As the FT has noted:
The vast majority of Grant Thornton's UK employees want to spend less than half of the working week in the office after the pandemic, according to the accountant's chief executive David Dunckley.
Apparently, 88 per cent of 4,600 people surveyed wanted to spend most of their time working from home.
It is, unfortunately, not possible to know what the data on this question might have been before coronavirus. No one asked in the same way because no one really took this option seriously in the way that they do now.
What I do know is that I was on Ely station last night when the 16.45 (or thereabouts) out of Kings Cross arrived. In my long experience this was a packed train before March 202o. Last night it was almost empty. Things have changed.
The reality is that we seem in collective denial about this change.
There is still a hankering for two weeks abroad in the sun, as if this defines the good life. There is a denial that Covid is here to stay, not least because we have a government not intent in eliminating it.
And the reality that Covid will change demand for healthcare in the UK, and with that what else we can do, is so far ignored.
It is as if there is a wish that this whole issue will go away. But as the Lancet points out today, one in three COVID19 survivors received a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis within six months of infection, as an observational study of more than 230,000 patient health records published in The Lancet estimates. That reflects continuing, ongoing and significant need.
The reality is that Covid has now changed a great deal of what we think of as normal. Much of it is simply not going back to where it was.
I suspect holidays in the sun are going to be as rare as people working full time in offices.
I think the state will have to do a great deal more in coming years, and if the private sector denies it the resources it requires to meet need then tax will increase to restrict market based activity so that public need is met.
And some things we assumed, like steady train travel growth, driven by commuting, will not happen, with big changes coming for public transport, with a bigger focus in local transport becoming much more important, and massive changes for city centres likely, with as many consequences as the online shopping revolution creates.
At the same time, working out how to live with greater isolation - which everything from increased home working for many implies will become the norm - poses challenges we have just not got our heads around as yet (unless, like me, you've done it for 20 years).
The point I am making is a simple one, but essential. If a great deal about our society, way of working, travelling and interacting is going to change - and I think it is - we need to get our thinking straight in what this means and embrace the uncertainty it creates. I see no evidence that the government is anywhere near doing this.
The question is then, who is it who is going to build the politics that understands the new normal?
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“Dear Keir,
I am 81. I have always voted Labour, or — since I now live in a Conservative/LibDem marginal — LibDem. I was a strong Remainer. My career has been mainly in public service here and abroad in the environmental sector. Now you know “where I come from”.
The Conservative Party has morphed from a centre right party into the English National Party. The name has not changed but its core philosophy has altered fundamentally. I get the impression that the Labour Party has not realised the full significance of this. And perhaps the English have been slow to see it — but it is very apparent to people living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
One thing ought to be clear: the Labour Party cannot be a second English National Party. Waving union flags and beating jingoistic drums (albeit more softly) will never convince those who want the true thing and will embarrass and alienate those who find this kind of gesture nationalism offensive. And yet the government has been able to define this as the playing field upon which you feel you are required to operate” et-al..
https://westenglandbylines.co.uk/open-letter-to-keir-starmer-leader-of-the-opposition/?fbclid=IwAR3Lpcdh2MZMo-jfSuj5lUSik3xKhI23DNSxQ6tu4UOdreNz8uatgWF55PU
Looks like the office-renting business is a loser now…
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/04/05/office-slump-gets-ugly-in-houston-san-francisco-los-angeles-manhattan-chicago-washington-dc/
This issue goes unmentioned but needs to be addressed. With WFH and/or hybrid arrangements there is and will continue to be a massive oversupply of office space in our major city centres and a huge knock-on effect for all the service industries (everything from sandwich bars up). Will these cities become doughnuts, sweet and light around the outside but hollow in the middle?
There needs to be some clear long term thinking and a strategy for addressing the issue. E.g. surplus office space being repurposed as or replaced with (affordable!!!??) residential accommodation. Some people (not including me) like living in cities.
But I forget, this government doesn’t do strategy. It only does tactics.
I agree that strategic planning is necessary, but who is going to do it? Two examples from Slough: Burger King recently closed an office building near the town centre and it was converted to flats without even going on the market as office space; the (Labour) town council’s strategic plan has a huge expansion of office space planned + massive home building plans, including digging up green belt land.
The council seem not to have noticed all the people leaving the country after Brexit and have not factored in the pandemic at all, whereas whoever owned the Burger King building has seen the trends and reacted.
I usually lean more to public than private, but I think there are too many snouts in the trough here and at national level the piggies are that much more greedy … So who do we trust to do real planning?
Many of these rushed office to residential conversions are absolutely dire – tired old buildings with cramped internal spaces and little or no outside space; poor insulation, poor light, poor ventilation; badly sited for residential use, in industrial park locations, with pollution and noise but few local amenities or services or public transport connections. They can certainly be quick and cheap (that is, slapdash and corners cut) but they are the slums of the future. It does not take too much imagination to fear another Grenfell situation before long.
Agreed
Much evidence on this
I’ve been working from home for over a year now. No indication from my employer as to even a possible date for a return to the office.
When/if that return happens, my personal preference would be to split my time between home working and office working. I’ve found many positives to working from home (e.g. no commute) but some negatives (e.g. looking at a screen for longer each day – meetings and courses that would be done away from ‘my desk’ whilst in the office are now done at ‘my desk’ at home). My employer has said that it will offer the hybrid option of home working and office working and I hope it does live up to that promise.
After travelling to work by public transport (train and, during my time working in London, tube) for nearly all of my working life, I have made one return journey by train since mid-March last year and that was not work-related. I wonder how busy the trains, I used for work before then, are now.
The impact of the pandemic goes far beyond the medical impact on those who have tested positive for Covid-19 some of whom, very sadly, have passed away and the mental health impact on so many. But, our current (so-called) government don’t have the capacity to see the ‘bigger picture’ and, even if they did, would only be interested in how it could benefit them or their mates.
Craig
Please don’t let it be Paul Embery and Co.
?
There is a train of thought in some parts of the Labour party – the ‘Blue Labour’ arm shall we say – that thinks that the best thing Labour can do to get into power is to pander to the pro-BREXIT, anti woke, overtly nationalistic attitudes seen in the ‘Red Wall’ and other areas.
As Timothy Snyder points out in his book ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ that vying for power over a group of angry, hopeless, abused voters who wear their suffering as a badge of pride will only lead to a race to the bottom as far as politics and society is concerned.
Paul Embery basically puts this proposition forward in his book ‘Despised’, supported by people like Maurice Glasman and that key failed political advisor Nick Timothy.
Embery (a prominent Fire Brigade union member) is entitled to be angry and frustrated with the Labour party’s lack of progress. But I read his book and despite agreeing with him about the lack of real management of immigration, there was nothing else I could agree with at all. In fact his proposition was positively scary. A Labour party as suggested by him I would not vote for.
I wrote a review of his book on Amazon but they told me it was too long. Although Embery wants the sort of things we discuss here (social justice etc.,) he has no new ideas (such as PQE or MMT investment in new technologies etc.,) other than the ‘new’ idea of outdoing the Tories at their own game.
As I said at the end of my review ‘Paul Embery is a fireman: he should know better than to play with fire’ – because that is what he is advocating.
Also – there is this negation of history present in ‘Despised’ that we see in Neo-liberalism, Fascism and Communism .
For example, The Labour Party (along with the original Liberal Party) was the original ‘woke’ party in British politics – it brought the concerns and travails of less powerful people to the fore of British politics. Embery seems to forget this and thinks that only a sort of poorly defined (by him) ‘working class’ is entitled to have a voice and pours his derision over other groups (LGBT,BLM etc.,) seeking social justice.
All I can do is invite people here to read ‘Despised’ for yourself. But in answer to the question your blog poses, I hope the answer does not come from the direction that Paul Embery is suggesting for the Labour party. Not one bit.
BTW – I hate the ‘woke’ label – it is derogatory of people who value history, who are ever-vigilant about how tenuous our grip on decency and democracy really is.
These people know the words of Milan Kundera in that ‘Mans struggle with power is the struggle of memory against forgetting’.
Embery and his advocates have done just that: Forgotten.
Of the many issues that, in my opinion, will come to the fore post pandemic, the glaring disparities between the London and South East region, and the rest of the country figure highly.
In terms of infrastructure, most regions are appallingly served by inadequate rail and bus services, and a poverty stricken social and cultural settlement that would disgrace an ambitious Third World country. And those are just for starters.
It would, for example, have been a very brave politician indeed to suggest to the country that a free, fully comprehensive broadband network from Lands End to John O’Groats be created, but Covid has proved the need for such a facility if the economy and country at large are to have any hope of adapting and developing in these new times.
On the same theme, there are plenty of regional rail lines cut by Beeching that could usefully be restored, and new ones added.
To all of this must be added the Green New Deal to lead in Carbon reduction and the creation of good employment opportunities that the region’s desperately need.
I am talking about serious “levelling up”, currently one of this government’s useless slogans which, it is hoping, people have forgotten already.
Unfortunately for them, those of us with foresight can see that it is an important key to the future, but their hopes hang on a return to the failing past, because they think that they could control that.
I am very familiar with that train service, and your estimate of it’s departure time from King’s Cross is extremely accurate – according to the timetable it is actually 16:44, and yes it used it be heaving – more than once on that service I found myself standing until Ely – it was between there and King’s Lynn that seats would be easily available. I think you are right that many of us did not even think about working from home before March 2020.
I know that service too well!
Just got a disturbing bit of news yesterday …taxi firms are struggling to stay operational just now …and may end up going under. People not traveling to airports and train stations, people staying home and not going shopping, people not going to pubs and restaurants–especially in the evenings–children not going to school …all these things have taken their toll.
The firm we use regularly (have been for well over 30 years) has had to suspend all night services between 10pm and 6am. They are losing drivers in worrying quantities. Whether they can build up those numbers again, in time to save the service, nobody knows.
I live in an urban area, outside a major city. (Glasgow.) Our bus services are good, but of course buses don’t go everywhere. And getting to a bus means taking a good long walk from our house. Carrying things back home, such as a couple weeks’ worth of groceries, becomes problematic. Getting to our medical appointments and dental appointments will be nearly impossible without the taxis. We don’t run a car, and our ability to walk is either nonexistent or limited. Losing our taxis would be devastating.
The consequences of this pandemic are widespread indeed. And what the ‘new normal’ will be is anybody’s guess. That includes working environments, transportation, etc. The one thing that’s sure, however …the longer this pandemic goes on, the worse the outcome will be.
I am aware that you are right about this – it is happening here as well
We have no idea what the new normal is going to be
Those who still seem to be assuming that it is the same as the old one are wrong – but we need to ensure that essential services survive
I lived and worked in Bristol until my late 30’s leaving in 1998.
I could and did walk to work.
What amazed me was going to visit a friend who was living in Chatham, in the 80’s. Getting on a Kent Coast express at Victoria, standing room only.stopped at Bromley then Strood where I got off after about an hour.. Still packed it headed into the night.
I just cant understand why anyone would want to put up with that every day