Should the UK have more Bank Holidays?

Should the UK have more Bank Holidays?.

Bank Holidays, who doesn’t love them?

A day that the banks officially close their doors and, thanks to MP Sir John Lubbock way back in 1871, your office does too.

The theory of the bank holiday was simple, if the bankers weren’t doing any business, then why should everyone else?

This was coupled with the notion that we should all be entitled to an extra four days off a year in order to alleviate workplace pressures.

Nice one John.

The initial four bank holidays were Easter Monday, the first Monday in August, Whit Monday and Boxing Day.

Fast forward to 2017 and the UK has now has upped that figure to eight. Seems pretty good, right?

Wrong.

The lovely people at The Telegraph have put together this informative, and quite frankly jealousy fuelling map, so you can see just how many more public holidays other countries around the world have compared to the UK.

Just look at the number of public holidays other countries have:

  • India and Columbia – 18

  • Japan, Thailand, Lebanon and South Korea- 16

  • Argentina, Chili and Finland – 15

  • Turkey – 14.5

  • Puerto Rico, Germany, Ireland and UAE – 9

Compare that to the eight we have and you can see why there’s a campaign for the UK to have more Bank Holidays – only Mexico has less than us, with seven.

We’ve already got our bags packed.

Even beyond Bank Holidays, some companies in Sweden are shortening their working week to 6 hours a day to increase happiness and productivity amongst workers.

We kind of feel like we’re being ripped off here.

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