The Future of Work by Richard DonkinBBC iPlayer is a fab invention. Not only can I catch up with Spooks – completely riveting on a laptop – on the evenings A is out at Ki Aikido, but I can hear the radio programmes I would otherwise miss.  I’ve just been listening to You and Yours on Radio 4 about how work is changing.

There were the usual stories of people who used to have to go to an office but can now work abroad or from their garden sheds, but what caught my attention was the question of how we avoid a two-tier society when essential services still have to be supplied by people who can’t work at home and often have to work long, anti-social hours in unpleasant conditions.

I feel that really needs addressing now, and maybe there will be some pointers in the book written by Richard Donkin, who was the major contributor to the programme.  It’s called The Future of Work
 and will be fascinating to compare to American Daniel Pink’s Free Agent Nation.

What particularly bothers me is that government and the law seems unwilling or incapable of keeping up with the changes in the way people work, which after all don’t happen overnight but over a long period of time, but more about that another time.