in america it makes sense to say, well, i dont need to live in new york anymore, i will build a cabin a redwood forest
or i'll join a commune in Sedona and tap into the vortexes but the UK doesnt really allow for this decentralisation.
you cant move out of London becasue if you did you would be in Yeovil or Basingstoke. you can only emigrate. you
can;t move internally.
Interesting. Despite such measures the lockdown had quite a sad effect on the working lives (and therefore also the rest of their lives) of a lot of people I know. Before Covid hoved into view most of them worked in bars a few days a week and spent the rest of their time (and some of that time in fairness) taking drugs and occasionally doing something creative vaguely related to their art degrees. With the advent of the pandemic virtually all of them were unceremoniously laid off, in most cases they were vulnerable cos when they were given the job they were forced to take them as cash-in-hand with no contracts. They were properly fucked over - some places didn't even give them any notice, they simply stopped phoning them with their hours for the week and assumed that they would get the message. No pay off of course, and in the above cases, because of their previous dubious status they won't be recorded as newly jobless.Portugal sounds cool;
Portugal's remote working law is a 'game changer,' but what's changed?
No phone calls after hours, help with internet bills and remote working rights for parents are just some of the changes in a new law approved by Portuguese lawmakers.www.euronews.com
I was about to say, how much can you earn doing call-centre work that it pays for you to be able to do drugs more or less continuously while you're answering phones, then I read to the end, and the answer, predictably, is not enough.Interesting. Despite such measures the lockdown had quite a sad effect on the working lives (and therefore also the rest of their lives) of a lot of people I know. Before Covid hoved into view most of them worked in bars a few days a week and spent the rest of their time (and some of that time in fairness) taking drugs and occasionally doing something creative vaguely related to their art degrees. With the advent of the pandemic virtually all of them were unceremoniously laid off, in most cases they were vulnerable cos when they were given the job they were forced to take them as cash-in-hand with no contracts. They were properly fucked over - some places didn't even give them any notice, they simply stopped phoning them with their hours for the week and assumed that they would get the message. No pay off of course, and in the above cases, because of their previous dubious status they won't be recorded as newly jobless.
One by one they took jobs in the only industry that is here in Lisbon, call centres. There are loads of them here and it feels a real shame that all of my friends had to quit their bar jobs and, more importantly, their dreams to answer stupid questions from customers of AirBnB or Youtube or something. Luckily quite a few of them were able to get the equipment from the company and work from home, so most of them didn't let it impinge on their main vocation though - for example Liza would often go for a walk and then meet up with our friend Luis who got shifts for the AirBnB call centres dealing with queries in the evenings. She would keep him company throughout the shift, I guess at least partly cos they would work their way through quite a few cans and he always had a good stock of K so would get increasingly wankered. Another guy we know, Alex, worked for the Chinese delivery thing called Far Fetch, when I nipped round to visit him and Augustus for some reason I noticed that he also had several different piles of white powder neatly positioned by the phone. I formed this image of thousands of sad young hipsters sitting alone in dark bedrooms across Lisbon, boshing endless lines to get through the boredom of the endless stupid questions, ending each day having sniffed more than they earned.
update on this: i went there today and any attempt at engagement is met with suspicion. i'm going to get there. i will grind them down. there's a company there which hires influencers for parties and they are both the most numerous and the most receptive so far. one of the guys at bandcamp has an utterly ridiculous haircut which i very much respect. no-one at resident advisor has ever shown up which seems appropriate. there are some people from a hipster bakery who once left a load of sugary biscuits for everyone to eat, not sure i approve of them, they're a bit matronly.my office is in a kind of shared workspace thing, and both resident advisor and bandcamp have 'space' there. i'm determined to make friends with them but they are abolutely refusing so far