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Comment by iso947 | Hacker News Reader

Office management companies are worried. In the UK they, as well as commuting companies like Daily Mail Group, and overpriced sandwich shops like Pret, have realised their entire company is reliant on millions of sheep trudging 2 hours a day to an office block with no space to fight for a desk to have a day’s worth of meetings on skype.

A large anti WFH campaign run by the people behind brexit and linked to trumps campaign is set to start next month in the UK (the feelers you’re judge public mood have already gone out)

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It is a shame that your message got lost in the tone.

It's pretty clear that they are pushing in the media for people to return to work and quite often that is not going to be to the benefit of the people they are pushing back.

I on the other hand deliberately switched jobs to a role that was 100% remote forever because it is what is in my best interest.

No need to call anyone sheep for having jobs to feed themselves and their families.

The fact that people are feeding themselves and their families is irrelevant. They're still doing something in a flock like a flock of sheep.

Is voting acting like a flock of sheep? Would sitting on a Jury be similar? Your view is terribly offensive.

To us or the flock? We are animals, analogies using other animals shouldn't be taken so heavy? Bring any herder to the city and see if he finds a difference.

"Flock to the polls" is a common phrase in headlines. So that’s some evidence that others see voting as flock behavior. I don’t think I’ve ever seen “flock to the jury boxes” though.

For whatever reason when I see a “flock to” headline I think of birds, not sheep. Specifically I think of flamingos.

The wording is maybe a bit off, but the point about a media campaign is spot on. To quote Karl Marx: "The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent."

For example:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/richard-littlej...

That link really does sum up the print media in the UK.

I think it’s worth asking what even is the monarchy? You’ll find your answer right there.

They’re landlords. Extracting ground rent from some of the most valuable land on the planet for generations, which has made that family a supranational entity even as nation states rise around it.

It always comes back to land. It has since the advent of agriculture: he who owns the land owns everything.

For that matter, one could also include the Church of England:

https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/72713/the-uks-50-bigge...

It’s more like cattle if you’ve ever been on the tube at rush hour, waiting for train after train because it’s so full, to hopefully end up in someone’s armpit, 20 metres underground. There was the adage that Animal Welfare regulations would not allow this to happen. Central Line in the summer.

No need to offend the sheep

OP is presumably offering a characterisation, probably accurate, of the office management companies' thinking.

link to info for this campaign?

Info on the government campaign to get people back to offices? See any UK newspaper for past week or BBC. The controversy regarding the hypocrisy of government agencies telling people to go back to offices (under pressure from biz groups who represent the various chains that survive off these commuters) while their own workers are WFH? Look to any newspaper from past three or four days for that one. Contra the earlier claim the Daily Mail group is not among those pushing for a return to regular commuting, other than their desire to parrot the Tory party line; in fact, they had one of the more pointed push-backs by showing that the same ministry that was telling companies to return workers to offices had less than 10% of its own employees working in the office (feels somewhat dirty posting a daily mail link, but it does reveal a bit of the controversy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8675573/Just-5-work...)

safe link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200829123525/https://www.daily...

There's a bit of politics there - the Daily Mail are still right-wing xenophobes, but the present editor doesn't like the Johnson/Cummings team at all, and takes shots at them whenever he can.

'Go back to work or risk losing your job': Major drive launched to get people returning to the office

Ministers warn that continuing to work from home could make staff ‘vulnerable’ to being sacked

I had to laugh when I saw this report [0]

  “Clearly people should be going back to work because it is safe to do so. There are already problems with workers’ mental health. It’s not just about hard-nosed economics,” the report said, citing a Cabinet minister.

The idea that this is not a purely economics-driven initiative and that the government gives a flying fuck about the mental health of the working population is so beyond farce as to be an insult. How stupid do they think we are?

[0] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain...

basically, (a) no actual office worker believes the government line on this (b) the employers - who are actually paying people to work from home - don't believe the government line either

>How stupid do they think we are?

what's the phrase? "A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it"?

I really hate conspiracies, but this global cabal of ultra-rich, herding the sheep to slaughter for gigantic short-term profits while burning the world down, is beginning to get on my nerves.

But don't look there! Tom Hanks and Oprah are pedophile cannibals, and they need to be stopped at ALL costs!

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