In defence of working from home

Working from home has had a terrible effect on my state of mind and it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

Which is why I want to defend it in a week of it being under attack. On Monday, on the BBC’s Panorama, Stuart Rose, former chairman of Asda, said he believes ‘productivity is less good if you work from home. I believe that your personal development suffers’. In the US, Donald Trump set the global social media agenda by ordering the end of ‘remote work arrangements’ for government workers. I get the sentiment, but completely disagree. In the UK it is not a problem to be fixed. In fact, it could even be a shortcut to levelling up.

When I retreated to Newcastle from London a decade ago, local journalism in the North East was almost nonexistent and freelance work was unreliable. I got a job on a local magazine for low pay, then academia on even lower pay, before Alex Kay-Jelski, now the BBC’s director of sport, tweeted that The Athletic was looking for a freelance editor.