War in the workplace as high-powered female bosses decree that home working equals shirking.
The rise in modern technology liberated huge numbers of us from the tyranny of commuting, freeing up time to work flexible hours and combine raising a family with a decent job.
Home working for both sexes has risen exponentially over the past decade, but it’s taken a mum — albeit one with a million-pound salary — to stick her head over the parapet and say the unsayable: workers get more done at work.
Marissa Mayer, chief executive of technology company Yahoo!, outraged the sisterhood — and alienated her male employees — by issuing a dictat that from June, everyone must come into the office.
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Mums are complaining because lucky Ms Mayer had a nursery built next to her office for her new baby, Macallister. But no one can accuse the woman of shirking. She was back three weeks after giving birth and has gone on record as (tactlessly) saying being a mum ‘isn’t that hard’.
Tough on home workers: Janet thinks Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was rightHow can women work from home with small kids running around their feet? Surely, everyone suffers. Mums end up working at night when their babies are asleep and must find it hard to concentrate during the day, exhausted from lack of sleep.
What’s really needed is adequate free childcare close to workplaces, something I hope Yahoo! plans to provide. Other high-profile women agree with Ms Mayer — broadcaster Jenni Murray admits she loathes working from home, and Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, refuses to allow it.
As a freelance, I’m lucky enough to be able to split my working week 50/50. I write from home (and when I’m travelling, on planes and in hotel rooms), but go into television and radio studios regularly for production meetings and recordings.
I value the time I spend each week talking to other people in formal meetings; at home it’s easy to prioritise the wrong stuff — paying bills, ordering rubbish on the internet, reading fluff online, cooking supper. I’ve always hated being told what to do, so part of me rebels against the idea of turning up at the same time and place every day, but — and I hate to admit this — the discipline is really important. And what’s wrong with that?
We have a generation of unemployed school leavers, many of whom have no concept of the necessity of turning up at work or for job interviews on time, correctly dressed, rested and ready to be productive. Unless they get the message that working means sticking to rules (that you don’t necessarily agree with), we will never get them off benefits and into work and young people coming into this country from abroad will continue to pick up the jobs they could be doing.
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Why should women — who carp they are overlooked for promotion — campaign for home working as if they are a special case? Meeting your boss face-to-face can send all sorts of positive messages about your ability to move up the ladder. Time in the workplace — as Jenni Murray confirms — means time chatting, and in that ‘off-agenda’ few minutes, you’ll spark ideas or start a line of conversation that can be really productive.
Obviously, some jobs, in accounting and administration, can easily be done off-site, but the majority are best carried out in the office. Plenty will disagree with me, but as a world-class expert in procrastination and fridge-raiding, I know unless I go out to work, I will turn into an anti-social weirdo who can’t hold a conversation.
Another reason to force people back to work; it’s where you make friends, meet people, find people to go to yoga or book clubs with. Some days, the newsagent or the parking attendant might be the only person I’ve spoken to for 24 hours, and that’s not good, is it?
Stop peeking on panda hanky-panky!Along with the Duchess of Cambridge’s pregnancy bump, the most sought-after pictures in the UK will be of the pandas mating in Edinburgh Zoo.
This unconsummated courtship has lasted longer than some of my marriages, and public interest is so great that the zoo has installed video cameras inside the enclosures of the male Yang Guang and his paramour, Tian Tian, so fans can track the reluctant lovers 24 hours a day.
Spot the difference? Testing pandacam at Edinburgh ZooAccording to technicians, this is no ordinary CCTV set-up but ‘intelligent tracking’, designed to follow the exact movements of the animals.
To test the system’s responses, human volunteers dressed up as pandas and wandered around mimicking their behaviour (presumably they weren’t required to munch on bamboo), but the resulting pictures could easily be mistaken for the fur-embellished outfits seen on the catwalks in Milan.
Yesterday, live on pandacam, Guang sat on his backside stuffing his face with a giant heap of food — a similar scene probably taking place in kitchens all over the UK.
Sadly, Tian Tian is fertile for only three days a year, and to preserve her dignity, pandacam will be turned off for the thrilling moment when the pair are brought together to (possibly) mate. Have zoo keepers not considered that some couples find being filmed having sex a bit of a turn-on?
Go back to Wales? You'd have to pay meFed up with paying so much income tax? Forget moving to the Cayman Islands — the Treasury is considering discounts for living and working in Wales.
Great news, when ordinary workers seem to be paying a higher proportion of their salaries in tax compared with multi-nationals expert at minimising bills via offshore companies and avoidance schemes.
Moved on: Neither Catherine Zeta Jones, left, or Katherine Jenkins still live in WalesIf this scheme goes ahead, the Welsh Assembly could set different tax rates for residents and vary stamp duty.
At the moment, the UK Government hands £18 billion more to Wales than it gets back in taxes, so there’s a need to attract high earners and investors to create jobs.
Most high-profile Welsh entertainers live elsewhere: Shirley Bassey in Monaco; Catherine Zeta-Jones in New York; and Katherine Jenkins bought a home in Richmond, split up with her fiancé and now says she plans to buy somewhere in Wales ‘in the future’. Only Ruth Jones, born in Neath, lives in Cardiff.
I’m half Welsh —will I be tempted to move back to Mum’s birthplace if this scheme goes ahead? Possibly, if signing up doesn’t mean I can’t criticise the place.
Got the moves: Michelle Obama works out for an anti-obesity campaign Power to MichelleThe Oscars featured the ultimate ‘surprise guest’, the President’s wife. Michelle Obama appeared live from the White House, presenting the award to Argo for Best Film.
A few days earlier, she’d been body-popping on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night television comedy show, doing a ‘mom dance’ with the host in drag, promoting her Let’s Move anti-obesity campaign.
Since his inauguration, Obama has said and done little of note, but his wife — with an approval rating of more than 70 per cent — is hard at work, much to the chagrin of Right-wing commentators, who think Presidential wives should be little more than non-threatening arm candy. Good for her.
I couldn't stick a sat-nav for walkersA wife won a divorce recently, citing a row she and her husband had over her map-reading on holiday. The judge sympathised, admitting he and his wife had similar disagreements.
Our sat-nav causes many rows as I frequently disagree with the route the smarmy female inside it has chosen. In Los Angeles last November, I got out of our rental vehicle and started screaming at my partner — my route was longer, but quicker and more pleasant. Now the technology is set to revolutionise walking. A prototype ‘next generation cane’ has been unveiled, with a sat-nav directing users home should they get lost.
Invaluable for anyone suffering mild dementia, as it contains a tracking chip, but I hope people won’t start screaming at a stick — that will do their blood pressure no good at all.
