Benefits of a four-day week are ever clearer, despite Steve Reed’s stance
In his stern letter to South Cambridgeshire district council, the housing secretary, Steve Reed, criticised the decline in “key housing-related services including rent collection, reletting times and tenant satisfaction with repairs” during its trial of a four-day working week,The independent report he refers to is a dense 104-page document packed with tables, graphs and complex terminology, but its findings are not too difficult to decipher – the vast majority of the council’s services were not adversely affected by the trial,The academics from three UK universities who wrote the report said their analysis had found that 21 of 24 objective performance indicators – key council services or functions – were stable or improved,Reed homed in on the three areas that showed some decline – rent collection, tenant satisfaction with repairs and average days to re-let housing stock – and there is a clear downward trajectory on the graphs in these areas,But the report states there is no definite correlation between the trial and the declines.
“These represent only a small part of the full set of measures and may be influenced by external factors such as the cost of living crisis, contractor shortages and housing market conditions,” said Daiga Kamerade, a professor of work and wellbeing and a director of the centre for research on inclusive society at the University of Salford,“Criticism appears to be based on the assumption that working more hours automatically achieves better results, a premise not supported by the growing body of scientific evidence,”The campaign for a four-day week has grown in momentum in recent years, particularly since the Covid pandemic, but despite generally positive results scepticism remains in some quarters,The biggest trial to date involved 61 companies and about 2,900 workers from June to December 2022,Fifty-six companies chose to extend the four-day week, including 18 who made it a permanent policy.
It didn’t work in every company that adopted it,Some said it was too expensive, that they would have had to hire more staff to fill shortages and that it placed more pressure on staff on the days they did work,Most, however, said their employees were less stressed, and had reduced levels of burnout and a better work-life balance at the end of the trial,Revenues increased by an average of 35% compared with previous years, and the number of staff leaving dropped by 57%,Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThere will inevitably be more concern about how the policy is rolled out in the public sector, when services funded by the taxpayer are on the line – and as Reed made clear, the government needs the social housing sector to be running as efficiently as possible if it is to tackle the country’s homelessness crisis.
But momentum is firmly moving in favour of more flexible working and the evidence to support its positive impact is growing more difficult to deny.Focusing on the potential negatives while denying the positives, as Reed seems to have done, is unlikely to hold much sway.
Man who won damages over Richard III film calls for more regulation of fact-based drama
A university executive who won damages over his portrayal in Steve Coogan’s film The Lost King has urged Ofcom to strengthen regulation of fact-based drama, after what he described as a three-year “anxious, stressful and hurtful” ordeal.Richard Taylor, formerly deputy registrar at the University of Leicester, sued Coogan as well as the film’s production company, Baby Cow, and the distributor Pathé over his portrayal in the 2022 film about the discovery of Richard III’s remains in a Leicester car park.The parties reached a settlement requiring damages, a clarification to appear on the film, and an undertaking not to repeat the defamatory claims. A judge had found Taylor was shown in an “unrelentingly negative and defamatory” light.Taylor said Ofcom needed “clearer guidance” to stop similar misrepresentations happening in future
Jon Stewart on Trump’s taunts of an illegal third term: ‘We know he’s thought about it’
Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s taunts about an illegal third presidential term and his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.From his Monday night post on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart assessed the threat of Trump attempting to run for a third term as president, which is illegal under the 22nd amendment to the constitution.Asked by reporters for his thoughts on comments by Steve Bannon that he had a plan for such a campaign, Trump answered: “I would love to do it ..
Steve Coogan says Richard III film was ‘story I wanted to tell’ as he agrees to libel settlement
Steve Coogan has said his film about the discovery of the remains of Richard III was “the story I wanted to tell, and I am happy I did” after he and two production companies agreed to pay “substantial damages” to settle a high court libel claim over the film’s portrayal of a senior university administrator.Richard Taylor, deputy registrar at the University of Leicester at the time of the find, sued Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions for libel over his portrayal in the 2022 film The Lost King, which follows the amateur historian Philippa Langley and her search for the king’s skeleton.Taylor’s lawyers had asserted previously that he was portrayed in the film as “devious”, “weasel-like” and a “suited bean-counter”.Judge Lewis had ruled previously that the film portrayed Taylor as having “knowingly misrepresented facts to the media and the public” about the find, and as being “smug, unduly dismissive and patronising”, which had a defamatory meaning.The case was due to proceed to trial, but lawyers for Taylor read an agreed statement to the court on Monday saying the parties had settled the claim
‘We were fitted with remote control penises’: Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke on Kevin and Perry Go Large
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From White Teeth to Swing Time: Zadie Smith’s best books - ranked!
How do you follow a smash hit like White Teeth, which, as everyone now knows, sold for a six-figure sum while the author was still at university, and turned Zadie Smith into a literary superstar and poster girl for multiculturalism at 24? With a novel about a pot-smoking Chinese‑Jewish autograph hunter, the dangers of fame and the shallowness of pop culture, of course.The Autograph Man begins in full wisecracking throttle with three boys in the back of a car on their way to watch a wrestling match between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks at the Royal Festival Hall. As 12-year-old Alex-Li Tandem gets Big Daddy’s autograph (the start of an obsession), his own daddy drops dead from a brain tumour. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel doesn’t quite live up to the prologue. The critical heavyweights of the time didn’t pull their punches: “A poky, pallid successor” (Michiko Kakutani, who had rapturously reviewed White Teeth, in the New York Times), “cartoonish” and full of “misplaced ironies and grinning complicities” (James Wood in the LRB)
Ardal O’Hanlon: ‘I fell asleep on stage once – I could hear someone doing my material, got annoyed and woke up’
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Benefits of a four-day week are ever clearer, despite Steve Reed’s stance
Business and charity leaders urge ministers to lead England’s transition to four-day week