Misleading headlines from The Guardian

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If you’re abreast of what matters most to the Government and media at the moment, you’ll know that they have a large bug up their arse about misinformation. This being the telling of porkies in public online forums such as Facebook and such

Social media may be a big cesspit of the utter bollocks, but the biggest source of misinformation is the Government and media themselves. I mean come on, who can actually remember a truthful thing that either of them have said

I suppose there could be a case here for commas, grammar or interpretation, but on the face of it, the headline is a lie – most UK firms have not introduced a four day week

Most of the UK companies that took part in the world’s biggest ever four-day working week trial have made the policy permanent, research shows.

So it’s not most UK firms, it’s most of the 61 companies who took part in the vanishingly small trial of a four day week

The report’s author, Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, said the results showed “real and long lasting” effects. “Physical and mental health, and work-life balance are significantly better than at six months. Burnout and life satisfaction improvements held steady,” she said.

The initial findings do sound very positive, however reports have also recently found that smoking causes blindness, cow farts change the climate and lockdowns work

But Matthew Percival, a director at the Confederation of Business and Industry, said the four-day week was not a “one size fits all answer” and would be “unlikely to pay for itself in many industries”.

Indeed. The companies that took part are not listed in this article, but I remember looking at it when the trial started and they were mostly financial services companies. I can’t think of many other sectors where a four day week with no loss of pay could be made to work, although I imagine there may be some

Unfortunatley, one of these may be the civil service

This month, the Scottish government launched a four-day working week trial for some public services. Autonomy is calling for the Westminster government to introduce policies that would enable its wider take-up, including giving workers the right to request a four-day week with no loss of pay, a public sector trial, and funding to support the shift in the private sector.

As Timmy points out, 

The usual claim here is that productivity goes up with the extra day off. But as we don’t – can’t – measure bureaucrat efficiency that’s not a useful argument for them, is it? 

As usual, Tim Worstall describes the situation a lot more eloquently than I could. My thoughts would be something on the lines of, They’re all a bunch of lazy grifters and the only way to cut their hours with any meaningful result, would be to sack the lot of them and be done with it

The idea that they would spend even less hours working than they currently do, on our dime, really grips my shit