When the haves and the have-nots all have something to be grateful for

I mean, of course, the humble bank holiday. What did you do with yours on Monday?

Up until 1834 we had no less than 33 public days of holiday in this country – there must have been a kind of ‘back to basics’ austerity period though, because some killjoy decided the amount to be excessive and slashed the total back to just 4. Then, in 1871 the liberal politician (and banker) Sir John Lubbock made the four days official, since when their numbers have again grown, to the current eight in England and Wales, nine in Scotland and ten in Northern Ireland. From time to time there is a call to further increase the number of permanent public holidays – the most recent being when Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee took place and the 3rd of June 2023 became a temporary bank holiday. But if we have a banker to thanks for bank holidays, what is the cost to the nation of such national indolence?

Government figures would have you believe that the cost of bank holidays to the economy is of the order of £20bn each year. PwC on the other hand reckons that the figure is substantially lower by about £500m each time the nation takes a collective long weekend. But in the current economic climate and with many companies – and the civil service in particular – now affected by the hybrid working arrangements which emerged from the era of the Covid-19 pandemic (and arrangements which are now demanded by many as the norm), what does having a bank holiday achieve? Does it actually hinder the economy and our working lives?

Clearly, bank holidays make little difference to those who don’t work for whatever reason. For many they aren’t a holiday at all. If anything, they are divisive, driving a wedge between the haves and the have-nots. During my career to date they have meant nothing except a little less traffic on the road at traditional rush-hour times and fewer places open from which to get a sandwich – programmes still have to be produced and presented. In my commercial radio days a large proportion of radio output over a bank holiday used to follow a rather jaded ‘Your Top 500 Countdown’ format which I always thought ill-conceived, completely fabricated, and lazy. Now, the national stations are up to it because they know that there’ll be hardly any audience on the day and therefore little point in investing the staff time and resource in programming the hours. So they keep the meters moving, but not much more.

Even when I worked the 9-5 myself - for a bank, perversely - many judged the oncoming extra day away from work as being a bit of a hindrance. Managing the finances of the bank and the needs of its customers is a real 24/7 challenge – so on a Monday morning we would wonder what was going to hit us when the nighttime data reports came down. Inevitably, the work of what would otherwise be five days got condensed into four, with the Tuesday after a bank holiday being a day of manic activity and everyone manning the pumps to clear away the financial congestion of the previous week. The public too found bank holidays disruptive – with monotonous regularity you could guarantee that the banking halls of the industry would be wall-to-wall with people last-minute queuing to draw out sufficient cash to see them through the rigors of 24 hours without bank doors being open.

Of course, that’s now no longer any kind of a problem whatsoever. We now have a virtually cashless existence with payments being made by phone, watch or online and for those needing cash there are holes in the wall all over the place. It’s just as well really, because there are now substantially fewer banking halls left, as branch by branch they have been closed and turned into vast bars and eateries. Now when we have a bank holiday, people can go to what used to be a bank, queue for a beer instead of queuing for cash and pay for their refreshment cashlessly. Plus ca change…

I suppose our attitudes towards bank holidays depend on how we experience them. If we still have to go to work but can get over the pangs of jealousy towards those who are able to stay home, well that’s quite positive. If we work from home and suddenly find the peace of our home office existence shattered as our working week gets telescoped down with the work of five days to be carried out in four, that’s quite a hurdle to get over. And if we are able to take the break and stretch what would otherwise be five days of work into the following week rather than cramming them into the current four days remaining of the shortened working week (weekends notwithstanding) – bingo!

Should we have MORE public holidays then? If the actual cost isn’t as high as the government would have us believe and if we can manage work and traffic flows to the point where we don’t have paralysis in either domain, why not? Would we have a happier workforce? Would we actually be more productive? What public holidays would you want? Could there be innovation through recognition in areas of the human condition which have yet to be so celebrated? Should we have public holidays linked to the sectors in which we work? Bank holidays for people working in banks? Petrol station and supermarket worker holidays for those otherwise confined to the checkouts and tills? Politicians? Ah, no – perhaps not. They rise for their Summer Break on the 23rd of July but nobody yet knows when they return. Or, presumably, if. There might be something prophetic in there for some…

I think there’s merit in continuing to have bank, or public holidays. They bring a change to the feel of a regular working week – and a change is as good as a rest, they say. Long may they continue…