Even more of the Home Office’s civil servants are working from home than before Jacob Rees-Mogg’s crackdown on remote working culture.
An average of 46 per cent of the desks in the Whitehall headquarters were populated in the last week of June, down from 61 per cent in February.
This is despite the efforts of Jacob Rees-Mogg to pry them from their spare rooms and kitchen tables.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s endeavours to end WFH have so far included conducting spot head counts in offices at Whitehall and leaving messages on empty desks in a move which was branded insulting by unions.
The note, printed on government paper with Jacob Rees-Mogg’s title, was left at empty desks and read: ‘I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.’
As reported in a newspaper outlet, a Whitehall source said the Home Office had been terrible at returning to work after COVID, and they added that with backlogs unresolved and public services underperforming, officials who were refusing to go into work as they were expected to were taking taxpayers for a ride.
The newspaper outlet said that the latest data on office occupancy showed that nearly every department had brought more staff back to the workplace since Jacob Rees-Mogg’s crackdown.
The Department for Work and Pensions has expanded its numbers from 32 per cent at the beginning of February to 56 per cent at the end of June, while the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was up 59 per cent from 27 per cent.
Last month’s rail strikes affected occupancy in the office dramatically, with divisions across the board seeing a massive decline in those working at their desks, with the Treasury headquarters on Horse Guards was 44 per cent occupied that week compared to 67 per cent on the following.
Priti Patel’s Home Office was one of three departments having a lower office occupancy rate than the numbers in February, and the Cabinet Office minister has threatened ministries with expulsion if they don’t use their desk space.
Taking a swipe at the out-of-office culture that has taken hold across Whitehall, Jacob Rees Mogg said that in his experience of working from home is that you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, stepping gradually to the fridge, hacking off a small portion of cheese, then walking extremely slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you were doing.
Oh, the wretched flake Civil Servants. Do we feel sad for them? No, of course, we don’t because they should just be doing their jobs, or moving on so that other jobs can be created for someone else.
There are many who are still working from home, and the majority do what they like, when they like, with some taking advantage of the benefit of working from home, with many hating the office and the people in them, and they were only putting up with them because it was the only way they could pay their mortgage, but now they don’t need to do that and at least it saves them spending about three hours travelling each day because who now wants to do that when they can work from home?
The problem since COVID and lockdown is that now the mentality of the nation is on its backside (literally) and no one appears to be able to cope in the real world. I mean, look at the heatwave last week, any excuse to not do anything? Businesses are closing in London due to no workers spending, and when the October utilities increase people will be wanting to work in the office again because they won’t be able to afford to stay at home because they won’t be able to afford utilities, the problem is, neither will offices and then everything will come to a grinding halt.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 