Seven tips for entrepreneurs
How to navigate the minefield of flexible working


A few months ago my daughter returned to work after maternity leave.  She wanted to work less than full time, in order to spend more time with their daughter. 
They were also keen to minimise the cost of nursery school care, whilst retaining my daughter's job as a career rather than a pin money job.  

This is the latest advice given to employers, for when a member of staff requests flexible working:

1. Don't confuse flexible working with part-time working: flexible working can encompass a change to working hours, but may mean place of work.  The options include compressed hours, term-time working, flexi-time, job sharing the home working to name a few.
2. Deal with requests reasonably: there is no obligation for employers to grant an employee's request, only to deal with it in a reasonable manner.  Make sure the final decision is based on genuine business drivers rather than attitudes.
3. Consider carefully whether to ask the reason for the request: employees are not obliged to tell you but it may be beneficial for them to do so.  It may allow you to clarify for example, whether a temporary, rather than permanent contractual change is preferable, or whether another option might be more appropriate.
4. Don't make value judgements about the most deserving request: consider requests on their merits in the context of your business and if your business can accommodate the request, rather than focusing on the reason for the request.  That avoids getting into discrimination territory.
5. Consider a trial period, instead of rejecting a request outright: if you are unsure what the effect of a flexible working arrangement will be on the business, and what impact it may have on other employees, a trial period for a short fixed period can help to gauge whether the arrangement is sustainable.
6. A refusal must be based on one of eight statutory business reasons: otherwise employers might find themselves on the receiving end of a claim.  These reasons are the burden of additional cost; detrimental ability to meet customer demand; inability to reorganise work among existing staff; inability to recruit additional staff; detrimental impact on quality or performance; insufficient of work during the periods the employee wishes to work; or planned structural changes.
7. Deal with competing requests on a first come first served basis: this is the fairest approach and business needs and context must remain key.  If you decide to ask staff already working flexibly if they are willing to vary their arrangements to accommodate further requests, remember that agreeing to the first request constituted a permanent contractual change.

My job is to notice things

Grayson Perry's acute observations about modern art are at their best when they are personal*

Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood by Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry's transformation from freakish outsider to mainstream darling is a sign of our times.  It doesn't seem so long ago that the Turner Price-winning artist was seen as a man in a frock who made pots with rude designs on them.  He was castigated in the press for his art: people regarded his alter-ego Claire with deep suspicion.

He has done more to make transvestism acceptable than years of dogged campaigning.  He delivered the Reith Lectures done up to the nines, with outlandish hats, sequinned eyes and a teddy bear called Mr Measles on his arm - and everybody cheered. Literally.

His pots sell for thousands, and formed part of a though-provoking exhibition in the British Museum which he curated (went there on one of my very infrequent visits to London).  His tapestries have television series devoted to them.  He is already a CBE.  

Playing to the Gallery's text is closely based on Perry's four Reith Lectures, delivered in 2013.  The book has the same conversational tone and lively intelligence.  Beautifully illustrated, it reveals Perry to be not just an artist but a wordsmith too.

For example, when describing the way the word 'art' has come to be all-encompassing, he says:  'When I think of the sort of bag that art might be, it's one of those very cheap dustbin liners - the ones that, when you drag them out of the dustbin and you're walking towards the front door, you're praying that ll the rubbish won't spill out all over the hall.'
Then there's his 'handbag and hipster test' for judging whether or not something is a work of art.  'If there are lots of people with beards and glasses and single-speed bikes, or oligarchs' wives with great big handbags looking a bit perturbed and puzzled by what they're staring at, then it's probably art.'
This is writing with the eye of someone who says: 'My job is to notice things that other people don't notice.'  It is full of insight and of telling points.

Describing artists as 'the shock troops of gentrification' is a brilliant way to sum up the process in which derelict warehouses are replaced by coffee shops and, ultimately, by designer lofts.  It is acute and funny at the same time.
This, I think is why people love Perry so much.  He is really smart.  he says the things that we wish we had thought of, and asks the questions that we want to ask.  What is art?  How can we tell if what we are looking at is any good?  Is it OK to like certain artists?
The trouble is that when it comes to answering those questions, his arguments are as sinuous as his vases.  All this thoughts head in interesting directions, but if you break the line of his reasoning down, step by step, it doesn't take you to a firm conclusion.


In the end, however, that probably doesn't matter. Perry represents a gentle strain of English eccentricity, a kindly, soft-eyed wandering that doesn't necessarily require hard-line outcomes.
This is the quality revealed in the best section of both lectures and book - the one in which he describes his own discovery of art, and suggests that most artists are driven to create by some kind of trauma.
He goes on to talk about The Art Room, a charity that gives troubled children a chance to create objects that they can take home.  'When a child takes a decorated stool or lampshade back to a home that he little furniture and bare light bulbs, it must give them a sense of empowerment, that in a small way they have begun to change the world.  Because, of course, art's ... most important role is to make meaning.'
And there, in three words, Perry comes u with a definition of art, one drawn from the deepest strains of emotion.  It makes the rest seem like so much throat clearing.  For all the fun of the ride he has taken us on, it is this simple empathy that is his most important contribution to the debate.

Taste is woven into our class system:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/10117264/Grayson-Perry-Taste-is-woven-into-our-class-system.html


* extracts from an article by Sarah Crompton in the Telegraph.

The increasing use of powerful drugs to manage chronic pain is leading to long-term harm.  Should we keep taking the tablets? 

from an article by Anjana Ahuja

In the Victorian age, legions of women relied on a medicine known as 'Mother's quietness' to soothe the pain of their infants.  The reason it worked was that its chief ingredient was laudanum - an extract of opium in alcohol- and its popularity meant that even babies ran the risk of overdosing on remedies bought with ease from chemists and street hawkers.
British laws regulating drug preparation, sales and labelling have been around since 1868 but we remain in thrall to the growing armoury of drugs that promise to take away our pain.  A report from the American Academy of Neurology unvails the extent of this modern intoxication: it says that, in the treatment of chromic pain unrelated to cancer, painkillers are, on balance, causing more harm than good.
The rampant use of powerful medicines, mainly opioids (a class of drugs, including morphine and oxycodone, that have similar pain-reducing effects to opium), is responsible for an epidemic of addiction and overdoes that is costing lives.  

The figures from the US are frightening: in 2007 alone, there were almost 12,000 deaths from unintentional overdose of opioid painkillers, more than the number of heroin and cocaine overdose casualties combined.
The American health-care system is particularly conducive to such abuse: privately funded patients can roam unchecked from doctor to doctor, collecting prescriptions as they go.  In Britain where patients can register with only one GP, massing a stockpile of painkillers is harder to achieve.
But while UK data on opioid overuse may not be precise, we should not dismiss it as an issue of public concern as apparently there has been a large increase in opioid prescribing of the order of 400% in the past ten years.  Other European countries have found similar trends, so this increase isn't restricted to the U~S.
That is why the British Pain Society, a professional body that aims to advance the understanding and management of pain, together with the Royal College, is revising and updating its opioid prescribing guidelines.  
According to the BPS, nearly 10 million Britons suffer pain on an almost daily basis, and work-related back pain alone results in five million working days lost every year.
One factor contributing to the riding prescription rate might be our ageing population, who are increasingly going to their doctors complaining of chronic conditions - that is, those that last longer than 12 weeks - such as osteoarthritis and nerve pain.
Around 2000 there were several trials that suggestion opioids might have some benefits in these types of pain.  It has taken a little while, but those findings have finally filtered through to everyday clinical practice.  Certainly, the pharmaceutical industry has been very proactive in promoting these medicines to health-care professionals.  As a result those new medications were taken up enthusiastically by patients and doctors alike.
But apparently there are problems with these trials.  First of all, the amount of pain relief provided is no better than that provided by alternatives, such an anti-epileptics and antidepressants such as amitriptyline.
Secondly, the trials were largely limited to 12 - 16 weeks, but once drugs go into everyday clinical practice, patients can end up taking them for much longer.  So we've now got patients possibly taking these drugs for many years on the basis of limited evidence.
Not only are the drugs of questionable long-term benefit, but evidence is coming to light that opioids may cause long-term harm by affecting the regions of the brain that produce sex hormones (oestrogen in women and testosterone in men).
In particular, the extended use of opioids appears to disrupt the production of testosterone.  A generation of older men may be on the verge of discovering that, even if their chronic pain is dulled by prescribed opioids, they are now plagued by sexual dysfunction, wasting muscles, thinning bones and low mood.
Over-the-counter (OTC) preparations are also implicated because many of them contain the opioid codeine.  For example, Nurofen Plus is a blend of codeine and ibuprofen, while co-codamol contains paracetamol and codeine.  Solpadeine is another well-known  brand of so-called compound analgesic (a mix of two or more drugs).
In 2009, on the strength of evidence showing that 30,000 patients were addicted to OTC medicines, tough new regulations came into effect.
Packets could not contain more than 32 tablets and had to carry prominent messages warning of the danger of addiction.  Patients are now urged not to take them for more than three days.
The charity Action on Addiction has recognised that some people do show the hallmarks of addition to OTC medicines: withdrawal symptoms if the tablets are stopped; being furtive about taking them; visiting multiple pharmacies to circumvent the limit on tablets; exceeding the stated dose; continuing to take tablets when the pain subsides, sometimes to cope with anxiety.
In fact someimes people resort to painkillers when they should be seeking help for depression or anxiety.  The difficulty is that prolonged pain casts a shadow in which depression can fester; the two conditions become dangerously entwined, and a desperate patient may come to believe that the mental agony, as well as the physical discomfort, can be numbed with painkillers.
Pain, derivated from the Latin poena meaning penalty, is a universal hnuman experience and we have always sought to address it.  Since 1000BC, some Peruvian communities have practised trepanning, believing that perforating the skull relieves pressure.  The Ainu, a hunter-gathered community is Sakhalin, Japan, categorise their headaches as 'bear', 'deer' or 'woodpecker', likening the discomfort to the heavy steps of a bear, the lighter skips of a deer, or the repeated pounding of a woodpecker on a tree trunk.

Opium is perhaps the oldest remedy; opium poppies were cultivated by the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, amongst others.  The Chinese and Indians, too, have  a long history of opiate use.  Edwardian and Victorian Britons eagerly embraced the exotic therapies imported from the far-flung corners of the Empire. 

According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 19^th-century consumers were taking morphine for morning sickness, sniffing cocaine to banish catarrh, and ingesting heroin for bronchitis.  Opium-derived therapies were repackaged and marketed under such alluring names as Brathwaite’s Genuine Black Drop, Dr Bow’s Liniment and Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. These profitable elixirs spurred the birth of today’s global pharmaceutical industry.

That same industry has somehow lulled us into thinking that our lives can, and must, the pain-free.  This may be the case for short periods of acute pain, such as a headache or a sprained muscle, which can indeed usually be lessened with a pill.  I reserve particular praise for the epidural, which transformed my experience of childbirth.

But chronic pain is an altogether trickier customer.  There is no thing as a universal prescription for relief.   Our experience with acute pain, such as muscular pain or a headache, is that we take tablets and the pain goes away.  We think that we can do exactly the same for persistent pain.  In fact, trials suggest that, for chronic pain, if you manage to get a 30 – 50% reduction, you’re doing reasonably well.

Some pain management techniques include exercise, meditation, relaxation, hypnosis, pets, massage, heat or cold applied to the relevant spot, Tens machines and breathing techniques.  I'm not sure that alcohol helps, although I subscribe that dark chocolate does! 

See also:
Pain is also subjective: http://www.spine-health.com/conditions/chronic-pain/chronic-pain-coping-techniques-pain-management
Tens: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childbirth/a916646-Tell-me-about-Tens-machine-any-good
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/findoutmore/yourbrain/howdodrugsaffectyourbrain/howdopainkillerswork/whatarethedangersofopiates.aspx
http://www.aarp.org/health/drugs-supplements/info-09-2011/common-painkillers-raise-heart-risks-health-discovery.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2333067/Painkillers-taken-millions-increase-heart-risk-Prolonged-use-leads-significant-danger.html
http://consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/09/the-dangers-of-painkillers/index.htm

Book: http://www.amazon.com/When-Painkillers-Become-Dangerous-Prescription/dp/159285107X