Our thanks to Nigel for this. Civil service productivity will decline even further as an unsupervised largely female workforce works even less. An extract:

“The climbdown does not bode well for other public sector services attempting to get staff to return to the office. 

Unions hailed the announcement as a ‘breakthrough’ which they said was the first time an office attendance mandate had been broken. 

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) said the deal was ‘more sensible’ than the attempts to force staff to work from the office for two days. 

General secretary Fran Heathcote said: ‘For the first time, a rigid office attendance mandate has been broken and replaced with a more sensible, flexible approach based on what actually works.’ “

Nigel writes:

“A symptom of decline, “flexible working”, “caring responsibilities” “mental health”. The ONS had been for years obsessed with accuracy but post pandemic it made a series of gaffes. Basically its usual checks hadn’t worked. And so it wanted its staff “in” (but actually only 2 days a week).

A decade ago the Swedes were at least honest in that their “solution” to the “pay gap” and men’s focus on work was to get men to work less (long parental leave “compulsory”). Fortunately for their economy their productive sector (male “dominated” ) carried on being busy. Meanwhile our public sector in the UK becomes more and more dysfunctional as it is run for the benefit of its largely female workforce. The cancer spreads as male workers realise that they the ones still working when the office is empty and not wanting to be “mugs” they too take advantage.

“Work /life balance” “flexible working” never includes more work. So though it may not be so bad if the ONS continues to embarrass itself with duff stats it is just one casualty of feminism. As are so many services and even productive industries.”

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