Noel Edmunds is Mad (and so is Bill Gates)

It’s a wet, windy morning here in the Big Smoke. The sort of day where you’d prefer to hide under the duvet than face the commute to work (yeah, admittedly every day starts like that for most of us). Especially as I’ve now been told by a rheumatologist that working at a PC all day “is just very bad for you on all sorts of levels”.

I saw the consultant yesterday because I routinely get neck and shoulder problems. The problem is, according to this geezer, postural – just sitting in the wrong position at the PC, probably due to a bad ‘workstation configuration’. But even so, apparently working at a PC is bad in itself. You could extrapolate further and say that employment is bad for you. At least, employment in an industrial society. Admittedly neck ache isn’t quite as extreme as being crushed in a cotton loom or a miner’s emphysema, but it does reinforce for me that working is crap.

This leads me to thinking about people like Noel Edmonds and Bill Gates. People fulfilled only by work. Positive, driven people whose demented search for validation makes them the most successful individuals in our sick society. People whose lives are empty outside the boardroom or the television studio. Bill Gates, according to his biographers, worked 18 hour days and slept under his desk for most of the 80s. It’s just not healthy is it?