Labour’s legislation confronting a ‘culture of presenteeism’ may inadvertently favour employers and cause the badly paid to lose out

At the age of 25, casting around for what to do next, I was lucky enough to get a few weeks paid work at a newspaper. The work itself wasn’t exactly thrilling – I was placed next to a Bloomberg terminal and tasked with writing up rather dry market reports. But my colleagues were funny and friendly, and as deadlines approached at the end of my first day I was surprised to see senior men and women actually running in the office.

Editors tore back and forth with huge printouts, clustering to debate the placement of a sentence, or perhaps a single word. At one point a top reporter of unimaginable glamour stalked past my desk, berating herself in an undertone: “You’ve just talked yourself off the front page!” For some reason, it was then that certainty struck: I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.