I’m drowning in my own work, but still I end up offering to help other people with theirs. What on earth is wrong with me?
My interlocutor was a British African-Caribbean secondary school teacher from Luton, drinking wine with my sister-in-law’s sister in the kitchen of my lodgings. I wasn’t a particularly willing participant in that near one-way conversation. I was only present to prepare my evening meal. But she had me cornered, so I had little choice but to …
Forget Andrew Tate. Andrew Millison is the influencer this generation desperately needs. Build a better world.
Language has lost all meaning. We are extremists. So we’re told. What does this extremism entail? Some kind of inclination towards violence or compulsion in religion? No, nothing like that. Our extremism is encouraging our kids to prioritise their studies. Ours is an extremism of ambition. Of seeking the best for our children. Ours is …
Yesterday, I was invited to tender an expression of interest for acting up into an interim associate director post. “What are you waiting for,” you might say, “Go for it!” But after mulling it over for half an hour, I already had my response. A polite thanks, but no thanks. This afternoon, another colleague put …
All this talk of working compressed hours, so you can do a four-day week, really does make me laugh. The idea is that instead of spreading your hours over five days, you work ten hours a day over four. But the reality is that many employees already work ten hours a day, effectively for free, …
Today, I spent six hours sitting with my team and a highly paid consultant who told us what we already knew and helped us plan work we’ve already done. From my perspective, a complete waste of both money and time. I don’t understand why they were commissioned, nor what value they brought us. The consultant’s …
Robert Jenrick speaks of segregated communities. I know all about those. Growing up in East Yorkshire’s golden mile, my family lived opposite one of the region’s wealthiest businessmen. We never met him, though, because he lived in a mansion behind a red brick wall, three metres tall. Indeed, with private security outside, few of his …
There’s an expectation that we will keep on absorbing more and more work, for every whim and fancy, each as urgent as the last, come what may. All good until those tasked with delivery simply break. We’re only human.
Losing a manager is always stressful. We’ve spent the last eighteen months building a relationship with our current leader, proving our worth, but now they’re off. Naturally, we worry what kind of person will replace them. For we’ve all been here before, lamenting the loss of a mentor for a manager who couldn’t care less. …
I noted a few months ago that the qualifications section in our staff record at work is completely empty, and there is no way for us to edit it. I wrote to our retention team at the time, suggesting that this might be fixed, so that our employers and managers could better understand who works …
Here we are once more, scratching our heads as tribal cliques insist on imposing regressive cultural practices on a civilisation that once championed and celebrated female scholarship. Do those now insisting that women must not speak in public not recall that many of the great imams of the schools of jurisprudence were themselves taught by …
England’s good, true, anti-immigraton patriots are announcing they’re leaving the UK to become — completely unsurprisingly — immigrants somewhere else. You’ve had a good run playing your culture wars online, sowing division and hatred all over. But now it’s time to quit, you say. Well, good. Good riddance, that is. I’m sure we’ll survive without …
I set out early this morning, driving west along the motorway to collect our son from his week away. On the way back, I stopped halfway to buy supplies so we could make him his favourite biriyani to welcome him home. But in the end, our meal just descended into farce as brother and sister bickered …
