Some offices & factory spaces have been converted to housing, much of it highly unsuitable with no suitable facilities nearby, (shops etc). There was a report on London news a few months ago.Â
The leaves have gone from the big trees. I can see some of the London skyline now. There are buildings that weren't there last year.
I'm sure they're all office towers. The world has changed. Businesses are realising that people can work from home and they don't need so much office space. Companies have relocated to Europe. What's going to happen to all this office space? It looks like the bubble has burst in a property ponzi scheme.Â
A friend of mine is a manager for a company that supplies and services photocopiers to the business sector. Talking with him a few days ago he remarked on the number of calls he's been getting from these companies to come and collect their rented photocopiers as there no longer needed as so many staff are now working from home permanently. Many have also said there looking to rent smaller office space for just enough people to deal with the public face to face , everyone else will be working from home with subsidised Internet access and phone calls.
He collected 8 from one company and at £50 a month rental his company is getting worried as they have lost so much income from so many machines being returned over the last few months as companies realise these fancy offices are no longer needed.
Its a changing world there's no doubt about that and as automation and AI kicks in society will have to change the way it functions or there's going to be a hell of a lot of people out of work.
Universal income anyone?
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
True AI will be a complete game changer. I thought they'd have to get AI in place for autonomous vehicles and once that was done, the floodgates would open as AI would then learn (by itself, with guidance) to do anything. Governments don't seem to factor AI into the equation - or at least the discussion on it seems to be minimal still. The UK gov is still talking 2030 and electric cars as if that's some major achievement, but what point cars when virtually any task could be undertaken by a machine? Societal changes in the extreme seem to be coming down the line at a rapid rate of knots.
When you look back and think man had the wheel and horse and cart for millenia, then within just over a century, the whole world has changed and may change in the next decades unrecognizably. But it's just change - man adapts. It does beg the question though 'what point capitalism' when it is a machine generating 'wealth' for other machines - who owns the 'wealth'? I think different social models will have to come into being.
As I've probably said here before, the solution to the HS2 problem is to buy everyone in Birmingham an alarm clock. They will then be able to get up 20 minutes earlier and will no longer need a train that takes 20 minutes less to get to London. Anyone living in London or en route who wishes to go to Birmingham could have one too. The money saved could be spent on plans for garden bridges, state of the art tracking schemes, dodgy PPI etc
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
A friend of mine is a manager for a company that supplies and services photocopiers to the business sector. Talking with him a few days ago he remarked on the number of calls he's been getting from these companies to come and collect their rented photocopiers as there no longer needed as so many staff are now working from home permanently. Many have also said there looking to rent smaller office space for just enough people to deal with the public face to face , everyone else will be working from home with subsidised Internet access and phone calls.
He collected 8 from one company and at £50 a month rental his company is getting worried as they have lost so much income from so many machines being returned over the last few months as companies realise these fancy offices are no longer needed.
Its a changing world there's no doubt about that and as automation and AI kicks in society will have to change the way it functions or there's going to be a hell of a lot of people out of work.
Universal income anyone?
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'