Letter: Time To Reconsider Dates For Bank Holidays?

Published on: 13 Sep, 2015
Updated on: 13 Sep, 2015

From Bob McShee

Is it not time to reconsider the dates of our annual bank holidays?

As we have suffered the wettest August for many years, which culminated with a damp and dismal bank holiday Monday, one has to ask why this bank holiday is so late in the year?

The Government changed the date from the first Monday in August to the last Monday in the 1960s, and then the early spring bank holiday was introduced in 1978 at the beginning of May, giving us two bank holidays in May.

I believe that the early spring bank holiday should be scrapped, the August bank holiday should revert to the beginning of August and a new bank holiday should be established on November 11 to commemorate Armistice Day, a date which is a national holiday in Belgium.

Hopefully this could be achieved by 2018 to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War.

Guildford’s Armistice Day two-minute silence led from the balcony of the Guildhall.

Responses to Letter: Time To Reconsider Dates For Bank Holidays?

Jim Allen Reply

September 14, 2015 at 11:24 am

I fear too often we look back but don’t learn from history – perhaps we should look forward instead.

Far better than changing Bank Holiday dates we should look to be able to celebrate the number of days since anyone feared for their own existence and safety.

We can’t go on finding reasons to remember the past while utterly failing to learn from it.