The Unbearable Lightness of Working

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has recently unveiled a new contribution to political taxonomy: a “working person” now appears to mean “anyone earning below the 40% tax bracket”.

Finally, an objective measure. No more of this outdated fixation on hours, effort, or output. The government offers a cleaner test: is your income sufficiently taxable? Then sit down. You’re not working. You’re a Schrödinger’s labourer: simultaneously alive yet professionally inert, until observed by HMRC.

Useful! And it explains so much.

Now that’s what we call leisure

We’re having building work done at home. (Obviously. It’s the middle-class version of therapy: expensive, disruptive, and guaranteed to reveal structural issues you didn’t want to think about.)

The builder received one-third upfront. It was a radiant week in October, the kind that makes poets reach for metaphors and contractors reach for… time off. He appeared for three days, did four hours per visit (a total of 12 hours, for those who enjoy arithmetic). A whole 1.5-day week.

Then it rained. Apparently rain makes building work impossible (except for invoicing, which thrives in all meteorological conditions). Tools down at 3pm sharp, sometimes 2:58 pm if the drizzle is particularly morale-damaging. The project timeline has extended into something that feels more geological than contractual.

Meanwhile, my own contribution to the national project involves roughly 60 hours a week engaging in activities the Chancellor suggests do not constitute “work,” on account of my marginal tax rate. The builder, who works about the same hours as a French civil servant on strike, is firmly in the “working person” category. I, with my four-monitor prison setup, am not.

This is fine. Absolutely fine.

Chancellor’s CV (of changing definitions)

Reeves demonstrated aptitude for redefining “work” early in her career. Famously, she once reclassified her own postgraduate course as “working” at the Bank of England: an admirable early display of statistical creativity, which neatly foreshadows her current productivity strategy: improve national efficiency (output per unit of input) by redefining 15% of the tax base as “non-workers,” thereby reducing the denominator.

Elegant. Brutal. ONS will love it.

Guardian vs Gladwell

Just as this semantic revolution unfolds, The Guardian has helpfully explained that success is now largely an accident. Something between cosmic dice-rolling and a clerical error at birth. Gladwell’s Outliers can apparently be pulped: practice, focus, effort, the 10,000 hours — the whole Protestant work ethic — have been debunked and replaced by “vibes plus stochastic fortune”.

It’s a refreshing worldview. Everyone is absolved of responsibility except the people funding the Treasury. A perfect intellectual climate for redefining “work” around tax bands.

A public service glossary (revised for the new era)

• Balanced Approach – More tax. Balanced chiefly on your wallet.
• Brexit’s Impact on the Economy – See: “global factors”, “challenging headwinds”, and “please stop asking”.
• Broad Shoulders – Anyone who has ever received a tax bill that induces mild nausea.
• Challenging Headwinds – Meteorological phenomenon occurring whenever GDP numbers flatline. Typically used in place of the more accurate “we did something extremely stupid and would quite like you to stop bringing it up”.
• Civic Duty – Paying more tax with a serene facial expression.
• Consultation – A ceremony in which stakeholders are notified of the decision.
• Economic Competence – A tone used when unveiling numbers with a short shelf life.
• Efficiency Savings – Spending cuts, but with plausible deniability.
• Fairness – Policy that benefits whoever is speaking.
• Fair and Sustainable Settlement – More tax but with nodding.
• Fiscal Responsibility – Announcing something you said last week you’d never do.
• Global Factors – Everything except raising trade barriers against your largest trading partner.
• Growth Plan – Tax rises with a motivational title.
• Hard Work – Traditionally hours of labour; now a marginal rate threshold.
• Honesty – A speech genre.
• Industrial Policy – Nostalgia packaged as ambition.
• Industrial Strategy – A document asserting Britain will become a world leader in something it currently does not make.
• Integrity – Doing the right thing, once polling confirms it is safe.
• Investment – Spending.
• Listening Exercise – A consultation that produced an inconvenient answer.
• Meritocracy – A belief system in which hard work is widely celebrated but officially irrelevant. See: “cosmic windfall,” “planetary alignment,” “favourable birth coordinates.” Effort is decorative; its outcomes are taxable.
• Middle Class – Small enough to squeeze; too large to pity.
• Modernising the State – Launching an app that doesn’t work.
• National Conversation – An announcement.
• NHS – Britain’s most cherished institution: part religion, part museum exhibit. An employer large enough to qualify as its own weather system. Known internationally for its cutting-edge queueing technology.
• Office for National Statistics – The nation’s calculator, permanently updating its firmware.
• Personal Responsibility – The unique privilege of the middle classes to financially support themselves, the old, the young, the infirm, and approximately 0.85 of an officially designated “working person.” See also: “civic duty” and “broad shoulders”.
• Professional Experience (Bank of England edition) – A postgraduate course completed within the same postal district.
• Public Sector Pension – “Long-term affordability concerns” followed by stasis.
• Public Sector Reform – Hiring a consultant to implement a dashboard.
• Public-Private Partnership – Combining the agility of the public sector with the accountability of the private sector.
• Rental Licence – A mandatory permit issued by councils, governed by rules so opaque they must be deciphered using folklore. Commonly forgotten by landlords across the political spectrum, later discovered during a routine administrative embarrassment.
• Spending – Someone else’s investment.
• Stakeholder Engagement – A series of meetings where everyone agrees the problem is “complex” and then goes home.
• Tough Decisions – Announcing something unpopular in lieu of something else even more unpopular.
• Vision for Britain – Four bullet points, three slogans, and a photo of a warehouse.
• The Wealthy – Individuals politicians threaten but cannot locate.
• Working Families – Individuals who procreated without the means of supporting the offspring.
• Working Person – Someone earning below the 40% bracket. Hours optional. Output negotiable. Hi-vis recommended.