A British Day would mean an extra day off work, so why should we stop at just one?

There’s been a lot of discussion this week about the possibility of having a ‘British Day’. Ruth Kelly and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, in a Fabian Society pamphlet, are proposing this as a new public holiday, and have stimulated a wide debate and many headlines along the lines of ‘What is Britishness anyway?’.

The Daily Mail was on fine, frightening form, ridiculing the emphasis on better community relations in the ministers’ statement, and wondering how a government that banned fox hunting could lay claim to any kind of national pride. Hmmm.

More reflectively, Derek Wall, my counterpart as Principal Speaker of the Green Party suggested 1 May as a candidate for a British Day. May Day is at least an ancient festival, and its modern-day connotations of progressive protest are also appealing, but I reckon we have got enough holidays in the spring already.

To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the proposal has hardly been mentioned. We are being offered a new bank holiday, and not before time. Workers in the UK get a raw deal on public holidays compared with almost everywhere else. With eight a year, we’re on average three days behind Europe, and even America trounces us with eleven federal holidays plus a range of state holidays on top (Texas has six!).

We also work longer hours than anywhere else in Europe, and our mental and physical health suffers as a result. One in three British employees thinks they are less healthy thanks to their working patterns and a 2006 survey showed that the average lunch break had declined to under 20 minutes, with most people eating lunch at their ‘workstations’.

And the bosses are as badly off as the rest of us, at least in their work-life balance: one in five managers in the UK works the equivalent of a seven-day week.

We are badly in need of more time off. So, if we can’t agree on what to celebrate with one new bank holiday, why not create three or four?

There are plenty of ideas already out there, with various campaigns taking advantage of this week’s debate to make the case for a public celebration of their cause. Alex Salmond called for St. Andrew’s day in November to herald the start of a winter festival, and campaigners for a St. George’s Day holiday in England also seized the chance to speak up, citing the fact that "in Ireland they go berserk on St Patrick’s Day". Apart from everything else, 23 April is also part of the spring glut, so this one doesn’t get my vote either.

From a practical point of view, July has to be the prime candidate for an extra day off. It's the month that usually has the best weather and – frustratingly – is a bank holiday-free zone at present. If it was given to me to decide I think I’d pick my birthday, name it ‘Lido Day’ and then put plenty of Lottery funding into making sure everyone had the chance to lounge around at a nearby pool.

There’s a lot about local communities in the ministers’ proposals. So, another suggestion of mine, for the similarly blighted run up to Christmas, is ‘Buy Local Day’ where shops selling plastic and electronic goods from the far east are closed and we visit independent shops to buy locally made, seasonal presents.

The day would of course be finished off with a huge feast of local food and a pint of local beer.

So that’s two sorted out. How about a national vote on the other two, pitting the nationalist campaigners against those in favour of commemorating Sylvia Pankhurst’s birthday, the Magna Carta, Waterloo or the day we invented Blu Tack? That would keep us occupied for a while, and might result in some interesting choices.

I don't think it really matters what we go for. Finding things to actually ‘celebrate’ is a bit of a minefield, as Ruth Kelly has found out; and whatever you choose is likely to raise someone’s hackles.

Perhaps instead we should have holidays to promote things that are still works in progress, such as peace, justice, democracy, or indeed protecting the environment. Or, given our chronic need for rest, why not just pick a few dates at random and call them ‘days off’.

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