14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
THE WEEK 28 May 2022Take as much
holiday as you
want... sucker!
Editorial
Financial Times
Forget about annual leave: take as much time off as you want.
That policy, long favoured by tech firms – Netflix scrapped holiday
entitlement back in 2010 – is now being adopted by big city firms:
last week Goldman Sachs offered such a deal to its senior bankers.
But “beware the siren call of unlimited vacation”, says the FT: the
evidence shows that when you offer people unlimited holidays,
they actually take fewer days off, especially if they work in
cut-throat environments where their jobs are on the line. “What
was once ordained becomes a perk, laden with guilt and anxiety.”
Colleagues, rather than the HR department, start to monitor your
time off. Research by Namely, the HR platform, found that those
given the unlimited option were taking just 13 days of annual
leave on average, compared to 15 for those on fixed holiday plans.
No, the only ones that really benefit from unlimited leave policies
are the companies themselves: they get to squeeze more work out
of employees and can slash their payouts of accrued holiday to
departing staff. For workers, it’s a lousy deal. What a con.Wise up:
France is closer
than America
Bagehot
The Economist
British politics has an unhealthy obsession with America, says
Bagehot. MPs, policy wonks and journalists devotedly follow each
twist and turn of its politics, devour books on its history and even
ape its political terminology. People now ludicrously refer to our
own local elections as “mid-terms” and to parts of Britain as
“flyover country”. This fixation with finding a US equivalent also
warps our policy debates. America’s experience with racism, police
brutality or “woke” excesses on college campuses are unthinkingly
projected onto Britain, though they have little bearing on our own
particular problems and solutions. Discussions about the future
of the NHS are always dominated by references to the “weird” US
system, deflecting attention from more instructive models closer to
home. “British campaigners alighted on a minimum-wage demand
of £15 for little reason other than that American ones had
demanded a $15 wage.” This is silly. If we are usefully to compare
ourselves to others, why not do so with similar-sized neighbours
such as France? Why must the benchmark always be America?The appalling
state of British
justice
Gaby Hinsliff
The Guardian
It’s hard to overstate the mess in which Britain’s underfunded
criminal justice system finds itself in after the pandemic, says Gaby
Hinsliff. Prisoners in our understaffed prisons are kept locked in
their cells for upwards of 22 hours a day. The probation system is
in tatters. And meanwhile our criminal courts are struggling with
a huge backlog of cases: by the end of last year, fully 25% of cases
in England and Wales had been waiting a year or more to come to
trial. To make matters worse, a “mutiny among criminal lawyers”
now threatens to paralyse the entire system. Lawyers complain
that, since 1996, the fees for defending people who can’t afford
their own representation have fallen by up to 45% in real terms,
with the result that some junior lawyers are “effectively paying
for the privilege of working”. In protest, they’ve started refusing
to take on low-paid cases such as burglary. The crumbling justice
system is failing everyone: the victims unable to move on from
trauma, the defendants longing to clear their name, the lawyers
abandoning their trade in despair. If Boris Johnson is as keen as
he professes to be to tackle crime, he knows where he should start.Beware: Beijing
can see what
you’re up to
Ross Clark
Daily Mail
Snack fans have been divided
by a new flavour sensation:
cheese and onion chocolate,
packed “with real crisp
pieces”. The Irish potato
giant Tayto has released the
bar in a limited edition of only
480,000, and it has become
a hot commodity on eBay,
where bars are selling for
several times their original
price. “It’s genius,” said
Professor Barry Smith, taste
researcher at the University
of London. “The human brain
likes contrast in taste and
texture — this has both.” Not
everyone was convinced. “It
actually tasted like sick,” said
one dissatisfied customer.A Japanese man whose
dream was to live as an
animal has had his wish
fulfilled by a company that
specialises in highly realistic
costumes. Thanks to his dog
suit, which cost around
£12,600 and took 40 days
to make, the man, known as
“Toco”, is now enjoying life
as a collie, and documenting
his experiences on his
YouTube channel, which
shows him playing with balls
and rolling onto his back.
Asked why he wanted to live
as an animal, Toco said that
it was “difficult” to answer.A new Guinness World
Record has been set by an
Idaho man who ran a half-
marathon while wearing 111
T-shirts. David Rush said it
took 25 minutes for his
“support team” to dress him
for the run, which he finished
in 2hrs 47mins, despite being
weighed down by 40lb of
material. “My arms lost
circulation and after a couple
of hours my hands swelled to
what felt
like twice
the size,”
Rush said.
“I couldn’t
even touch
my thumb
across my
hand.”IT MUST BE TRUE...
I read it in the tabloidsImagine how we’d feel if our streets were littered with Russian-
made CCTV cameras equipped with facial-recognition software
and microphones? Well, thankfully, Russia doesn’t possess such “a
fleet of potential spying machines”, says Ross Clark. “But China
does.” Two Chinese firms, Hikvision and Dahua, have become big
players in our CCTV market. Of 1,300 public bodies in the UK
that responded to freedom of information requests, 800 – and
these included nearly 75% of local councils and nearly a third of
our police forces – confirmed that they had cameras made by these
firms on their premises. The Department for Work and Pensions
uses them; we know the Department of Health does because it
was a Hikvision camera that captured the image of Matt Hancock
in his office clinch last summer. True, there’s so far no evidence of
anyone from these two firms making illegitimate use of these
images, but the security risks this network of cameras presents
should be glaringly obvious. They are to the US authorities who
have banned Hikvision and Dahua from selling surveillance
equipment in the States. We should consider doing the same.