On 2016-01-04 Mon 18:11 PM |, Jason McIntyre wrote: > On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 03:46:53PM +0000, Craig Skinner wrote: > > Happy Hogmanay/New Year! > > > > Scotland & New Zealand have an additional New Year's celebrations > > hangover recovery public holiday. > > > > In Scotland, Hogmanay is THE most significant winter festival, with > > internationally popular street parties of 400,000 people dancing. > > > > (Xmas was banned in Scotland for over 400 years, until recently.) > > > > i diasgree with this. it's true some of us in scotland get the 2nd off, > but i'm not sure it's helpful to describe the 2nd as a new year's > festival. > > really we have hogmany and new year's day. depending on your job, you'll > get some combination of these off. i worked 31/1 and had the second off. > lots of people have two weeks... > > traditionally the 2nd was described as a bank holiday. now banks are > open on this day. some businesses shut. >
Many English businesses operating in Scotland are open on that day, but many Scottish businesses are shut. It's a mixed bag..... However, the Scottish Government lists it as an offical public holiday: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/bank-holidays/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_holidays_in_Scotland "2nd January" is the decreed dour/hungover/can't be arsed label given. Notice that the diff also includes New Zealand, as mainly Scots established that country as part of the British Empire. NZ too has the 2nd as a national holiday: http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/publicholidays/publicholidaydates/current.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_New_Zealand "Day after New Year's Day" is the silly long label given way down under. For simpilicity I diffed them both together as: > > +01/02 New Year's Holiday in Scotland and New Zealand Maybe the wording could be better.... Feel free to improvise! What about (lower case as not the offical name): "Another new year's holiday in Scotland and New Zealand" > jmc > > ps xmas banned in scotland till recently: how old are you exactly, craig ;) > I worked as a skilled mechanical fitter for a few years at the Edinburgh Rolls Royce factory, many of the older tradesmen talked about not having Xmas as a holiday until the 1960's. Likewise at other factories/breweries that I worked in Edinburgh. The factories at Livingston I worked in were mainly new semi-conductor, robotics & mobile phone factories, so most of the men were younger, but spoke of their fathers working Xmas. The Sun Microsystems factory in Linlithgow where I worked for 3.5 years was different in that ALL statutory holidays were floating, with no extra payment for working on them. It was like having an extra fortnight's holiday to take whenever someone wanted. Superb! In New Zealand, we would normally finish repairing the submarine hunter killer warships towards the end of the year, then I would take them to sea & full power test the turbines & control systems in mid December as the last of the spring storms would toss the ship about & give the engines a good work out. After the parties on ship, it would be a fornight away from the Naval Base camping & yachting over New Year's. Before back to the dockyard to take another frigate out of the sea & strip it down for overhaul. What a fucking fossil I am.... meh. -- Craig Skinner | http://linkd.in/yGqkv7
