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I find it insulting that the people campaigning to save the hyper-inflated profits of inner-city landlords are pretending that their real concern is people who make minimum wage in coffee shops.
The property boom has needed to be corrected for a long time and nowhere more than inner-city London. It's absolutely ludicrous. And that's what a lot of the push to return that people like Alan Sugar are clearly worried about.
But, shockingly, 'I game the system and now I might lose some of the millions of pounds of value in my property portfolio' isn't the most sympathetic position.
So instead, it's "but what about the people who work in coffee shops" and "but really, face-to-face meetings are so important for young members of staff". Because these are also issues, but they're ones that actually engender sympathy.
This article was doing the rounds yesterday, and I do get that lower-paid jobs have relied on the infrastructure around offices. But just look at the first example that's given. https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-office-economy-5800af06b007
The first example is a shoe repair guy, who is bemoaning the lack of customers, meaning that he's now only working part-time. By which he means he's coming in at 7am and working until 4pm instead of the 8pm he normally works.
When this economy is 'working' properly, this poor guy is having to work 13 HOUR DAYS to make ends meet. This is not an economy we should be working hard to save - it was already broken.
That's 13 hours, by the way, IN HIS SHOP. Not including however long it takes him to travel to work. Is this really a sign of an economy that's working in any way in his favour?
All of these campaigns about low-paid jobs relying on this, about how face-to-face meetings are somehow better, about the 'buzz of the office' and all of the other things that are talked about... they're completely disingenuous.
You can tell they're disingenuous because they're generally not the arguments being made by the people whose jobs actually rely on this. These people have long commutes for long hours and poor pay. They rely on it, but it's not working for them.
Since when have right-wing governments given the slightest damn about the low-paid? Yet now, they're somehow the great defenders.
They've started caring about the low-paid who rely on the city economy because they're a useful mask to hide behind while they actually protect the millionaires and billionaires who finally stand to lose some money.
Let them lose out. And bring in Universal Basic Income to help and protect the low-paid so they don't have to prop up the millionaires and billionaires who are leeching off the economy with the artificially inflated property prices.
Oh, and the same millionaires and billionaires who leech off the economy are also trying to tell people who are working from home that they're not really working. That it's some kind of holiday. This is also an insult.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm working from home, I'm working. I do my job. I'm good at it. This whole 'back to work' thing insults everyone.
The market is clearly telling us all that the inflated, artificial parts of city centre economy don't work. It's been shown to be unsustainable and actually unnecessary. And there's an enormous propaganda campaign to tell us that it is.
If we're really worried about these businesses and the low-paid workers they employ, then reducing the rents that they need to pay is part of the solution.
Look back at that example earlier. Do we really want to keep on the path to the US, where 13-hour days are acceptable, because it's the only way they can make ends meet?
Bring in UBI and let's stop propping up millionaires and billionaires with their property scams. They've been ruining city centres for years. And finally, change is happening. Let's not move backwards now.
