There was a time when politicians resigned to spend more time with their family and it became a kind of joke.

It all started with Norman Fowler, who used the time partly for producing the most stupendously boring and poor-selling memoirs in history. He was quickly away from his family and back in government.

It continued with politicians involved in sex scandals whose families didn't want them anyway or those who had been too fond of receiving money in brown envelopes whose governments didn't want them.

But now Health Secretary Alan Milburn has given his family as a reason for quitting and although hacks were cynical about his motives no one can find they were other than the truth.

He follows a host of business leaders who have also decided to go in for what is called downsizing.

For many local yokels, and I count myself among them, there is no need to downsize since we never upsized. I made a decision early on in what could laughingly be called my career that there should be a balance between work and play and what I wanted to do was to write rather than to be part of power games.

I also decided I would always live near my place of employment so whenever I left and no matter how hard I had worked, I could never be more than half an hour from home. Although I have had ten jobs in 43 years I have always kept to this.

During that time I have never lived closer than one mile from work or further than five so it has always been possible to reach it by bike or foot within a matter of minutes. I have also chosen always to live to the west of my office so I can have the sun on my face both ways in and out of work when the days are long.

I have no idea whether I could have made it in Fleet Street, or Docklands as it is now. What I do know is I never wanted to try.

The prospect of commuting four hours each day, and that's just when trains ran to time, filled me with horror. It would have turned normal working days into 12-hour days and made long ones fill all my waking hours.

There is no doubt I have paid the price financially. Provincial journalism is famously not well rewarded and at times I have been close to benefit level even on full pay.

All around I see friends far younger than I am retiring on pensions that are bigger than my wage, in some cases more than twice the size, but I have accepted that part of the decision I made involved having to work well past 60 and the cash rewards would not be great.

We must do something about work practices in this country. It is crazy that people are commuting long distances to work ridiculous hours under enormous stress.

There are politicians, business leaders, journalists, public service managers and many others whose lives are being wrecked and who see far too little of their families.

Proper salaries need to be paid in the provinces when people are working just as hard and well as they would if they were in London.

Most meetings can be scrapped. Most offices are unnecessary. More efficient work practices can compress 60-hour weeks into 30 hours with no loss of momentum and much gain in human happiness.

Many people including me could just as easily work from home. It is a revolution that will happen over the next 30 years but it is taking its time.

Meanwhile I must plod on and write a few more million words while my friends retire to spend more time with their money.