21 Hours

It’s not often that I feel much cause to get excited about what economists have to say, but this week has been an exception; for it has come to my attention that major thinktank the New Economics Foundation – “Economics as if people and the planet mattered” – have published a report calling for the standard working week to be cut to just 21 hours. According to the nef, various factors including “the lasting damage to the economy caused by the banking crisis, an increasingly divided society with too much over-work alongside too much unemployment, and an urgent need for deep cuts in environmentally damaging over-consumption” makes such a move not only desirable, but imperative for our collective future. Here’s a quote from Anna Cooke, co-author of the report:

So many of us live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume. And our consumption habits are squandering the earth’s natural resources. Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern. We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours. And we could even become better employees: less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive. It is time to break the power of the old industrial clock, take back our lives and work for a sustainable future.

Wise and encouraging words indeed! Let’s hope that this eminently sensible report causes more people to reconsider our present overworked, over-stressed, environment-squandering and generally pretty self-destructive way of life, and make the bold move towards allowing ourselves to relax into a freer, more satisfying and more planet-friendly existence.

You can read a summary of the report, and download a full copy, here: 21 Hours

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