UK Politics Thread

Er, Rishi, please remind me which party came up with the idea of writing people off as unfit and moving them on to benefits because it had the beneficial effect of reducing the unemployment statistics?

I thought the government didn't want people working from home??

Tbf, the explosion of remote work probably does enable some people who couldn't previously work to work, but that's going to be very much on a case by case basis, and also rely on them having computers, good internet, etc..
As well as jobs available.

So you can’t get benefits because the Government says you can work from home but you might not be able to work from home because the Government says we should all be back in the office?

Cool

Kinda stuff you'd expect from an authoritarian regime.

UN criticises 'severe' Just Stop Oil sentences
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0p6ll3jjgo

Why suspicious?

Workhouses here we come!

At some point we need to accept the fact that technology will render many jobs unnecessary and the tight fisted need to accept one of several outcomes

1 - many people will still need a means of support, particularly if the bosses want their products to be bought

2 - they cut the tech and spend to employ humans

I wish we would have an honest conversation about what it is that people at the top feel. Is it that they want to be rich or is it having a level of power and control? Both? Or maybe they have a narrow vision of what the world should look like?

I'm not even looking to judge them at this point but just to understand

It will reach the point where the Govt. realise that taxing the machines will bring in more money than Income Tax.


* assuming that AI hasn’t invaded the Treasury and that the AI developer hasn’t tweaked the algorithm to say taxing AI is bad.

Oldies like me will be OK - we are the ones that ask the questions and strategise. The entry level jobs that young people go for, that are more admin like, or involve basic analysis and comms, those are the ones that won't be needed. Still not sure how you train up my successors.

There is the train of thought that 'we will still need to work, that work just changes' every time something hits an industry like a meteor wiping out the dinosaurs but surely it is going to get to the point where that just isnt true?

If we keep chasing automation and efficiencies like we are what are we actually going to *need* to do?

In my job, we are automating out the low level shit to allow us to concentrate on higher level, more quality work but it wont be long before even that is automated. What then? There wont even be a greeters job in asda for me.

I've always felt that the replicator, the magical device that converts matter into any form that you want, is the most important technology in Star Trek society. Far more so than the warp drive or the ship's computer, the latter of which is almost looking quite quaint compared to current tech. Obviously, for the purposes of the show and the drama, the warp drive is essential, but from what we know of 24th century Earth society, the replicator makes all that possible.

As you say, we aren't getting a device like that any time soon. People will still need some way to put food on the table and that is still going to be limited.

Universal basic income surely must be inevitable at some point, but seeing as our government have been terrified about ideas like working from home and four-day weeks, I can't see it getting anywhere if any of the current crop have any say in it.

The problem is going to be that crossover period where the reality that UBI is not only inevitable but urgently required is butting up against that fantasy held by the right wing strata of decision makers and spiteful elderly people who resist it as 'money for nothing'.

Nobody is going to just give me a creole restaurant like Siskos dad.

Few things most of which are to do with long term issues that I'm observing. Not the nuts and bolts of getting work done. Nor really anything to do with Tory obsessions, which all seem to be to do with micro-managing and monitoring people.

1. Is a general point around getting some meetings done face to face and developing decent relationships with people on other teams. Which is also about doing stuff like going for lunch or going to the pub. Just makes developing trust easier, so that if "Dave" says something and you've got some sense of them to hang that on you're more likely to actually do it, or trust them to do it etc.
2. A fuck load of meetings get resolved faster doing them in person. We're in 1 day a week, so kind of hybrid, so we currently mostly handle this fine. But during the pandemic it was a nightmare. Only really applies to senior people though. Though it relates to 1. in how well you can gauge someone is talking shite.
3. Is probably more important, but I think it's doing some long term damage to juniors. Dunno about other jobs, but with devs there's a lot of on the job training. Getting yourself in a state where you can be a professional and wear your big person pants is a bunch of work. It's really difficult to get it from books, or god forbid training videos. Being around people is actually really good for this. For one thing the senior team members can actually just spot someone is struggling or having a shit day via body language. This kind of started before the pandemic where we could tacitly work from home a couple days a week. People who were most insistent on it were some of the seniors, who just happened to have bought a house in London in the 90s, some of them had a real "fuck you got mine attitude" to helping juniors if it meant they had to commute. Especially bad in London during the pandemic as lots of the juniors/grads basically had a room in a house so were working sat on their bed all the time, it was really fucking miserable for them. But lots of the juniors still live like that and would rather turn up to the office more. As getting out the house, learning off people and hanging around in central London are positive things.

Three's the main one though, as I suspect it's building up problems for the future. Kind of like the school/university situation during the pandemic. That's really not got back to normal yet either.

EDIT: Also as I only moved to London post 2008 crash, I'm still stuck in a 1 bed flat with my wife and it's cramped to say the least. If my new(ish) job actually had an office in a non-shithole I'd definitely be in more. I really miss working in Soho, I even miss the commute. A good 45 minutes to sit and read a book and unwind.