Happy Holidays?

Apparently I'm one of those idle bastards damaging the economy by having the audacity to take two weeks off at Christmas and not go back to work until the second week of January. According to a report by one of those groups which seems to do nothing but come up with sort of report, more and more people are doing this. Well, so bloody what, you miserable gits? It's my annual leave I'm using up! Who the hell wants to work at this time of year anyway, if they can help it? For what it is worth, this is the first time off I've had since the end of August. I was bloody exhausted. Not that this break has been much of a rest. I've spent most of it battling illnesses, and today I nearly ruptured myself laying some new flooring in my kitchen (it was shifting the washing machine which had me feeling my groin for lumps). The remainder of my time off is going to be spent preparing lessons for my teaching placement next week.

I wouldn't mind, but every bloody year we get this same cobblers from the CBI or some other group linked to employers - if they aren't moaning about the amount of holidays being taken, they're trying to claim that everyone is pulling a sickie. Fuck off! I know it's outrageous, but this is the twenty first century and we workers do have statutory rights when it comes to paid leave! These self same employers don't seem to worry too much about lost productivity when they book their skiing holidays or winter breaks in Barbados. The fact is that this country still has fewer public holidays than virtually any of its Western European neighbours. Curiously enough, their productivity seems unaffected. Actually, this obsession with productivity always strikes me as being rather strange, bearing in mind that Maggie ensured the virtual destruction of our manufacturing industries. I wouldn't have thought that the service and financial industries which our economy now seems to be based on were so tied to such crude measures of performance. Maybe someone could do a study of that?