to think some people would be weirdly excited if WFH came to an end?

Ahhh the office paper shuffler. Every office has one of those 🤣

Most of the people at the company I work for live all over the country so would not even be physically possible. I go into office maybe once or twice a week but I work so much better at home... at the office I get distracted with chats and conversations with colleagues, coffee breaks, sometimes my form of transport gets delayed and I can miss maybe 10/15 minutes at the start of the day, I have to take an actual break to go get lunch from somewhere (we don't have a fridge or microwave) whereas at home I do not have any of these distractions and can get on with my work and get so much done. I actually save office days to days where I don't have much to do because of the fact I get way less done.

What a great use of public money that would be!

I agree. Some posters on here complaining about WFH or colleagues that WFH, they just sound like they have no life. Other people have family, friends, hobbies, some people are just too obsessed with work and need to get a life. That sounds harsh but I mean it literally, so many people that have ultimately low stakes office jobs need to chill a bit and improve their work life balance.

It’s Farage causing the drama. That’s how it works in his world.

A chap I worked with used to move a pile of paper around all day!

They could rent office space from private landlords. Funnel public money into private hands, it's the right wing way

Agree Op - I strongly suspect those people who are so against wfh are just jealous of those who can.

Thankfully I work for a public sector organisation that has sold off a large chunk of its real estate so there is simply nowhere for us all to go if they dragged everyone into the office.

Same. Was made WFH in 2015 and haven't worked in an office since.

Some of the biggest lazy slackers I know work in the office FT. They spend their days wondering around chatting, on endless tea breaks, take around 15-20 minutes to answer an email, so going through emails literally takes them all morning, they honestly get so little done it’s ridiculous.

I’m retired and I think it’s great that people can work from home. I know I would have been more productive having at least a couple of days every week working from home. There was a lot of wasted time , unnecessarily long meetings and chit chat at work. I think it’s just another example of finger pointing and divisive speech. Also the person who said there might be a financial motive of investment in office space has a good point. I like that technology has made this possible. My only concern is that there still need to be ways of doing things that don’t exclude people who find using technology difficult. I occasionally don’t know how to do something and there’s no one to ask. It doesn’t make any difference if someone is speaking to me from their home though. I also wonder if there’s an agenda to make it more difficult for people with family responsibilities and disabilities to work.

Well surely this is about something bigger from WFH isn’t it? Is society “working” when there is no adult in a household who can afford to take the time, or have the flexibility, to drop their children at school?

SAHM is another thing. I worked all while my children were little but in my experience it was the SAHP doing most of the volunteering for school trips or lunchtime supervision. Because they could. But everyone benefitted. The same way people benefit from me working.

And the vitriol against the WASPI women campaign is something. I don't think honestly we can afford to compensate them given other spending priorities. But I can understand why they feel hard done by. Whereas some of the messaging is again, gleeful about it.

It's not just pensioners. Though I too have retired parents with opinions on how easy my generation have it taken straight from the Daily Mail.

He can't stop WFH anyway. Even if he insists on all government employees/civil servants coming back into the office full time now, he'd have to spend an absolute fortune of tax payer's money on additional office space. Nobody wants that.

Farage is just shooting his gob off to appeal to his knuckle-dragging fan base, as usual.

My company have hired so many people and not invested in office space. We are only allowed one day a week in office..

I’ve WFH even before COVID, the company I work for had already figured that they can save a lot of money by not renting office space. I don’t think this will change.

My old.company a local.authority sold off a lot of its buildings.a couple.of years before.covid. my current job would.not.fit us all in if.we went back.0

It's a nonsense, whipped up by the media. Private companies will continue to have the freedom to agree working arrangements with their staff that suit them and their business. I guess if you work in the public sector, in certain roles that could be done from an office, then it might be an issue. For the rest of us, it won't be. And those in the public sector are free to leave and find another job if the working conditions no longer suit them.

If I need to contact any type of Customer Service - I never do it 8am-9.30am, or 3-4pm. For the very simple reason- people who are working from home are on the school run and I could write a book how many times I was disconnected because of "bad signal ". Once I had very important call regarding medical test results and I couldn't understand a word because of few dogs barking non stop. It wouldn't happen if these people would work in office.

I don't think they problem is about them working from home. It's about quality, performance and availability during your work hours. We literally saw school mum with laptop in her hands on school run. What kind of quality you can get from it?

He can't dictate thst companies force workers back to the office. Not in the private sector anyway. Starmer has recommended previously that he would like to see people return to the office, but he cant force it unless in the public sector. And yes, there is a lot of jealousy around people wfh, so some will be pleased, but it's irrelevant as its not going to happen.

The idea appeals to commercial landlords and those with big commercial property portfolios. It appeals to retired right wing people who don't understand how work functions these days and just assume people can't be getting work done. And to bad, controlling managers who like to lord it over people (unlike managers who are actually good at their jobs)

My DD had to do exactly that. They went full WFH, closed the office 4 min walk away and then now they gone back to the office it’s a different office over an hour away that she can’t do because of her health and disability.

a friend of mine also changed their job as her company went full WFH and she hated it so has a new job with a company that’s hybrid.

I was mainly thinking about men, so basically a retired version of the bossy men (and women) the PP was talking about.

Not unhelpful though. I feel there will be a fair few people at the intersection between the three groups of 'Enjoy working from home' 'planned on voting Reform' and 'don't understand the limits of the power of government over businesses'. Think Farage has misjudged this one.

Same as my mum.

Her belief is that people who WFH have limp wristed, useless, mickey mouse jobs and wouldn't know hard work if it slapped them in the chops.

In some ways I do agree. I mean if we found ourselves in a 1970s "Survivors" situation, it's the people with WOH jobs that'd be most useful for survival.

But the service sector is big and employs people who pay tax, own houses and spend on goods just the same as people with 'real jobs'.
People WFH still work hard. Even if their jobs would be mostly bullshit in a 'basic' society situation.

I say this as someone with a limp wristed, useless, mickey mouse job who WFH almost permanently by the way.