it took her to realise the CV entry.
August 25, 2021
Could it also be the London Weighting Allowance for State employees when you don’t have to go near London is a massive bonus in addition to not paying for season tickets. Given that the managers of Government Departments are also working from home and enjoying all their extra free money there is no one there to encourage a different attitude.
Still XR is making sure it can replace the reduced pollution and congestion with the barmy operations in London. Criminal damage and a ‘free pass’
August 25, 2021
XR = New Conservatives
August 25, 2021
Indeed – there is no ‘rebellion’ in Extinction Rebellion. They are pushing on an open door with government, the police and the courts.
August 25, 2021
XR are indeed approved, sanctioned and authorised by this government
August 25, 2021
Poor old Dominic Raab… “With hindsight I wouldn’t have gone on holiday”…
Hmm… with the Taliban rampaging through Afghanistan before he went away, you didn’t need to use much “foresight”
August 25, 2021
I see everyone under 26 now gets free dentistry in Scotland, and all NHS car parking charges in Scotland have been abolished. And of course they already get free prescriptions.
Socialist nirvana paid for by the English.
August 25, 2021
+1; The only sensible policy is to reverse the devolution.
August 26, 2021
NO !!!
Indy Ref 2.0 and, if they still won’t bugger off, 3.0, 4.0 etc etc.
August 25, 2021
As they say in USA…”thats your tax dollar at work”
(but only the English tax payer)
August 25, 2021
Iain. Everyone in Scotland has free dental check ups so are you talking about treatment too?
August 25, 2021
yes
August 25, 2021
Iain. How very nice for them. Once again the English lose out and pay for the rest of the nation. No wonder Sturgeon is so popular.
August 25, 2021
moneysaving expert.com ‘Under 26s can now get free NHS dental treatment in Scotland’, 25/08/2021.
August 25, 2021
And what do you do about it? Vote Tory?
August 25, 2021
These people need to be careful what they wish for. What’s to stop employers off-shoring their jobs to countries where rates of pay are lower? If their job can be done remotely it can be done abroad. We even saw the government’s communication director working from Canada during lockdown which means paying her a huge salary and not getting any tax back.
Personally, I know of many instances where people are not actually working. They spend time walking the dog, doing housework, visiting friends and family. I also know of people who juggle more than one full-time job.
Customer service is dire from many companies but it’s a bit like political parties who are all equally bad so there’s no point moving. It’s no wonder that productivity is going down.
In the long term, these people will lose out as networking and mentoring can be key to a successful career. The workplace is somewhere to make friends and even partners. The impact of society needs to be taken into account.
August 25, 2021
Juggling more than one full time job from home is a fantastic idea.
Do you think it will catch on?
August 25, 2021
SirJ you’ve falling into the trap of only talking about public sector workers – private sector workers haven’t got the choice to commuter rebel……even if it looks good on paper in westminister the private sector workers cant walk, cycle or buy £40k electric cars to commute
August 25, 2021
The changes have seen benefits for all commuters, not just those who travel by train. I’m sure there are as many folks who are grateful not to have to sit in their car in queues on roads like the M4 every day, are looking at the amount they are no longer spending on fuel and the dead time they now get back to do something more useful with. No more calling home (on the hands-free) because there’s a traffic jam and you’ve no idea how long you will be stuck in it.
All of this will knock a big hole in government tax revenues (almost 2/3rds of the price you pay at the pump is tax).
The reality is that some of us having been working from home or hybrid working for years, decades even (it was the end of the 90s when I last went to the same office 5 days a week, week in week out). For many jobs in the modern economy, all you really need is connectivity (internet, phone etc.) and once you have that, you can work from anywhere and travel only as needed.
It’s good to see that a lot of both private and public sector organisations have been forced to learn this reality. It takes pressure off the transport system and reduces demand on both the roads and the rail network to the benefit of those whose roles do require them to be in a particular place every day.
August 25, 2021
“…a dearth of reliable information about what has gone wrong…”
My favourites:
1 The train is delayed/cancelled because of a lack of resources. I.e. we’ve run out of something. We’re not going to tell you what.
2 The train is delayed/cancelled because of an incident. I.e. something has happened. We’re not going to tell you what.
August 26, 2021
3 The train is delayed/cancelled owing to management incompetence. Now, that would be a reason I could believe.
August 25, 2021
We have passed a milestone.
5 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide. This is an impressive achievement in just 9 months.
Today Germany will surpass 100m doses. France will surpass 85m doses and, according to Bloomberg, has now surpassed the U.K. in terms of the % of its population who are now fully jabbed. EU countries Malta, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Ireland are already ahead of us. Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and a few others are likely to overtake us soon.
When the vaccine rollout it apparently a Brexit success how come we’ve lost out to numerous EU countries?
August 25, 2021
Even you can’t be quite so stupid as to fail to see the unequivocal success of the vaccine rollout in the UK, thanks to Brexit, and the irrelevance of the comparative numbers today. And if really are too stupid to get it, you are the village idiot and not worth wasting time talking to.
August 25, 2021
The rollout of the vaccine in the UK had nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit.
August 25, 2021
Well, it kind of did. We were not part of the EU procurement scheme, so we ordered earlier.
Why the EU felt it was anything to do with them, I have no idea. They seem to act as a supra government. Weird.
August 26, 2021
It didn’t. Each member state had a choice of being part of a collective procurement scheme or purchasing individually (as the UK did). Being an EU member state would not have stopped the UK from making exactly the same purchasing decisions .
August 26, 2021
Mike is correct.
The EU took longer to give their approval via the European Medicines Agency and this delayed the puchasing of vaccine doses in European countries.
December 2nd 2020 the UK MRHA approved the first vaccine.
December 21st 2020 the EU EMA approved their first vaccine
Three important weeks were lost whilst the UK went away and organised the purchasing of millions of doses.
August 25, 2021
Whoopi-do!
These are the countries the IMF expects to have recouped if not exceeded their pre covid GDP level by the end of 2021:
China,Vietnam,Turkey,Ireland,India,Korea,USA,Norway,Paraguay,Australia,Luxembourg,Israel,Romania,Poland,Indonesia,Russia,New Zealand,Canada,Kazakhstan,Switzerland,Bulgaria,Sweden.
Some notable omissions there.
August 25, 2021
A childish tantrum. Stop whining and write something original and worthy of response.
Do your children know you scrawl this miserable rubbish? Poor kids.
August 25, 2021
Andy. Who gives a stuff? Sod off to the EU if you think it’s so great. You already profess to own a house in France. What’s stopping you? We’ll all come and wave you off.
August 25, 2021
Everyone in the UK who wanted the vaccine have already gotten it, I go the excellent AZ vaccine back in May and I’m lower down the priority list.
There is no prize here for coming last.
August 25, 2021
Reading of BJ offering the Taliban “Hundreds of MIllions of pounds”????Is this true – if so WHY?
August 25, 2021
Apparently it is to prevent the Taliban from keeping Afghans in Afghanistan where they belong, and instead provide the all-important supply of migrants.
August 25, 2021
So we give them millions of pounds, to let millions of people out, to, inevitably, come to the UK, where they then cost us billions of pounds while changing the UK forever. And of course – WE the taxpayer, have NO say in becoming the slaves, as the world is brought here for us to keep?
August 25, 2021
Is it safe to assume you voted Tory in the last election?
It’s a shame UKIP disintegrated and Nigel stood the troops down so that ‘Brexit would get done’.
And, safe to assume you are a fan of first-past-the-post? If so, you are happy with a system that allows a party into absolute power who can put two fingers up to the people who voted for them.
August 25, 2021
Boris(or being an empty vessel,his handlers) is trying to hang on to our soft power “empire”.He apparently hasn’t learned what happens when soft power collides with hard power(or even an unsophisticated mediaeval horde)-
SPLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!
Who would have thought it!
August 25, 2021
Will the taxpayer get its London weighting payment back now we don’t have to work from London?
August 25, 2021
For many employers and employees working from home makes good economic sense. I have long advocated this to several companies I have worked with.
However, it obviously is not a good idea if you have to put a message on a website saying “some services may be delayed since many of our staff are working from home”. I have seen this kind of message a few times and, especially where someone is customer-facing, working from home is a bad idea.
Horses for courses. Let the market decide.
August 25, 2021
Ken. Nothing has run as smoothly as it did now there are people working from home. Judging by the number of people I see walking around and jogging etc who are normally at work, there isn’t much work being done. My friend works for the NHS and she is working harder to cover for those at home.
August 26, 2021
‘those at home?’ – – – – -shhh.
August 25, 2021
Good to hear. Another business flourishing ‘despite Brexit’.
August 25, 2021
This was meant to be a congratulation to Newmania’s business success
August 25, 2021
The railways are finished, Sir John. And so are most of those presently WFH.
The slump in the railways is because of the slump in our towns and cities. You cannot run a railway on dwindled passenger numbers – the high residual costs remain even if you cut half the staff (which you’re going to have to, even if you cut their wages.)
Our first world position is over and this will become evident very soon. All Boris can do is tell us it’s for our own good, for the environment or to stop us dying of something that only kills a tiny fraction of those infected.
August 25, 2021
Why? Our company makes money by designing and manufacturing electronic products. There is no downside to staff working from home if they do the work.
Right now our biggest problem is a shortage of skilled staff, one downside when the economy is doing well.
August 28, 2021
Just think, you used to be able to recruit freely from a further 450 million of the world’s best-educated.
August 25, 2021
As someone who has worked from home for 35 years of a 45 years career, I can testify what a hugely more efficient working environment one can have as well as a far better lifestyle. I started when there was not even a fax machine, just a clumsy landline phone, yet we were able to conduct work very satisfactorily, even then.
More recently, before the pandemic started, I had to pick my wife up from Heathrow at around 5pm and decided to drive down the A4 to Reading and then go across on the A33 to Basingstoke to join the M3.
Apart for the sheer number of glittering and expensive palaces masquerading as office blocks, the traffic was horrendous. It took almost 90 minutes to traverse that relatively short distance to Reading from the airport. Our car was surrounded by Mercedes, Audis and BMWs, no doubt almost all company cars, crawling along, each with only one person aboard. I thought at the time, what a waste of valuable time, let alone the pollution generated and the cost.
The owners and managers of the businesses no doubt feel good and adopt a sense of immense pride when they drive up to their posh office block, Emperors over everything they survey. Yet they are wasting millions by not adopting and embracing home working.
Workers who have properly embraced the lifestyle that comes with working from home never want to go back. It is the way of the future.
August 25, 2021
Off topic, I have a little letter in the Irish News:
https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/letterstotheeditor/2021/08/25/news/apologies-for-campaign-of-violence-should-start-with-british-government-2426042/
“Simply not true that there’s no alternative to present protocol”
“Edward Murphy – ‘No alternative to protocol’ (August 19) – asks what changes may be made to the protocol. I have an email from the Cabinet Office replying to several queries that I made and it states that the proposals in the Command Paper:
“…would mean that full customs and SPS processes are applied only to goods genuinely destined for the EU while allowing goods made to UK standards and regulated by UK authorities to circulate freely in Northern Ireland.”
This seems perfectly sensible to me, as the EU certainly has a legitimate interest in the nature of the goods entering its own territory but no comparable interest in goods circulating outside of its Single Market.
Whether that be in Northern Ireland, or in the rest of the UK, or in any other ‘third country’ – or are we to suppose, for example, that the EU should be dictating to the US government what goods are permitted in their territory?
Furthermore the UK government makes a generous offer to help the EU protect its Single Market by bringing in “new legislation to deter anyone in the UK looking to export to the EU goods which do not meet EU standards or to evade these enforcement processes”.
It is simply not true that there is no alternative to the present protocol, and nor has that ever been an accurate description of the situation.”
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
May we talk about the Lorry Driver Rebellion next ?
It transpires that worker’s wages WERE suppressed by loose EU borders then. That the job became so dire that British people didn’t bother doing it.
In all other ‘menial’ jobs wages are going up too since Brexit.
Doubtless the Andys who run the Tory party won’t allow a correction to happen.
——
Also the EU is responsible for the migrant crisis because it created a direct route through Europe. I saw it on a trip to Milan and predicted the boat crisis on this site about five years ago. Without armed military patrols my visit to Milan would have been scary – in fact it still was on occaision even despite that.
August 25, 2021
PS Allegra Stratton (ex beeboid and Blairite) has a lot more say in number 10 than you back benchers do, Sir John.
You seem more like controlled opposition rather than part of an 80 seat majority posting the odd click-bait comment on an industry that is now dead (the railways.)
HS2 is so obviously corrupt now.
August 25, 2021
I thought it was Labour & the Green Party who had the 80 seat majority
August 25, 2021
Off subject but VERY important.
Mr Gove has revealed that Johnson has capitulated to the eu over fishing rights, how many other important things has has Johnson caved in on and not had the guts to tell the public?
Conservatives need to find a strong leader if they are to survive, politicians are at an all time low as far as I am concerned. No political party are trustworthy any more
August 25, 2021
+1
August 25, 2021
MFD
Agreed. Enough is enough, Fishing, money to the Taliban, Net Zero, HS2, Dingy Invasion, this leader is well past his sell by date. It is like a death from a thousand cuts, totally gutless and two faced , as are his cabinet.
The senior experienced MPs have got to get A’s into gear and sort this out before they totally destroy what is left of this country. Push has got to go to shove.
This is getting frightening and dangerous.
August 26, 2021
+1. Johnson must go. He lacks resolve. The next time he commissions something for No 10 could I suggest that he asks for a custom piece of furniture, named the Irresolute Desk.
August 25, 2021
Dear Sir John, Working from Home is not the only alternative to commuting. One can live near one’s work or work near where one lives. Covid-inspired WFH will mostly be temporary, perhaps cutting commuting into big cities and the need for office space by little more than 5 per cent. But I suspect that the experience will cause many people, particularly families, to re-evaluate these alternatives. They both come at a cost: working within walking or cycling distance of home can cut incomes and scope for advancement; living near inner-city work can be prohibitively expensive, especially for larger families.
The benefits are also great. Commuting at rush hour by train is unhealthy (a great source of colds anf flu), mentally stressful, expensive in both time and money, frequently degrading and also bad for the climate.
August 25, 2021
You should all read the https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/great-british-railways-williams-shapps-plan-for-rail We are going back to autonomous regional railways. Track and Trains all in five vertically integrated entities. Passenger Service Contracts will replace the disaster that is the privatisation franchising model that the government had to bail-out last March.
“Even as the pandemic deepened, the Spending Review in November 2020 committed over £40 billion for rail capital projects over the next four years, including £22.8 billion for HS2 to 2025 and a further £17.5 billion in capital funding for renewals, upgrades and enhancements of the existing network up to 2024.”
Passenger numbers have dropped 80% in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020. They can’t all be working from home, can they? Before the pandemic hit, the current version British Rail was costing about 30 pence per passenger kilometre; of which the passenger was paying on a broad average about 17.5 p/km.
August 25, 2021
Does this mean the government will admit that HS2 is just an expensive white elephant? Perhaps, then, the money being wasted on that could be spent on existing lines. I believe many people would travel by train for pleasure if the services were improved.
August 25, 2021
Jones. Defo.
August 25, 2021
Having flexibility in my life, I’m able to get some very good deals for leisure travel by train, about half the usual off-peak fare – and that’s enough to attract me into London on a monthly basis. But the cost of a season-ticket, plus NI, plus income tax is sufficient to put me off looking for salaried employment in the capital. I’ll stay retired.
August 25, 2021
The piece is true up to point, but even on a sunny day if everyone else were to magically stay at home to make the journey easier – and even if the traisn ran on time – a commute would still potentially be some number of hours.
Nobody wants that any more. Except perhaps those who treat work as social life or a knocking shop.
The great myth has been debunked – people are more prductive when WFH. That was the last bastion of the old ways, with poor managers claiming that we couldn’t WFH, we all had to be seen and counted.
Now they try to claim, rather weakly, that people will suffer from lack of socialisation and loneliness. Wrong again, that may have held some water during full lockdown, but with restrictions all but gone people will have more time to socialise – and they still meet other people electronically in meetings etc through Zoom/Teams (which is only supposed to be social in the sense of collaboration on work matters, nothing else).
I hope there’s no going back. It was a nightmare.
August 25, 2021
The glib assurance office workers give about being ‘perfectly able to do their jobs perfectly well from home’ has the air of the self-indulgent complacently marking their own homework. Since March 2020 I’ve had to deal with countless gross examples of poor communication, including an indolent refusal to reply to emails or answer telephone calls, as well as unexplained delivery failures, hold-ups and errors by banks, local councils, government departments, commercial retailers, GPs, MPs, professional bodies, websites… and that’s to name only a few.
And all have ruthlessly told themselves that ‘this is fine’.
What is clearly absent is the collective level of managerial coordination, standard-setting and -checking, and personnel discipline. The workforce has now declared itself completely unaccountable (the GPs being a model for the rest to follow). Lying excuses have become a staple of national working life.
This cannot continue.
August 25, 2021
It’s not long since the Tories were crowing about how much more traffic there was on the railways since their various privatisation cock-ups.
There are different forms of commuting, the local commuting where people travel short distances to work in a commercial centre, travelling in from the suburbs and commuting long distances to work in a city. Many of our great cities are now under foreign occupation as a result of Tory and Labour rubbing our noses in diversity. This has markedly increased the number of people commuting who have exchanged an expensive, hostile environment where only the very rich and the very poor live, for one in which they have sacrificed leisure time to provide a better environment for their families, colloquially known as white flight.
We can only hope those who have taken over our cities enjoy the cultural and educational opportunities that our great cities afford which are so sadly lacking elsewhere.
Reply The railway is nationalised
August 25, 2021
So the French are saying we are paying them to do the impossible regarding immigrants. So why are we paying them?
August 25, 2021
So that the Government can say things to please people like you.
August 25, 2021
Mic. Not a very intelligent answer. You could do better and you are certainly not funny or entertaining.
August 26, 2021
nothing anybody in any sort of authority could please you – anarchist through and through!
August 25, 2021
I used to commute 60 miles a day by car, the round trip consumed 3 gallons od diesel a day.
Later I rented a flat close by, then as the flat had to be returned I had to spend around £200 a week on train (I no longer can drive), hotel and food for four days a week.
However, since covid I have been working from home doing my job (microchip design), this involves mainly working at a computer and sometimes fiddling with hardware. Since working from home I generally have done a similar amount of work as in the office. But the work has been far better thought out, the designs are smaller (more efficient use of chip resources), use less power and offer more functionality.
I believe it is because I have less distractions, less hassle from commuting, and more time to work on things, I stop when I want to – not when the office closes. There are some things that are easier in the office, using multiple bits of test equipment, meetings and getting to know new staff. But the revelation I have had is with good internet working at home can be more efficient for certain jobs.
I’m sure some people abuse the opportunity of working from home, but this is a problem for managers to resolve with those staff. Now I’m using a fraction of the oil I used to, and doing more work, I find it odd no one is talking abut this benefit.
August 26, 2021
Reply to Gareth
Very true that creative and problem-solving work benefit both productivity and job satisfaction greatly like a virtuous circle with less oil as a bonus as I too experienced when WFH as self-employed. The later point is key. No results = No Pay. Payment by results should replace existing arrangements to avoid distractions etc.
August 25, 2021
deaths running way above average, seems the ruling classes dont care about deaths not caused by covid.
what are we paying all that tax into the nhs for exactly?
August 25, 2021
BBC 9pm news – no mention of covid, channel immigration nor XR protest