DON’T you love phrases intended to mean the opposite of what they actually say? Such as “excuse
me?” — meaning “if you dare to repeat what you’ve just said, you’ll be in deep trouble”. Or “with all due respect” — meaning “as usual you’re talking complete cobblers, you old fool”.
And last Friday the TUC gave us another example. Revealing an ironic touch hitherto unsuspected in the trade-union movement, it decided that, once a year, what is universally known in British offices as “Poets Day” (P*** Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday) should instead be called “Work Your Proper Hours Day”.
Which would seem to mean that we should all chain ourselves to our desks till 6pm, rather than sneaking off for the weekend after a long liquid lunch. Not a bit of it. What the TUC wants is the opposite: that we, the oppressed proletariat of Britain, rise up and shout at our heartless bosses: “No! You’ve had enough unpaid overtime from us. Today we work not a minute longer than our contracted 7.5 hours, minus our statutory lunch break, tea breaks, screen breaks, loo breaks, fag breaks and nip out to get the dry-cleaning breaks. So there!”
Yes, the TUC believes it has uncovered worker exploitation on a scale that would have made a 19th-century millowner envious. Taking a 40-hour week as the norm, it asserts that 4.8 million of us are giving our bosses weeks of unpaid overtime each year.
And the unlikeliest people top the list of oppressed minions! Solicitors, barristers and judges are said to do eight hours of unpaid overtime a week, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever received a bill from m’learned friends, and gasped at the meticulous precision with which every minute of legal advice has been costed. As for lecturers and teachers, they apparently clock up an heroic 11 hours and 36 minutes of unpaid overtime weekly, though presumably not in the 13 weeks a year when they are paid to do nothing.
I don’t wish to belittle the TUC’s efforts to ease the hideous working hours of the common man, woman and barrister. But come off it, comrades! Yes, there are lots of people in Britain now who work longer hours than they are contracted to do. But where’s the scandal in that? Many do so because they take pride in doing a damn good job. Presumably the TUC has no problem with that. Others because, like Noël Coward, they think that “work is much more fun than fun”. That may seem warped to dedicated hedonists. But to be discouraged? I rejoice that so many people find their work fascinating.
I sense, however, that the TUC’s real target is people who put in long hours because they are ambitious and want to climb the ladder as fast as possible. Back in the Thatcherite 1980s such folk were corporate heroes. Now we are seeing a backlash. The new wisdom is that long hours produce worse work; that workaholics destabilise offices; and that if we want to keep employees on top of their game we should be encouraging them to spend long, fulfilling evenings in the bosom of their families, rather than burning the midnight oil in the office.
The TUC is not the only advocate of this “less is more” philosophy of work. One of Tony’s cronies, the Labour peer Richard Layard, has written a book, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, in which he argues that competitive workplaces make many of us unhappy. He is even against performance-related pay, on the grounds that rewards for achievers upset those who don’t get them and therefore jeopardise working relationships.
Hmm. That line of argument sounds dangerously close to the paralysis inflicted on Eastern European workforces in the communist era: the theory being that if competition and personal gain are extracted from life’s rich tapestry, envy would disappear and everyone would be happy. The reverse happened. The Soviet bloc seethed with envy and unhappiness on a scale that made Caligula’s Rome seem like dinner and a movie. And so did British factories in the 1960s and 1970s, when “union rule” imposed a watered-down version of the same.
Layard thinks we can avoid repeating these errors because, he asserts, the “science of happiness” is now so developed that sociologists and economists can confidently predict what makes people truly blissful. Top of the list, he says, are family and personal relationships. Money matters less.
Really? It matters less if you have plenty. But if you have gnawing cash worries, everything — especially family and personal relationships — gets screwed up. Which is why, despite the TUC’s urgings, millions of people work long hours. It makes them feel more secure, and therefore happier.
Where Layard really goes wrong, however, is in perpetrating the myth that a grand utopian vision imposed from above by the Government has the slightest chance of increasing the sum of human joy by so much as a single bar of chocolate (which is, I find, by far the best measure of bliss). Actually, the real secret of happiness is . . . no, sorry, that’s my 40 hours done for this week. I’ll tell you another time.
Short attention span
UP IN the frozen North last week, I found the redoubtable Manchester Evening News raving about a possible new “magnetic levitation” railway that would allow 300mph trains to skim, literally, from London to Manchester in 45 minutes.
Obviously I welcome anything that makes Britain’s railways less tragic, especially since I have just survived a journey in one of Sir Richard Branson’s “state of the art” Pendolinos, where the loo flooded and the buffet’s boiler broke down. (On the plus side, I suppose, since we couldn’t drink tea our need for the loo was reduced.) But I have now reached the age at which news of any long-term project triggers just one thought in my head. Will it happen in my lifetime? Morbid, perhaps, but time-saving. If the answer is no, I just forget about it.
For example, London to Manchester by train in 45 minutes? Unlikely. Manned flight to Mars? Hard to imagine. Useful occupation found for Prince Edward? Highly implausible. Another Tory government? You have to be joking.
As I said, it saves a lot of bother.
Hard act to swallow
FRIGHTFULLY dangerous business, journalism. Displaying the unflinching fearlessness that is the hallmark of my trade, I have just diced with death by venturing into an environment lethal with poisonous chemicals and as yet unidentified toxic hazards, while at the same time tangling with sinister corporations ruthlessly intent on slipping their noxious products into our homes and offices.
Still, that’s my lunchtime sandwich safely eaten. The rest of the afternoon should be less stressful.
Labour’s cool girl ...
WHAT a shame that the supposedly all-inclusive Labour Party has taken Christine Wheatley off its shortlist of potential MPs. And all because the feisty fiftysomething candidly declared that, in her impecunious youth, she spent an action-packed six weeks as a Paris prostitute.
She surely possesses exactly what it takes to be a good MP. She has a fine record of dealing quickly, sympathetically and effectively with ordinary people’s needs. She is clearly in touch with the mood on the streets. And she has proved herself capable of making exciting links with our European partners.
Put her back on the list. In my view, she’s Chief Whip material.
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