Dear LPG readers, 

I am so glad that LPG is around because they give me a reason to share my findings when they come to the surface and I have a floater or two to offer today.  I can’t help it, I love looking at a list of statistics and while doing a little morning surfing session recently I came across a spreadsheet showing the number of public holidays that are officially celebrated by the countries of our world, and I think we who live in the United Kingdom are not doing that well.   

There nearly always more than one set to be looked at but the statistics I found, show that, although employers vary, British workers are most likely to get about 20 statutory days designated as paid holiday on average each year, while people who work in Malta enjoy some 41 days a year as a rite and those working in the United States have no statutory right to any paid holiday at all.  

But we come in at the bottom end of any list when it comes to the number of public holidays we get allocated.  The internet list I found mentions 7 and when you think about it, we are used to New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, the early May bank holiday (May Day), the Spring bank holiday, the Summer bank holiday, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. The website I looked at mentioned that the Scottish people still miss out on Easter Monday although many workers can now look forward to that week between Christmas and the New Year. 

Having seen the statistics, I would suggest that we tell our youngsters that a move to somewhere like India where they can be entitled to about 42 days a year could be a good thing, although I don’t know much about the job market out there.  

I understand that all this talk of work and holidays has to be discounted for us oldies as every day is supposed to be a holiday for us (at least that is how my working children see my life), but we oldies know that it is not as simple as that.  Back when we were the workers, when it came to getting days off work we did relatively badly in my opinion, the youngsters who are working now are at least two days a year better off than a lot of the present pensioners.   

Apparently at one time there were loads of English public holidays but it all got cut back by a banker called John Lubbock who brought in a bill that resulted in the first official bank holidays in the UK in 1871.  Since then, New Year’s day was added in 1974 and Mayday only became a public holiday in 1978.  Over the past couple of years, we have had a few extra ones thrown in.   You might remember that the crowning of King Charles allowed us an extra two in 2023, and there were the two extra days allocated in 2022.  One to mark the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee and later that year her funeral

But we oldies don’t need to worry about any of that, or do we?   No matter how old or young we are, we all seem to have become a lot busier (in spite of what my children think) and, with our weekends blurring their way into our working weeks and so many of our relatives moving further afield, these are often the only days that so many of us pensioners ever get to actually see our families without the aid of electronics. 

I think that our modern pace of life leaves so little time for something that is so important whatever your age which is why, having written down all the somewhat useless information I have researched in order to write this message, I felt that a bit of forewarning of the actual dates that are worth noting this year, might allow us to get the family organised with subtle hints about a get-together or two well in advance of the days that count… 

TK, Downham.

TK offers us a few statistics that, it might be argued, prove her point…

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And a list of next year’s bank holiday dates…

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