Despite appearances sometimes the House of Commons really is a lot of fun.
On Monday Shona McIsaac Labour MP for Cleethorpes, Immingham and Barton introduced a Bill to Parliament in an attempt to gain a new Bank Holiday in Autumn.
The UK has not had a new Bank Holiday added to the calendar since 1978.
Shona outlined to Parliament the history of public holidays:
"This country used to have far more public holidays, as there were local fairs and festivals. In fact, in the 1820s the Bank of England took 33 public holidays a year. But then came the 1830s and it was nose to the grindstone time. Public holidays were cut to just four a year.
We have made progress since, and we now have eight public holidays a year—in England anyway—with the last one being introduced in 1978, under a Labour Government of course. This Government have done well in introducing a minimum annual holiday entitlement, which I am sure everybody welcomes, but we have not done so well with public holidays.
We seem to have spent all our time debating Europe recently, so I thought I would look at European public holidays. It turns out that most European countries are far better than Britain in this regard: Italy gets 16 days, Iceland gets 15, and Spain and Portugal get 14 each. However, countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal also have all sorts of festivals, ferias and local saints’ days, so they are way ahead of us when it comes to having time away from work. It makes our measly eight days look even meaner."
Shona recognised that although many welcome an extra holiday there were some "misery-guts" who were against such a new Bank Holiday:
"The CBI is one such organisation: it claims that another public holiday would mean less productivity. However, I would hit back by asking whether, if it thinks that one extra day would have such a dramatic impact, it intends to campaign for the abolition of weekends."
Don't tempt them!
There was great hilarity when Conservative MP Christopher Chope got up to object to being called a miserable soul for being against the holiday and proceeded to describe the "victims of bank holidays" -people who are dependent on benefits and want to gain access to public services, those who found themselves caught up in the traffic and of course the national economy (to the tune of £2.5 billion apparently).
His concern in the first instance would be more believable if Conservatives had a record of being concerned about people on benefits or of those trying to access public services. On the contrary! At least not in that way.
Bizarrely, he argued that "bank holidays smack of collectivism and central control."
"They militate against individual freedom and flexibility. Most people, if they were given a choice between taking a holiday on a bank holiday set by the state or at a time of their own choosing, chosen in consultation with their family, would choose the latter."
This would have been a fair point if he was proposing to offer people that choice. But of course he was in favour of no extra holiday at all.
Let Shona know what you think.
Also there is a petition here for a National Remembrance Holiday falling on the second Monday in November each year to reinforce Remembrance Sunday which falls on the second Sunday in November. Such a holiday, the petitioner suggests, "will serve to emphasise our commemoration of The Fallen who gave their lives to save Britain and also the on-going importance of the survival of our Nation. The National Remembrance Holiday will further serve to break that period between late summer and Christmas when there is currently no public holiday." Closing date 18 April 2008.
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