Calling time on the laptop layabouts...
IT’S THE latest issue to divide the country. There’s no longer a need to bother about Brexit or joust about Covid jabs, the newest and deepest battle lines are all about where’s the right place to do justice to a much used four letter word...work. On this page last week we discussed how a new ugly style of apartheid has entered our workplace. As cleaners, canteen staff, security guards and maintenance workers troop into their places of work, the newly named “laptop” class stay at home, bleating the unbelievable drivel that they can achieve more from their kitchen tables in their dressing gowns than they can at their offices. What utter tosh!
Last week fresh impetus was rightly directed at this outrage when it emerged the boss of the Passport Office, Abi Tierney, inset below, has reportedly been spending a considerable amount of time working from her home in Leicestershire.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Leicestershire whatsoever.
Indeed, as my late grandmother lived there I don’t need to be reminded of the delights of places such as Oadby or Ashby de la Zouch.
But, if you’re presiding over the cluster shambles that is the current form of that particular department and you’re presumably in receipt of a pay check in the region of £175,000 per annum, it doesn’t seem a lot to ask for you to actually turn up for work. But she’s living around 100 miles, or a threehour drive, from the office!
The backlog of outstanding applications to clear currently stands at around 700,000, of which 300,000 have yet to be uploaded. If you call them, you could put a child through college in the time it takes to get a human voice.
And then they gleefully trot out the mantra that everything has been affected by the pandemic. Presumably, after delivering that piercing insight on the situation, that particular member of staff needs a long sit down in the back garden with a cup of tea and a Hob Nob.
Meanwhile, families face the daily frustration of not knowing if they’ll be
able to go away on that much cherished – and desperately needed – holiday and business people are having to cancel meetings overseas that could be crucial to help them emerge from the doldrums.
This disgraceful state of affairs is not contained to government departments.
In Cambridge, the paint has only just dried on the county council’s new offices, built in 2020 at a cost of £18million.
But when one resident visited, she was told by a receptionist that no one was working there due to Covid guidelines.
Yet again, the receptionist is expected to be at their place of work – but not the tiers of managers, junior managers and associated legions of form fillers.
This is why Government Efficiencies
Minister Jacob Rees-mogg is absolutely right to be touring Whitehall departments to see how many staff are at their desks, sometimes leaving caustic notes for those who are absent.
Opponents have derided this as “Dickensian,” but that is nonsense.
Put simply: if so many people don’t need to be at their government offices, let’s sell them all off. Imagine the amount of loot that would net the Treasury.
This workplace schism grows ever deeper. During lockdown, there was little rest for the lorry drivers, firefighters, supermarket staff, careworkers, police, nurses and the rest of the NHS – or most of the self-employed.
And after lockdown the situation remains the same. If you work for yourself, there’s no pension pot, sick pay or paid holiday. You just get on with it.
A clearly frustrated Boris Johnson tore into the issue last week, claiming he was ready to “privatise the a***” out of the Passport Office.
But there’s no need for that Prime Minister. Just get them back on their office seats, behind their desks, and get them to crack on.
That’ll get to the bottom of the problem.
WHAT sort of person would book tickets for a show that had acts as diverse as Bill Bailey, Helen Mirren, Mo Farah and Basil Brush?
It’s certainly an eclectic mix, isn’t it?
Yet this is what is being served up as the big set piece of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration.
While there can be no doubt she will desperately miss her late husband the Duke of Edinburgh by her side, the Queen can at least be comforted that he is being spared this all-encompassing parcel of cobblers.
IFYOU ever find yourself seeking a “decent” red, a Fleurie is sure to deliver. And this one is no exception.
The Extra
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£8.50 at Asda.