In article ,
hugh ] wrote:
When I bought my first house in 1969 wife's earning were ignored and max
mortgage was STRICTLY 3 x earnings and 80% of purchase price. To get a
mortgage you had to join the queue and you couldn't even get in the
queue unless you had a savings record.

Same here - in the early '70s. And not all building societies would lend
on a house this old - it's Victorian and 1885. Luckily found a London one
which would.

Interesting point was the house was valued at less than the rebuilding
costs. So had to pay insurance based on the latter higher figure. That's
been index linked ever since, and they now sell for 3 times today's
rebuilding cost...

--
*Microsoft broke Volkswagen's record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Feb 8, 3:22*pm, djc wrote:
On 07/02/12 18:25, Cynic wrote:

The law regarding maternity leave has resulted in many employers being
even more reluctant that they used to be to employ women between
certain ages.

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties. *Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

And that social change has probably contributed to the economic change.
If a two income household can outbid a single income household when it
comes to housing costs then the sort of ever-rising house prices we have
become all too accustomed in 2 or 3 generations is no surprise.

When I bought my flat a quarter of a century all my neighbours were, as
myself, singles buying on a mortgage. Now half are rented by couples and
sharers.

--
djc

Families never expected to own TVs, cars, telephones, refrigerators
etc back then.
The wimmin were sent out when these became neccesities.

Around1970 I bough tmy first house. £400. End terrace slum but I
fixed it up with a grant from the council.
Six years later sold it for £7000.
Now that was a housing bubble!

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:42:29 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip

That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.

I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids - once kids are in bed work a bit
longer.

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously. Distractions abound, and
the temptation to indulge in other things whilst out of sight of
anyone else is great - and while they may promise themselves that they
will make up the time they just took off to watch a TV program or do a
bit of wallpapering or pop down the shops - it never seems to happen.

And I'm afraid that your type of work is a type that it is difficult
to monitor just how much time you really *did* spend on it, because
one specification may take you 5 hours to write, whilst another might
take you 8 hours even though they are of similar size.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee. The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

--
Cynic

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 12:05:36 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

SteveW

They'll learn, given time. They'll just have to;!..

I know if a large local Taxi firm where when they have "overloads" like
Friday and Sat nights they can bring online home based workers who VPN
into their system for DATA and the "office" phone.

Works very well main reason is that the workers find it very attractive
working from home, they just don't have to go out to the office for a
few hours;!..

It works because it is self-monitoring. Some jobs are like that. For
the majority of jobs however, the temptation to skive off work when
there is nobody around to see what you are doing will prove too great
for the majority of people, no matter how well-intentioned they set
out.

--
Cynic

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:38:25 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Okay, so we should have moved to Ireland, where there were no jobs for
me and away from my parents who may need support from us soon enough.

If needs must, you would have had to live separately most of the time
and see each other only on occassion. It's what many people have to
do - oil rig workers, soldiers etc.

I don't have any problem with paying to help those in need, although I
do object to supporting those who have never had any intention to try
and support themselves.

The difficulty when the support system is based on government edict is
in separating those who are genuinely in need from those who are not.
*You* may have had no reasonable options, but other people may well
take a government handout when there are other solutions open to them.
Sure, every applicant could be vetted - but that in itself takes a
great deal of time and manpower (=money), and there is still no
guarantee that people are not playing the system.

You obviously are very much of the "I'm alright Jack" ilk and are not
willing to provide support for others who are struggling through no
fault of their own and do not have the support networks to assist them.

I would love to be able to support all the unfortunate people in the
World. But I do not have the resources to do so, and so my charity is
focussed on the people I know rather than millions of complete
strangers.

In fact, government support is what *stops* people helping their
family and neighbours in many cases. Why should I help the struggling
single mother next door when the government is already taxing me to
destitution in order to provide all the help they tell me she needs?

I have noticed that countries that do not have such a benefits system
have communities that are closer and less anti-social than countries
in which the government is supposed to supply all the help anyone
falling on hard times needs.

I'm pretty right-wing myself and feel that far too much is paid out in
benefits to those who only ever take, but I do feel that society owes
care and help to those who are unable to help themselves through age,
illness or infirmity - or for those who are normally productive members
of society, but are temporarily unemployed.

As said, it is difficult to differentiate between the two - unless the
people you are helping are known to you personally so that you can
make a continuous assessment as to whether they are really in need or
whether they are taking advantage of your generosity.

--
Cynic

On 08/02/2012 19:00, Cynic wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:54:22 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

"Think" is not the right word and neither is "innocent". There's a big
difference between "suspecting" that someone has your stolen tools and
having actually seen him take them from your vehicle and make off with them!

There is also a similar difference between "suspecting" that someone
has committed GBH, and actually seeing him beating up a youngster in
the street.

In the theft case the "thief" may believe that he has the moral right
to take the tools, and in the second case the pugalist believes he has
the moral right to inflict GBH. Can you not see that the two
situations are exactly the same - a person acting outside the law
because he thinks he has the right to do so?

No they are not the same situations, despite the law being broken in
both cases.

In one someone is stealing an innocent person's tools of his trade. He
has no right to do so and no right to think that he can - even if he
thinks that they are his relative's tools, he has nothing to confirm
(even to himself) that that is the case.

In the other case, the victim of the theft, has actually seen the person
taking the tools and therefore there is no doubt about the guilt of the
thief, however he has no way to prove to the authorities that that is
the case and therefore no recompense or punishment will follow.

And what if he collars the wrong person in the same way that the thief
collared the wrong tools? By the time he got down from the roof, the
person he saw may be far away, but another youth who looks similar is
seen and mistaken for the perpetrator.

So if a person has no right to take goods that he thinks were stolen
from him, surely he also has no right to beat up a person who he
thinks he saw take them?

I read an amusing article today about a policeman who was chasing
himself. A CCTV operator had originally mistaken the plainclothes
policeman for a "person acting suspiciously". That info had been
passed to the policeman himself, who then attempted to find and catch
the suspicious individual by following information received from the
CCTV operator who was tracking the suspect. Eventually it was
realised what was happening and everyone had a laugh. But I
immediately thought to myself, what if an innocent person had happened
to walk into the area? The probability woul dbe that the innocent
person would be mistaken for the suspect, and an unpleasant time for
the innocent person would follow.

--
Cynic

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:29:31 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.


And you think that is not a very significant potential problem? How
would you feel if one of your collegues, who does a similar type of
job to yourself was permitted to work from home and you were not?

And what would your employer do if one of your
black/homosexual/female/Muslim collegues screams, "Discrimination"?
And/or the union gets involved?

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

Unfortunately IME the people in the "less work" category are rather
more prevelant than those in the "more work" category. The majority
of UK employees will take all they can get away with - many even view
the maximum number of paid sick days as being a supplementary holiday
benefit.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

Whose experience?

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

--
Cynic

In message
,
harry writes
On Feb 8, 3:22*pm, djc wrote:
On 07/02/12 18:25, Cynic wrote:

The law regarding maternity leave has resulted in many employers being
even more reluctant that they used to be to employ women between
certain ages.

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties. *Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

And that social change has probably contributed to the economic change.
If a two income household can outbid a single income household when it
comes to housing costs then the sort of ever-rising house prices we have
become all too accustomed in 2 or 3 generations is no surprise.

When I bought my flat a quarter of a century all my neighbours were, as
myself, singles buying on a mortgage. Now half are rented by couples and
sharers.

--
djc

Families never expected to own TVs, cars, telephones, refrigerators
etc back then.
The wimmin were sent out when these became neccesities.

Around1970 I bough tmy first house. £400. End terrace slum but I
fixed it up with a grant from the council.
Six years later sold it for £7000.
Now that was a housing bubble!
My 1st house cost £3400, my 1st caravan cost £3600. How's that for
inflation!!
--
hugh

On 09/02/2012 16:08, Cynic wrote:
On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:29:31 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.


And you think that is not a very significant potential problem? How
would you feel if one of your collegues, who does a similar type of
job to yourself was permitted to work from home and you were not?

If it were reasonably explained, it would be fine. Those of us who work
at home don't live near any office - I'm about 200 miles from my "home"
office. If I had an office available near me I'd use it - working from
home does have disadvantages too.

And what would your employer do if one of your
black/homosexual/female/Muslim collegues screams, "Discrimination"?
And/or the union gets involved?

They'd have to demonstrate it's because of that that they're not allowed
to, and there's sufficient number of counterexamples to demonstrate
otherwise. Ie their complaint will go nowhere. I'm in a professional
business. There's no unions here.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

Unfortunately IME the people in the "less work" category are rather
more prevelant than those in the "more work" category. The majority
of UK employees will take all they can get away with - many even view
the maximum number of paid sick days as being a supplementary holiday
benefit.

Round here that attitude would get noticed, and we don't have much space
for dead weight. If somebody working at home was underperforming, it
would get noticed and dealt with, if necessary by revoking the right to
do so.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

Whose experience?

Mine, my employer. See above.

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

I manage people, I work from home, I have colleagues who work from home,
I have friends who work from home. None of us are doing crappy jobs -
mostly IT related, and at the skilled end of that.

Get the right people and they'll work well at home or in an office. If
they're too crap to work well at home, I'm not sure how keen I am at
having them in an office either.

Now in case you're confused, I'm not saying everybody should be able to
work at home. I'm not even saying the majority ought to. I'm just
pointing out that your claims about the situation are wrong.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

I manage people, I work from home, I have colleagues who work from home,
I have friends who work from home. None of us are doing crappy jobs -
mostly IT related, and at the skilled end of that.

Get the right people and they'll work well at home or in an office. If
they're too crap to work well at home, I'm not sure how keen I am at
having them in an office either.

Now in case you're confused, I'm not saying everybody should be able to
work at home. I'm not even saying the majority ought to. I'm just
pointing out that your claims about the situation are wrong.

Course a lot can now work whilst mobile which is IMHO a very useful
thing...
--
Tony Sayer

On Feb 7, 6:25*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:51:02 +0000, Andy Champ
wrote:

Can you not see that for a great many employers, paying an extra
salary every month to someone who does not actually do any work can be
just as devastating, and could easily result in bankruptcy for the
employer? *That would especially be the case if such a thing became
law, because for every genuine case there would bound to be several
chancers who did not*really* *have to stay at home as a carer.
IF such a thing became law? *Have you ever looked at the rights for
pregnant women?

Yes - and fathers as well now. *At least it is not completely
open-ended, which paying for an unproductive "carer" would have to be.

The law regarding maternity leave has resulted in many employers being
even more reluctant that they used to be to employ women between
certain ages.

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties.

Lol! Aside from the fact that domestic duties are not nearly as
onerous as they once were, what advantages do you see in this system?



*Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

It is possible from a purely economic point of view - our society is
more than rich enough.

On Feb 7, 6:33*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:46:19 +0000, Steve Walker





wrote:
Why should that situation be anyone's problem apart from you, your
friends and your family?
When my wife was in a similar situation, it would certainly have
caused me just as much hardship as it did you *if* I had provided all
the necessary care personally. *There were however plenty of friends
and family members who between them were able and willing to provide
the additional necessary care without significant detriment to
themselves.
The idea that complete strangers had any sort of duty to solve the
problem by paying for her care did not even cross my mind.
My wife's family is from Ireland, she has no family over here (her
parents moved here before she was born and have now died) and we
couldn't really expect her extended family to come and live here for a
very extended period. My parents are well into their seventies and
certainly couldn't help her up and down the stairs or grab her when she
moved and her balance went; or look after our three young kids for
extended periods over many, many months. All our friends are in full
time work or live many miles away. No, I am not making up a scenario
here, this is simply the case.

There are many situations that I can sympathise with, but at the end
of the day I have to take the attitude "tough luck" rather than shell
out to solve everyone else's problems. *I'd love to be able to save
all the starving 3rd World children as well - but pragmatically that
is also "tough luck".

Indeed, you cannot be morally obligated to do what you cannot do,
although it is worth remembering that conditions in the third world
have often been aggravated by our own (i.e. the 'first world's')
actions, and are not just an inevitable product of nature.



If the only people who could be her carers are in Ireland (or Africa
or India or China), then pragmatically there is a decision to be made
as to whether she needs to move to where she can be properly looked
after.

But realistically, that is likely to mean the elderly being moved to a
place away from their families, communities, and culture. The fact
that you could suggest the idea as being a "pragmatic" solution to the
problem, fails to appreciate that part of the problem with 'care' is
that is has a psychological component that is quite distinct from
catering to biological needs.

Realistically, we could hook the elderly up to a machine, by inserting
a feeding tube and urethral and rectal catheters, with an overhead
nozzle providing occasional showers of soapy water and disinfectant,
and on the face of it this would be high-quality and effficient
biological care, and yet there seems to be something missing...



Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Indeed, but potentially that means more radical and fundamental
reorganisations of society.

On Feb 7, 8:42*pm, Steve Walker -
family.me.uk wrote:
On 07/02/2012 18:12, Cynic wrote:

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:16:30 +0000, Steve Walker
*wrote:

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip

That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. *If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.

I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids *- once kids are in bed work a bit
longer. At the worst I could go into the office for a couple of short
days to allow for face to face contact and meetings. My level of work is
easily measured as there are detailed project plans, with deadlines,
expected times, etc. for each document required. Broadband will easily
allow me to VPN into the company network, although a USB stick would do.

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.

On Feb 7, 9:38*pm, Steve Walker -
family.me.uk wrote:
On 07/02/2012 18:33, Cynic wrote:





On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:46:19 +0000, Steve Walker
*wrote:

Why should that situation be anyone's problem apart from you, your
friends and your family?

When my wife was in a similar situation, it would certainly have
caused me just as much hardship as it did you *if* I had provided all
the necessary care personally. *There were however plenty of friends
and family members who between them were able and willing to provide
the additional necessary care without significant detriment to
themselves.

The idea that complete strangers had any sort of duty to solve the
problem by paying for her care did not even cross my mind.

My wife's family is from Ireland, she has no family over here (her
parents moved here before she was born and have now died) and we
couldn't really expect her extended family to come and live here for a
very extended period. My parents are well into their seventies and
certainly couldn't help her up and down the stairs or grab her when she
moved and her balance went; or look after our three young kids for
extended periods over many, many months. All our friends are in full
time work or live many miles away. No, I am not making up a scenario
here, this is simply the case.

There are many situations that I can sympathise with, but at the end
of the day I have to take the attitude "tough luck" rather than shell
out to solve everyone else's problems. *I'd love to be able to save
all the starving 3rd World children as well - but pragmatically that
is also "tough luck".

If the only people who could be her carers are in Ireland (or Africa
or India or China), then pragmatically there is a decision to be made
as to whether she needs to move to where she can be properly looked
after. *Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Okay, so we should have moved to Ireland, where there were no jobs for
me and away from my parents who may need support from us soon enough.

I don't have any problem with paying to help those in need, although I
do object to supporting those who have never had any intention to try
and support themselves.

You obviously are very much of the "I'm alright Jack" ilk and are not
willing to provide support for others who are struggling through no
fault of their own and do not have the support networks to assist them.

O would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see
us.



I'm pretty right-wing myself and feel that far too much is paid out in
benefits to those who only ever take,

A class of people who exist more in the imagination than in reality.



but I do feel that society owes
care and help to those who are unable to help themselves through age,
illness or infirmity - or for those who are normally productive members
of society, but are temporarily unemployed.

The distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, is always
a pretense to allow a person to claim that they actually have some
care or charity for others, whilst in fact shirking the obligation.
It's quite clear that you think "society owes" care pretty much to
just to yourself and those closest to you (whose adverse circumstances
happen to include age, illness, and infirmity).

It is not even clear that the concern for those closest to you is
purely altruistic, but rather a desire to shirk the responsibility for
care that will otherwise fall on you to provide (either by supplying
your time and labour, or by supplying money from your earned income).

On Feb 8, 7:00*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:42:29 +0000, Steve Walker

wrote:
Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip
That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. *If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.
I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids *- once kids are in bed work a bit
longer.

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. *The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously. *Distractions abound, and
the temptation to indulge in other things whilst out of sight of
anyone else is great - and while they may promise themselves that they
will make up the time they just took off to watch a TV program or do a
bit of wallpapering or pop down the shops - it never seems to happen.

And I'm afraid that your type of work is a type that it is difficult
to monitor just how much time you really *did* spend on it, because
one specification may take you 5 hours to write, whilst another might
take you 8 hours even though they are of similar size.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee. *The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

More importantly, not everything that counts can be counted, and
nothing everything that can be counted counts.

If "results achieved" is synonymous with "spec documents produced",
then how do you actually measure the *quality* of those documents?
There is an apochryphal story about how IBM paid their programmers per
line of code, ostensibly to encourage the production of code, but with
the adverse result that programmers spent much of their valuable
brainpower working out how to express a procedure in as long-winded a
way as possible, whilst discouraging analytical forethought which is
essential for the quality of the code.

Linking a salary too rigidly to a measure of performance, only draws
unwanted attention to those measures, and ultimately it draws unwanted
attention to how those measures might be subverted for the employee's
own benefit.

On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:44:24 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.

Both trust and exploitation are 2-way streets.

Otherwise what you say is correct - working from home is possible only
if there is respect and trust *on both sides*. As your posts indicate
that you could never trust your employer, it would probably not be a
good thing to allow you to work from home.

If an employee feels as you do, that they are being exploited by their
employer, then it is pretty obvious that they will do all they can get
away with to redress the balance (as they see it). So if, for
example, you feel that you are not being paid enough, then you'll
probably respond by working fewer hours so that your hourly rate
increases to the point that you believe is more fair.

--
cynic

"Cynic" wrote in message
news:4f353062.150819250@localhost...
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:44:24 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.

Both trust and exploitation are 2-way streets.

Otherwise what you say is correct - working from home is possible only
if there is respect and trust *on both sides*. As your posts indicate
that you could never trust your employer, it would probably not be a
good thing to allow you to work from home.

If an employee feels as you do, that they are being exploited by their
employer, then it is pretty obvious that they will do all they can get
away with to redress the balance (as they see it). So if, for
example, you feel that you are not being paid enough, then you'll
probably respond by working fewer hours so that your hourly rate
increases to the point that you believe is more fair.

--
cynic



or doing something faaaaaaaar more beneficial like get another better job
;-)

Mike


--

....................................

I'm an Angel, honest ! The horns are there just to keep the halo straight.

....................................

On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:25:15 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties.

Lol! Aside from the fact that domestic duties are not nearly as
onerous as they once were, what advantages do you see in this system?

The main advantage is that the children will be fully cared for by a
single (thus hopefully consistent) adult during their formative years.
And not only merely cared for, but also given lots of individual love
and attention of the sort that is lacking when a child is sent to a
nursery or day-care every day. I firmly believe that that is a huge
factor in producing well-behaved and well-educated adults who have
sound social values. Next is that there is far more time to spend on
non-essential household tasks that improve the quality of life for
both people. Meals, for example, are a lot better if time is spent
preparing them from fresh ingredients and cooking at the optimum rate
rather than having insufficient time to cook properly and resorting to
frozen microwave food, or ordering from the local takeaway.

As a departure from the traditional, I see no reason why the housewife
should not also undertake household repair, redecoration and other DIY
tasks, which will improve the house and save money that would
otherwise have been spent on tradesmen.

=A0Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

It is possible from a purely economic point of view - our society is
more than rich enough.

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards. The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.

--
Cynic

On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:38:44 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

But realistically, that is likely to mean the elderly being moved to a
place away from their families, communities, and culture. The fact
that you could suggest the idea as being a "pragmatic" solution to the
problem, fails to appreciate that part of the problem with 'care' is
that is has a psychological component that is quite distinct from
catering to biological needs.

Realistically, we could hook the elderly up to a machine, by inserting
a feeding tube and urethral and rectal catheters, with an overhead
nozzle providing occasional showers of soapy water and disinfectant,
and on the face of it this would be high-quality and effficient
biological care, and yet there seems to be something missing...



Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Indeed, but potentially that means more radical and fundamental
reorganisations of society.

It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.

It is my strong belief that the change in attitude has arisen
*because* the state decided to step in and take over responsibility
for that care. I have said before and I say it again - countries that
have little or no social benefits system have far closer-knit and
caring communities, which in turn means less anti-social behaviour at
all levels. State handouts, unless carefully restricted to only those
very few who genuinely have no other recourse, create a huge social
problem by taking away individual responsibility (and therefore making
people irresposible).

One reform that sounds very drastic, but which I feel would end up
with many benefits in the long run would be to disallow any benefits
whatsoever to people who have a close family member who would be
capable of supporting them, and to make it *obligitory* for people
with the means to support any close relation who is currently in
receipt of state benefits. Not only will it ease the tax burden, but
anyone being forced to live with and be supported by a
brother/sister/uncle is likely to be far more motivated to become
independent than someone being housed and fed by the government. They
are certainly unlikely to get away with lazing about all day and
squandering money on booze!

--
Cynic

On 10/02/12 15:27, Cynic wrote:
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:25:15 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

=A0Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

It is possible from a purely economic point of view - our society is
more than rich enough.

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards. The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.

Notions of luxury and necessity are for most relative. Perhaps more
important is the security of a double income; being able to make ends
meet for a while at least if one person in the household loses their job.




--
djc

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:13:12 -0000, "'Mike'"
wrote:

If an employee feels as you do, that they are being exploited by their
employer, then it is pretty obvious that they will do all they can get
away with to redress the balance (as they see it). So if, for
example, you feel that you are not being paid enough, then you'll
probably respond by working fewer hours so that your hourly rate
increases to the point that you believe is more fair.

or doing something faaaaaaaar more beneficial like get another better job
;-)

Sure - whilst still "working from home" and taking a salary for the
first job ...

--
Cynic

On Feb 10, 3:08*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:44:24 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.

Both trust and exploitation are 2-way streets.

I'm not sure it is. What you say, is akin to saying that both
cooperation and defection are two-way streets in the prisoner's
dilemma, when in fact only cooperation is a two-way street, whilst
defection is not necessarily so.



Otherwise what you say is correct - working from home is possible only
if there is respect and trust *on both sides*. *As your posts indicate
that you could never trust your employer, it would probably not be a
good thing to allow you to work from home.

I'm not sure I've ever said "one can never trust one's employer".
Anyway, it would depend on what the trust concerned, and also whether
you are making a comparative assessment of their personal character,
or looking at their role within the system and their likely behaviour
based on systemic pressures.

As for whether it would be a good thing to let me work from home, it
could go either way for an employer, could it not, depending on the
quality of the relationship. I'm of a more conscientious and
cooperative disposition than most, but so too I'm of a more punitive
disposition than most when faced with a parasitic competitor.



If an employee feels as you do, that they are being exploited by their
employer,

I'm not sure that does reflect my own feelings, either at the present
time with my current employer, or as a matter of generality. I make a
much clearer cleavage between rich and poor, than between employer and
employee. There are plenty of poor and exploited employers - small
businessmen of the sort who keel over with a heart attack in their
50s! What is reprehensible in some cases however, is that small
businessmen in particular can often throw their lot in with the rich.



then it is pretty obvious that they will do all they can get
away with to redress the balance (as they see it).

Indeed. The retention of autonomy in when and how work is carried out,
is a powerful (if not perfect) means of enforcing fairness and trust,
because any unfairness is immediately penalised by adverse changes to
the important but hard-to-measure qualities of the work being done.



*So if, for
example, you feel that you are not being paid enough, then you'll
probably respond by working fewer hours so that your hourly rate
increases to the point that you believe is more fair.

Indeed.

On Feb 10, 3:13*pm, "'Mike'" wrote:
"Cynic" wrote in message

news:4f353062.150819250@localhost...





On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:44:24 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.

Both trust and exploitation are 2-way streets.

Otherwise what you say is correct - working from home is possible only
if there is respect and trust *on both sides*. *As your posts indicate
that you could never trust your employer, it would probably not be a
good thing to allow you to work from home.

If an employee feels as you do, that they are being exploited by their
employer, then it is pretty obvious that they will do all they can get
away with to redress the balance (as they see it). *So if, for
example, you feel that you are not being paid enough, then you'll
probably respond by working fewer hours so that your hourly rate
increases to the point that you believe is more fair.

--
cynic

or doing something faaaaaaaar more beneficial like get another better job
;-)

Or get *several* jobs working from home, and bill the same eight hours
a day to all of them!

On Feb 10, 3:27*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:25:15 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties.

Lol! Aside from the fact that domestic duties are not nearly as
onerous as they once were, what advantages do you see in this system?

The main advantage is that the children will be fully cared for by a
single (thus hopefully consistent) adult during their formative years.

I'm not sure that is a real advantage. Adults need time to recover
from child-rearing, and it doesn't harm children to interact with, and
have good relations with, more than one caring adult. The reality is
that society needs to move forward by reducing the working week and
giving people (men in particular) more flexible and family-friendly
working hours.



And not only merely cared for, but also given lots of individual love
and attention of the sort that is lacking when a child is sent to a
nursery or day-care every day.

I quite agree that children do need love and close attention from
adults who have a long-term stake in the child's wellbeing. The whole
point of a nursery is to achieve an efficiency of labour by spreading
the attention of each adult across several children, but not only does
that mean children get less attention and socialisation, but the
little attention they do receive will be from adults who will have
little time to build mutual relationships and who do not expect to see
those children grow up - in other words, the children receive too
little adult attention, and both adults and children experience too
little continuity fo relationships.

It's also worth pointing out that it does not replicate the usual way
in which large families are managed, which is that as the family grows
older, the older children increasingly participate in child rearing
and domestic labour, so that to a certain extent the effort that the
parents put into the older children, trickles down to the younger
children without additional effort on the parents' part, and obviously
the nature of a family is such that there is a high degree of
continuity.



*I firmly believe that that is a huge
factor in producing well-behaved and well-educated adults who have
sound social values.

I agree.



*Next is that there is far more time to spend on
non-essential household tasks that improve the quality of life for
both people. *Meals, for example, are a lot better if time is spent
preparing them from fresh ingredients and cooking at the optimum rate
rather than having insufficient time to cook properly and resorting to
frozen microwave food, or ordering from the local takeaway.

It is certainly nice to come in from work and have one's food ready
cooked. I'm not sure it is an efficient use of labour, however, to
have a woman and a cooker in each house to prepare food (which the man
has to bankroll). I've said before that what our society really needs
to look at, is providing high-quality restaurant/takeaway food at an
affordable cost, so that the labour of cooking and shopping (which is
particularly onerous for families with children) is reduced.



As a departure from the traditional, I see no reason why the housewife
should not also undertake household repair, redecoration and other DIY
tasks, which will improve the house and save money that would
otherwise have been spent on tradesmen.

Indeed!



=A0Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.
It is possible from a purely economic point of view - our society is
more than rich enough.

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards.

Quite, although this seems incongruous with your proposal that
families do exactly that: survive on one salary.



*The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.

Agreed, although I suppose it will not be unexpected if I point out
that this is all perfectly consistent with what I said about there
being sufficient economic capacity for all families to live on a
single income. The only reason some families would struggle under the
current circumstances, is because other rich families are consuming
vast amounts of finite economic resources.

On Feb 10, 3:59*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:38:44 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:





But realistically, that is likely to mean the elderly being moved to a
place away from their families, communities, and culture. The fact
that you could suggest the idea as being a "pragmatic" solution to the
problem, fails to appreciate that part of the problem with 'care' is
that is has a psychological component that is quite distinct from
catering to biological needs.

Realistically, we could hook the elderly up to a machine, by inserting
a feeding tube and urethral and rectal catheters, with an overhead
nozzle providing occasional showers of soapy water and disinfectant,
and on the face of it this would be high-quality and effficient
biological care, and yet there seems to be something missing...

Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Indeed, but potentially that means more radical and fundamental
reorganisations of society.

It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. *A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. *In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. *A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. *And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. *Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.

But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

Whereas society will suffer directly from the poor treatment of
children, the only limit to how badly the elderly can be treated is
younger people's own fear of being treated in that way at the end of
their lives. There will probably be more demand for euthanasia in due
course, but the certainty of suffering and premature death at the end
of life, is only likely to make people more concerned with their
immediate circumstances rather than planning for the future, which is
adverse for the stability of any society, but also adverse for any
ruling class which is trying to tell people "suffer now and you'll be
rewarded later". People aren't going to peacefuly tolerate 20 years of
austerity, if that 20 years represents the best years of their lives,
after which they will be on the slab.



It is my strong belief that the change in attitude has arisen
*because* the state decided to step in and take over responsibility
for that care. *I have said before and I say it again - countries that
have little or no social benefits system have far closer-knit and
caring communities, which in turn means less anti-social behaviour at
all levels.

But it is the question of which came first. The need for care homes,
arose once women were expected to pursue life outside of domestic
labour, and also as the demands of socialising middle class children
have increased. For a family that is already at the redline with two
employed earners, two children, and a big mortgage, it is laughable to
expect them to suddenly unwind that lifestyle when granny unforseeably
takes a bad turn.




*State handouts, unless carefully restricted to only those
very few who genuinely have no other recourse, create a huge social
problem by taking away individual responsibility (and therefore making
people irresposible).

The reality is that the state is simply straining to compensate for
the problems being created by the free markets, and as the markets
increasingly force people into unhappy and unnatural modes of living
and constantly encourages parasitic competition in every aspect of
life, so too the state spends increasing sums of money compensating
for it where otherwise the threads by which society is hanging would
otherwise snap.

Given the existing demands of the economy, sending women back to the
kitchen would cause a massive undersupply of labour, and a spike in
workers' wages at the expense of profit. The same is true of
immigration. And if the state returned to the post-war policies of
full employment, which would reduce the unemployment benefit bill,
that would cause a spike in workers' wages and a return of a muscular
working class who are not amenable to the interests of private profit.



One reform that sounds very drastic, but which I feel would end up
with many benefits in the long run would be to disallow any benefits
whatsoever to people who have a close family member who would be
capable of supporting them, and to make it *obligitory* for people
with the means to support any close relation who is currently in
receipt of state benefits.

That would certainly ease the tax burden on the rich. I'm not sure it
would necessarily yield higher-quality care for the elderly, or
benefits for the economy with so many workers being taken out of
employment at short notice by the need to provide care. Nor
ideologically would it help the rich, to start promoting the idea that
people stand or fall as a collective family, rather than as
individuals.



*Not only will it ease the tax burden, but
anyone being forced to live with and be supported by a
brother/sister/uncle is likely to be far more motivated to become
independent than someone being housed and fed by the government. *They
are certainly unlikely to get away with lazing about all day and
squandering money on booze!

Indeed, but so too those family members are also less likely to
sanction criminal behaviour amongst those unemployed family members,
if that reduces the financial strain on the family.

And this also subtly presupposes the existence of the imaginary class
of people who are simply too lazy to work - I know only one person
with even remotely that kind of attitude, and he has emotional
problems such that he could probably never turn a profit for an
employer in a competitive market, and his attitude of 'I should not
have to work' is probably a defensive position rather than an honest
preference, and indeed his family and partners (as well as the
taxpayer) have subsidised him to a great extent all of his life, but
the only realistic alternative would be for the state to give him
supported work of a kind which it was willing to accept an overall
economic loss on each unit of labour rendered!

The remainder of those I know who are unemployed, are effectively
unemployable in the current market conditions, and none of them are
averse to work per se - one of them (who is in his late 30s and has
been unemployed most of his life and has mental health problems -
probably as a result of his circumstances) was almost harassing me for
work last year or so, whilst I had to maintain that I had no work to
offer (and that I wasn't running a business anymore).

Even if I had had work to offer, I can't see what use he could
possibly have been to me, having never had any reason (or economic
means) to develop skills, or any opprortunity to develop economically
useful skills en passant through the ordinary course life. Even in
terms of crude manual labour, decades of being on the dole had not
left him with the physical or mental stamina of a navvy, and the poor
rates of pay offered by the market would hardly have been much
incentive or reward to him anyway.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:42:50 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards.

Quite, although this seems incongruous with your proposal that
families do exactly that: survive on one salary.

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

=A0The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.

Agreed, although I suppose it will not be unexpected if I point out
that this is all perfectly consistent with what I said about there
being sufficient economic capacity for all families to live on a
single income. The only reason some families would struggle under the
current circumstances, is because other rich families are consuming
vast amounts of finite economic resources.

Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc. Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home. Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality. In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former. I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a £15 cocktail at the poolside of a £1000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year. And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a £10 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.

Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

--
Cynic

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. =A0A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. =A0In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. =A0A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. =A0And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. =A0Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.

But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. It is government
taxation. And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

Consider how much of your income ends up going to the government one
way or another. Obviously there is income tax, VAT and council tax,
which of themselves eat up a huge percentage of your income (work it
out and surprise yourself). But you also pay indirectly for business
taxes because the cost of *all* goods, utilities and services must
incororate that levy - which in many cases you are then charged VAT
on. And of course there is the huge cut that government takes from
motor fuels that again affects the cost of almost everything.

If people could afford to go back to single-income families, it would
increase the number of jobs available which consequently would
decrease the amount needed to pay unemployment benefits.

--
Cynic

In message 4f3903d0.83396046@localhost, at 13:23:18 on Mon, 13 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message 4f3903d0.83396046@localhost, at 13:23:18 on Mon, 13 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Acute point and well made.

My home is now far more comfortable and nicer to be in than almost all
pubs.

I can smoke if I want, drink as much as I like, the toilet are not
disgusting, and mostly the food is as good or better.

If I want to gossip, there is the Internet.

If I want to watch a football cricket or Rugby match, there is the TV or
the Internet/computer.

What do I need or want a PUB for?

In message , at 15:15:53 on Mon, 13 Feb
2012, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house,
for example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the
same activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.
The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that
- homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Acute point and well made.

My home is now far more comfortable and nicer to be in than almost all
pubs.

I can smoke if I want, drink as much as I like, the toilet are not
disgusting, and mostly the food is as good or better.

If I want to gossip, there is the Internet.

If I want to watch a football cricket or Rugby match, there is the TV
or the Internet/computer.

What do I need or want a PUB for?

You want it when you aren't near home, or want more than a cafe but less
than a restaurant, or it's a meeting of more people than you'd be able
to accommodate at home, or supply free food and drink to at home.

On the other hand, if fancy hosting the next cam.misc meet, feel free
--
Roland Perry

On 13/02/12 13:23, Cynic wrote:

Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

I think the biggest difference is the freedom from stress that comes
when not everything is a necessity. ie not being desperate to find a job
or worrying how to pay an unexpectedly high bill. But even those things
are relative: become accustomed to a certain standard of living and rate
of spending and adjustment to unexpected reduced circumstances can be
difficult whatever your position on an absolute scale of wealth. Living
up to your income is always unwise, but for the really poor they is no
margin to do otherwise..


--
djc

On Feb 13, 1:23*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:42:50 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

The average individual family cannot survive on a single salary
without suffering a significant loss of living standards.
Quite, although this seems incongruous with your proposal that
families do exactly that: survive on one salary.

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.

You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".



=A0The
ever-rising fixed expenses such as mortgage/rent, council tax, water,
electricity, gas etc. have resulted in *very* little money left over
from the wages of an average worker, and in many cases the second
income is necessary to even be able to afford to buy a reasonable
amount of food, let alone any luxury/leisure items.
Agreed, although I suppose it will not be unexpected if I point out
that this is all perfectly consistent with what I said about there
being sufficient economic capacity for all families to live on a
single income. The only reason some families would struggle under the
current circumstances, is because other rich families are consuming
vast amounts of finite economic resources.

Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. *We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. *The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). *You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.



*Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.

If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.



*Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.

Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.



*In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.

Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.



*I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.



Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a £15 cocktail at the poolside of a £1000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.

There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.

Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.

Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.



*And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a £10 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. *And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.

I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.



Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. *And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.

On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:





It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. =A0A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. =A0In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. =A0A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. =A0And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. =A0Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.
But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation.

Rubbish! Direct taxes are at their lowest in living memory. Indirect
taxes (e.g. point-of-use charges) have increased massively, but people
such as yourself often tend to support such things anyway as an
alternative to direct taxes.

And the point is, my taxes pay for the public services that I, my
family, and friends enjoy. I don't have a problem paying taxes in
principle, and I don't have this imaginary perception like you do that
the public sector is full of workshy layabouts who sit around drinking
tea all day. As I've said previously, my experience of the public
sector is that most of the 'waste' occurs at the interface with the
private sector. It is true (though not in my direct expeirence) that
the public sector can be inefficiently organised and lacks political
control, but the private sector often lacks organisation almost by
definition, precisely because there is so much atomisation of the
productive process (not least because monopoly is prevented), and it
often also lacks the appropriate incentives (which is precisely why it
cannot be permitted monopoly).



And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

Indeed.



Consider how much of your income ends up going to the government one
way or another. *Obviously there is income tax, VAT and council tax,
which of themselves eat up a huge percentage of your income (work it
out and surprise yourself). *But you also pay indirectly for business
taxes because the cost of *all* goods, utilities and services must
incororate that levy - which in many cases you are then charged VAT
on. *And of course there is the huge cut that government takes from
motor fuels that again affects the cost of almost everything.

If people could afford to go back to single-income families, it would
increase the number of jobs available which consequently would
decrease the amount needed to pay unemployment benefits.

Yes, but like I said previously, it improves the bargaining power of
labour! Why do you think they ended the post-war policy of full
employment, and put one in ten on the dole in the 80s?

On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation. *And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.

On Feb 13, 8:37*pm, Tim Streater wrote:
In article
,





*Ste wrote:
On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:
It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation.

Rubbish! Direct taxes are at their lowest in living memory. Indirect
taxes (e.g. point-of-use charges) have increased massively, but people
such as yourself often tend to support such things anyway as an
alternative to direct taxes.

And the point is, my taxes pay for the public services that I, my
family, and friends enjoy. I don't have a problem paying taxes in
principle, and I don't have this imaginary perception like you do that
the public sector is full of workshy layabouts who sit around drinking
tea all day.

No, they probably work quite hard, a lot of them. But because it's a
monopoly, there's no incentive, as there is in the private sector, to
improve processes and squeeze out waste.

Rubbish. There isn't a need to constantly motivate people with
"incentives", by which you implicitly mean financial incentives. Moral
narratives and collective purpose, are sufficient to an extent to
motivate people. It is private profit that often assaults these very
incentives.

It doesn't mean the public sector runs itself - it needs political
oversight to ensure efficient use of public money (and by 'efficient'
I mean efficient in terms of achieving political policy, not in terms
of spending the least possible amount of money), but the private
sector is simply not a substitute for this.



As I've said previously, my experience of the public sector is that
most of the 'waste' occurs at the interface with the private sector.

And that's because in the public sector, there appears to be a complete
inability to write contracts.

No, it's because they're being forced to write contracts that would
otherwise not be written, because the nature of the operation requires
flexibility and above all, mutual trust. It's the same reason as why
most organisations have employees rather than contractors, because you
don't have to renegotiate a contract every time you want the employee
to do something different.



It is true (though not in my direct expeirence) that
the public sector can be inefficiently organised

Got that bit right ...

and lacks political control, but the private sector often lacks
organisation almost by definition, precisely because there
is so much atomisation of the productive process (not least because
monopoly is prevented), and it often also lacks the appropriate
incentives (which is precisely why it cannot be permitted monopoly).

The private sector knows how to manage sub-contractors, and how to get
the best results from them in terms of quality and price, precisely
because they have the incentive to do so, a quality so conspicuously
lacking in the public sector.

The private sector manages difficult kinds of subcontracting by
internalising those functions - it only externalises those functions
that it can manage successfully, so it is very easy to reflect and say
the private sector is expert in managing external subcontractors. The
public sector does divide and externalise - you don't have the same
organisation running schools as railways - but if permitted (which it
is not), the public sector does so in a more efficient way than the
private sector.



How often are we hearing about IT
projects, or MoD cost increases? All the bloody time.

All projects run by the private sector! Funnily enough, I don't
remember all these IT fiascos before the mid-90s, when it was all
outsourced to the private sector.



You may or may not remember a time some 25 years ago when Jaguar nearly
went tits-up, because they allowed their subcontractors to do component
quality testing, rather than doing it themselves. As a result,
reliability of the XJ6 during that era was rubbish and sales plummeted.
Eventually they scrapped that policy and things picked up.

That sort of discipline is lacking in the public sector.

But if the production of those components had been internalised, there
would have been *no incentive* for anyone to have violated the quality
parameters in the first place!

On 13/02/2012 22:57, Tim Streater wrote:

Christ on a bicycle, you dope. I'm not talking about ****ing bonuses,
I'm talking about the fact that in any private company that expects to
thrive, and survive, theres's gonna be a person, or team, whose job(s)
it is to examine how the company does things and work out ways to
improve them. And save money. And therefore keep the company alive. And
in the long term stop it going bust.

Public sector has the same thing when it's run well.

Yes - and a screw up because the public sector is crap at managing
suppliers. It's easy for a wide boy to underbid and then, oh dear, there
are "unforeseen extra costs", and oddly enough the contract allows me to
charge those back to the saps in the public sector - who didn't write it
tightly enough in the first place.

Private sector is entirely capable of doing that too.

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:09:05 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message 4f3903d0.83396046@localhost, at 13:23:18 on Mon, 13 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.

Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort, and the use of many *public* facilities is thus preferable to
having such facilities in your own home.

--
Cynic

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:15:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

What do I need or want a PUB for?

Purely for the social experience of physically being amongst a crowd
of people, even if you are not actually interacting with many of them.
Human psychology is such that for most people it is at times
preferable to be surrounded by many strangers than being alone or in a
smaller group of people.

I have visited several small uninhabited islands that had beautiful
sandy beaches that were completely deserted. After the novelty of
being in such places had worn off, I found that I much preferred being
on a beach that has plenty of people on it (so long as it is not
overcrowded).


--
Cynic

Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:15:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

What do I need or want a PUB for?

Purely for the social experience of physically being amongst a crowd
of people, even if you are not actually interacting with many of them.
Human psychology is such that for most people it is at times
preferable to be surrounded by many strangers than being alone or in a
smaller group of people.


BTDTGTTS.

No thanks

I have visited several small uninhabited islands that had beautiful
sandy beaches that were completely deserted. After the novelty of
being in such places had worn off, I found that I much preferred being
on a beach that has plenty of people on it (so long as it is not
overcrowded).


Says everything about you...

My nearest neighbour is 200 meters away and that's 200 meters too close.