Banking on another holiday...

CG

I don't like bank holidays because everywhere is too busy. There's no point in going out because everybody else does. I'd rather have eight days that I could take when I like. In any case, contintental Euroe may have more bank holidays but if, say, Italian independence day or whatever, falls on a weekend, the holiday is not moved to the Monday as compensation as it is here in May.

Tom

Perhaps we could have FEWER bank holidays so that Peter Hoskin could work on his grammar.

Cranmer

The clergy do not enjoy bank holidays at all - especially those over Christmas and Easter. No rest for the wicked...

Emma

Its a leap year this year. Why not make every February 29th a day off. That way its only once every four years.

Chris Good

Bank Holidays as I understand it are only officially holidays for Banks. Employees tend to get them as well as a perk of their employment (I've certainly had to work through bank holidays when situation demanded it). I think we have enough, and the only change might be to spread them out a bit throughout the year.

Tiberius

Lloyds TSB are ahead in the Bank Holiday game. I've just discovered that our local branch is to close every Wednesday starting next week.

William Norton

Easy: (1) chop the 2 January bank holiday in Scotland and Orangeman's Day in Ulster; (2) chop May Day and redistribute it as a holiday for St George's Day (23 April) in England - Scotland already has St Andrew's Day (30 November) and Ulster already has St Patrick (17 March), let the Welsh have St David (1 March); (3) chop the Spring Bank Holiday in May and reassign it to the Monday closest to 15 September and call it Battle Of Britain Day; (4) move the June Bank Holiday back a fortnight to the Monday closest to 18 June and call it Waterloo Day; (5) combine the two August Bank Holidays into one and put it back to the Monday after Pentecost, which it where it was in the first place and should never have changed; (6) bring forward the October Bank Holiday one week to the Monday nearest to 21 October and call it Trafalgar Day. Who could possibly object to that?

Heywood Yerbloemie

Make 7/7, or the Monday to which it is closest, a bank holiday. A state-subsidised skive is surely the best way to commemorate the steadfastness of 'British varr-lews' in the face of terrorism.

Cat

Yes, please! We Brits are over-worked, over-taxed and under-sunned. The least we should get is an amount of Bank Holidays equal to the rest of the EU.

Chris

Can banks employees no just take holidays the same way as the rest of us?

Michael Gorman

Lets make a bank holiday on the anniversary of when Marks and Spencer was founded. It would be St. Michael's Day.

William

William Norton - St. Andrews Day is not a bank holiday in Scotland.

David Lindsay

Is there anywhere else on earth where they celebrate the mere fact that the banks are on holiday? How pointless is that? And just why is either 26th December (though not in Scotland) or 2nd January (in Scotland but nowhere else) a public holiday at all? Not “How did it come about?”, but “Why is it the case now?” Seventy-two per cent of Britons called themselves Christians at the last census, and no more than about one per cent is Eastern Orthodox. So the first source of holidays should be from the Western liturgical calendar as acceptable both to Protestant and to Catholic sentiment. Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day (forcing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to restore it to its Biblical day as kept by the Holy Father) and the real Whit Monday (Whitsuntide, not Wilsontide) would do. Then there are Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, and the Queen’s Official Birthday (if only in celebration of the simple existence of so quintessentially British a thing), all of which should be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom. Giving eleven, an odd number in more than one sense. It would seem a bit churlish to abolish Wilsontide while retaining Heathmas on 1st January, but that would nevertheless be the obvious way of giving an average of one per month, with twelve throughout the year. Still very modest compared to what even subsistence farmers and their labourers managed to survive throughout the thousand years before the Reformation.

dexey

I'm with david Lindsay but would like to add Trafalgar Day.
If this is unacceptable I don't give a toss because I retire soon and every day will be a Bank Holiday.

William Norton

William (20th Feb, 3.51pm): how about the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007?