h/t James Delingpole – Britain’s Labour Opposition Party, which has a real chance of winning the next UK election, is seriously considering a think tank proposal to radically cut working hours and wages to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint.
Plan for 10-hour working week with 75% paycut under Labour
Martine Berg Olsen Monday 10 Jun 2019 7:54 am
The Labour Party is discussing plans to bring in a 10-hour working week and slash pay by 75 per cent to tackle climate change. The radical report titled The Ecological Limits of Work by the Autonomy Group states unless current carbon emissions are cut there would be an ‘unprecedented decrease in the economic activity’.It says the sustainable work week would likely be ‘well below 10 hours per week’.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who has previously backed a four-day working week, said: ‘This is a vital contribution to the growing debate around free time and reducing the working week.’ Leo Murray, adviser to Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis, said: ‘I like this take a lot.’
Lewis has previously backed another controversial report from the group on reducing the working week.
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/10/plan-10-hour-working-week-75-paycut-labour-9878450/
…
The full report, “The Ecological Limits of Work”, is available here.
Under the topic “other considerations”, the report authors express concern that their proposed cut might not be deep enough, because people working shorter hours might be more productive during the time they do work, which would cancel some of the ecological “benefit” of a shorter working week.
This is not a fringe proposal. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who praised the proposal, is a senior figure in the Labour Party, and has a real chance of being put in charge of Britain’s banking system and economy after the next election.
The report kind of skips over issues which might concern some workers, like how British workers already suffering fuel poverty are supposed to warm their homes and feed their families with 75% less money, and how they are supposed to pay their mortgages and bills (maybe all mortgages will be forgiven?), but I doubt the politicians considering this radical policy proposal have ever personally experienced real hunger, poverty or cold.
C’mon, man, this has to be from the Babylon Bee or the Onion.
sorry…. this guy waved Mao’s little red book in parliament.
That’s ok! It wasn’t a lump of coal.
Maybe Mad Magazine?
The National Lampoon would have run this, but I don’t think they are still in press.
No it aint .
No one can live on a 75% pay cut , the socialists have decided to cut the population by starving the British population down to a sustainable number , around twenty million .
Do you really believe people would sit quietly at home and die of starvation? Umm, no. It would be France ^ 10.
Break out the BLADE……heads will roll!!! Just sayin’.
Can’t wait to see the 1/4 pound note. Perhaps instead of Her Royal Highness’ face, the McD 1/4 pounder will feature prominently
You misspelled doubling the work week to 10 hours. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
The only way to make it work would be to cut everything %75 across the board …
Prices
Rents
Property values
Goods and services
Taxes
Lordship fees
AND
live with an isolationist policy.
No imports
No EU grid electricity
No foreign travel out of country (wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway)
Full charge pricing for foreign travelers within the country
Put the GMO people to work on humans. Engineer us to go into suspended animation 75% of the time.
Day World- by phillip jose Farmer is about exactly that 😉 excellent book
as for this gem of an idea..i remember a mate saying by yr 2k wed be on 20hr weeks lotsa leisure etc. well pt time or casuals ar and they are lucky to pay rent n eat let alone spend on leisure..
i liked this…because after i cleaned up my snorted coffee it was the funniest thing this week
theyre serious? seriously deranged and on a fast trail to zero.
deservedly so if theyre that nutty
Bryan A:
You forgot to mention food!
It’s starting to sound a lot like the old USSR…
Is that a bug, or a feature?
That’s the selling point. On the front cover, in all caps.
I feel ya – it’s hard to accept ANY people being this crazy/stupid – it’s flat terrifying when it’s people empowered to DO it.
Its never going to happen. How did this even get published here?
If I had a $100 for everytime I heard “it’s not going to happen” then it did maybe not right away but it did. Or the slippery slope arguments turned out correct. I could retire. I remember when both sides said the Supreme Court wouldn’t force citizen’s to buy private products. Yet we now have Obama care.
Population is the real problem.
We just have to get back to about 1 billion people worldwide, as was the case in 1800.
Offer $5000 to women of childbearing age, no matter where they live, to be sterilized.
Tens of millions of the poorer ones likely would accept it.
With fewer women having children, population would rapidly decrease.
Population is a problem? Only in your mind. Despite the billions of us, we are better fed, better housed, with better health than at any time in the past.
So where’s the problem?
China tried something similar and actually did manage to get their population (up) to 1B
They even tried getting rid of their girl babies and now, as a direct result, gangs of unmarried men roam the streets with no wives and no prospects looking for any woman around just for sex.(rape)
Actually, the Chinese government didn’t want to get rid of girl babies, or I don’t think they did. That was a mistake rooted in the failure to realize that allowing people only 1 child would result in a great many of their citizens committing selective infanticide until they got a male child. I could be wrong, it’s not like the Chinese government consulted me on this… but their attempts to “steal” women from other nations makes it pretty clear they wanted fewer children, not fewer women.
Precisely but families want their name to endure which doesn’t happen with women.
If you look at the trend line, China’s one-child policy was enacted at a point where the existing downward trend in average fertility suddenly flattened out. In other words, for the one-child policy to have an effect on Chinese fertility it would have to have discovered time travel.
Population is not the problem.
Religious beliefs, cultural beliefs and lack of education is the problem.
No Samuel, traditional Judeo Christian values are what laid the foundation for Western society, which was by far the freest and safest, most prosperous and comfortable ever.
The religion of Islam, CAGW, and statism (including all forms) are the extremely dangerous ideologies. The historical evidence is absolute on this
“HA”, …… first you disagree ….. and the next breath you agree with what you disagreed with.
World population is currently roughly 7,700,000,000, the land area of Texas is 171,891,840 acres, divided one by the other and you get 45 people per acre, almost exactly the same as the population density of New York City. Yup, everybody in the world could fit into Texas living as New Yorkers leaving the rest of the planet empty!
Greenpeace activists actually have a plan to reduce world population by 6 in 7 through genocide.
The greatest atrocities in mankind’s history have been committed by those that truly believe their actions are justified…
Yeah, I get the point, but “living as New Yorkers”? Hopefully could improve on that……
There is no problem with population. The world could easily handle twice the population.
Well Willem.
If you think the population is the problem.
Why don’t you lead by example then?
I did.
I am 82, married for 57 years, no children.
The population explosion is not in Japan, not in Europe, not in Russia, etc., but in underdeveloped countries.
Almost all of them have an excess of population growth, such as Pakistan, Egypt, India, mostly due to religious dogmas, and not enough resources to provide for them.
10 billion people need a lot of room and resources.
They will take them from the other fauna and flora, which will shrink more and more, as happened during the past 200 years.
Well known biological scientists at Harvard and Stamford U, think even 1 billion would be too many, because that 1 billion would do much more damage than the 1 billion alive in 1800. Just google.
The way to reduce population is increase standard of living. That is why China no longer has one child law.
Based on the diversity of comments by readers, I want to emphasize the worldwide program is ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY.
Women would get PAID, several times the annual household income in poorer countries, for voluntarily being sterilized.
This has nothing to do with China which FORCED people to have just one child (NO COMPENSATION), with severe penalties for having a second child. Just google
No point in that. Most Western women have only one or two children, which is too little to prevent Western countries from crashing with or without immigration. We needed the contrary, give money to anyone who gives birth to a child. And that happens in Nordic countries, with almost zero effect on aboriginal fertility,but more on immigrant fertility.
My language, my history, my color are all going to disappear in a one big cultural suicide taking about 50 to 100 years before being well committed to. But it is evident already. Valuing immigrants over aboriginals will be for destruction of aboriginals.
It may, but they underestimate the true grit of some of us Patriots.
Globalism cannot proceed unless the biggest threat to collectivism (historically white Western societies with Judeo Christian values) is eradicated and absorbed into the light brown blob of “diversity”. It is the virtue signaling, self loathing extreme liberals who are guilty of pushing this (only group through polling that has a negative self valuation compared to other ethnicities), and the rest of us to a lesser but still responsible degree for not unifying when this shift began
Willem, where on earth does anyone come up with such a notion that 1 billion is the right number?
Real world data and research indicate that this would result in worse economic conditions, not better. PEOPLE are the worlds most valuable and creative resource.
At least the intelligent ones…..
How did AOC miss this?
Man, our socialists just suck.
Getting rid of 75% of the population would cut hours and wages by the same amount as propososed, without the economic pain.
This excerpt from the article, …… was beautiful, …… absolutely beautiful, to wit:
I think they got that backwards. If they unwisely implement this plan, there will be an “unprecedented decrease in the economic activity’”
We have to destroy the economy in order to save it.
+42
Prosperity – gotta get rid of it to save the planet.
If they cut everyone’s pay by 75%, then everyone will be reduced to cutting down their urban forests to heat their homes and business. What are these people thinking, worrying about a ‘carbon footprint’? The UK was the first to adopt wholesale carbon fuels to replace having to cut down forests for heating and charcoal for things like steel making. However, I would support the 10 hour work week, at least for Gov’t bureaucrats, since the damage they do to the economy is immense when they just show up for work. In fact, I would support just paying them to stay home.
Earthling2
Presumably then, every pensioner with an institutional or private pension would become the new upper class wealthy.
I’m up for that!
Except I wouldn’t retire to the UK (an option in two years) I would be heading Stateside with everyone else.
HotScot, I hate to point this out to you, but Stateside is where AOC lives and agitates, along with the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore that Mann chap and his hockey stick fixation, Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg, and too many other fruitcakes to mention them all.
Are you sure choosing the USA is a wise option at this stage of their shakedown?
Maybe try Canada first for the full fat option of Green lunacy, just to see if you like it. If it doesn’t work out, there is always Australia, which should have returned to the sane world within the next couple of years/ A safe haven from Green destruction should become available down there. They are finally asking the right questions of Greens and they don’t think paying AL Gore to speak nonsense at tax payers expense was a good idea either.
It reminds me of the joke back in the days of union/industrial unrest of strike after strike after strike in 1970s Britain! The left kept saying, “all we’re asking for is an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work!!!
Just goes to show how there are no limits to the eco-insanity that pervades the mids ofthe Left! I wonder, as I have said some time ago, the BBC Horizon programme did a special on the Sun & Solar activity, they tracked (or rather their experts did) Sunspot activity & the higher it was, the more curious the behaviour of Humanity appeared to be, e.g. the rise & fall ofhemlines in the 1960s correlated with Sunspot activity!!! Perhaps the new Grand Solar Minimum has already kicked in exerting its lunatic affects!!! AND before anyone thinks I am being too serious, absences of evidence is NOT evidence of absence!!!
as long as their stay home pay is = to their unemployment rates…yes
Er…..does this include a cut in politician’s salaries too?
I thought not.
Good Lord no, they need those cuts to increase their salaries & expenses allowances!!!! OT, not sure Len Jay if you’re from the Virginian Colonies, but it has always been symptomatic of the British Civil Service, that nobody ever has a headache or a cold, it’s always a migrane or flu, requiring a day off sick!!! Sarc but true!!!
You know there’s just too much good living been going on ’round here. Our think tank studies assure that the apex has been reached and we’re all headed down to the new normal of deprivation by design. So do stop your unmutual conduct and torch yourselves!
Well most certainly. Right after you, commissar.
I bet that searches for “pitchfork” on eBay have spiked (no pun)
From part 1 of the report = History of an Idea
As early as the 1880s, Paul Lafargue, a son-in-law of Karl
Marx, put forth the demand for a three-hour work day,
enthusiastically highlighting the emancipatory potentials of
technological progress (Lafargue 1883). Roughly half a century
later, John Maynard Keynes dedicated himself to discussing
the “economic possibilities for our grandchildren”, likewise
putting forth the prospect of three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour
work week (Keynes 1930). Societal development, however,
took a different route: working hours largely decreased, but
nowhere near to the extent discussed by Lafargue and Keynes,
whilst increases in productivity lead to qualitatively and
quantitatively vastly expanded production that provided the
base for modern-day mass-consumer culture.
Had we been willing to settle for the standard of living enjoyed by the average person 100 years ago, we could have cut the work week down to 10 to 15 hours. People chose to spend part of the bonus from increased productivity on better lives for themselves and their families.
No it wouldn’t. You can’t innovate without making new things, and the only way to keep the standards of, say, 1900 without inventing new things is to invent new ways of making the old things. But those new ways are themselves new things.
Consider the people who invented pottery and made better and longer-lasting dishes and ways of preserving and transporting food than wood. You can’t make better dishes by innovating wood work; it takes pottery, and that’s a new product with unforeseen advanced uses which change society.
How could you improve personal transport in 1900 without inventing cars? You can’t breed smaller cheaper stronger horses who eat and shit less.
One of the ways people got more productive was washing machines and refrigerators. You couldn’t reduce women’s working hours (this is 1900, remember) without inventing those two machines.
Refrigerators had the knock-on affect of eliminating the need to go shopping for food every day, or twice day. Congratulations, you’ve just moved beyond 1900.
And people seem to have settled on a 40 hour work week. If you tried to force everybody to limit work to 10 hours a week, people would find side jobs. Or if you made it such a terrible crime so well enforced that people really did stop working more than 10 hours a week, what would they do? People in 1900 were not very rich. They could not afford to take vacations. Those people are going to be bored stiff and *find* things to do which can make them more money.
And anyone self-employed will sometimes find themselves working 70 plus hour weeks, as the job actually has to get done on time.
“You can’t make better dishes by innovating wood work; it takes pottery, and that’s a new product with unforeseen advanced uses which change society.”
I think I know where you are coming from, but POI, pottery has been around for well over 3-4 thousand years so cannot be descirbed as new!
But excessive improvements to pottery can result in a dead end. The Chinese and by extension the Japanese made such high quality pottery that they missed out on a superior technology, glass. Glass is a more versatile material in its many varied forms.
At some point pottery was new, just as wood dishes were new at some point.
I say, increasing productivity increases wealth.
You say, not that’s wrong, you can’t innovate without making new things.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying, I’m struggling to find the thread by which your comment is connected to mine, much less proves that what I said is wrong.
@MarkW. There isn’t a connecting thread. You aren’t wrong. He’s doing damage limitation by pretending there’s a counter-point, but there isn’t one.
You said, “Had we been willing to settle for the standard of living enjoyed by the average person 100 years ago, we could have cut the work week down to 10 to 15 hours”.
I’m saying you could not have both settled for the standard of living of 100 years ago AND innovated to cut the work week down to 10 to 15 hours.
The only way to cut the work week down is to make old things better. If you innovate by making new things, you have improved the standard of living.
Felix – June 12, 2019 at 7:01 pm
Felix, your 1st sentence was OK iffen you were talking post-1950’s, …… but the next two I hafta question.
And remember, there was and still is, a big difference in the “labor intensiveness” of urban and rural living, especially after 1900.
Washing clothes was “labor intensive”, with or without a washing machine ……. until electric water well pumps, in home plumbing and the “automatic” washing machines were invented.
And home refrigerators didn’t really eliminate the “labor intensive” acts of raising livestock, raising a garden and canning-drying-salting “down” your harvested food for later consumption.
It was the increase in urban population that made refrigerator-freezers and well-stocked neighborhood retail stores a “labor saving” necessity.
My point is that you can’t increase manufacturing efficiency to support a 10-15 hour work week without inventing new things which take you out of the static lifestyle which was part of the original supposition. Innovation and stasis are incompatible.
“Had we been willing to settle for the standard of living enjoyed by the average person 100 years ago, we could have cut the work week down to 10 to 15 hours.”
Can’t be done.
Felix, …… I was not and did not ……. critique the above quote you posted.
I was merely critiquing your beliefs about earlier (late 1800’s early 1900’s) living conditions
Thanks, NMD – I will look these up, as part of my study in The History of Ideas.
All ideas have a history.
I have posted before – not in a while – that this shorter work week idea HAS come to fruition, but not as we anticipated. I had only gone back to post-WWII. Here is my observation:
We had a boom post-WWII. Especially in technology. Two areas: designing and mass-producing mechanical things, and chemistry. We had the advent of the many labor-saving devices – washing machines, vacuums, etc. And, we had the day of “Better Living Through Chemistry.”
We also had an economic boom so vast swaths of the population could buy things.
The idea was discussed a lot: in the future, we would all live lives of leisure, since we were saving so much time, and having healthier lives.
Here is what happened. On average, we have ALL had our work week shrink, and we all live a good life. But the work week has not shrunk for all of us, equally. This enhanced productivity has allowed us to have the productive people stay busy at 60 hours a week, and the wealth is transferred to the unproductive people. I work 60 hours a week so some unknown person can be supported by my tax dollars.
That is where my 3-day work week has gone.
no, you work 60 hours a week to provide money for bullshit jobs in which people also work 60 hours a week.
I certainly think it is the height of stupidity to do it to curb carbon emissions – but I can see it happen somehow in the future as automation spreads in all workplaces. You would need to tax more – and introduce negative tax. In effect pay each human being a lifelong fixed amount of money from the date of birth.
Let’s see… Now everyone will need four jobs to make the same income, but now they’ll be traveling more to get to all those jobs, and that will of course drive up emissions. Yeah, I’m going to say they didn’t think this one all the way through…
Wrong – the transportation is going to be bicycles or horses [carriages OK]
Naah. The high poobahs of the green movement really envision sedan chairs, with them riding, rather than carrying one.
Bicycles maybe. Horses no, they fart too much. Rikshaws maybe, if you can get there and back in 10 hours at a normal human trot. Would stopping for a cupa’ be counted in the 10 hours? Oh MY Gawd, this would eliminate professional cricket. Ain’t no way anyone could finish a match in just 10 hours.
they are NUTZ
I beg to differ, they are nucking futs!
Richard Chenoweth – Nah, but IMO it is Cultural Marxist kite-flying. So why fly this kite, now? Is UK Labour trying to get a feeling for how gullible the UK voter is?
The UK officially needs a gulag archipelago for these characters. Western Falkland Islands living in a tent for 10 years maybe?
The gulag is likely to be set up as reeducation camps for those who disagree with these planteray saviours…..
South Georgia would be better. They can hug penguins to keep warm. Won’t be allowed to hurt them because protected species, naturally.
The actual working paper was published in April. Sooooo …
This is just short of Venezuela and it’s problems right now. This proposal creates mass poverty and confiscation of one’s wealth by the government and is step away from a socialist state if it goes down this path.
Ah, you have noticed what they want to model our new economy on then. Having even 10 hours work is a miracle there at the moment for most.
“people working shorter hours might be more productive during the time they dowork which would cancel some of the ecological benefit” Easy to solve – just make them all government employees and the productivity issue is solved.
Um, isn’t that called Socialism?
Besides, if you turned up to work 1 day a week, how are you going to remember what you were doing 6 days ago? How can you arrange appointments with external consultants? It takes years to do an engineering project now with 5 days x 9 hours per day. At 1 day x 10 hours, it would take 5 times longer to build anything at all…. Doh!
But there’d be no money available anyway as taxes would be cut by 1/5th, therefor no welfare, no roads, no railway, no building maintenance, no public transport, no public parks, no police?
What makes you think taxes would be cut?
Someone should pass this idea onto Warren. It sounds like something she’d jump on.
Or put them on a benefit to make up for the loss in income. After all, the government has lots of cash, and can always print more if its needed…….
….N.U.T.S…..!
Step away from the kool aid now.
The Labor-NOT party.
I guess after you starve to death your carbon foot print really takes a nose dive! Seriously who is this STUPID???
‘because people working shorter hours might be more productive during the time they do work”
who are these morons?…
People will work at exactly the same pace…you’ll only get 10 hours of work…instead of 40
…actually…they will more than likely work slower and less….no one likes to crank it up after doing nothing
nothing becomes the new norm
The UK public service unions will not have a bar of working a 10 hour week.
They’re not going to put in another 4 hours for any ba5tard bosses.
Well, sure, if everyone starves to death or freezes to death, then you would reduce everyone’s carbon footprint.
“unless current carbon emissions are cut there would be an ‘unprecedented decrease in the economic activity’”
To avoid this they propose a drastic evisceration of economic activity to prevent… an unprecedented decrease in the economic activity.
Of course they are loony. WTF do they think a 75% reduction in economic activity is?
Should not one expect that a 75% reduction in working hours also bring about a 75% reduction in productivity (GDP)?
With a 75% reduction in GDP mightn’t the government expect a 75% reduction in tax revenues?
Surely they haven’t thought this through very far.
Maybe the intent is to increase tax by about 300%?
“Surely they haven’t thought this through very far.”
That’s because they can’t think.
The irony is that reducing ‘carbon footprint’ would have no significant effect on climate. Patrick Michaels of Cato discusses the colossal mistakes being made by ‘climate science’ here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA5sGtj7QKQ&authuser=0 .
You can discover what has actually caused warming here http://diyclimateanalysis.blogspot.com . This method is easily adaptable to calculating future temperature using data up to any year in the past. The prediction using water vapor, SSN and a simple approximation of SST up to 2005 calculated the measured, 5-year smoothed, temperature trend for 2018 within 0.05 K.
Yep. Delays the global temp. rise by 70 days. Have we reached peak moron yet?
Hard to tell. Lots of folks have been indoctrinated with the false notion that CO2 has a significant effect on warming. The observation that CO2 continues its current rapid rate of increase (CO2 increased 2002-2018 by 40% of the increase 1800-2002) while the temperature trend increase rate has since about 2002 slowed to a creep, should eventually sink in.
Gosh, why didn’t I think of that? Let everyone starve to death or just commit suicide from the sheer hopelessness of it all. Lets see how Venezuela turns out and use that as a template, eh?
Sounds like a good way to bring down the British economy, and British social order with it. Once the chaos begins, no one in Britain will give a damn what the climate is doing.
It is a descent into sheer madness if it’s not a joke article from The Onion. But these days, you can hardly tell with the nuts from Labour.
But dont worry. The report says
“……..a growing discussion sees a reduction in working hours as a multiple dividend policy, increasing, among other things, individual wellbeing, productivity and gender equality whilst simultaneously potentially contributing to a reduction in unemployment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”
There. Nothing to worry about, it will increase individual wellbeing.
Yup, dead people never get sick or have bad days and gender equality is almost perfect in cemeteries, so starving and freezing 2/3 of the population will eventually increase individual wellbeing for the majority. The 1/3 of the population that survives may not really think so and the 2/3 that starve and freeze will no doubt have a few questions about this socialist utopia while they’re starving and freezing, but that’s progressive progress.
One would think the Godzilla-stomping obvious insanity of this proposal would bleed over into more skepticism of the global warming stampede in general. Anyone proposing something this dumb should be given no credence on any topic whatsoever.
Not if people glue themselves to a moving city bus, as it then goes viral, and spiral popularity for the proposal is practically assured.
How will British subjects warm their homes? By burning Labor politicians as firewood. Then next election, they can get this stupid proposal repealed.
I’m sure farmers would like to cut their hours by 6.5x under this plan. They might just be able to grow enough for themselves, though.
https://www.fwi.co.uk/farm-life/health-and-wellbeing/fit2farm-farmers-weekly-campaign-to-improve-farmers-health
In other news the UK Labour party proudly announces the discovery of a new massive seam of Stupid, big enough to provide for all of the British Isles for the next 250 years…
On the plus side I suppose, if this goes through the Pound will be so low that us foreign types will be able to visit the UK for about $0.39 a day.
I was watching a video the other day, that was just a day old, of a cab trip on a train from Winchester to Basingstoke. In the video you can see a red-brick building to the right as the train pulls in to the station. That building is called Normandy House. The last time I was in that building was 1994, and it has been empty ever since.
The UK is on a one way trip to economic doom with or without Brexit. It started in about 2008.
Great idea. And if the
peasantspeople run out of bread, they can always have cake instead.You all seem to think he is talking of everyone cutting down to 10 hours a week.
He is really only talking of those who vote for liberals, which in the US , on average, would be an increase if the 10 hours was productive work.
He expects conservatives to continue carrying the load.
So, which 10 hours a week will the hospitals be open?
Or the grocery stores, or …
Appreciate the honesty here. Just more Progressive War on the Middle Class.
Yes. I think they said exactly what they really mean. And that is a good thing because it is sooooo obviously deserving of ridicule, derision, and rejection!
With police and firemen working such short hours I’m sure this won’t affect the crime rate. Neither will all these poor, hungry people with lots of free time. They wouldn’t consider crime just because they are starving.
face::palm.
If this happens I suggest that all the British people should move to America and join the ‘I can’t be bothered to get a job but can I have a working salary anyway’ mob that AOC will introduce. They won’t even have to get visa’s etc. as AOC will let them all in for free. They can then turn the UK into a giant historical fun park…
Ooops.. no need, I forgot we’ll all be dead in about 11 years and 7 months or so..
I heard Theresa May saying something stupid about climate change. Now Labor is being real stupid. Who’s the British public got to vote for that isn’t nuts?
That’s absolutely the problem for people like me who are sceptics.
Unfortunately politicians think this is a popular issue with the climatologists in the majority, so they jump on the bandwagon. We need a party to do some serious thought on this and lead the way to more rational solutions.
If the #trillions+, that it will cost to tinker with the climate via CO2, were to be spent on coping with climate instead, then the problems of warming, cooling or staying the same (we have now and have had for ever, droughts, floods, storms, etc, etc ) could be dealt with and a lot more beside.
OTOH the Extinction Rebellion crowd want to do away with democracy and have mob rule by activist minority, so political parties and voting would be irrelevant.
Perhaps it is a good thing that the far left, environmental, loony fringe is no longer fond of wearing a thin veneer of pretend logic. They have gone whole hog for fantasy land to the extent that anyone with a heart beat can see what the outcome of their policies would be and how society would dissolve into chaos in less than a week.
In my working career, I always modelled myself on Wally from the Dilbert cartoons. I can see a lot of upside in this proposal.
For example, by the time you take off a lunch break and a couple of coffee breaks, it’ll hardly be worth even logging on. Especially if I shank my password and have to get IT to reset it a couple of times a day. In which case, might as well save the commute and just stay in bed. I’ll send you my bank details, just EFT my salary and we’ll be sweet.
Of course as soon as they get into power the first thing they will do is to cut their own pay by 75%…
If politicians were to only work 1 day a week, we’d all be better off.
My God! There is an upside to their proposal…
The whole article from the Autonomy think tank is based on the assumption that 1/ there is a major climate emergency, and 2/ it is caused by human CO2 emissions. There is significant scientific evidence that neither are true.
3/ killing most of the population is the best solution to 1 and 2.
You’re not thinking it through!!!! These poor ruling classes have to consider the long-term future for the good of the Nation, trouble is, when the concentration camps are built, what will they gas us with? Conventional natural gas or evil wicked fracked natural gas? Oh the awful dilema they face! (As we all know, fracking was only invented by the evil wicked capitlists of Big Oil a couple of years ago to increase their riches)……FACT!!! Not!
I think a rename to LObotomy think tank more apt;-)
Has not Venezuela already accomplished this fine goal?
And I think Greece and Spain had some claim to this kind of perfection as well.
Of course the Professional Parasite is projecting,as he and his kind work less than 3 hours/day..there fore every one else can.
The problem with being a kleptocrat,otherwise known as a parasite,is you fail to understand your host.
Never having worked,this character cannot see what work produces.
Production is just a phrase to him.
Me thinks our elites are very effete and need replaced.
I bet he has an Economics PhD from some liberal university too.
The counter proposal should be to cut Government employee (including the politicians) work hours and pay by 75%, but leave everyone else alone.
I have to believe that is Fake News. Not rational by any measure.
It is. John MacDonnell was talking about a quite different report, not concerning climate change. There is no evidence of Labour support for this one.
The Autonomy Group folks who created, “The Ecological Limits of Work by the Autonomy Group,” quote the spokesperson for Labour’s 4 day workweek campaign praising it.
Where? I see no such claims in the 10-hour paper by Frey. There are endorsements of the different 4-day week proposal, in that report, including the one by MacDonnell. The proposal to make possible a shorter week has been a subject of active discussion, as is well known, for reasons little to do with climate change.
Nick
McDonnell has spoken approvingly of the report and it is being ‘considered’ although that is not the same as an endorsement.
Autonomy is a new left leaning research group looking at all the things beloved by labour. Here is a detailed summary of their activities. They have yet to file their accounts.
http://autonomy.work/about-us/
It would be astonishing if McDonnell and others on the left were not being actively consulted by Autonomy or at the least were not enthusiastic recipients of the output by the group.
Tony,
“McDonnell has spoken approvingly of the report”
Do you have evidence of that? As I noted here, the quote attributed to MacDonnell was in fact about another quite different report, on a four day week, which was not about climate change. The quote appeared months before the 10-hour report highlighted here was published. I can see no reason to believe that this latter report was considered by any senior level of the Labour Party.
“…Where? I see no such claims in the 10-hour paper by Frey…”
Didn’t lift a finger, did you?
http://autonomy.work/portfolio/ecologicallimitscoverage/
Emma Williams, Spokesperson for the 4 Day Week Campaign says:
“We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet. In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less”
“Emma Williams, Spokesperson “
So who is Emma Williams? Certainly not a member of Parliament. And her organisation is not part of the Labor Party. No identified Labor figures are listed in that praise list.
So it goes here. The Shadow Chancellor praised the report? He didn’t? Who cares – someone leftwing praised the report. It’s all the same.
Wut.
Just… wut.
Global dimming (aerosol masking effect)! Wake TFU.
Turn off global industrial production by only 33% and climate change accelerates rapidly (6-12 weeks).
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘞𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩…
https://globalwarmingclimatechangemethane.blogspot.com/
Global Warming must have caused a massive increase of ” magic schrooms ”
and these people must have them at the bottom of their food pyramid .
If you’ve ever talked to Labour activists or Greens, I think you would realise that rationality is not their strong point. Many of them will surely agree with this. Fortunately a lot of them want to get elected and do have enough sense to realise that 75% pay cuts are not so popular.
Extinction Rebellion supporters unfortunately have no such democratic constraints and, believing they have no future, may well try to ensure that belief is fulfilled by destroying human civilisation to preserve the planet.
Easy: Feed your animals once every 4 days. Water your plants once every 4 days. Cook your food once every 4 days. Eat in a Labour soup kitchen the other three days.
That saves the world, but is that world really worth saving?
Every generation or two, Britain’s Labour Party tries to commit suicide.
In the 1930’s before WW2 pacifism became the Labour party’s official policy in opposition. Pacifism – getting rid of all military capability. And that while the threat of AH and his movement was growing in Germany.
Pacifism in the run-up to WW2 is a very good analogy for renouncing fossil fuel energy, in the face of what lies ahead in the coming decades.
75% wage cut? We’re talking about genocide. That should be a real vote-winner for them!
One can only hope that resuscitation efforts will fail this time.
We’ll begin the program with all government representatives and employees to test out how it works for us, those in favor … where’d they all go?
Look, it’s really simple(*). This won’t hurt the people at all. Deflation is bad because we all know that consumption is what makes us all richer, so we need more demand. BUT we know that wage growth causes inflation, so if we cut everyone’s wages by 75% we’ll get deflation which is good because it will lower the prices of everything so everyone can still consume exactly like they did before, but now they won’t need to emit nearly so much of that dreaded carbon and the planet will be saved. It’s just basic economics.
*Yes, this is /sarc.
Or put them on a benefit to make up for the loss in income. After all, the government has lots of cash, and can always print more if its needed…….
Will these reductions in hours also apply to the NHS?
Did’ja ever wonder just what it was that made South Carolina finally open fire on Fort Sumter?
“This is not a fringe proposal. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who praised the proposal”
Typical parroting of British tabloid nonsense. The Autonomy Group does seem to be a fringe group. It isn’t mentioned by Wikipedia; Google turns up little.
John MacDonnell did praise a report using the words quoted, but it wasn’t this one. It was a much different discussion proposing a four day working week, and not at all based on climate change. Here is a 1 Feb article with the quote and context. The fuller quote from MacDonnell was
“This is a vital contribution to the growing debate around free time and reducing the working week,” shadow chancellor John McDonnell said of the report, signalling the Labour leadership’s endorsement. “With millions saying they would like to work shorter hours, and millions of others without a job or wanting more hours, it’s essential that we consider how we address the problems in the labour market as well as preparing for the future challenges of automation. “
Nothing there about climate change.
Nice cherry pick Nick, climate change is part of the agenda and I copied straight from your report link:
“Further benefits of a four-day week include a reduced burden on healthcare services (poor mental health at work is estimated to cost employers £33-42bn, or 2 per cent of GDP, a year); greater environmental sustainability through a reduction in the number of commutes and an increase in low-carbon activities (such as walking or cycling instead of driving, and cooking with fresh ingredients rather than heating energy-intensive frozen food products); and increased gender equality by encouraging men to bear more of the burden of unpaid work and care.
Notice Nick, the wording above, …”environmental sustainability”………”increase in low carbon activities”….”energy intensive”……
Man, you must have been hoping no-one was going to take the time to read your links.
There is nothing in MacDonnell’s comments about climate change. And in a long discussion by many authors, someone is going to mention climate change, but it isn’t what that report is about.
But the point is, it is fake news. MacDonnell was not talking about the 10 hour article, by a different author. There is no evidence that has been endorsed by Labour.
Semantics Nick semantics…
Perhaps it was misconstrued from a possible 10 hour day 4 day workweek
Nick
Wrong.
The Autonomy Group and their report “The Ecological Limits of Work” are solidly located at the extreme end of the connected circle of the Labour Party. People directly associated with the report are part of the party’s apparatus. It is in line with their self positioning as the party of “Green Revolution”.
Your defence of this report of Talebanic eco-extremism or eco-fascism, as fake news, is utterly false. This is the Labour Party. The first sentence of the report tells you everything you need to know about Corbyn’s Labour Party:
As early as the 1880s, Paul Lafargue, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, put forth the demand for a three-hour work day, enthusiastically highlighting the emancipatory potentials of technological progress (Lafargue 1883).
“People directly associated with the report”
There is one person directly associated with the report. That is Philipp Frey, the sole author. He is a PhD student in Karlsruhe, Germany. The “report” sounds like part of his thesis.
“The first sentence of the report tells you everything you need to know”
It is written by a PhD student giving the background to his topic.
” as fake news, is utterly false”
What is utterly false is the association of this report with MacDonnell. The alleged praise from him was actually for something quite different. There is no evidence that the report ever came to his notice. Yet this discussion goes on as if that didn’t matter in the slightest.
They’ll try this out by cutting Parliament’s pay and hours first, right?
Might be best to start with a lot of the unelected and NGO lobbyists who infect the halls of Westminster.
James Bull
He just wants publicity and to be adored by an admiring throng of ninnies.
Don’t get worked up about it, it won’t happen. Nobody, not even a lefty is that stupid.
And if by chance they did get elected and did make such cuts into law, within a week the rioting mobs would have overthrown the government and lynched the idiots.
So in conclusion it would be fair to say that this man is an awful eejit and should not be allowed out in public without adult supervision. While he’s probably very handy around the house, you know trimming the green lawn (damn you carbon dioxide) God bless his wee head with the burden of saving the planet. Now, we as the adults, need to remember that the thought processes of the Labour Party, and that ilk, don’t funtion rationally so we need to do the right thing and give then some crayons and string so they can amuse themsekves in the corner of whatever dark room they happen to reside in!!! So there John McDonnel – you don’t count!
I’m unwilling to work. I’ll take a 100% cut in hours. (Of course I expect the same payment on the first of the month.)
#VirtueSignaling
It is crazy and unbelievable !
Unfortunately I remember some 15 years ago reading that what deep ecology believe will arrive in a matter of 10 to 20 years time, so I guess wait 2035 to see that common thinking unless there is a paradigm shift, but as deep ecology of 15 to 20 years ago is becoming more mainstreet thinking I am afraid this shift will not come until people are in deep shit, very deep!
I bet this 75% wage cut is really popular with the people/electorate ????
sarc/
Someone who has never really worked came up with this it’s the only way anyone would even think it.
I work in the water supply industry working in a 24/7 control room if they cut our working hours by 75% they’d have to employ 75% more people to get round the clock cover.
I mean come on just think about how stupid you’re going to seem before saying or printing stuff like this.
Also as “climate change” is a non problem there’s nothing to “fix” anyway and it seems you can’t fix stupid.
Unfortunately many younger people who haven’t enjoyed the delights of union lead government seem to think Jeremy and his gang are the best thing since sliced bread.
Rant over
James Bull
Oh! Heck! It all makes sense now! The government took all their guns to prepare for the culling.
Plenty of shotguns around.
The UK had to employ a 3 day working week in the 60’s to save on energy reserves because the coal industry held the UK to ransom by “industrial action” to improve pay and working conditions. But this is just madness, it will never happen because if it did the public would storm 10 Downing St even though it is now a well protected fortress. When I left the UK in 1995 there were 13 million able bodied working age people that were unemployed and drawing some sort of taxpayer funded benefit this policy would greatly increase that number.
Cockamamie idea!
Why not make it 97% just to be sure.
They are completely crazy.
Hypothesis 1:
Their ideological stock is so deeply depleted that they fly on vapors:
Hypothesis 2:
Their electorate has more psychological issues than initially taught.
Hypothesis 3:
Both.
Politicians see kudos in leading whether it be a silly hat parade or a lemming rush. They just have to be leading.
What an idiotic idea! Third world people have salaries under $ 100 and are big polluters. It’s just the opposite, rich people are more able to take care of their waste, buy electric cars and use technology to live better and reducing their carbon footprint. Poverty pollutes!
History repeats. When Labour under Harold Wilson devalued the pound and introduced the 3 day working week my father was just reaching retirement on a final salary pension scheme. He was not a happy bunny. Then we had the winter of discontent, rubbish piled up in the streets, if your house caught fire you called out the army, electricity if you were lucky etc. Happy days…
We did have the BBC radio “service”, and my father roamed the local industrial site for wood pallets to help through the cold winters with a back-boiler.
Like communism this is a revolt of new elites. (now ligitimated by the green church)
Elites fear the loss of resources which they want to save for themselves.
So a class of poor has to be created.
Windmills and solar panels just serve that purpose, creating energy scarcity.
Now these plans move a step further, cutting off salaries.
But they clearly expose the underlying objectives.
Vaclav Klaus was very right, it’s not about the climate, not about nature but about our freedom.
Go for it so we can all watch and laugh…from a distance.
There’s no way the taxeaters are going to accept having to do 10 hours of productive work a week and the concomitant mass redundancies.
Alternatively Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell could swim to Sierra Leone – the locals exhale about 37.5% less carbon dioxide during their life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Here’s how this “works”: eliminate cheap, reliable energy and the modern economy. Farmers can’t grow food at even 20th century levels of productivity, so everyone has to grow their own food. With everyone engaged in subsistence agriculture, no one can make more than 10 hours a week available to work for a third party. Therefore, no one works more than 10 hours per week, since we dont count subsistence agricultural activity as work.
I agree, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
As a retired professor I’d have to say that if you changed the work week to ten hours that would roughly double the amount of work a couple of my colleagues would have been required to do.
Hopefully, this loonie suggestion from the Labour Party in the UK will prevent the Labour Party being elected to power. The pursuit of Green Fantasies in Australia by the Labour Party there was enough to keep Labour out of office.
Not only “climate policy” it was also due to their tax policies which was just envy taxes dressed up as being fair tax policies. One ALP candidate, Chris Brown, said…
“If you don’t like it [Labor policy], don’t vote Labor”. Voters did exactly that and the ALP lost.
Sounds like a plan to convert England into a 3rd world impoverished country. Good luck with that!
Things always go through a curve. The renewable and climate change craze has arrived at the point where the majority of the people won’t be able to afford regular life anymore. Moaning about unreasonably high taxes and other costs but being able to make ends meet albeit under constant strain is one thing, taking peoples foundation for life away is a totally different scenario. Labor might win an election because of the horrible condition the competition is on. But with such proposals, they might face protests that will make extinctiin rebellion seem quaint in comparison real quick.
😂 😂 😂
There is more chance that I’ll become the next Queen than of Labour getting into power under Chairman Corbyn!
Not even lifelong Labour voters will vote for his party under him and they would usually vote for a chicken if it was wearing a Labour badge. If you think the Conservative party is in a mess, and it most definitely is, you’ve not seen anything yet, the knives will be lodged in his back before long, figuratively speaking of course.
The rising of the British Green party at the recent EU elections was testament to that, they picked up the Labour Remainers who want rid of Corbyn, just as the Brexit party picked up votes from the Leavers. The Greens were so excited that they’d done quite well that it was cringe worthy watching them speak on tv.
If more Leaver Conservatives had voted for the Brexit party instead of refusing to vote because ‘we shouldn’t be having this EU election’ it would have helped.
The irony is that Corbyn’s brother, Piers, is one of the countries leading climate change sceptics, I’m pretty sure he’s lurking on here somewhere, nice chap.
All debt has to be removed and I mean all!
The world has to scrap money completely.
A world wide work credit scheme would incentivise people to receive food proportionate to work performance.
The rich would be rich no more.The poor will be poor no more.
Land is to be allocated by birthright ie an acre a person,it can be traded or swapped but always returns after a period of time to its owner.
A common food supply chain regulated to feed every one world wide. All motorised vehicles to be recycled.
Air travel to be limited to essential traffic only ie medical etc.
Localised food production.
Local production for all products in work credit scheme.
90% of humanity thinks everything is ok today and all the above are insane.
90% of humanity are soon to discover food scarcity and the complete collapse of the world as they know it.
90% of humanity need to wake up and smell the coffee!
[??? The mods point out that if 90% of the world will discover food scarcity, 90% of the world can scarcely expect to wake up and smell the coffee. (They will be either dead from starvation, or have no fossil fuel energy to harvest, bake, separate and ship the coffee beans, much less brew the coffee in their dark, cold, waterless, insect-ridden hovels and sheds.) .mod]
Some people may not realise that, for British MPS, the thought of a ten hour week would make them break out into a cold sweat. Take Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East. Between 1 January this year and 25 January he held 3 surgeries (making himself available to his constituents) totalling 6 hours. All of the problems raised by these citizens were referred to someone else, so no actual work there. All the other “work” by Mr Vaz involved asking other politicians what they were doing about something or other. Stressful stuff.
The average working week for an MP comprises:
working out their expense claim for the month – a time consuming and stressful job as the MP has to remember even the smallest and often apparently trvial expense. One home secretary even felt that she had to incude a plug for her kitchen sink costing 8p and the £15 spent by her husband on watching blue movies (she was a very fat and ugly lady)
Locating Michelin star restaurants which will provide duplicate bills ( one for the person paying for lunch and the other for the MP’s expense claim).
Sorting through estate agents’ brochures to find luxury properties for the MP to buy and claim back the cost of buying on expenses to build their property portfolio
To be fair to MPs if they don’t put any effort into their expense claims, they have to struggle along on a pittance of only £78,000 a year and miss out on possibly the £250,000 a year of expense claims. So you can see that they would be quite content for the average person to live on £5,000 a year
Here would be a good start . Cut the number of elected politicians in half .
They act like jerks , don’t get anything of consequence done and are a massive waste of money .
The USA takes it to another level of twerps having a four year peeing contest .
All they do is rubber stamp $trillion dollar deficits and fatten their wallets .
Seriously there is no need for this many clowns in the show .
You have to realise that John McDonnell is completely insane, as are most of the leading members of the Labour Party. They want to nationalise all utility companies in the UK without paying any market level compensation to shareholders and they want to tax lifetime gifts (with a tax free lifetime allowance of £125,000). They want to raise income tax considerably because they actually believe that if you raise the tax rates you will receive more tax revenues. Oh, and they believe passionately in the theory of dangerous man made climate change.
So, what happened to 10-10 and the exploding people ?