Bordering on Hypocrisy

WELL, well, well. I never thought I'd see the day. After years of calling for open borders the Guardian newspaper has finally come clean and admitted how utterly foolish and short-sighted it has been. In a way, at least.

Discussing the modern tendency to construct open-plan offices, one journalist admits that “it may seem cheaper to get rid of walls, but it’s definitely not smarter”. In an attempt to help to help dissatisfied office staff concentrate in the midst of an unwanted crowd of fellow-workers, one company has even produced headgear know as Wear Space. This prototype item functions in a similar way to horse-blinkers, thus preventing wearers from seeing what is going on right next to them. Whilst this might seem like a rather extreme measure, the journalist argues,

“the dystopian thing here isn't the blinders - it's open-plan offices. As you surely know by now, they're demotivating, distracting and linked to higher stress and blood pressure”.

Typically, as you would expect, our liberal-leftist writer prefers the fact that such places “are in tune with modernity [with] everyone mucking in together”. Nonetheless, he is forced to concede that whilst “the idea of an office more clearly divided [...] feels anti-democratic, old-fashioned,” it is far superior to the more intimidatory open-plan design.

The moral of this little volte-face? Whilst we cannot simply block out the people we would rather not see with fancy headgear, we can keep them out by retaining our borders.