Workers that don’t have to go into an office are £480 billion better off.

Did you think public Transport was better under the SYCC or private enterprise ?

 

Maybe your husband doesn’t use any cafes or restaurants during his working day but thousands do. Thousands of businesses will close putting countless people out of work. How would that make you feel if members of your family stood to lose their jobs with little hope of finding another?Not looking for an argument here but there really is a bigger picture to look at.
For the record I too work in an office but I do go in 2 or 3 days a week and have done since the start of the pandemic.

 

Change the economies.

it was always going to happen, Covid has just brought it forward a bit.

and to add to the original point. This money isn’t disappearing from the economy, it’ll just move elsewhere. We live in a market driven society, I find it slightly hilarious the the very people who’ve spent the last 40 years championing the free market are now telling me off for choosing to spend my money at the garden centre in Donny rather than the sandwich shop in Sheffield.

 

Many of those returning to our office couldn’t wait to get back and admitted that they never imagined saying something like that. I think a balance of the 2 would be good

 

Interesting points about town centres. They have been in decline for a long time as a place to enjoy a visit, many are now half closed down, empty decaying shopfronts, thousands of lumps of chewing gum on the floor. Litter everywhere and the only seemingly busy shops are charity shops, Greggs, and pound shops.
There are many intimidating characters around, adddicts, drunks and groups of feral youths. Also stay a minute over time and you can expect a parking ticket. It's a very unpleasant. I'm not talking just of Barnsley, most town centres have declined into something like I've described.
That's why Meadowhall and the like thrive, they are clean, warm,safe, have variety, are free to park without time limit, and have security on hand should anyone be threatened.
That's not to say I like the place, I'd rather have those facilities in my own town but nowadays there's no enjoyment in going to Tarn, I just pass through it on my way to Oakwell.

One solution I would like the council to consider? Yes it's a pie in the sky daydream, but if nobody bothers then we'll end up with a ghost town full of gum, chip papers and dog muck
Compulsory purchase all the derelict or unused/closed offices and shops. Rent them out for a peppercorn amount with the proviso that the incumbents only employ people from the borough area. Greedy landlords rents have strangled many small independent shops and businesses and this would help make them profitable.
Each business also has to compulsorily take on youth trainees and pay them a fair rate. Scrap all car parking charges. Turn every available bit of waste ground around the town into a tarmac car park. Employ properly trained security staff to be visible and approachable on the streets. Engage with the SYP to provide a much higher level of cover in the town on foot patrol. Employ a good cleaning company to constantly keep on top of the litterbugs. Organise live music, brass bands, kids entertainment etc, with no licensing restrictions or jobsworth hoops to jump through
Encourage independent trades of all descriptions to open up in the town with these measures, this would generate a go-to town where people would have variety, security, value for money and an enjoyable day out.
And of course the council would collect the business rates and the benefits of higher employment, plus the perception from larger organisations that Barnsley is a good place to invest.
Oh, and demolish Stairfoot roundabout. I know it was built as a defensive barrier to repel invaders to the Tarn but it needs to be replaced with something not thought up by a town planner on magic mushrooms

 

I have posted further down about changing some of the economies in Town Centres etc .
Town/City centres are the Hub of the communities with it being central to most communities as for example move the football ground to other parts of the borough and it makes it doubly difficult for fans to get to including two or three time’s the transport and then trying to manage the connections etc.
Town Centres can still play a big part in communal activities if managed and people want to go into them rather than just have to go into them .
It’s much more than buying a sandwich in a garden centre rather than the City Centre which there still the option to do by the way and it works the other way where people could end up in garden centres they don’t want to be in because the town option is too difficult for one thing or another (transport )

 

Would rather see cheap public transport rather than tarmac the town tbh .
Efficient park and rides with bus lanes in conjunction with Cheap transport would be my preference .

 

We need to be more European, work from home with flexibility. 2 hour lunches would allow folk to go out for lunch. Who wants to pay top dollar for a takeout Costa or Starbucks when you've only got 30 hour to a hour lunch. Have it inside a nice independently run local pub (no requirement to drink), bistro / cafe.

Folk who are working from home are will still be working normal office hours. Its crackers, greater flexibility can be good for business, the economy, the environment and public health.

Public transport under normal circumstances was rammed, dirty, expensive and not fit for purpose. Reduce the numbers it'll make it more comfortable for those using it. I know private transport will say they're skint, cry me a river. Public transport costs in this country are a disgrace time for them to innovate.

 

Productivity is down in some cases from working at home. Also, wages will.go down as redundancies kick in. Worrying times for a lot of people.

 

Those thousands are often vilified for doing so too. How many times did we hear 'no wonder you can't afford to buy a house, you keep wasting money on expensive coffee'? Now it's 'go buy an expensive coffee otherwise the economy will collapse and it's all your fault'. Workers should be given a choice, there should be a (smaller) office open for those who find it difficult to work from home for a variety of reasons but those who are happy to work from home should be able to do so. I find it crazy that people are wanting to mandate that those who work in a specific type of job should have to lose hours of their day five days a week often leaving very early morning and not getting back home until the evening, spend sometimes up to thousands of pounds a year on a train season pass, be crammed into unhygenic and frankly unsafe transport all so that they can then spend even more money on crap that is only convenient because of the fact that they've been forced to be somewhere that they have no need to be at a time that they didn't need to be there. On top of this, pollution levels go through the roof, traffic accidents go up and there's no room for new housing because all the city centres are taken up with giant office blocks. The people who run Pret run a Pret because it is a money earner, if it stops being a money earner then them (or someone else) will open up a new business that will be a different money earner and will still need to employ people. No, it won't happen overnight but forcing office workers to spend thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours in travelling all whilst wrecking the environment isn't something that I'm prepared to shrug my shoulders and just accept. Whatever happens is going to be far from ideal, so yes, I'm going to support the selfish one for my family as those who own commerical property are wanting the selfish thing for theirs.

 

Can't like your comment enough, let's not forget the economy was already teetering before Covid. The tax dodgers are still dodging using loopholes. The government are still quiet about their mates doing this cos they'll no doubt have a dog in that fight.

But let the plebs argue amongst themselves about how we get the economy going. Pitch teachers and nurses against factor workers and pub owners. Trainer drivers and cafe owners against basic officer workers.

 

Just as an aside the days I get to work from home are great. I get to get plenty of work done without the usual distractions of phone calls, and getting embroiled in other issues which I shouldn't be involved in (makes my staff think for themselves without the constant safety net).
I get 2.5 hours daily with my family, I get to go out for a walk, play with my daughter, garden or cut grass. This means on my days off I can maximize my time and go out for the day (spend money in local businesses) rather than doing choirs.
Its bizarre if I'm working abroad I get a better work life balance than if I'm at home. Covid's awful it nailed me but its opened my eyes to smarter working which is better for my overall health.

 

I'd happily pay more tax to the tune the amount I usually spend on public transport and at city centre shops to avoid having to go back into the office.

Financially I'd be no worse off but time wise I'd avoid spending 2 hours a day commuting which is essentially dead time.

Tax money could then be used to support rebalancing of economy away from city centres and all the negative externalities that brings toward more local economies. The government talks about levelling up - there will never be a better opportunity to move wealth from cities into towns and villages than there is now.

However - above unlike to happen as there are too many vested interests from landlords with big city centre property portfolios who stand to lost the most from a rebalanced economy.

 

Towns used to be a mix of housing work and entertainment, the post war years moved people out then moved industry out, pretty soon all that was left was shopping and pubs.

there’s been a recent gentrification of towns like Donny and Barnsley, and I think moving housing back in makes more sense than trying to force people to commute to work when they don’t need to.

I don’t have a choice btw, ‘my’ desk is currently being used by someone who needs to be in the office to work (I don’t*), it’ll be god knows how long before that changes, maybe even after I’ve retired.

*btw it never made sense for me to commute to Sheffield, working for a team based all over the country, sitting with people I only have the vaguest work connection with.

And as far as the economies go; it’s about £7 in fuel per day, £5 to park. So I’ve spent £12 before I buy anything, if I don’t take my own lunch I will spend anything from £3 to £6 a day on that. Any ‘shopping’ I did still needs to be done, so really the losses to the economy are:
Fuel and parking (surely a better gain for the world)
My lunch - so I’m spending £2 a day with Aldi or Morrison’s closer to home than £5 with Sainsbury’s in Sheffield.

And where’s that money going? It doesn’t disappear from the economy as the article suggests, it gets spent on renovating the house and garden (what we’ve concentrated on as we aren’t going on holiday).

that’s my gripe with the article, it suggests that money disappears from the economy if I’m not buying a sandwich at lunch. The fact that I spend more on fuel to commute to that sandwich is ignored. But my money is still going round the economy - just in a different place. Even if I had the choice to go into Sheffield, should I feel bad that rather than buying diesel I’m freeing up space for housing?

 

I agree Marlon, I remember when living in Sheffield that all bus fares were 10p (sure it was 10p, may be a bit wrong) in the 1980's. Buses were rammed every route, dirt cheap to get anywhere. They were subsidised by the council.
Unfortunately these days of transport privatisations mean that profit to shareholders comes first and stuff the passengers (and therefore the destinations those passengers can no longer afford to go to)
If we made it incredibly easy and cheap to use the car to go to a town centre then the transport companies would surely have to offer incentives to attract those commuters back

 

Yes 10p that’s about right . It was subsidised by the South Yorkshire County Council which Thatcher hated and got rid of .
You could get a bus anywhere at that time even in the outlying areas , Saturday Mornings and early afternoons even though buses were plentiful they were heaving partly because there were less cars but also because they were so cheap .
Unless I wanted a lot of heavy things I’d rather go to town on bus than in car .

 

The 2 hours that you save each day equates to 10 hours a week or 40 hours a month - basically the same as having a week off work every month without any loss of hours to your employer. That's absolutely priceless - how often do people wish they had more time when they're not working, doing chores or sleeping? You've just been handed an extra week of time for free every month, plus a payrise in money not spent on travelling and people are trying desperately to guilt trip it back away from you. The Tories don't care about the economy, they want to keep you busy, tired and skint so you don't look too closely at what they are doing and to keep raking it in through renting out commerical property to your boss.

 

Remember when you were young, starting your first job in an office. Learning lots about the job and about life from people you worked with. Casual conversations with people you didn’t normally work with at the coffee machine, in the kitchen or outside having a smoke. Going for a drink after work. Making friendships that would last a lifetime. Office romances; having your own and gossiping about who was secretly seeing who.
None of this happens when you’re on a laptop in your bedroom relying on Skype or Zoom...
I pity the next generation.

 

Of course it happens, the fact that we are having this conversation now shows that it happens. Take this board for example: I've learned loads about Barnsley FC and life from people on here, I've had loads of casual conversations with people, I've met up and had a drink with people on here, I've not had a romance with them as I've got a husband but there's been plenty of gossip about all sorts. You don't have to be in the same room as someone getting more and more pissed off as they breath through their mouth, stir their tea a hundred times and crunch their way through a ryvita to make connections. I certainly wouldn't give up thousands of pounds and 40 hours a month to experience it. No-one makes footwear competitive online either, I'm sick of hearing 'oh, I love your shoes' 10 times a day (not at me, I don't play that game) as everyone around me clearly throws away every pair after wearing it once and buys a new one for the next day.