Ministers face backlash over messaging campaign calling time on home working

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2. Some major issues have come to light for the government

Last edited Mon Aug 31, 2020, 02:10 PM - Edit history (2)

One is that people spend more money when they work in an office as opposed to working from home.

When I'm in the office I spend more on transport and food. If the papers weren't such a steaming pile of crap then maybe I might have considered buying one of those as well. There's also more opportunity to nip out to the shops to buy other things rather than buying stuff online. Some people also socialise straight after finishing at work. All this adds up to a lot of economic activity (especially in Central London) and the loss of this is hurting a lot of people.

This is a major reason why the press is so shrill on this point. They are losing a big chunk of their readership. To be honest I wish they would admit this point when shrieking about the supposed evils of working from home.

The second point is that this is having a dramatic effect on how and where people shop. Not just the move to buying online but also where I live it is very noticeable that people are keeping to the suburbs and out of the city centre.

The future looks very bleak for town centres. High Street retail is doing really badly and town centre living with it's lack of space is looking a lot less attractive than it used to. And homelessness, which is already a big problem in town centres is going to be an even bigger problem going forward.