Getting people back into their offices

The one positive out of the long months of coronavirus-driven lockdown and working from home is that a large proportion of people have saved money. Quite a lot in some cases. No commuter travel costs. No lunchtime sandwiches round the corner from the office. No going out to restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theatres, bowing alleys, gymns, swimmming pools. Suddenly there's money in the bank. But now the UK government and the US government and no doubt many others around the world are trying to persuade everyone to go back to work and sit in their offices rather than work from home. Not for their sakes but for the sake of the general economy in city and town centres which are dying on their feet through lack of people. All the shops and restaurants that rely on the lunchtime trade are going out of business. It's desperate for them. But how can governments persuade people to stop working from home when they can prove they are functioning perfectly well on their computers at home and, as a bonus, seeing more of their children and saving loads of money. No one enjoys commuting by train into work, wasting valuable time and spending hundreds or, in many cases, thousands of pounds a year in travel costs. But at some point people who were perfectly prepared to do the train or bus journey into work every day five or six months ago will have to make a decision that benefits not just their employers but also the myriad of small businesses that depend for their very existence on the commuters. We can't have ghost cities and towns for ever. If we are to return to some form of normality then the millions of people who have settled into a way of life based around working from home will need to get up and go to work. Otherwise the general economy is never going to revive. Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, came up with the idea of offering to help pay for people to go back to restaurants by slicing £10 per person off the bill for a meal. Pehaps now he should think of a way of persuading people to go back to work with a special one-off bonus for those who return to their offices and give up their work-from-home routine.