No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

1. It’s a PR World It used to be that the news­pa­per report would say “The police were tipped off about the where­abouts of the gold bul­lion”. And in Evelyn Waugh’s, Scoop, that sort-of journ­al­ist Wil­liam Boot, who hoped to go to Ish­maelia as a spy but ended up being sent as a journ­al­ist, finds that…

For once, the big ques­tion of the Tour de France is not ‘who’s dop­ing?’, the ques­tion is ‘who’s crash­ing?’. The Tour hasn’t been this dan­ger­ous for years. Slip­pery roads, whether from rain or oil, are well-known haz­ards for the road cyc­list. And racing in a pelo­ton of 100+ riders at 30+kph does raise the chance…

Being on the North­ern Soul scene, with its all-nighters, amphet­am­ines, and obsess­ive pur­suit of obscure and rare records, didn’t suit those with a steady day job. And, as is so com­mon with research into sub­cul­tures, Andrew Wilson’s ‘North­ern Soul’ (2007) doesn’t offer much by way of insight into how a per­son makes a liv­ing at…

On the 69th Floor This is one of the most fam­ous pho­to­graphs of work, Charles C. Ebbets’ ‘Lunch­time atop a Sky­scraper’. It’s the sort of image that counts as iconic – that is, you can buy a poster ver­sion of it. Taken in 1932 as the 69th Floor of the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter was being built,…

I’m chat­ting to the ticket seller and the train driver at a sta­tion with one plat­form. The driver’s done Lon­don and back this morn­ing, and now he’s on the third of seven trips between the same two sta­tions. The jour­ney is seven minutes each way, round the back of the allot­ments, across a couple of…

Carers UK have just released new fig­ures cal­cu­lat­ing the value of the work of unpaid carers. Some time ago I wrote about being a carer, and these latest fig­ures do noth­ing to chal­lenge the argu­ment in that piece to take care ser­i­ously. Carers UK/University of Leeds cal­cu­late the eco­nomic value of caring as £119 billion…

On the 13th Feb­ru­ary, 2011, I pho­to­graphed my work­place at night, as part of a pro­ject on dreams. Sound artist Will Mont­gomery was with me, record­ing the uni­ver­sity breath­ing. Click on the present­a­tion to hear how the boiler room hums and the air­con­di­tion­ing units buzz. A silent, dream­less night is an illu­sion. Dreams The photographs…

Since post­ing Work at Height and Work at Great Height, I’ve seen a couple of inter­est­ing things. The first is a clip sent by a col­league at the OU, Simon Carter, shows what its like to work 1768 feet in the air, mend­ing anten­nae. Phew. I could scarcely watch. Notice that they show the ascent,…

For some time I’ve been work­ing on a pro­ject about musi­cians and the work they do. This star­ted as an invest­ig­a­tion into the rela­tion­ship between work, con­sump­tion and leis­ure in the lives of cre­at­ive work­ers. Here, the pre­car­ity of being a worker in the informal eco­nomy, depend­ent on an act­ive, pay­ing audi­ence and (prob­ably) a…

A few weeks ago, I pos­ted a clip of a man fix­ing a satel­lite dish. I called it work at height, and I wrote it because the idea of climb­ing a lad­der to make a liv­ing made me shiver. The satel­lite dish engin­eer has noth­ing on the four man team keep­ing the Eif­fel Tower’s lifts…