national garden league employer

[alldigging]

Something on R4 this morning (just before 7) about national garden league employer scheme where people are given a day off a week to garden.
It was done in the states apparently in places like Detroit and they found it helped people - sharing the amount of work out between more people and people being fitter and healthier from the gardening.

Sounds interesting.

[Newton]

Is this a 4 day week proposal? Back to the seventies? Power cuts? Watneys party 7.

We all know the benefits of gardening......but give people a day off and they will do their own thing.......unless it is community service.

Most will just "veg"out!

[alldigging]

Yeah I think thats sort of what it was - work 4 days (Presumably for less money though)

[chris]

heh, I'm thinking of dropping to a 4 day week, so that I can garden

[northepaul]

Cant really see it catching on in our capitalist money grabbing society though....

[Mikey]

I already have two gardening days, they are called Saturday and Sunday. If I was given another day, I'd be worn out.

[dogsbody]

Do I drop a day or say enough and just give up completely?

(Work that is, not gardening)

[Alison]

I did exactly this about 3 years ago, work a 4 day week so that I can do jobs on the fifth and it makes things easier for me and OH. If the weather is decent then I'll almost always try and spend that day on the plot although it often does seem to rain on a Friday and of late I've ended up being dragged into work . Personally think that if employers were more flexible generally then it can only be a good thing and be that changing working hours etc to the benefit of both parties then great, don't see it as enforced as mentioned above and that's a totally different thing.

[Farmer_Gyles]

if we ALL dropped to a standard 4 day week, it would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, taking people off benefits, thereby reducing our tax bills .... so although we'd earn less, we'd pay a lot less tax .... so the financial loss wouldn't be too harsh .... and those of us that choose to do gardening etc on the day off can grow more, reducing our overall expenditure ....

i think we have quite long working hours over here .... i saw some figures on the bbc website a while back .... we have something like an average 40 hour week, while in france it's an average 31 hour week ....

[Mikey]

I haven't done an average 40 hour week, for 4 years, more like 60, prior to that my average working week was 45 hours for the previous 5 years. Before that it was more, in fact since I started work, I have never done a 40 hour week, it has always been more.

[Farmer_Gyles]

last night on question time (i don't normally watch it, it was on while i was clearing up before heading for bed), grant someone (an MP) said that the cost of welfare benefits and state pensions was £200bn per year and that this is one third of government expenditure .... that's a vast amount of money ....

[alldigging]

It is a huge amount of money.
But then how much have they let big companies off with tax just for a dinner date with the taxman?

[veggiechicken]

Read more about this proposal here National Gardening Leave | the new economics foundation
I haven't read the download - I'm on permanent Gardening Leave