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        General >> Off Topic Subjects >> St Georges Day holiday ?
        
(Message started by: jonnycab on Mar 13^th, 2007, 1:08am)

Title: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by jonnycab on Mar 13^th, 2007, 1:08am

Anyone fancy a day off work on St Georges day (April 23) ?

Well you can vote for one on the link below...

http://www.stgeorgesday.com/voting.asp

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by taliban on Mar 13^th, 2007, 1:33am

worth a go, but i seem to remember receiving that e mail for the past 2 years running......

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by jonnycab on Mar 13^th, 2007, 1:48am

Yea, come to think of it, I've seen it before as well. Must run every year ;)

Oh well, it's an excuse for a day off work, to celebrate a guy that apparently came from Lebanon, during the crusades & never actually killed any dragons....you'd have to find one first ::)....maybe he stamped on a nasty looking lizard... ;D

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by macroy on Mar 13^th, 2007, 2:21pm

I could have done with the guy when I was married to my ex mrs. http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r302/macroy6750/Dragon-14-june.gif ;DRoy.

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by julie_quaife on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 4:00pm

i just voted, catching up on this site as i,ve been ill lately and am behind in reading all the items. i always made my kids wear their brownie uniforms on st. george's day as anyone belonging to the guides/scouting movement have that right. i am fed up hearing about st patricks day with all the associated guinness advertising everywhere you look and then st davids day with charity boxes of daffs on every counter. everyother saint or deity associated with britain seems to be celebrated in some way apart from our st george he may have been a foreigner but he is a figurehead and a symbol of courage and bravery, in my view either allow celebration as others do or ban the lot!!-i am now up-standing with a badly remembered brownie salute-god save the queen!! land of hope and glory etc; etc; god i,m in last night of the proms mode again!!

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by Baz on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 4:28pm

Is there one to vote against it? I employ 6 people and if I have to give them another paid holiday it would cost me about £600.00 plus the cost of lost production....

It is so easy to campaign for all these days off without having to think of how to fund them. We now have the minimum wage, minimum holidays entitlement and god knows how many other bank holidays throughout the year including the two days off at the weekend...

What about voting for a day when employees go into work and work for the entire day for no wages; that way the bosses get something back?

Any takers?

No I thought not!!

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by macroy on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 4:40pm

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Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by julie_quaife on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 4:49pm

baz, you left out maternity leave, paternity leave, jury service leave, TA leave plus many others i am sure, i am not meaning to be rude or facietious but it did get me thinking when you listed your reply and looking at your side of things i can appreciate your side of the story. NB one for mrs spannerdemon :the fight is still on down here for an official st pirans day holiday!

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by Baz on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 5:14pm

Julie,

you are right about the others... I don't have any female employees at the moment apart from a free lance book keeper who doesn't fall under my remit.

I have had instances of TA holidays as a lot of the guys I have employed are ex forces and we do provide on site experience for forces personnel who are due to leave. This is done on quite a regular basis!

I am only a small company and it does take some finding when you have to provide vehicles and equipment for 6 men along with work clothing and tools and to cap it all there is the holidays and bank holidays and sick pay etc.

Shame the Chancellor can't come up with a one week tax and vat holiday for small businesses where they can nominate a week every year where they get to keep all the VAT and tax generated as long as it is re-invested in the business... what I could do then!!

Plus on top of it all, I have to now compete with companies employing eastern europeans who are happy to work for minimum wage doing a job which is normally paid at twice that rate!

I'm never going to get my Bentley at this rate!

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by cleave on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 5:14pm

im all for it.Its about time british people showed like many other countries of the world that they are proud of there heritage.Last christmas my employer wasnt allowed to decorate the workplace as it was deemed as offinsive to the immigrant workforce,and ive heard that in alot of places this will applt to st georges day too.Paying employees for public holidays etc is part and parcel of being an employer.No disrespect baz,but you sound like you think the minimum wage law is a bad thing?.If we can have time off to dress in white frilly shirts...plus fours...with bells on our feet and dance around a pole..surely an extra day for st georges day is ok? ;) ;)

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by dh_dove on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 8:10pm

Dear All
Surely there are two discussions here............
English people having no opportunity to celebrate their heritage, as opposed to St. Patrick's /St. David's Day etc. etc.
AND
Employers having to pay for employees Bank Holidays.
As a compromise why not slash the payments to Scotland that allow them to give students tuition free of fees and low Council Tax payments, and slash the payments to Wales that give them free prescriptions?
There again, why not just let them pay for themselves...........could save Miillions ::) Sorry, not enough people live there to foot the bills and they can't afford to pay their way. :(
Also ask for repayment in full for their overpriced "Assemblies/Parliaments" and make their countrymen pay their representatives wages }{ }{
Then the English could have St George's Day as a Bank Holiday!
Result
DH Dove

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by scorpio_man on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 8:26pm

on 04/03/07 at 20:10:14, dh_dove wrote:

Dear All
As a compromise why not slash the payments to Scotland that allow them to give students tuition free of fees and low Council Tax payments, and slash the payments to Wales that give them free prescriptions?
There again, why not just let them pay for themselves...........could save Miillions ::) Sorry, few people live there and they can't afford to pay their way.
Also ask for repayment in full for their overpriced "Assemblies/Parliaments" and make their countrymen pay their representatives wages }{ }{
DH Dove

you're having a laugh with all this, aren't you?

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by dh_dove on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 8:38pm

Scorpio Man
Sorry to introduce some discord but I do feel that The Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is under some stress at the moment , and more particularly The Act of Union between Scotland and England is under considerable strain.
Look at it from our point of view, if you can please
We are paying massive taxes to fund your benefits. Scottish Parliament, (what exactly does it do apart from keep SMP's in jobs???)
You have benefits that we don't have and by and large we are paying for them!
Now we are also paying for benefits for people in Wales that we don't receive
Your parliament was ten times over budget I believe, who do you think paid for it?
Personally I am a bit hacked off :(
DH Dove

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by scorpio_man on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 8:47pm

hi dh

you could look at another way. we all paid for it, because my taxes go to the uk. plus i think so does the north sea oil and gas, etc, etc.... ;) :)

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by dh_dove on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 8:58pm

Scorpio Man
YES!!!
We all paid for it years ago because the "pot" was shared fairly - by and large.........
I remember the debates over the oil and gas and WHO it belonged to....it might as well be the Norwegians as the Scots as far as I can recall ;D
Now us poor sods down south seem to be paying the Lion's share and we are not getting much back!
NB WHAT DO your SMP's do apart from fill in their expenses claims??? I presume that they have possibly a thousand Civil Servants or more keepinng their paperwork sorted?
I really DO NOT MEAN to be offensive to the Scottish People, we have a long and illustrious history together since 1606(?)
I do think that you should realise that the mood is changing in England as we seem to be the fools being taken for a ride at every turn.
I love paying taxes, but there comes a point, if you know what I mean.
DH Dove

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by scorpio_man on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 9:20pm

hiv dh

re taxes. i think if you pay tax, then they make sure you don't see any of it back again, regardless of what part of the country you live! >:(

i think that's one thing we can agree on, at least! :D

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by dh_dove on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 9:45pm

Scorpio Man
Agreed..............
When Gordon Brown becomes PM we'll have to raise the white flag :'(
Perhaps he'll allow us (foolish English) some tax concessions on the grounds that we live"south of the border" and we have been bled so dry over ten years that we have nothing left top give :(
Otherwise , I'm thinking of moving to Scotland to take advantage of your more favourable regime......assuming you do not impose Passport Controls in the meantime...... ;)
DH Dove

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by tintin on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 9:49pm

so do we get to keep the north sea oil? ;D you can keep trident....

two different agruments here, first is fiscal :

scotland costs england money : careful how you think of cutting up the "revenue" from scotland, the politicians may be lying to you.....although i agree with you on the cost of our parliament, to be honest, im pretty sure all politicians are costing us a fair bit..... im also fairly sure we pay the same tax rate as you. there are a few companies that pay quite a lot of corporation tax that are scottish, (edinburgh is the second biggest finance city after london in the uk, and finance is the mainstay of the UK), but recognised as UK, so arent taken into account in your straw poll (£2bn from Royal Bank of Scotland last year, a company that is now bigger than Coke, and the No.1 corporate tax payer in the UK ). and dont get me started on the north sea oil (the tax from which "economists" allocated almost 100% to england). take that back, lose trident (we were allocated £3bn deficit in defence hah!), and scotland is subsidising england.

second is allocation of funds : if you are arguing that we are spending more on nurses and prescriptions, etc, then thats a rocky place to argue from. we are the ones in the right. dont cry wolf if you are the wolf.....if we chose not to follow the policies set down south by Labour, and benefit from it, perhaps you should follow suit rather than complain. if you think the grass is greener, come on up.

maybe its time for independance.....

;D

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by macroy on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 10:00pm

All this because some poor sod wanted a day off work.Roy ;D

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by tintin on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 10:07pm

}{ }{ }{

its an old political ploy to raise this issue, always gets disproved. i was born in scotland, raised in london, living in scotland for last 12 years. heard it all before....

would we get St Andrews Day off? ;D

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by Baz on Apr 3^rd, 2007, 11:57pm

on 04/03/07 at 17:14:48, cleave wrote:

Paying employees for public holidays etc is part and parcel of being an employer.No disrespect baz,but you sound like you think the minimum wage law is a bad thing?..surely an extra day for st georges day is ok? ;) ;)

Cleave, you raise a few different points: The first about paying employees for public holidays being part of being an employer....

well no, not when I started in business. Although I have always given my lads 20 paid days PLUS the bank holidays when the law states that bank holidays could be included as part of the annual holiday entitlement (or at least it used to be the case)

Minimum wage law being a bad thing?

Well yes I do in some cases. I have always paid above the minimum since it was introduced but there are some people who are not cut out to earn even the minimum wage just like some jobs don't really warrant it (and I don't necessarily mean 16 year olds) I am talking hypethatically about the 22 year old who starts for me as a trainee engineer. I have to pay him £5.35 an hour I can pay him £4.45 an hour if he is between 18-21 but only if he is on "recognised" training courses. So in other words, I have to pay someone £5.35 an hour from day 1 regardless of how productive he is for me?

There are a few exceptions to minimum wage legislation;

armed forces (no point paying them too much if they are going to go and get shot is it?)

Volunteer worker?? (Duh surely the words give that one away?)

Prisoners (should get nothing anyway)

Au pairs and nannies. (keep the MP's happy)

Self Employed (so after us employers have put our houses, cars and everything else on the line, paid everyone more money than most are worth, paid tax, VAT, fuel duty, corporation tax and god knows what else, we can't even guarantee ourselves more than £5.35 an hour for our 18 hour 7 day a week jobs!!) but as long as the workers and the government are sorted thats fine isn't it?

The minimum wage was brought in purely so that the government paid out less top up benefits and to reap more in taxes. Sure they tried to wrap it up as a social thing but that never washed really did it?

And the last point about an extra day off for St George being OK? I don't think so. We already have nonsensicle bank holidays already in this country... how many people take good friday, Easter Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing day off and go to church to celebrate the reasons for those holidays?...... Exactly. Ask most English people about St George and all they could tell you about would be the dragon bit.

Don't you like my idea of an employers day where the employee works for nothing to pay back the cruel boss for all the lovely wages and holidays and cars and vans and phones and laptops and train travel and and and....

A business friend of mine who owns the speed karting track in Warrington summed everything up one day when he said that when you interview someone for a job, you spell out what you expect of them, i.e. for this amount of money each week, I expect you to do this, this and this for it. However, once they start work all they seem to be interested in doing is less, less and less for the same amount of money. He expalined that one lad he employed, part of his duties were to turn off lighting in areas of the track when the racing was done and the customers were in a specified area. After a while he began to not turn out the lights which, as he explained cost the equivilant of a few small houses electric bills every few hours to run. When threatened with having this amount of money deducted from his wages, the lights started going out again as requested.... doesn't take much does it??

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by cleave on Apr 4^th, 2007, 1:39am

i understand what you are saying baz......we must not forget that 90% of the working population(me included)go to work,not because we like it,but coz we have to work to keep the wolf from the door,and i accept that most workers would vote yes to a new public holiday regardless of its agenda..all i was trying to say is st georges day in my opinion is a just cause ,especially in todays situation when it seems it is getting harder and harder to be allowed to show that your proud of your heretige.As for the employer...employee debate i have learnt through experience that as an employer you reap what you sow...treat your employees fairly and with respect and usually you get there loyalty in return..if georges day was made apublic holiday and my boss said to me ''i know you dont have to work it but ive got a deadline to make'' i would work it for free.As for the christmas..boxing day issue etc well..tradition has got alot to answer for lol,but lets not forget christmas is for children(and alkiz)wouldnt be alot of fun for em with both parents at work ;)anyway its good to talk perhaps the off topic forum cauld be upgraded to ''current affairs/debates and good old rant section''

regards cleave :P ;) ;)

Title: Re: St Georges Day holiday ?
Post by dh_dove on Apr 4^th, 2007, 6:56pm

Sorry, didn't mean to rant.......... :-[
Tintin - exactly IF we followed suit and had an English Parliament we could do our own thing, but re "West Lothian question" we should not allow Scottish/Welsh MP's at Westminster to vote on issues that affect England as they do at present.
The inevitable result of this imho would be the break up of the Union.
Re taxation yes, we all pay under the same regime, it's just the way it gets split up afterwards that seems a tad partial.
Anyway, not to worry as it's all academic. The EU will have got us split into nine regions soon under a new European Constitution (yes............you thought it was dead and buried but like Dracula it's about to rise from the grave once again).
So we'll all be happy citizens of the corrupt bankrupt undemocratic Socialist State of Europe ;D ;D ;D
Happy Days :-/
DH Dove