A shorter working week for health and environment?

When I was a kid (like: about 10 -so back in the late 60's and early 70's) teachers were telling us that htey were thinking that htey needed to educate us to know whwt to do with all the leisure we were going to have in the future. I realy wish they'd been right: I've got about 3 books that I'd like to be able to finish not to mention a couple of art projects...

So, you can imagine I'm both keen on this idea and also sadly skeptical. It's form those nice people NEF.

Twenty-one hours is close to the average that people of working age in Britain spend in paid work and just a little more than the average spent in unpaid work. Experiments with shorter working hours suggest that they can be popular where conditions are stable and pay is favourable, and that a new standard of 21 hours could be consistent with the dynamics of a decarbonised economy.

I'm wondering if this would affect vicaring ...
The report (pdf) here.
It's interesting to see the summary of experiments in reducing working hours in developed nations as is the brief history of the invention of the working week -it's worth remembering that it was invented; it's not entirely natural or inevitable. Pay too does not necessarily reflect profitability or other measures of value but rather power (think bank exec bonuses) and power is potentially a democratic vector and in that connection we should recall the messageof the researc indicating that more equal societies have better outcomes in welfare and happiness. Some of this may chime with the ideas that Tom Sine and others have been propounding. In many ways, too, this is pointing towards a way of life much closer to what the Green Party manifesto desires to produce.

Interesting facts mentioned: In the UK the value of housework and childcare carried out without pay would be 21% of GDP if it had all been paid at minimum wage in 2005; informal carers are said to be saving the UK economt £87bn pa.