“Return-to-office mandates hurt employee retention, productivity, survey says”
Surprise, surprise: forcing people back into offices may not have the effect employers are hoping for.
…remote workers were 23 percent more likely to say they have “a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace,” 19 percent were more likely to cite “high levels of cooperation,” and 18 percent were more likely to say that people avoid office politics and backstabbing.
‘Free speech’ and online offences
Today’s briefing in the Guardian explores what we can learn from the recent UK riots about the criminal justice system.
British courts have long held that freedom of speech does not entitle people to incite violence. Part of the outrage may be due to a perception that online behaviour is somehow exempt from this general principle; these sentences may change that.
Cassia Rowland, a researcher focused on criminal justice at the Institute for Government, added:
I think most people have been aware for some time that online behaviour may be illegal. But they may not see that their own behaviour can qualify to be taken seriously as a criminal offence, especially in this kind of context.
What it feels like living in a tourist hotspot
Locals against tourist stories have been in the news a lot lately. This is a thoughtful article, recognising some of nuances that are involved.
Tourism is very important, and if it disappears, we’ll be poorer. But we want to preserve the island and have a better quality of life and better access to housing. Diversifying [the economy] is the obvious answer, but that’s really hard at this point.
How it feels to be a British Jew after October 7
Many on the Left most energised by Israel and Palestine can’t accept they could ever be anti-Semitic because they believe they’ve always fought racism. Well-meaning people end up being anti-Semitic by accident, susceptible to peer pressure, half-truths and outright falsehoods. That means that those who have convinced themselves they possess the facts – let alone the armies of previously uninterested and ignorant newbies – feel their desire to be morally right outweighs the sensitivities of those they see as wrong.
I’m hesitant to even venture near the subject of Israel and Palestine. Sadly, for many it is become a black and white, either or issue. Reality is always more nuanced.
Rude disregard for female teachers is unprecedented
Alarming, anonymously written, piece in The Times by a senion pastoral leader at a school in England.
I had a lesson recently where Andrew Tate was mentioned by a boy who remarked on all the cars and money he seemed to have as a reason that he was someone to emulate. One of the girls tried to cut in and say, “But you do understand that he’s a bad person?” And the boy said, “Well, you can’t say that; he’s doing pretty well for himself.” At this point I added, “He’s also someone awaiting trial for sexual offences. And I think we’re going to shut this conversation down.” Wealth equals good in class, with little regard for how it is achieved.
“Trump and Musk share tips on running companies into ground”
“I think the key to turning any business into a disaster is simple,” Musk opined. “You have to take a brand that people love and make it toxic. I don’t mean to brag, but that’s kind of my superpower.”
“That’s true up to a point, but you also have to make sure that the product itself is horrible,” Trump responded. “Ask anyone who’s stayed at one of my hotels and found it infested with bedbugs.”
😂
Graham Thorpe’s daughter: We’re not ashamed of talking about his suicide
I grew up watching Graham Thorpe play cricket for England. It’s devastating to read of his mental health illness that led to the taking of his own life.
I love what his daughter had to say about why they’re sharing more details about his illness and death though:
We are not ashamed of talking about it. There is nothing to hide and it is not a stigma.
…the Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith, and all that Jesus was and is. Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group – because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally antichristian.
“Inside the ‘cult’ of the Far Right”
This interview with Kaelin Robertson, a former friend and ally of Tommy Robinson is insightful and definitely worth listening to. The journey of how someone became radicalised is informative. The comments below are undeniably worrying though.
“Somebody that is tweeting the things that he’s tweeting, he doesn’t believe half of it, but it doesn’t matter because the truth is totally irrelevant to him, will genuinely disrupt normalcy in the UK. The majority of people that have been protesting and rioting in the last few days who are far right have done so because they saw his tweets. What we saw with the riots in the last few days, I genuinely think is just the beginning.
Somebody that doesn’t care about the truth and somebody that doesn’t care about anything other than blowing up their own profile, regardless of what happens to Britain, is extremely dangerous.”
UK disorder: What’s Elon Musk’s game?
Mr Musk has highlighted his concerns that the media doesn’t hold power to account any more. And yet most of the time, when I want to ask questions of both him and of X - there is no response from the social media company.
Good article by Marianna Spring.
The far right riots, Starmer’s response, and the role of Elon Musk
This episode of The News Agents is a helpful take on the recent rioting, the far right, policing, disinformation, and more.
And I thought this comment on the two-tier policing accusation was apt:
“…this accusation of like two-tier policing, one of the things that’s come out in the last 24 hours is to say, oh well, the police were much gentler when looking at what was happening with the Gaza protests over the course of the last year or so.
It’s like, hello, this is sort of crazy critique. Yes, some of the things that were said on those Gaza protests were distasteful. They were racist, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Semitic tropes.
They reported that on that at the time. Sometimes, they were intimidating to Jewish people who were there. But they weren’t going lot around orchestrating that level of violence and disorder, and they weren’t going around burning down shoe zones.
These were largely peaceful by comparison. So yeah, there’s two-tier policing in the sense that different sorts of protests and if different sorts of crimes are committed, have different sorts of responses from the police. That is kind of how justice and the law works.
You do different sorts of things, you get treated differently by the police.”
Emphasis mine.
Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport much worse
We’re in danger of sleepwalking back in time to the world dissected by Hannah Arendt six years after World War Two: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Whole article is worth a read. What we’re seeing across the UK following the Southport murders is horrific. And it’s hard to disagree with the premise that X is making it worse and shoulders culpability.
“It’s good to mock and make fun of people who are bad or want to do bad things. It’s also necessary politically… Good thrusting mockery cuts right through that. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also insecure, stunted degenerates.”
From: Are You on Team ‘Weird’?
How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths
This is both fascinating and alarming in equal measure.
“Vultures are considered nature’s sanitation service because of the important role they play in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment - without them, disease can spread. Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, and not just the cute and cuddly. They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.”
–Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.