in praise of idle

Sometimes I'm very proud to be British. This post-Christmas / New Year period has been one of those times. Because clearly, no-one can be arsed to go back to work. Most of the people at the coffee morning yesterday hadn't been back to work yet. The Guardian describe is as The Great British Skive with tons of businesses staying closed between Christmas and New Year and many not opening again until January 8th. (explanation of skive)

The Federation Of Small Businesses bleated that "The country will take some days to crank up again. We have stiff competition from China and India and if we are all away until the 8th there is an impact." Though if the competition is stiff enough to be impacted by our holidays then we're screwed already.

I was thinking about this myself this morning, wondering if I'd gone back to work yet. It's hard to know when you work for yourself and work from home. When do you go back to work? I've been answering emails and answering the phone the whole holidays, does that mean I've not stopped working yet? (I shall be listening to this to find out.)

I thought about it even more when I heard this extract from Tom Hodgkinson's How To Be Free. (The audio is only up for a week.) He pointed out that Merrie England was called that because it was a very merry place, he reads a list from Ronald Hutton's Rise and Fall of Merry England which makes it clear that before the reformation the whole year was chockful of feast days and holidays. Until the bloody puritans came along. And: "the tragedy of the 19th century was that Western man came to see himself, first and foremost, as a worker."

I think the Great British Skive isn't just a momentary aberration. I suspect it's part of a re-balancing going on in UK society, re-considering the relationship between work and life. This is partly because the economy is doing OK and we're, relatively, fat and happy at the moment. But I think it's a thing. Worth looking out for anyway.      

Comments

[John Dodds]

It's only a bad thing if the attitude spills over into one's actual work.

The post immediately brought to mind all those claims that are made about lost revenues due to sudden bursts of adverse weather or other events that impact some organisation for a couple of days. Someone creates the figure by multiplying average revenue by number of days lost but there's no consideration of the fact that most, if not all, of the spending will be made up in the future since the pound in your pocket is still there.

Perhaps we all only have a set amount of productive work that we can deliver in a year and people skive safe in the knowledge that missing a few meetings won't reduce their total output in the long run?

[Amy]

This is certainly not limited to the UK. My daily drive to work in Los Angeles (at a major record label) has been cut from an hour to 25 minutes all week. Once there primed and ready to work, I found that approx 30% of the staff had yet to return and those that did were 'just getting going again'. All and all a quiet week.
Interesting to note as well that the Los Angeles school system gave their students this past week off as well, in large part due to the huge distances to south america that many of the immigrant population must travel to see their familys.

[russell]

Maybe it's a global thing. Maybe this will be a lucky year for the whole world.

[Christian]

If you love skive you should come more often to the Kingdom of Skive : France. There you will learn how to 'esquiver' work with 35-hour weeks.

[Rodney Tanner]

Mexico City has been wonderfully quiet for the last two weeks. Those that can take off for the school holidays. They say that around 6 million people left the city over the holidays. The next big exodus is Easter week and that is slowly being extended from 1 to 2 weeks, again to match the school holidays.