Back to the office for you bone-idle civil servants

THE one interesting thing to come out of the Prime Minister's appearance at the Covid inquiry yesterday, other than his mesmerising grasp of detail, was his admission that too many people worked from home during the pandemic.

- Melanie McDonagh

"Fewer people were out at work than had been anticipated." I'll say.

But the important thing isn't (just) that we're still paying the bill; it's that lots of people are still at it. In Ireland there used to be a joke about the work-shy, that they wouldn't bother to turn up for an actual job - "just send up the money to us at home". But the joke was, it turned out, on us. That's precisely what people did say and, more worryingly, are still saying.