General Chat

Evening All :-D <3 <3

Hope you are all ready for it Fly :-) :-)

Heavy showers here :-0 and it look like a storm is lurking :-(

Fly~~~~~~~~~~~~ :-) <3

Hi Fly. <3 :-D

All good thank you :-)

Evening Dermot :-S :-D <3 Island :-D <3 Joy :-D <3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emma :-D <3

All good here, thanks Emma. How about you and yours?

Hi Joy :-D <3

How are you and yours <3

Hi Emma. <3 :-D

Evening all :-D <3

would you mind précising that please Dermot? :-S

Trusting you haven't c&p'd? ;-)

There’s something hugely ironic about associating Mondays 'off work' with the banks, given that the reason that many in the UK have no work at all any day of the week because of the profligacy of those same lending institutions during the boom times.

But let me not get into any argy-bargy with banks or their managers particularly those who willingly lend you an umbrella just in case it rains & then demands its return as soon as the skies open up - as it usually does during such extended periods from hard graft.

But be that as it may, the existence of Bank Holidays means that those who live for the 'long weekend' can at least find something to be grateful for, apart from the tenuous security of actually having paid work. We will soon be enjoying an extra Bank Holiday thanks to Her Majesty’s longevity. Long may she live.

Bank holidays are not wasted for everyone of course because there are some employees who are fortunate enough to be in jobs where the work starts & finishes on a given day. For most people though, what isn’t done today has to be done tomorrow instead.

So you have Monday off, but you still have to do a week’s work by this coming Friday. So for those people, a ‘Monday off’ isn’t really a holiday at all.

Before I cause collective apoplexy & people like you readers think this is similar to Scrooge cancelling Christmas (they may be right), this isn’t about being a killjoy on the holiday front. Being retired, a long weekend is not as exciting anymore as it used to be.

Replacing bank holidays, employees should get an extra week’s holiday a year. That way, workers enjoy the benefit of the free time & they wouldn't have to shoehorn five days' work into four.

Employers also benefit because production isn’t affected five weeks of the year, or they don’t end up paying double time for some to come in just so the assembly line isn’t brought to a shuddering halt.

The tourism sector might object to the end of so many Bank Holiday weekends & the publicans in particular might miss the busier Friday to Sunday nights, but the police wouldn’t miss the hassle & neither would the street cleaners.

We cannot underestimate the economic impact of a Bank Holiday weekend; we can see anecdotally how it works here in the UK. Cornwall, for example, calculated that moving the May bank holiday to St Piran’s Day (the region’s patron saint) on March 5 would benefit the Cornish economy by between £20 & £35 million. Canny Cornish!

Given that the pubs & hotels have taken quite a hit in recent years, and this year in particular, it might seem churlish to try & starve them of some nice extra little earners.

Anyway, enjoy your forthcoming bank holiday breaks. You know the weather will be beautifully interspersed with thundery showers & floods; the motorways will be clear of congestion hot-spots (but watch out for fallen bridges on the M20); network rail will not need to carry-out essential works other than ensuring Jeremy Corbyn has a comfortable seat to position his hefty posterior if he‘s ever allowed to board a train again & finally, those pesky French Traffic Controllers will not dare go on a wildcat strike just because we voted for Brexit.

And finally for those unfortunates still stuck abroad caused by the current virus & bedding down in noisy foreign airport terminals, spend some of your precious time cogitating BA’s technical hitches & the financial compensation that’s on its way to you sometime. Or maybe not.

Beautiful rainbow over the house.....................just trying to find the end of it, and the crock of gold. ;-) ;-)

I still don't know when bank holidays are - never had the privilege due to work.

Funny you mention that, Dermot, because I am exactly the same. Come Friday, my heart still gives a little jig - whether it's Irish or not, I don't care! :-D

We've just had thunder and a terrific downpour - it's bright again now!

Afternoon all :-D <3

Mild here again but no sun :-)

Full time work but you got the weekends off Dermot? 9-5 too? You've had it cushy LOL

Strange how I still look forward to Friday as earnestly as I always did when in full time work.

I retired in 2004. :-D

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Apparently according to staff..The machine lets so many go through as contactless then does a kind of check…meaning you then have to insert the card manually :-0 :-0