In trying to understand local/public/bank holidays in Scotland, I discovered that though bank holidays are declared by statute in Scotland, the banks have agreed to close on English Bank Holidays instead.
I’ve had a hunch for a while that I did not understand the Monday holiday syndrome.
Ah, yeah. I’ve only moved up here comparatively recently (~2yr ago), and I seem to have to work to English bank-holidays still – but the post-office has a mind all its own with `local holidays’ and things. Irksome, it can be!
It is very easy:-
Firstly consider there are several urban areas in Scotland each with their own local holidays – loosely based around the old Trade Fairs.
First of all the last Monday in August is not a holiday for most of us in Scotland, the school have just gone back!! Scotland does have the civilised holiday of 2nd January to allow for more recovery time after the New Year’s festivities
** Glasgow – 3rd Monday in July; Last Monday in September
** Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, Paisley – Not sure about July; Penultimate Monday in September
** Edinburgh – 1st Monday in July; 3rd Monday is September (Ruth can probably confirm this one!!)
** Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee – no idea, I was brought up in West Central Scotland.
Not really irksome, just need to understand the historic background. For example, Blackburn had its trade holidays when everything shut down for two weeks. Scotland has retained a margin of localism in its holidays
Just to confuse matters further, when I was working in Canada four years ago, I got the Canadian holidays, however one of the major engineering firms was based in Chicago who had slightly different days off. We working on the last Thursday on November, whilst the Chicago guys had Thanksgiving – and they took the Friday off as well!!
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