Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

UK Holidays

Grumpy Old Lemons Like You
UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10692
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: UK Holidays

#468876

Postby UncleEbenezer » December 28th, 2021, 8:19 pm

GrahamPlatt wrote:
UncleEbenezer wrote:
malkymoo wrote:In England we have 8 public holidays, you would be pushed to find a country with fewer, as evidenced by this list:

That comparison is an illusion. England's 8 is worth 11.2 days of most countries' public holidays, based on a conventional five-day working week.

That's 'cos England's holidays are always additional: if the date of a holiday falls on a weekend day, the holiday gets moved to the following monday. And this week, even Tuesday. In other countries you get to serve both sentences concurrently.


OTOH 11th November is “Remembrance Sunday”... never a workday. Whereas in Belgium, it is a day off whatever day it falls on.

Why OTOH?

All that says is that Remembrance Sunday is not one of the eight. Whereas it is one of however many public holidays Belgium has.

GrahamPlatt
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 2059
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 9:40 am
Has thanked: 1032 times
Been thanked: 824 times

Re: UK Holidays

#468890

Postby GrahamPlatt » December 28th, 2021, 9:53 pm

OTOH? Because whilst UK holidays may be cumulative, we are parsimonious with them - even to using such a device as Remembrance Sunday to avoid losing a workday.

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10692
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: UK Holidays

#468910

Postby UncleEbenezer » December 29th, 2021, 12:09 am

GrahamPlatt wrote:OTOH? Because whilst UK holidays may be cumulative, we are parsimonious with them - even to using such a device as Remembrance Sunday to avoid losing a workday.

Someone posted:

In England we have 8 public holidays, you would be pushed to find a country with fewer


I think that is uncontroversial, and it follows that days exist that are public holidays elsewhere but not in England. You just named an example of that.

My post points out that England's 8 days is not a like-for-like comparison with other countries. Your example is a case in point: two years in seven, Belgium's remembrance day will coincide with a weekend so it's not an additional day off. England is different: the eight are sacrosanct, so when a public holiday falls at a weekend, we get additional days. Belgium's remembrance day is worth just 0.7 English bank holidays.

You've provided an example of both the post I quoted and my own point: we are not at all so parsimonious as those numbers would lead you to suppose. But I don't see how it introduces anything new that might merit an "other hand".

TUK020
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 2039
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 7:41 am
Has thanked: 762 times
Been thanked: 1175 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469017

Postby TUK020 » December 29th, 2021, 2:22 pm

Many years ago, while working for a US based multinational, I was over in Chicago just prior to Easter. There were a lot of disparaging comments about the Brit's lack of attendance over Easter.
When I observed that it was our 4 day weekend, and enquired whether they regularly worked through Thanksgiving weekend, there was a lot of rapid backpedalling.

My rant about UK holidays is the movable date of Easter makes it more difficult to plan around. Why on earth do we schedule our longest weekend break around when the pope changed his underpants after a full moon following the equinox?????????????

doolally
Lemon Slice
Posts: 632
Joined: February 8th, 2021, 10:55 am
Has thanked: 107 times
Been thanked: 509 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469023

Postby doolally » December 29th, 2021, 2:53 pm

TUK020 wrote:Why on earth do we schedule our longest weekend break around when the pope changed his underpants after a full moon following the equinox?????????????

Sums up religion quite nicely ;)

doolally

Lootman
The full Lemon
Posts: 18681
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 3:58 pm
Has thanked: 628 times
Been thanked: 6564 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469093

Postby Lootman » December 30th, 2021, 1:45 am

TUK020 wrote:Many years ago, while working for a US based multinational, I was over in Chicago just prior to Easter. There were a lot of disparaging comments about the Brit's lack of attendance over Easter.

When I observed that it was our 4 day weekend, and enquired whether they regularly worked through Thanksgiving weekend, there was a lot of rapid backpedalling.

My rant about UK holidays is the movable date of Easter makes it more difficult to plan around. Why on earth do we schedule our longest weekend break around when the pope changed his underpants after a full moon following the equinox?????????????

I read somewhere that there is an American law that the financial system there cannot be closed for 4 consecutive days.

So even when Christmas Day falls on a weekday there is only one weekday closure of the banks and markets.

On Good Friday the US stock market is closed but otherwise Easter is a non-issue because of the separation of church and state,

I much prefer the US approach to publlc/bank holidays. The UK effectively shuts down for 2 weeks this time of year and it drives me nuts.

pje16
Lemon Half
Posts: 6050
Joined: May 30th, 2021, 6:01 pm
Has thanked: 1843 times
Been thanked: 2066 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469094

Postby pje16 » December 30th, 2021, 4:17 am

CliffEdge wrote:Being retired I don't get bank holidays which doesn't seem fair.

Aren't you on "holiday" permanently :lol:

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469098

Postby Dod101 » December 30th, 2021, 7:10 am

doolally wrote:
TUK020 wrote:Why on earth do we schedule our longest weekend break around when the pope changed his underpants after a full moon following the equinox?????????????

Sums up religion quite nicely ;)

doolally


It doesn't.

Dod

gryffron
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3606
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:00 am
Has thanked: 550 times
Been thanked: 1586 times

Re: UK Holidays

#469623

Postby gryffron » January 1st, 2022, 10:05 pm

TUK020 wrote:My rant about UK holidays is the movable date of Easter makes it more difficult to plan around. Why on earth do we schedule our longest weekend break around when the pope changed his underpants after a full moon following the equinox?????????????

Pope, pah! Like ALL of our so-called christian holidays, it's a stolen North European pagan festival based on the solar/lunar cycle. As such you can predict its dates for thousands of years going forward.

Blessed Eostre. Goddess of the Dawn, Fertility, and chocolate. :lol:

Gryff

SteelCamel
2 Lemon pips
Posts: 208
Joined: February 15th, 2017, 5:49 pm
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 103 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471475

Postby SteelCamel » January 8th, 2022, 9:59 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Take hardworking Scotland, for example. The only place in the United Kingdom where Christmas Day is a statutory holiday. (Everywhere else, it's at the discretion of the monarch, who could refuse it any time she wanted to tee us all off. :) ) And the only place where 2nd January is a statutory holiday, and where both the 3rd and 4th of January are widely taken if New Year's Day happens to fall on a Saturday. By god, those hangovers must be serious.

Scotland is also the only part of the UK where they get both August bank holidays. And where the national day (St Andrew's, 30th November) is an official bank holiday as well. (Since 2008.) Good luck with trying to take St George's Day off down here in slacker England. :lol:

Scotland only has one Bank Holiday in August - at the beginning of the month. By the end of August, schools have been back a couple of weeks, so it would be an odd time for a holiday. And Easter Monday isn't a Bank Holiday in Scotland, which cancels out the extra one for 2nd January. St Andrew's Day is an "optional" Bank Holiday (whatever that means, since there's no law you have to have a day off, or do anything else, on a Bank Holiday - so aren't they all optional?). Of course many businesses, including all banks, observe English Bank Holidays even in Scotland...

And it's been proposed to make St George's Day a Bank Holiday in England - the issue being that it would be very close to Easter, or even clash with it some years. The last I heard they were looking at Trafalgar Day (21st October), though that seems to have quietly been abandoned.

Wuzwine
Lemon Pip
Posts: 72
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:19 pm
Has thanked: 1527 times
Been thanked: 10 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471597

Postby Wuzwine » January 9th, 2022, 7:00 pm

I used to work in an Lothian Civil Service office near Edinburgh.

We had a vote as to which August Bank holiday, as we dealt with mainly the English. I can't remember whether I voted for early or late August. However it didn't matter, as the majority went for the Edinburgh September holiday - so we closed for the Monday about mid September! I would have preferred either August date.

I wasn't surprised to find that, come the following May, we chose Victoria Day instead of the late May holiday.

Wonder if anyone gets them all?

https://www.edarabia.com/edinburgh/public-holidays/

Wuz

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8064
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2846 times
Been thanked: 3939 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471728

Postby bungeejumper » January 10th, 2022, 11:43 am

Wuzwine wrote:We had a vote as to which August Bank holiday, as we dealt with mainly the English. I can't remember whether I voted for early or late August. However it didn't matter, as the majority went for the Edinburgh September holiday - so we closed for the Monday about mid September! I would have preferred either August date.

Thanks for saving my sanity. :D Yes, it was on my records that both days were taken, although I didn't recall exactly by whom.

Most of the people I was compiling for were in the legal or financial sectors, so it was normal for those companies to take the same days off when London was closed. (I guess that's why they call it a bank holiday?) But other sectors would have observed different days.

It's not easy being a diary dates compiler! Two years ago, the date of the early May bank holiday was moved from Monday 4th May to Friday 8th May, so as to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day. The trouble was, the date change was decided too late for the diary industry, which had already printed and bound 50 million 2020 diaries by that time. It was either pulp the lot, or include an erratum slip. Decisions, decisions. :lol:

I do hope that England doesn't go ahead with the Trafalgar Day holiday. This isn't a great time to be punching Spain and France on the nose. Although some of our leaders will think it's a jolly morale-boosting post-Brexit jape that's bound to win votes. I don't recall the commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland (12th July) ever doing much for intra-communal relations in the province?

BJ

servodude
Lemon Half
Posts: 8271
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 5:56 am
Has thanked: 4435 times
Been thanked: 3564 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471732

Postby servodude » January 10th, 2022, 12:00 pm

bungeejumper wrote:. I don't recall the commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland (12th July) ever doing much for intra-communal relations in the province?


I was once sent a misprinted calendar from Ireland (it was a cheap community thing along the lines of "Tractors from Letterkenny")
- actually mis-bound would be closer to the mark; there was an extra
Sheet included

This meant it went Jan - Feb - March - March... I don't think they could have chosen a better month given the hobbies of some in the region

-sd
(there was an extra October as well :) )

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8064
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2846 times
Been thanked: 3939 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471740

Postby bungeejumper » January 10th, 2022, 12:19 pm

Aaargh! They've done it again!

Not that it's my professional problem any more (phew), but according to the BBC we're getting a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June, to celebrate Her Maj's 70 years on the throne. (That's Thursday to Sunday. Wanna bet that half the country will extend it?)

And to celebrate it all, the week will kick off on Monday 30th May with a grand competition to invent a new pudding that will celebrate the Queen's 70 year reign. To be judged by Dame Mary Berry, no less.

A pudding? Haven't they already got Prince Charles?

BJ

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10692
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471783

Postby UncleEbenezer » January 10th, 2022, 3:30 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Aaargh! They've done it again!

Not that it's my professional problem any more (phew), but according to the BBC we're getting a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June, to celebrate Her Maj's 70 years on the throne. (That's Thursday to Sunday. Wanna bet that half the country will extend it?)

And to celebrate it all, the week will kick off on Monday 30th May with a grand competition to invent a new pudding that will celebrate the Queen's 70 year reign. To be judged by Dame Mary Berry, no less.

A pudding? Haven't they already got Prince Charles?

BJ

So what kind of thing impresses Ms Berry? Does one go for nominative determinism there? Start of June is a little early for peak berry.

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471789

Postby Dod101 » January 10th, 2022, 3:54 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Aaargh! They've done it again!

Not that it's my professional problem any more (phew), but according to the BBC we're getting a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June, to celebrate Her Maj's 70 years on the throne. (That's Thursday to Sunday. Wanna bet that half the country will extend it?)

And to celebrate it all, the week will kick off on Monday 30th May with a grand competition to invent a new pudding that will celebrate the Queen's 70 year reign. To be judged by Dame Mary Berry, no less.

A pudding? Haven't they already got Prince Charles?

BJ


In midsummer, just like HM's official Birthday because of course she ascended the throne on 6 February, the day the late King died. I trust they will mark that day as well.

Dod

servodude
Lemon Half
Posts: 8271
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 5:56 am
Has thanked: 4435 times
Been thanked: 3564 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471875

Postby servodude » January 10th, 2022, 8:52 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Aaargh! They've done it again!

Not that it's my professional problem any more (phew), but according to the BBC we're getting a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June, to celebrate Her Maj's 70 years on the throne. (That's Thursday to Sunday. Wanna bet that half the country will extend it?)

And to celebrate it all, the week will kick off on Monday 30th May with a grand competition to invent a new pudding that will celebrate the Queen's 70 year reign. To be judged by Dame Mary Berry, no less.

A pudding? Haven't they already got Prince Charles?

BJ


Seems like tempting fate
What if she does a Betty White?

AsleepInYorkshire
Lemon Half
Posts: 7383
Joined: February 7th, 2017, 9:36 pm
Has thanked: 10514 times
Been thanked: 4659 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471876

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » January 10th, 2022, 8:58 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Aaargh! They've done it again!

Not that it's my professional problem any more (phew), but according to the BBC we're getting a four-day UK bank holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June, to celebrate Her Maj's 70 years on the throne. (That's Thursday to Sunday. Wanna bet that half the country will extend it?)

BJ

Clearly government don't believe she will survive to June.

AiY

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10692
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471915

Postby UncleEbenezer » January 11th, 2022, 12:46 am

I was just taking the rubbish out as I customarily do on a Monday night, when I thought to check the council's website.

A fortnight ago, of course I checked carefully, and found collection day had been put back from Tuesday to Thursday. OK, not unexpected that week. Last week I didn't bother to take anything out, so didn't check.

Turns out it's still Thursday this week. So the recycling boxes are now sitting in the hall while I decide what to do with them for two more days. I didn't realise we were still on bank holiday schedule in the middle of bloomin' January. :evil:

Watis
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 1404
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 352 times
Been thanked: 489 times

Re: UK Holidays

#471936

Postby Watis » January 11th, 2022, 8:13 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:I was just taking the rubbish out as I customarily do on a Monday night, when I thought to check the council's website.

A fortnight ago, of course I checked carefully, and found collection day had been put back from Tuesday to Thursday. OK, not unexpected that week. Last week I didn't bother to take anything out, so didn't check.

Turns out it's still Thursday this week. So the recycling boxes are now sitting in the hall while I decide what to do with them for two more days. I didn't realise we were still on bank holiday schedule in the middle of bloomin' January. :evil:



We're on a similar schedule here. And last week, our collection was on Friday (normally Tuesday, like you).

As I'm sure you know, Saturday collections are used to catch up after bank holidays. But, as New Year's Day was a Saturday this year, that Saturday wasn't used, so by the first week of January, there were three bank holiday day's worth of catching up to do. Here, the backlog finally unwinds on Tuesday 25th January.

Watis


Return to “Bitter Lemons”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests