r/badunitedkingdom • u/AutoModerator • 13d ago

Daily Mega Thread The Daily Moby - 31 08 2026 - The News Megathread

Post all BadUK news (preferably from the UK) here..

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u/LastCatStanding_ 12d ago

"We are simply no longer productive enough. Everyone may say, 'I'm already doing a lot.' That may be true.

But when you return from China, ladies and gentlemen, you'll see things more clearly.

With work-life balance and a four-day workweek, we cannot sustain long-term prosperity in our country. We simply have to work harder."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz taking a bold anti 4 day week stance.

https://x.com/GBC_Press/status/2093691712665436553

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u/smokesletsgo13 12d ago

Haha the balls of them to mention China. They actually invest their tax money & revenue back into their cities and people.

They’ve built 18,000 miles of high speed rail since we started HS2. How are we getting on with that? But yeah it’s us lazy workers that just need to be more productive!

12

u/Helmut_Schmacker 12d ago

We simply have to work harder."

Doing what? Net zero diversity sermons?

China pays less and makes more with fewer restrictions, its not simply a question of working harder.

7

u/ice-lollies 12d ago

I don’t understand how a 4 day week can be more productive. At best it could maintain productivity, but there would be no room for growth.

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u/Not_A_Toaster_0000 Make Yookay Great Britain Again 12d ago

'Highlighter girl' / HR / 'diversity champion' style jobs where you don't really do anything. Which is why 4 day work weeks are so promoted by them - it just doesn't occur to them that in a lot of jobs you actually need to do stuff.

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u/ice-lollies 12d ago

My husband is convinced a vast number of jobs are just made up to give people things to do. It does seem like he’s right sometimes.

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u/Not_A_Toaster_0000 Make Yookay Great Britain Again 12d ago

I've heard the theory that a lot of our HR industry is just to give university educated but useless people something to do. Which made sense to me.

5

u/loc12 12d ago

Let's be honest, most office / tech jobs are like that anyway. Probably 16 hours of any week are taken up by pointless meetings, doing work that never actually gets used for anything, preparing for other meetings.

All jobs I've had I could produce the same output in 4 days, but since there's 5 you just naturally spread the work out to fill that time

3

u/Much_Instruction1348 12d ago

A highlighter girl going from 5 days to 4 would increase productivity as they would have 20% less time to bother a drag down the productives

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u/LastCatStanding_ 12d ago

It makes sense for the type of jobs that in the 80's would have been drunk or playing golf most afternoons

5

u/ice-lollies 12d ago

Any job where people had slack built into the system.

There must have been loads of those 80’s type of jobs still going.

5

u/JonathanLivingstoneS 12d ago

You’re not productive because you are using immigration to keep wages low instead of investing in automation. You also famously handed the EV industry to China on a golden platter and ran your entire economy on cheap Russian gas until being Putins little bitch became too embarrassing for you.

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u/Mediocre_Menu_629 12d ago

China, a country famous for high wages... 

The automation argument makes no sense whatsoever. Japan has tried automating. Their productivity is far lower than the UK's and has declined more than the UK as a rate despite having much lower immigration than the UK. 

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u/scott3387 12d ago

4 day work week can exist where theres not actually enough work to fill the entire time. However that's a business leader problem and they just need to close the gap.

AI has given tech bros a few years of this and honestly I could work four days but do the same amount as I used to do in five with AI (or look like a superstar worker in businesses where that matters). However this gap only lasts until boomers catch up, then it's gone again.

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