They're All Mad You Know


 Coming back from my world cruise on the S.S. Happy Wanderer, I told myself that my knowledge of HM Revenue and Customs was now far too time-expired (our "out of date" as we used to say). But setting foot on English shores once more, I soon found that the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg were still trotting out the same old prejudices about civil servants, productivity and working from home. That's one good thing about starting from a base of no knowledge. It can never go out of date. 

According to The Times of 10 January, MP's such as Harriet Baldwin of the Treasury committee have written to Jim Harra ( head of HMRC) after helplines were shut down last month due to IT problems. Despite being told that the shutdown was due to "a botched upgrade", the MP's still want to know , "if its working from home policy has caused a decline in its customer service helpline."

Of course, Jim Harra will give them an answer. And they probably won't be satisfied with it. And they will still say it's caused by staff working from home. So, I'm going to thrown my bit in here.

So here's my defence from a couple of years ago of working from home - and here's my response to Johnson's original "back to the office" call  - and finally my response to Rees Mogg's love-letters left on empty office desks.

It won't satisfy the likes of Mogg. It will never sink in that the magic IT that they boast about when they're CUTTING jobs, also makes it possible to work productively from home. But at least it makes me feel a bit better...before I got off on my next cruise.

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