A piece in the Sunday Times by Minette Marrin about flexible work for mothers, and the reaction of non-parent co-workers goes over some old ground, and draws a predictable range of angry responses. She writes:

“In my own experience, women social workers and women doctors who work flexibly become much less satisfactory to me as a customer; they must be even more unsatisfactory to their employers….”

Except of course those “customers” may also be parents, or have other needs for flexibility in their own lives.
And she concludes:

“However good it sounds in theory, in the nasty detail of practice, flexible working all too often imposes a burden on businesses, on standards, on services, on clients and on the economy.”

Or, if you turn that around, “business”, “the economy” are putting burden on people’s lives.

So what is the economy for? Is it some great monster to feed itself, or is it there to serve its community? What if everyone – not just parents – had the option of flexible working, if it were encouraged even?

Sure we might have a smaller economy – but in this rushed world, it would be a time-richer society.

Over on Comment is Free I’ve got a piece about what I call The Somers Town mystery. At the council meeting on Monday night a delegation of residents was told, “don’t worry”, the three acres of land behind the British Library will go to a significant proportion of housing. Yet the lead bidder for the site is a medical research facility, that would want to take up every inch…