RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The sun has got his hat on, we’re not going to work today!
The Sun has got his hat on,
Hip-hip-hip hooray,
The Sun has got his hat on,
We’re not going to work today!
With temperatures soaring into the 90s in old money, the unusually warm weather has given the WFH brigade another convenient excuse to skive off.
Not that they needed one. Despite all Covid restrictions being lifted months ago, over five million people are still staying away from their workplaces.
London is leading the way, with more than a third of employees yet to return to their offices. Predictably, the civil service is resisting all exhortations by ministers to get back to full capacity. The Home Office is half empty. At the Foreign Office, only four out of ten staff are at their desks.
A heat haze shimmers over Crosby Beach, Liverpool as people do their best to relax yesterday
Yesterday, Foreign Secretary ‘Fizzy Lizzie’ Truss launched her Tory leadership campaign and Home Secretary Priti Flamingo was weighing up her prospects. But if they can’t persuade their own staff to turn up for work, what chance would they have of kick-starting the rest of the country should either of them become PM?
And now along comes a heatwave, manna from heaven for the WFH addicts. It’s too hot to work, they bleat. The daily commute is a bit ‘sticky’. Employers reported a spike in workers throwing a sickie.
‘So many employees are fed up with their work and lifestyle in general that an opportunity for a day off in the sun is just too much of a temptation,’ said Laura Rennie, who runs a Human Resources consultancy in Kilmarnock.
A swimmer takes a dip in the Sky Pool 35 metres above the ground in Nine Elms, London
Frankly, who can blame them? Especially when they are being encouraged by a burgeoning ‘Aitch-Arr’ industry to put their ‘well-being’ before their responsibilities towards the people who pay their wages.
It’s all about work/life balance these days — with work coming a distant second.
The pandemic institutionalised idleness, fostering a culture in which people became accustomed to believing they are entitled to decide for themselves where and when they work.
So when the sun comes out, why wouldn’t they head for the beach rather than take the train into town. It’s their yuman rites, innit?
Beachgoers flocked to Brighton Beach as another summer heatwave began on Monday
Pembrokeshire Castle in Wales looked glorious as it basked in the hottest day of the year
Some HR professionals are even suggesting that companies start giving staff an extra few ‘sunny days’ holidays, on top of their statutory five-and-a-half weeks paid leave every year.
No wonder the economy is going to hell in a handcart.
Train tracks caught fire in Battersea after bone-dry timber beams got too hot
Idleness isn’t the only vice which has become institutionalised. So has scaremongering, epitomised during lockdown by the Two Ronnies of Doom and their priapic graphs of death.
Now it’s the turn of something called the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to warn that unless we stay out of the sun: You’re all going to DIE! This costly quango is what we used to call Public Health England, that utterly useless body which was supposed to have been wound up after it was exposed as woefully inadequate in preparing for the pandemic.
Instead, it simply morphed into the UKHSA and continues to issue the same kind of intelligence-insulting, nanny state ‘advice’. Stay indoors, draw the curtains, stop your kids playing outside, keep hydrated. If you must go out, wear a hat and take a bottle of water.
This week the UKHSA issued a fatuous ‘Level Three Heat-Health Alert’ for London and the South East. ‘Drink plenty of fluids and avoid excess alcohol, dress appropriately for the weather and slow down when it is hot.’
The rest of the country was limited to a ‘Level Two’ alert. ‘Hot weather can be dangerous, especially for the very young or very old or those with chronic disease.’ Thank goodness they’re looking out for us. None of that would ever have occurred to me otherwise. Why is it always assumed we are far too stupid to look after ourselves?
Who said you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows? These days the weatherman has taken it upon himself to order you to drink more water.
The Met Office put out an official statement telling us to stay inside and take on extra fluids. What the hell has it got to do with them?
Even the railway companies got in on the act, warning that the heat might buckle the tracks — a summery twist on the ‘leaves on the line’ excuse — after some sleepers caught fire.
And, naturally, the global warming alarmists were out in force again, blaming the high temperatures on ‘climate change’.
From the lunatic over-reaction to a few days of sunshine, you’d think Britain had never experienced hot weather before. Some of us are old enough to remember the summer of 1976, when the heatwave lasted two whole months, reservoirs and rivers dried up and there were standpipes in the streets. This was Third World weather — 96 degrees in the shade. Newspapers ran ‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ headlines and fried eggs on the pavement.
Nobody issued a ‘Level Three’ health alert. We just got on with it. The country didn’t shut down for the duration. We weren’t bombarded with doomsday warnings that everything from the NHS to the power stations was about to go into meltdown.
In desperation, Labour MP Denis Howell, a former football referee, was appointed Minister for Drought. His solution was to import a Navaho medicine man to perform a rain dance.
It worked spectacularly. The heavens soon opened and within a few days Howell was reassigned as Minister for Flooding.
What’s the betting that this time next month, the heatwave will be over and half the country under water. No doubt the UKHSA and the Met Office will be warning us to stay dry and not leave the house without an umbrella.
And the WFH brigade will be back indoors again, munching their Hobnobs, and still refusing to go back to work because it’s too wet.
Forgive me for ducking out of the Tory leadership circus, for now. Watching a dozen politicians form a Weakest Link-style circular firing squad is not my idea of a quiet night in.
To be honest, I find the sheer nastiness of so-called colleagues slagging each other off, peddling dirty dossiers on their rivals, quite repellent.
The only thing which has amused me thus far is the revelation that Penny Mordaunt once worked as a magician’s assistant. Perhaps, instead of bothering with tedious TV debates, the candidates could all be put through their paces by a Tommy Cooper manqué to see which one makes the cut, so to speak.
I quite like the idea of seeing Fizzy Lizzie sawn in half, or Dishi Rishi spinning round on a giant wheel while his opponents hurl knives at him.
Just like that!
Until then, include me out. Shake me, wake me, when it’s over.
Forgive me for ducking out of the Tory leadership circus, for now. The nastiness is repellant
Almost exactly a year ago, this column featured a photo of Sajid Javid with his arm round his protege, Rishi Sunak. They were grinning from ear to ear.
I thought: ‘I have seen the Conservative Party’s future
I remarked: ‘In 1974, reviewing a concert by a young singer/songwriter, the critic Jon Landau wrote: ‘I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’
‘Looking at that picture of The Saj and Dishi Rishi, I thought: ‘I have seen the Conservative Party’s future — and it doesn’t include Boris Johnson.’ ‘
Mystic Rich strikes again.
The list of LGBTQWERTY+ candidates keeps on growing. Soon the acronyms will be longer than the alphabet itself.
Latest additions include members of the 2S community, who now feature on application forms for membership of the fashionable Soho House club in London. It stands for ‘Two Spirits’ — a term for Native Americans who display both male and female characteristics. I’ve spent a bit of time knocking around Soho myself. You bump into all sorts. That’s where The Kinks’ Ray Davies met Lola, who walked like a woman and talked like a man.
But I’ve never come across a half-man/half-woman Red Indian yet. Unless, I guess, you count that bloke from the Village People.
He must have been a member of the LGBTYMCA+ community.
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