If you’ve read Ben MacIntyre’s “The Spy and the Traitor”, you’ll know that Russia, then the Soviet Union, was recruiting both MPs and their staff left (of course), right and centre in the Cold War 60’s and 70’s. So China is (allegedly) following a well-tried model. The difference is that, back in the day, Russia was a military but hardly and economic threat; it was its economy, or lack of one, which finally brought it down. Now China makes most stuff, owns (with Russia) half of Africa’s and many other countries’ mineral rights and is the world’s second biggest economy. China sneezes and we all catch… well, enough said. In other words, we can’t afford, literally, to upset them too much and any wobbles in their finances feed through pretty quickly to the value of their investments. Noone, indeed, apart from the US, wants to upset them; and even they are treading pretty carefully these days.
“The working-from-home illusion fades”
Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently.
