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Working class heroes

Members of Parliament have been grumbling at proposals to cut first class train travel from their expense allowances. They say that a first class seat enables them to work on the train since they can plug in their lap top computers.

I’m taking advantage of a first class ticket to do just that right now although the internet access is not brilliant.

If the MPs have a point, perhaps it is time to rename first class and call it Working Class. Labour MPs would probably be happiest buying working class tickets. Once upon a time first class had something to do with status. Today, it seems, it's about plug sockets.

It’s quite possible, of course, to work in second class but there is a real risk that in the cheaper seats MPs would have to mix with more of the people responsible for voting them in to Parliament.

They might even have to mix with children. Children and babies are rarely seen in first class because most people with first class tickets are travelling on expense accounts as I am just now. It’s one of life’s ironies that, come the General Election, when Parliamentary candidates are out on the hustings, they will pick up any random baby if it helps ingratiate themselves with the electorate, or if there is a photographer on hand.

But once the election is over and these men and women of the people are travelling to their constituencies, the last thing some of them want is any contact with voters. That is not true of all MPs just as it is not true to suggest that all MPs have abused their expense allowances.

Second class travel for MPs should be compulsory. That would give them the greatest incentive to ensure that people can travel and work comfortably wherever they find themselves on a train. Two-tier travel should be viewed as an anachronism. We're all working class now.

Education for the over-50s

As this report suggests, universities must begin to take seriously people in their fifties and beyond who wish to undertake courses. But the thinking needs to go further than the provision of part-time courses.

Anyone embarking on a full degree course at the age of fifty could have twenty years or more in front of them to contribute to a new pursuit. In economic terms, that is useful productive work. Not only that, the student would be able to bring to their learning all their life experiences and expertise gathered in one or more careers up to that point.

Mature students could prove a mentoring resource for younger students. Inter-generational collaboration is important in the workplace. Encouraging this in our universities can only promote better understanding that is going to be increasingly relevant as a result of demographic trends.

Fat hamster

The modern relationship with work is often portrayed as something of a hamster wheel. I hadn't thought much of the hamster itself, however, until I saw this. One shouldn't blame the hamster. It doesn't know any better. Neither, it seems, do we.

Putting in the hours

It was inevitable that this New Economics Foundation report suggesting the adoption of a 21-hour working week would be ridiculed. Radio Four's Today programme loves this sort of thing so it was no surprise that it lined up a couple of polar opposites here to debate the suggestion.

"Total madness, fantasy land economics," said Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He had worked out, he said, that if people spent such little time working there would be "None of this retiring at 60." People would be working up to the age of 80, he said. What's wrong with that Mr Littlewood? Many people will be willing and able to spend part of their time working long after the normal retirement age.

The things Anna Coote, author of this report, is saying are very much in line with my own thinking on the future of work. I'm not in favour of a compulsory working week of 21 hours. But I see a lot of merit in working towards a three day weekend. Wouldn't it be better for everyone if work was dispersed more equally in society? The real problem is to find an equitable way of doing this that allows those who want to work more the right to do so.

Mr Littlewood says people should have the freedom to work as many hours as they wish. But he wouldn't say that about airline pilots or lorry drivers. Some jobs should carry hours restrictions for the sake of public safety. In the 1990s some junior doctors were putting in 100-hour working weeks. They didn't to want to work such long hours. It simply became a working practice that was tolerated by health authorities until their weeks were capped at 48 hours under the European Working Time Directive.

That said I'm in broad agreement with the argument that, where safety is not an issue, people should have the right to work as long as they wish. I would be very unhappy if anyone were to try and stop me typing these words because I had filled my quota for the day. Then again, too often I ignore other important things - time for leisure, socialising, exercising, in a love affair with the keyboard, books and the internet that is bordering on obsession. Sometimes it is helpful for someone to lay a gentle hand on your shoulder and say: "That's enough for today."

Tomorrow's world - but where is it?

Predicting the future is tough. This short 1958 film, Magic Highway, shows how the Disney studios imagined transport would develop in future. More than fifty years on we can see how short of the mark they were. A few predictions had it right. Modern cars do have more electronic safety devices on their dashboards and some use TV cameras for reversing.

But it was the bigger picture that the Disney people failed to understand. Some of this could have been predicted. Had they worked out that greater wealth would have meant more cars, they might have suggested that motorway speeds would have been unable to increase because of congestion. Neither did they factor in safety considerations and energy-saving needs that would influence traffic legislation and traffic speeds.

Some predictions, that cars would run automatically with people doing other things as they motored, may yet happen. But where the forecasters really let themselves down was in understanding social trends. In the film when the car gets to the city, father heads off to his office and mother goes shopping with their son. This was still a time when households had one breadwinner, usually the man. It was a time of married couples and nuclear families, not the diverse relationships we have today.

The most mistaken assumption of all, however, was that technology would give people more leisure time. The futurists did not factor in the need for ever greater productivity in capitalism's duty to compete.

It's clear also that environmental factors do not figure much either. The animators did not envisage that environmental concerns would inhibit road building. Indeed they saw the highway as a beautiful construction in its own right, enhancing, rather than despoiling the countryside.

More than anything, however, the film shows the extent to which Americans had fallen in love with the car. In some respects that has not changed. The love affair continues. But the obsession with speed has been contained. Apparently it did not occur to anyone that people might not need to go to the office or the shops.

Own your own space station

I wonder if there will come a time when some people engage very little with each other outside their family homes and local communities. Some, it seems, already value their virtual worlds as much as the world outside their homes.

Erik Novak, who plays a MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) called Planet Calypso, recently spent $330,000 on a virtual space station called Crystal Palace at an online auction. Not, only that, he regards it as a good deal and who is to say that he's mistaken? Virtual worlds attracted $1bn of investment in thew 12 months to October 2007 although most of this was business purchases.

"This is a stunning investment opportunity and I have complete faith I will recover what I spent relatively quickly," said Novak, whose avatar uses the name of Buzz Erik Lightyear. It's good to see that Disney still has some influence on tomorrow's
world.

Elephant in the room

But elsewhere Disney has a patchy record. In this clip outlining the progress, or lack of it, to Disney's House of Tomorrow, the most worrying trend on display is the obesity of the people looking around. Talk about the elephant in the room!

Networks and workplace freedom

I have just renamed this blog to reflect the issues I've covered in my new book, The Future of Work. Collecting material ahead of two speaking engagements last week it was clear that events with an impact on our working futures are happening constantly so I want this to be a living document featuring developments that I think are relevant to the changing workplace.

Some of these may seem surprising. What, for example, does the news that a former Guantanamo Bay inmate now includes his former jailer as a Facebook Friend have to do with work? I think this shows how people are connecting with each other today at levels that are challenging the controls and expectations placed on populations in the past.

Imagine back in December 1914 if British and German soldiers fraternising in no-man's land been able to exchange their Facebook and email details, organising a "let's go home" group on Facebook, for example.

You think it couldn't happen? I'm sure some EMI marketing executives had similar thoughts when Jon and Tracy Morter, a couple living in Essex, decided they would orchestrate a Facebook campaign to ensure that their favourite song by Rage Against the Machine, became the Christmas number one single (see augmented reality blog below).

People didn't just vote for the song, they dug in their pockets and bought it, such was the bloodymindedness of a section of the British public.

Much of the corporate sector has become increasingly controlling in the way it runs business. Employees are often forbidden to talk to journalists about their work without referring queries to press offices. But attempts to create workplace firewalls simply will not work in a world of Twitter and Facebook.

How will China's standoff with Google pan out? It's too early to say but the struggle for communications democracy is important not just for our personal freedoms but also for our freedoms in work.