The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
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@thecasualcritic @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 or indeed just anyone mentioning Brexit as a *factor*, let alone a cause, when sluggish growth/productivity/trade/anything else is covered...
@thecasualcritic @KimSJ @wayne @ChrisMayLA6 actually more than Brexit I get annoyed about the wall-to-wall "immigrants are bad/immigration is high/small boats are illegal" and "taxes are too high/increasing taxes is bad". Neither of these hegemonies are ever ever questioned.
Also I am increasingly entertained by how much time Chris Mason dedicates to how bad Starmer/Reeves are. The "Reeves lied!" thing went on for about two weeks -
The Dutch have been quietly getting on with normalising the four day working week, and it seems to not have had the negative impact many critics have claimed, with the Netherlands' economy still one of the most successful in the EU;
as so often, real political economic change can be organic rather than forced, and in the UK while at an early stage of this process, the four day working week is slowly but surely e becoming more widely adopted. Good!
#workers #FourDayWeek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y85xdyw3o@ChrisMayLA6 They've had this for a long time. When I lived in
in the late 80's, it seemed nobody came back from lunch on Friday and weren't at work until after lunch on Monday. 
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@wayne @ChrisMayLA6 the BBC has form on this - South Cambs DC has used a four-day week to solve a really bad recruitment and retention problem with positive results, but the article spends most of its time trying to find negative voxpops from people who don't know anything about it:
BBC News - Can South Cambridgeshire council do five days' work in four? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l97gnpyd5o?app-referrer=searchAnd of course, rather than engage with the evidence, central government has simply decided to abolish South Cambs DC as part of its unitarization programme. Sigh.
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And of course, rather than engage with the evidence, central government has simply decided to abolish South Cambs DC as part of its unitarization programme. Sigh.
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne I mean the Cambs councils do need making sense of, but the "stop talking about 4 day weeks!" message coming from central doesn't look good for the policy, certainly...
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@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne I mean the Cambs councils do need making sense of, but the "stop talking about 4 day weeks!" message coming from central doesn't look good for the policy, certainly...
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne also I suspect the new reorg is going to royally screw over East Cambs
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@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne I mean the Cambs councils do need making sense of, but the "stop talking about 4 day weeks!" message coming from central doesn't look good for the policy, certainly...
My view on unitarization is a straightforward, but surprisingly rarely-encountered one: being a district councillor, if you do it properly, is more than a 50% full-time equivalent job; and being a county councillor, if you do it properly, is more than a 50% full-time equivalent job: hence, bundling both roles together in a unitary council guarantees that the job won't be done properly.
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My view on unitarization is a straightforward, but surprisingly rarely-encountered one: being a district councillor, if you do it properly, is more than a 50% full-time equivalent job; and being a county councillor, if you do it properly, is more than a 50% full-time equivalent job: hence, bundling both roles together in a unitary council guarantees that the job won't be done properly.
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne in Cambs it's more complicated because of various other orgs being involved. This was drawn up many years ago and is now out of date as they're now talking about yet another growth corp and whatever it was Gove invented.
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@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne in Cambs it's more complicated because of various other orgs being involved. This was drawn up many years ago and is now out of date as they're now talking about yet another growth corp and whatever it was Gove invented.
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne however I do agree that there is way too much work for single councillors. But the current stakeholder situation is an absolute dogs dinner. I'm also pretty sure reorganising it along existing boundaries and current leaders' preferences will help barely a jot.
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@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne in Cambs it's more complicated because of various other orgs being involved. This was drawn up many years ago and is now out of date as they're now talking about yet another growth corp and whatever it was Gove invented.
@only_ohm @ChrisMayLA6 @wayne oh hang on, looks like @AntonyCarpen updated it here https://cambridgetownowl.com/
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I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge workers peaks at around 20 hours a week, plateaus until about 40, and then declines, so someone working 30 hours a week will achieve as much as someone working 40 (the problem comes when someone decides to use the extra time off to work a second job, which then hits their productivity in both). Above around 60 hours a week, net productivity tends to be negative: you (or other people) spend longer fixing your mistakes than making forward progress.
But a couple of years ago I was chatting to a researcher who studied productivity in construction workers and I was initially surprised that it was similar. Bit it makes sense: construction work has a lot of classes of error that are incredibly expensive to fix. Pour concrete in the wrong place and that’s a few person-days of jackhammering to fix. Misread the plans and put power or plumbing into the wrong place and you may need to rip out some finishing or even structural bits to be able to fix it (or need to adjust the design to work around it). Working when not properly rested and relaxed in such an environment can easily flip you into net-negative productivity.
Ever increasing 'productivity' to feed never ending corporate greed is always going to crash.
The capitalist system and goals are wrong.
We need a do-over.
Now.
-- gem
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Ever increasing 'productivity' to feed never ending corporate greed is always going to crash.
The capitalist system and goals are wrong.
We need a do-over.
Now.
-- gem
@gemlog
There's a story about an American economist who goes to China. He visits a dam construction site, and he sees hundreds of men working with shovels and wheelbarrows. "Why not use backhoes, excavators and bulldozers?" he asks. "China has many men, and we must provide them with jobs," is the reply. "Then why not take away the shovels and give them spoons?"1/2
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@gemlog
There's a story about an American economist who goes to China. He visits a dam construction site, and he sees hundreds of men working with shovels and wheelbarrows. "Why not use backhoes, excavators and bulldozers?" he asks. "China has many men, and we must provide them with jobs," is the reply. "Then why not take away the shovels and give them spoons?"1/2
@gemlog
Increasing productivity simply means that we can accomplish more with a given amount of labour, normally because of better tools, techniques and more skilled workers. The benefits might all flow to the employer, all to the employee, or potentially to the government. But at the end of the day, for society overall to become more prosperous, we want productivity to rise.2/2
