Thursday, 2 June 2011

Daily Mail On Top Form

Mildly interesting statistics on commuting via the BBC:

Three-quarters of UK workers have journeys to work of less than 30 minutes, according to the Office for National Statistics... Those who earn more and work in management or professional positions tend to having longer journey times, the statistics suggest.

Which is what you'd expect: there are more low paid jobs and fewer high paid jobs, so on the whole you'll have to travel further from any given spot to get to where a high paid job is; people are less likely to want to commute a long distance for a low paid job; high paid jobs tend to be in town centres and the people who do them tend to live in the outer suburbs.

The Daily Mail turns this all deliciously on its head:

Long commute? Don't fret - you are likely to earn more than people who live round the corner from work.

Which is almost as daft as asking your boss for a pay rise on the grounds you have now moved to a different city.

8 comments:

Bayard said...

"Which is almost as daft as asking your boss for a pay rise on the grounds you have now moved to a different city."

I've known it tried!

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, yeah, but did it work?

Anonymous said...

Can we therefore conclude on the basis of the Daily Mail article that all Daily Mail "journalists" must surely live well within 15 minutes of the office ?

marksany said...

I'd like a pay rise because my company moved to a different city. Commute went from 15mins to an hour.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, they sleep at their desks.

MA, by rights, yes, because that was their decision not yours.

dearieme said...

The best scheme is to live within cycling distance and then drive the Rolls anyway.

James Higham said...

My commute time is usually about 0.2 sec or half a metre. It's a pain but I force myself.

Bayard said...

Mark, of course not. I was amazed at the time by the idea that wages should be somehow linked to outgoings (I've had another kid, can I have a pay rise?), but since then I've realised it's standard socialist claptrap (from each according to his abilities etc).