People weren't choosing short weeks because they wanted leisure time. It was because there wasn't enough electricity to work five days a week due to Marxist mi

People weren't choosing short weeks because they wanted leisure time. It was because there wasn't enough electricity to work five days a week due to Marxist miners unions shutting down the power stations. Also on checking it turns out I misremembered. The UK went to three day weeks during this time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week TV stations were also required to shut down at 22:30 to conserve power. Bodies went uncollected, hospitals shut down, TV stations routinely went dark even when there was sufficient power. It's impossible to overstate the apocalyptic state of Britain in this era. You can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent The government was so left wing any thought of building a high tech ecosystem was out of the question and even keeping existing 1930s era industries was hard. Whilst the Americans were building Intel the British were living through something from a disaster movie. The 1980s were spent partly repairing the damage. By that point the US tech ecosystem was well under way.