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The Losing Battle to Get Public Sector ‘TWaTs’ Back in the Office

by Richard Eldred
25 July 2024 7:06 PM

Four years on from Covid, the Civil Service’s reluctance to return to the office is tanking productivity and leaving empty desks in its wake. In the Telegraph, Tom Haynes explains how the pampered civil service’s obsession with working from home is costing us all. Here’s an excerpt:

The Conservatives tried to force staff to turn up to their place of work just three days out of five, but the small ask was met with intense resistance.

The new Labour Government has so far failed to lay out any demands at all. All the while, the Government’s weekly office attendance figures have remained unpublished since the General Election was called.

Yet while public sector productivity has fallen, Labour is now dangling an inflation-busting pay rise in front of civil servants – many of whom are making considerable savings on childcare and commuting costs by doing their jobs at home. …

Some of the fiercest resistance to the return to the office full time is coming from young parents who have come to rely on working from home to look after children, one civil servant claimed. …

One said: “We’re TWaTs [Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays], the lot of us. On Mondays I’d say the office is about 50% full, Friday maybe 25%, and the other days 75-100%.”

Another added: “What’s the point of coming in on Friday when no one else is in?”

Public sector workers have long resisted attempts by previous governments to haul them back into the office. In April, it was reported that some 1,000 employees at the Office for National Statistics had refused to come into the office for even two days out of five. 

The 60% in-office mandate, meanwhile, prompted 40% of civil servants to consider jumping ship, according to a November survey by the Public and Commerical Services union. 

Childcare remains a strong draw for continued hybrid working across the private and public sectors – an October survey by Capital One found that 87% of remote workers regularly look after children while working from home, with a further 85% doing so in the same room as a child.

However, Neil Leitch, Chief Executive of the Early Years Alliance charity, warned that parents juggling working from home with childcare could be damaging for children.

He said: “If you can work from home and at same time you can be around your child, you can save a small fortune.

“Not a word has been spoken about what’s in the interest of the child. The reality is if you’re holding down a job, it’s very difficult to spend adequate time with the child.”

It comes despite repeated criticism that continued remote work has led to a decline in efficiency across departments. This week it emerged that workers at the Department for Work and Pensions had left customers on hold for the equivalent of 753 years, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Civil ServiceEmploymentProductivityWork from home

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32 Comments
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Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

Lab leak hypothesis a “wacky right-wing conspiracy theory”? Sorry, but that’s just not true. The founder of the Scottish branch of the Christian People’s Alliance (CPA) was a former Labour party member. The CPA (who also take a fairly “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Position” on nuclear weapons) have said from the start that it was a lab leak.

The People’s Republic of China may be communist, but not everyone who takes a different position from the CCP is right wing. (though whether the government, which has been far too close to China, is right wing or in any way conservative is another matter).

Last edited 3 years ago by Hugh
14
-2
SweetBabyCheeses
SweetBabyCheeses
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

I would also argue that it’s never been a conspiracy theory either! Just because media paints some opinions as wacky conspiracies does not make them so. Plain old common sense wasn’t it? X

8
0
J4mes
J4mes
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

If covid really is something that leaked from a lab, it has behaved the same way as ordinary seasonal corona virus. The survival rate is extremely high – almost no one dies of it.

The real crisis is a political one. Ferguson admitted global governments copied the Chinese communist’s authoritarian rule – and they didn’t think they could get away with it until Italy locked down. An immeasurable number of people have died/will die because of lockdown, restrictions, fear, and being injected with gene therapy.

Everything the government and their co-conspirators have done and continue to do has resulted in death. Their chosen corona virus didn’t do that – the powers that be did that.

Giving oxygen to the theory this ordinary corona virus is a dangerous lab-creation only supports the hysteria that the government wants us to experience.

10
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

I agree it will turn out to be a distraction. It’s important to know the truth, and if there has been deception it may heighten people’s suspicions generally, but the most likely result is simply China-bashing and as you say more hysteria.

3
0
SweetBabyCheeses
SweetBabyCheeses
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

But China didn’t want to purposely release a dangerous virus that was akin to a chemical weapon? They were already doing gain of function research on similar coronaviruses for years. And from the papers they were doing so in labs that were biosecurity level 2/3 rather than 4. In the same city as the initial outbreak.

You only have to look at the global history of lab leaks to see how easily they happen.

Whatever has happened since then is by the by, follow the money, follow the power, follow the incompetence, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still never convince me that it was a naturally occurring virus.

0
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

“Guns as prizes in vaccine lottery”

If they win, they can play Russian roulette with them as well!

12
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
3 years ago

As demonstrated by the people of Israel, widely ignoring Covid Passports is the key to getting them scrapped if they get introduced. Let’s not let the introduction of health passports signal the end of the resistance.

35
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Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

Report in the Telegraph yesterday was that “vaxport” plans were to be scrapped. Health passports aren’t a done deal yet are they?

Last edited 3 years ago by Hugh
4
0
SueJM
SueJM
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

This just feels like a part of the game… constantly reeling us in and then letting out the line again…. part of the psy-op fear mongering followed by relief. I always doubted that the passports would come into effect or at least if they did, not for long. Folk will be cheering if they don’t just like they will be cheering when lockdowns are lifted…. ‘isn’t it wonderful that we are all free and clean!’ Job done…. 80% vaccinated…. easy to vaccinate with the follow ups! It does seem that the whole focus was only ever on getting folk vaccinated….ummmm wonder why!

17
0
AfterAll
AfterAll
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

They are working on an international standard instead.

Also, as a government IT project it would probably not have been on time anyway, and the contract no doubt had generous provisions for cancellation. Why complete a project when you can be paid for a cancelled one.

Last edited 3 years ago by AfterAll
4
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peyrole
peyrole
3 years ago
Reply to  AfterAll

Yes they are concentrating on travel through an internationally recognised one. Its easier at this stage to produce national prisons than try to force it within each country. Slowly slowly catchee monkey.

7
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

“Ethical considerations concerning Covid-19 vaccinations”.

So there were 1,213 “vaccine” deaths reported by the yellow card system, with a suspicion that actual deaths from vaccines could be many more than that – 10 times, or even 100 times that number. So, PHE was quite happy last year to give the impression that anyone who died who had ever had a positive test result for Covid-19 was a Covid death, and still to this day report any death within 28 days of a positive test result as a “coronavirus death”. I call on the BBC and other media outlets to report all deaths within 28 days of a “vaccination” in the same way.

Of course, some of these deaths may be from causes other than “vaccination”, and likewise with “Covid” deaths. And there may be a case for believing that being “vaccinated” prevents transmission (although this is disputed). It is the duty of the media to set out the scientific arguments impartially, rather than acting as a propaganda arm of the pharmaceutical industry. Shame on them!

22
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Friedrich Stapß
Friedrich Stapß
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

Media grossly overreports “covid death” statistics, magnifying their credibility in the public mind.

Media grossly underreports “covid vaccine death” statistics, diminishing their credibility in the public mind.

In that contradiction, the corruption of the media is revealed, as clear as day.

17
0
TC
TC
3 years ago

The TrialSite \News link ATL is well worth a look.

3
0
peyrole
peyrole
3 years ago
Reply to  TC

Very good summary of the vaccine effects.

1
0
HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
3 years ago
Reply to  TC

Also the latest Hugo Talks https://hugotalks.com/2021/06/01/doctor-says-weve-made-a-big-mistake-with-vaccine-hugo-talks-lockdown/

1
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Friedrich Stapß
Friedrich Stapß
3 years ago

Delaying club opening risks “gifting a huge slice of the country’s night economy to the black market for most, if not all, of the summer” ATL

That would be pretty good. The more society moves outside the law, the better, at this point. Raves have already been catalysts for anti-lockdown protest in France, and as protest increasingly obviously fails to change anything, they might mutate into catalysts for action instead. We need large-scale, grassroots disruption.

Last edited 3 years ago by Friedrich Stapß
16
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Monro
Monro
3 years ago

‘Lockdown kitsch’ genius. David McGrogan: legend.

‘Kitsch, says Kundera, causes two tears to flow, one after the other. “The first tear,” he tells us, “Says ‘How nice to see children running on the grass!’” But the second tear says, “How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children playing on the grass!” It is the second tear which elevates the moment to kitsch.’

‘….totalitarianism, Kundera tells us, is founded in kitsch. “When I say totalitarian,” he writes, “What I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself) [and] all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously.” 

‘…there has unquestionably developed a kind of ‘lockdown kitsch’ since March 2020, in which people do not only care about Covid deaths out of their own compassion, but care all the more because of the awareness that others are all caring. They are sharing in collective emotion, and their feelings are made all the stronger because of it.’

‘….anyone who, like me, has sought to express doubt about the wisdom of all of this to friends, family and colleagues will vouch for the applicability of Kundera’s description: the sense that one is “spitting in the eye of the smiling brotherhood” is overwhelming.’

https://www.aier.org/article/lockdown-kitsch/

Nailed it! Priceless!

Should the next ‘lockdown sceptics’ competition now be nominations for the King and Queen of lockdown kitsch?

Last edited 3 years ago by Monro
13
0
Monro
Monro
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

I hereby nominate Devi Sridhar as the Kitsch Queen of lockdown.

And the Kitsch King surely has to be Professor Pantsdown?

8
0
Friedrich Stapß
Friedrich Stapß
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

My nomination for Kitsch Queen goes to Dr. Samantha Batt-Rawden, for this tweet after the April demo in London.

I’ll be honest – she’s being directly dishonest.

as an ICU doctor – weaponising her profession, one tiny step from here to “you oppose lockdowns, I refuse to treat you”

this actually makes me want to cry – and I’ll do it in public and you can all join in and we can celebrate our kitsch hurt and kitsch outrage

A gut punch for NHS staff everywhere tonight – ooh, punching an NHS worker in the guts, that only adds to the beauty and horror of the scene I want you all to cry about

I’m gutted – soon this will be the only adjective people are allowed to use

#tootiredforthisshit – but not too tired to weep and wring her hands in public and tweet about it

Screenshot 2021-06-02 at 14.07.07.png
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HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
3 years ago
Reply to  Friedrich Stapß

More like Samantha Butt-Hurtin. Kitsch Queen suits her

6
0
Friedrich Stapß
Friedrich Stapß
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Best thing I’ve read about this yet. I think it hits an extremely important nail on the head. (A personal side-note… I wonder if this is why I was immune to it all from the start. If anything, I care all the less if I am aware that others are all caring. I’m allergic to that kind of mass emotion.) Significant that the lesson comes to us from the much-maligned Kundera, who tried for decades to promote the reform of Czech communism, then finally admitted defeat and defected.

10
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Zombies don’t care about sadlideaths out of their own compassion. They care because they think they might be the next covviecorpse.

6
0
Friedrich Stapß
Friedrich Stapß
3 years ago
Reply to  Annie

I think that’s unfair. I think the article is insightful and balanced and reveals something important. I think it’s childish to just dismiss them all as zombies. They aren’t.

3
0
peyrole
peyrole
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Yes I too thought this article gets to the heart of why its been so easy for the psyop to work. Years of conditioning has gone into this. Looking back the first time the UK exhibited such ‘kitsch’ was Diana’s funeral, people wanting to be seen to be so affected by the death of someone they only knew on a TV screen.

13
0
SueJM
SueJM
3 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

Having said that, all we could see was the media show of the thousands of flowers and folk milling around Kensington Palace. Easy to be conditioned into believing it’s the majority. How do the crowds numbers compare to the folk at home getting on with their daily lives? We have to constantly remind ourselves of the fact of media hype and simply portrayal of one single facet of society…. Not the masses.

8
0
HelenaHancart
HelenaHancart
3 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

Communitarianism has always been been the end game. “The Big Society” and “No One Left Behind” have been gradually braintrained into the unsuspecting public, to make them easier to control in the Great Reset. “I care about you, you care about me!” Individualism will be outlawed. You don’t count anymore, it’s all about the Greater or Common Good.

11
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

I don’t disagree with you – it was exceptionally weird.

But most royal events – particularly the usual preparations for divorce (marriage) evoke a similar sort of response. It wasn’t that new.

Television soaps do the same, and I’m sure others can extend the trail.

0
0
scuzbert
scuzbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

The clapping for the NHS thing was a perfect example of the totalitarian kitsch thing. My friend/neighbour described how fantastic the feeling was as all the people in our Close came out to clap. She used the word ‘wonderful’. She was also disapproving of me that I hadn’t joined in. ‘I didn’t see you out there clapping.’ No, and you never will, I said. Disapproval, almost shocked silence followed. I told her I thought it was mawkish and false. To be honest, I think that’s why we’re now more neighbour than friend.
Thankyou for highlighting the article.

19
0
Monro
Monro
3 years ago
Reply to  scuzbert

I could not agree more.

‘Totalitarian kitsch’ is such a brilliant way of describing the whole ‘Diana moment/thank you NHS’ thing.

It is a madness of crowds. It is a virtue signal and it is a bit of a clique/political thing; self indulgent/absorbed, so quite complex and difficult to easily capture as a phenomenon but, for me, ‘totalitarian kitsch’ so exactly does capture it.

And once a subversive idea is explained, understood and ridiculed, it loses a great deal of its power to subvert, particularly, in this case, since it has been framed, with unerring accuracy, as ‘kitsch’.

9
0
Lady M
Lady M
3 years ago
Reply to  scuzbert

Yes, I called out the Clapping as ‘virtue signalling’ to a long-standing, dear friend. The barrage of abuse I endured was beyond belief. Friendship destroyed.

3
0
PoshPanic
PoshPanic
3 years ago

Here’s another article that’s worth a read. An opinion piece on open discussion in science..

https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/vinay-prasad/92868

0
0
chaos
chaos
3 years ago

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/06/01/vaccinate-the-whole-world-by-2022-says-boris-johnson/

1
0
peyrole
peyrole
3 years ago
Reply to  chaos

This man’s ego knows no bounds.

4
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
3 years ago
Reply to  chaos

‘If you look at what happened in the world in 2020, it was a terrible year for humanity and it was a terrible year for the international system.’ said Johnson. Out of 7.7billion, 3.5 million died WITH covid. For these people covid = money

4
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
3 years ago

What came first ‘vaccine’ or virus? Plus, those dying are the elderly from other diseases, not the unvaccinated.

6
0
ShropshireLass
ShropshireLass
3 years ago

Worth reading the article in RoundUp AND watching the video: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/key-figure-in-wuhan-research-thanked-fauci-for-downplaying-lab-leak-hypothesis . Note that a few minutes into the video the letter organised by Peter Daszak ridiculing the Wuhan lab leak theory is featured and includes a shot of the other signatories. Surely it is significant that infamous Christian Drosten is one. He is the guy responsible for the WHO advocating the use of PCR tests and not only that but his paper said to use cycles of 45 (rendering results over 97% – if not 100% false). Both these 2 guys and of course Fauci are intrically connected to the WHO.

Last edited 3 years ago by ShropshireLass
5
0
J4mes
J4mes
3 years ago

I lost the number of times Julia Hartley-Brewer and Ian Duncan Smith celebrated the ‘vaccine’ and declared that it is proven to work (on the basis that a minority of those hospitalised in Bolton had been jabbed).

The covid psyops definitely extends to those who pretend to oppose this political crisis.

7
-1
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

I know it seems odd, but I think it’s possible to question lockdowns and the coronapanic but believe in the vaccines. Vaccines are like an article of faith for the vast majority. Most people were jabbed at school or had their kids jabbed. It is deeply ingrained.

3
0
eastender53
eastender53
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

These aren’t vaccines in that sense.

1
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

They just ‘pop’ it in dont they, when actually, the unvaccinated are not dying either

3
0
JayBee
JayBee
3 years ago
Reply to  J4mes

They clearly haven’t read Paul Alexander’s letter ATL.

0
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
3 years ago

Is Asymptomatic Covid similar to an Air Guitar?

5
0
ScepticSteve
ScepticSteve
3 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

When I go into shops I wear an Asymptomatic Mask.

5
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
3 years ago
Reply to  ScepticSteve

Me too and it works!

2
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

With Fascist Israel in mind, probably a jew’s harp.

1
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
  • ““COVID-19, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century” – Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. Pierre Kory discuss the ongoing pandemic, the care of COVID-19 patients, and ivermectin

Highly recommended exposition, including an examination of the actual nature of ‘Covid’ as a didease.

2
0
Adamb
Adamb
3 years ago

This article from 2008 is interesting, linked in the TrialSite piece above:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/08/researchers-find-long-lived-immunity-1918-pandemic-virus

Immunity to the Spanish Flu found in people 90 years later. Quotes one Anthony Fauci, who said: recent studies have projected that immunity lasts several decades; the current study provides proof. “This is the mother of all immunological memory here”

Last edited 3 years ago by Adamb
1
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
3 years ago

Back to Mrs FP’s hometown this morning (Stourbridge).
First of all, I passed 2 “old Biddies”, all of about 60 ( your’s truly is 72) and heard 1st “Biddie” saying to 2nd “Biddie”: “We’re not out the woods yet and we won’t be for a long time yet”.
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE???, then whilst waiting outside Greggs,I saw a bloke pop in, slop a copious amount of gunk on his hands but never bought anything; I assume that he was a hand sanitizer “junkie”.
GOD SAVE US!!!!!

Last edited 3 years ago by Fingerache Philip
0
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  Fingerache Philip

If you go into the wood today, you’re in for a nasty surprise,
If you go into the wood today, you will not believe your eyes,
For all the zombies that ever there was
Are in the wood today, because
They don’t know how to get their arses out of it.

4
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
3 years ago
Reply to  Annie

Well said, Annie,(As always).

2
0
Susan
Susan
3 years ago

Disappointed in the Reverend Franklin’s ethical analysis. On the surface, an excellent wrap up, but not a word about the vaccines’ use of fetal tissue in development, testing, and ingredients. These are taken from living human fetuses. If your mind can encompass this horror, it takes little imagination to see where we are headed.

0
0

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