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I've worked in an office that was also a social hub. We ate lunch in the canteen, we went to the pub together, there were clubs and societies and 5-a-side and a quiz league with proper prizes, and at Christmas there was a big do with presents all round and cheap booze.
You couldn't work from home back then, but you wouldn't want to (no chance of a cooked dinner for one thing). I had quite a long commute, and I was strongly encouraged to move house - not for work, but specifically so that I could take part in more of the social events.
But we don't do cooked lunches in the canteen now. We don't do social clubs and 5-a-side, we don't do on-site Christmas dos complete with presents, and basically we don't do large, securely-employed workforces.
Nor do we do public provision of services - my employer was privatised in 1990 and bought out (and the office closed down) in 1996.
For a party that - for the last 40 years - has championed privatisation and downsizing and outsourcing and and zero-hours contracts and "flexible working" and "portfolio careers" and every imaginable way to progressively deskill and proletarianise everyone's working life...
...for that party to turn round now and start preaching about how the office is so much more than just a workplace - and to think that they're doing it, not even in the interests of capital generally, but specifically in the narrow sectoral interests of big landlords...
...it's through the looking glass. It goes beyond hypocrisy or brass neck - the brutal cynicism of it is positively dystopian.
Can they really get away with pushing a message so mendacious, supporting a policy that could harm public health and which business doesn't even want?
Can they really get away with pushing a message so mendacious, supporting a policy that could harm public health and which business doesn't even want?
If they can, they can get away with anything.
