Work Is a Four Letter Word
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2016
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many of us have grown up with the belief that a strong work ethic is a positive thing, and that by contrast idle hands are the devil's playthings. According to Professor Andrew Hussey, that argument makes very little sense. Starting off with a line from the Cilla Black song 'Work is a Four Letter Word' he offers a powerful counter-argument by navigating the ideas of, among others, Bertrand Russell, John Ruskin and the Situationists in France, whose graffiti slogan 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' - never work - still appears regularly on Parisian streets. Hussey argues that the corporate culture in particular, born out of mid-20th Century America and built upon ideologies of work developed during the industrial revolution and on through to the development of the assembly line, can have a hugely corrosive impact on people's lives. The programme features the voices of workers from the 1930s through to the present day, describing working life in call centres where even a trip to the toilet is timed by management. Hussey doesn't however suggest that we all take to the sofa to watch TV and eat crisps, though; instead he argues that by taking control of the work we do and the way we do it, work can actually become a positive force in our lives, once stripped of what he regards as the caustic power of modern managerialism.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Work, work, work, that's a four letter, work, that's a four letter |
| 0:11.1 | word all right. Work has a massive impact on all of our lives, |
| 0:15.0 | and many of us have grown up with the belief that a strong work ethic is a good thing. |
| 0:19.0 | And by contrast, the idle hands or the devils playthings. |
| 0:22.0 | However, according to Professor Andrew... the Idal hands or the devils play things. |
| 0:22.5 | However, according to Professor Andrew Hussey, that argument makes little sense, |
| 0:27.2 | and in this program he sets it out to prove why. |
| 0:30.1 | Now, before you start thinking about jacking in the job and watching TV and eating crisps all day, |
| 0:35.0 | that's not what Andrew's saying. Instead, what he's arguing is that by taking control of the work that we do and the way that we do it, |
| 0:41.5 | work can actually become a positive force in our lives. |
| 0:44.7 | As always this is the seriously podcast with me Testament and this is work is a four a word. Take this job and shove it. |
| 0:55.0 | I ain't working here no more. |
| 0:58.0 | A woman left and took all the reasons |
| 1:02.0 | I've been working for. |
| 1:03.7 | Why should you know you're wasting no time. |
| 1:08.8 | But here, for the right trace. You know when I... Why should I let the Toad work squat on my life? |
| 1:18.0 | Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off? |
| 1:22.0 | Six days of the week it soils with its |
| 1:25.1 | sickening poison just for paying a few bills. That's out of proportion. I'm a four letter word. |
| 1:40.0 | A lovely and fantastic Miss Silla Black and work is a four letter word. |
| 1:43.0 | And what I really love about this song and I do love this song is that as was her once, |
| 1:48.0 | Scylla yet again is here setting us a big philosophical question. |
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