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Original poster

To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

341 replies

catsliketowearsocks · 04/09/2023 07:42

There is yet another DM story doing the rounds today about people 'working from beach'. Apparently it's council worker this time rather than civil servants. I work for a council and we would not be able to live abroad as we have impromptu office meetings, but even if we wanted to for the short term (like, for a family emergency or flight issues) we would have to apply for permission due to cybersecurity rules.

The DM would like to ban WFH which is just nasty. There may be a small number who take the piss but I don't believe that's the norm. WFH has vastly improved my life and mental health.

I'm willing to bet many DM journalists work remotely.

OP posts:
BBno4 · 04/09/2023 09:10

Question for you
Everytime I phone Housing benefit I am told there is a backlog.
It had been 3 years now.
For RBKC work from home is not working.
Why is there a backlog that only begin since covid and wfh?

haXXor · 04/09/2023 09:10

Throwncrumbs · 04/09/2023 09:04

This is exactly why wfh people take the piss, can you not see the irony in your comment?

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Being able to attend a relative's medical emergency in 20 min instead of an hour and 20m because of not having to commute home first is not taking the piss. Most employers offer emergency leave for family illness and that policy would kick in whether you WFH or not.

Being able to spend what was your commute time caring for someone is not taking the piss either.

Monster80 · 04/09/2023 09:08

Hmmmmmm….

I hate the DM, but lots of London-based publishing/journalist types (ourselves included) are back 4 days a week with 1 day WFH. Ultimately it’s likely in most people’s interest to prevent a further corrosion of central London residential and commercial property prices, this could create a larger housing crash over most of the UK. With interest rates so high, this may mean the perfect negative equity storm for the many not the few. We already have a cost of living crisis, the economy needs boosting, you could argue each of us has a duty to bolster this if we are able. Personally I find WFH dull, but I always enjoyed the central London shops, restaurants, culture, bars. 🤷‍♀️

Iwasafool · 04/09/2023 09:08

ilovesooty · 04/09/2023 09:02

What does that have to do with Wfh?

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Absolutely nothing but a certain group of posters will grab any opportunity to display their prejudice, even if it isn't a very good opportunity.

BeCuriousNotJudgemental · 04/09/2023 09:08

Goldmember · 04/09/2023 08:04

It's so transparent that all the newspapers revel in spreading fear and causing intergenerational wars of opinion. Retired people do tend to be more susceptible to it as they are the ones who will buy their paper as part of their routine and absorb every word. It's often their only link to the wider world if they are not mixing with working people or kids. I've seen it with my grandparents how reasonable they used to be and how intolerant they have become.

This is sadly true.

I agree with you about how they ‘revel’ in it and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone who works there would think this is the way to go, most hateful newspaper I’ve ever come across personally

Throwncrumbs · 04/09/2023 09:06

Iwasafool · 04/09/2023 09:04

Ageism is rife on MN. Time it was stamped out. No other demographic gets the blame for absolutely everything the way the older people do.

It might interest you to know I couldn't buy a house in the early 70s because 3 times my husband's wage (they wouldn't count mine although I was working) wasn't enough. Eventually we bought a rundown 2 up 2 down, did it up and sold it at a loss as the market crashed. Hope that helps with your bitterness.

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Yep, us oldies never had it so good, just so we could make it so much harder for our kids….selfish gits aren’t we!

haXXor · 04/09/2023 09:05

justasking111 · 04/09/2023 08:29

Our council are working from home still. Council tax went up 10% this time. They're in a financial hole after six months of £ thirty million. Their new £fifty million office is empty, their old offices lie unused. As do other council properties libraries, a cafe on the seafront. A huge industrial unit they built and can't use because the floor is unsuitable, it's full of ppe from covid at the moment.

So as you can imagine there's a lot of simmering resentment here and WFH gets thrashed as the cause.

Your council tax bill would be even higher if those empty buildings were full. It costs money to heat and light it and that money can be saved when the building is empty.

People really need to learn about the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Anewnamea · 04/09/2023 09:04

Robinbuildsbears · 04/09/2023 07:58

Yeah, I hate the guardian and the independent for exacerbating intergenerational tension. Most newspapers are at it unfortunately.

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How do the independent and Guardian do that? Interesting two publications to single out on a thread about the right wing hateful rag that is the Daily Mail?

daily mail just does everything to do with creating tensions and fuelling hate better so I’m sure other publications pale in comparison to it in this respect.

DM aren’t even subtle about it - no one can miss what they’re doing.

Throwncrumbs · 04/09/2023 09:04

Chickenmumsticks · 04/09/2023 07:48

Oh god my FIL has this narrative about my BIL returning to the office.

It has not escaped my notice that he has benefited hugely from BIL being close by and dropping everything to help.

Doesn't stop the stupid comments and judgement though.

This is exactly why wfh people take the piss, can you not see the irony in your comment?

Iwasafool · 04/09/2023 09:04

Porridgeislife · 04/09/2023 07:54

Exactly. I’d probably trade hybrid working for 5 days in the office if I was given an occupational final salary pension and could buy a family home for 3x salary as they were able to.

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Ageism is rife on MN. Time it was stamped out. No other demographic gets the blame for absolutely everything the way the older people do.

It might interest you to know I couldn't buy a house in the early 70s because 3 times my husband's wage (they wouldn't count mine although I was working) wasn't enough. Eventually we bought a rundown 2 up 2 down, did it up and sold it at a loss as the market crashed. Hope that helps with your bitterness.

Eleganz · 04/09/2023 09:03

nettie434 · 04/09/2023 09:00

I'm willing to bet many DM journalists work remotely.

Richard Littlejohn, one of the most anti WFH journalists at the Daily Mail, lives in Florida and works from home, condemning everything happening in England. One journalist wittily suggested that his outraged rantings were probably the best indication that WFH exclusively for too long was probably bad for you.

What gets me is that these guys seem to be immune to the impact of being such massive hypocrites. I suspect it is that people just like having their biases and bigotry confirmed and reinforced regardless of who is doing it. It's the only way I can explain why Trump is so popular with people who would normally hate someone like him.

Shoelaces7 · 04/09/2023 09:03

I know, WFH has absolutely changed the working world for disabled people. Disabled people in digital roles can now work comfortably from home, they can apply for more opportunities as they don't have to factor in how to get to the office and how to work in the office, it has changed so many lives for the better. I almost find the I hate WFH stance quite ableist.

CleverLilViper · 04/09/2023 09:03

Newbutoldfather · 04/09/2023 08:02

I hate the DM, but kind of agree about WFH.

Every employment contract should be about a trade of skills and effort for money and conditions, so if you are so good that your employer still wants you if you WFH, fair enough. However, WFH is not the same as being in the office and has many negatives from an employer’s perspective.

The downside is most apparent for young people at the start of their career. You just can’t informally mentor over Teams effectively. And young people lose out on the social aspect of work, which is also really important. The spontaneous Friday night pub outing after a bad week is so helpful.

I do think some flexibility in being able to work from home sometimes is important, especially to facilitate childcare issues, and allows many able people to work who couldn’t if it was 100% office based.

Offices were invented for a reason and the internet has only partially changed this.

This is just so outdated now.

A Friday night pub crawl isn’t helpful or essential to any role. Some people like it and want to do it but many don’t and a lot of young people aren’t doing that anyway.

As for being unable to mentor effectively over Teams- this isn’t true. You can.

I admit that WFH vs office working is very individual as in some will benefit more from one or the other. But the way this post and every anti work from home article is written is as if it’s black and white and everyone benefits equally from working in the office.

I don’t. I found it great to work from home and I’m a lot more productive at home as I don’t have to listen to forced office chit chat and I can just get on. I’m more likely to stay on late to get things done at home than in office because I’m not thinking about the commute.

im also more collaborative over Teams as I’m quite quiet and shy and I can get my point across there without louder personalities taking over.

This isn’t true for all and some prefer office environments. However the push to ban WFH isn’t remotely based on what is best for the company or the employees. It’s based on what is best for the people who own the properties they’ve rented out.

Nowadays any employer that can offer work from home even in a hybrid basis would be foolish to not do so.

Throwncrumbs · 04/09/2023 09:02

Goldmember · 04/09/2023 07:48

It's playing up to the capitalist business owners and MPs that would have employees strapped to their desks as long as humanly possible. The reporting also satisfies the "hard working" retirees that put their slog in down the mines/ in the cotton mills/ in the steel factories etc. Why should working people today have it better than them?

Alll those MPs and capitalists making all those doctors, nurses and police officers go into work each day… bloody awful!

Kryten1958 · 04/09/2023 09:02

IMO the return to the office is most often pushed by middle and higher management who are failing to adjust to the post Covid age.
Tech is available to measure every aspect of a persons activity and productivity, and in business if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. If a person is WFH it is actually easier to measure this than for office based people.
Some managers are slow to take this tech up because they want people to return as they see WFH as a ‘management perk’, and continued WFH as an erosion of executive power.
For context, I have worked remotely since the turn of the century.

ilovesooty · 04/09/2023 09:02

Alycidon · 04/09/2023 08:09

Not to mention retiring at 60 or 65, instead of the ever-moving retirement goalposts we have nowadays.

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What does that have to do with Wfh?

nettie434 · 04/09/2023 09:00

I'm willing to bet many DM journalists work remotely.

Richard Littlejohn, one of the most anti WFH journalists at the Daily Mail, lives in Florida and works from home, condemning everything happening in England. One journalist wittily suggested that his outraged rantings were probably the best indication that WFH exclusively for too long was probably bad for you.

Eleganz · 04/09/2023 08:59

FernsInTheFire · 04/09/2023 08:56

I agree, Eleganz. Big dash of hypocrisy too as he disapproves of wfh in general due to the effect he feels it has on the economy, but was proud of his former employer for its perks. The only way I can make sense is that benefits are ok for some people but not if everyone starts wanting them.

We had a really angry argument about this once and the topic hasn’t come up again. Lots of irrational fury. The fact he couldn’t back up what he was saying was making him angrier.

I would just avoid the topic in future. I've found that nothing you can say about this will convince these people such is the nature of the influence the right wing media has over them. I now just politely but firmly shut down older relatives discussion of this.

TheGuv1982 · 04/09/2023 08:58

Newbutoldfather · 04/09/2023 08:02

I hate the DM, but kind of agree about WFH.

Every employment contract should be about a trade of skills and effort for money and conditions, so if you are so good that your employer still wants you if you WFH, fair enough. However, WFH is not the same as being in the office and has many negatives from an employer’s perspective.

The downside is most apparent for young people at the start of their career. You just can’t informally mentor over Teams effectively. And young people lose out on the social aspect of work, which is also really important. The spontaneous Friday night pub outing after a bad week is so helpful.

I do think some flexibility in being able to work from home sometimes is important, especially to facilitate childcare issues, and allows many able people to work who couldn’t if it was 100% office based.

Offices were invented for a reason and the internet has only partially changed this.

Offices were indeed invented for a reason…to manage and process the paperwork of an organisation.

Modern digital tools negate this need, and have done for decades. However the digital architecture was still required to be on site. Cloud based services, and a greater provision of laptops and other smart devices means that in the majority of cases, it doesn’t really matter where the work is done.

The above doesn’t cover all the benefits of an in person presence, which is why most reasonable people are fully onboard the hybrid train.

haXXor · 04/09/2023 08:57

Newbutoldfather · 04/09/2023 08:02

I hate the DM, but kind of agree about WFH.

Every employment contract should be about a trade of skills and effort for money and conditions, so if you are so good that your employer still wants you if you WFH, fair enough. However, WFH is not the same as being in the office and has many negatives from an employer’s perspective.

The downside is most apparent for young people at the start of their career. You just can’t informally mentor over Teams effectively. And young people lose out on the social aspect of work, which is also really important. The spontaneous Friday night pub outing after a bad week is so helpful.

I do think some flexibility in being able to work from home sometimes is important, especially to facilitate childcare issues, and allows many able people to work who couldn’t if it was 100% office based.

Offices were invented for a reason and the internet has only partially changed this.

The spontaneous Friday night pub outing after a bad week is so helpful.

Unless you are struggling with alcoholism. Or have kids to get home to. Or an elderly parent to care for. Or are sick of being sexually harassed in the pub by the barflies. Or the reason for your bad week is one of the colleagues going to the pub. Or you live in a rural village and the last bus home leaves before 6pm. Or are autistic and find loud crowded places a living hell. Or one of your colleagues makes you feel creeped out and you do not want be around him any more than you can get away with and certainly not with alcohol involved.

It's not a coincidence that many of the issues I list affect women more often or more seriously than men. It's like the anti-WFH people really hate women.

Dame Steve Shirley's company "Freelance Programmers" was 99+% female, WFH, and successful back in the sixties, using the overnight postal service that existed back then to send work back and forth. Increasing numbers of tech companies, including big names like Gitlab and Ubuntu makers Canonical, have gone 100% remote. The need for an office is a myth.

Eleganz · 04/09/2023 08:56

cathyj77 · 04/09/2023 08:49

Flexibility and hybrid working are incredibly helpful but people who deny the issues with the extent of WFH we have right now are kidding themselves slightly I think. Also hate the DM but have a lot of sympathy with them on this.

There are a number of measures of ‘productivity’ - my husband for example claims he gets more done WFH and in one sense he does, he spends more hours at his desk. At the same time, he has put on weight, and his back issues are worse. He also is relatively senior and experienced in his role and has contacts so the fact that he WFH most of the time doesn’t matter. For younger, new starters, it matters hugely.

In my workplace, we work hybrid - in the office 3 days a week, at home 2 - and this was enforced from Jan 2022 onwards. There was a lot of moaning at the time but almost everyone (including those who were originally reluctant) now concede it was a good thing. It is not physically or mentally healthy (for the vast majority of people, not including neurodiversity and disability here) to work all alone in your home full time. You don’t learn the same skills or achieve the same results.

I agree that I think hybrid is the best of both worlds although making workers go in for most of their time has always felt excessive and "one size fits all". We have a role-based assessment about remote working which I feel works much better.

However, please understand that the DM and the Telegraph hate hybrid working just as much as fully remote. They want everyone in the commercial properties in city centres funding the commercial property owners that are friends with the owners of these newspapers.

They also hate the public sector as the people who are behind these papers don't want lots of civil servants doing things they want a small number of overworked civil servants badly administering large contracts with the private sector to provide services whilst making nice fat profits. Their concerns have nothing to do with genuine concern for public sector efficiency and are all about building public support for their vested interests by spreading misinformation.

FernsInTheFire · 04/09/2023 08:56

I agree, Eleganz. Big dash of hypocrisy too as he disapproves of wfh in general due to the effect he feels it has on the economy, but was proud of his former employer for its perks. The only way I can make sense is that benefits are ok for some people but not if everyone starts wanting them.

We had a really angry argument about this once and the topic hasn’t come up again. Lots of irrational fury. The fact he couldn’t back up what he was saying was making him angrier.

Serendipitoushedgehog · 04/09/2023 08:55

This was my favourite of their articles on the subject 😂. Just so silly; I can’t believe people take this shit seriously.

To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta
Grantanow · 04/09/2023 08:53

Don't buy it and don't read it.

Seashellies · 04/09/2023 08:51

cakeorwine · 04/09/2023 07:53

If they try to get the public sector to drop hybrid working, then they should not be surprised to find fewer people want to work in the public sector as hybrid working is popular and companies that offer it have an advantage over others.

And then they will complain about a lack of public sector workers.

I dunno 'perks and benefits' have often been the dangling carrot in lieu of fair wages that meet inflation etc. With some of these removed maybe they'd have to start paying a decent wage!