Cracker: Hot Cross Words
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This is what I wrote last year about why I celebrate Christmas.
There are other holidays (ANZAC day, Easter) that I don't feel strongly about but I still appreciate having a day when I know the whole family will be off work and school without needing complex negotiations.
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And since there is no way to completely shut down hospitals, prisons and the police force (as examples), there is no point in public holidays?
No, Martin, but I'm really scratching my head to see why these are such special cases. If you want to make a social good argument, all well and good - all I'm suggesting is a little consistency. If nothing else, I suspect the Department of Labour could find much more productive uses for its time and resourced than trying to catch out garden shop owners or prosecuting farmers market stall holders.
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Simon, do you think that's partially a function of population size?
Village life in the UK, centred around the pub, would perhaps suggest otherwise.
And even in the smallest Asian hamlet public life rarely stops at 6pm.
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Worth noting that a lot of pubs in the UK are open on Christmas Day, but that on Christmas Day (and the days around it) far more stuff is shut or running a skeleton service than in NZ.
But more stuff is open at Easter.
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No, Martin, but I'm really scratching my head to see why these are such special cases. If you want to make a social good argument, all well and good - all I'm suggesting is a little consistency.
I'm right with you there, Craig. That list of special cases seems pretty, hmm, special. There is probably room to update that legislation. I just don't want to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater just to achieve consistency.
Although it would be a shame to deprive newsmedia of their one standing item in the news every Easter (apart from the road toll raffle); the complaining garden centre owner.
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We will not rest until New Zealand has as many public holidays as Spain
And siestas?
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And rain-breaks?
(Just so everything is locally adapted...)
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Ummmm, how are "tokens for x days off during the year" any different to annual leave? Did I miss something or are you just arguing for zero public holidays and 5 weeks legislated annual leave?
Something like it. There's only one weeks of stats - I don't know what the basic requirements are today for annual leave. Four weeks sounds like an awful lot, I've never had that much leave since I left University, and even when I was studying, I always worked every week of the "holidays", picking pears or pumping gas, except for the time I took off for annual sporting tournaments. But that week of stats could quite easily be converted to fall under the annual leave requirements. If everyone wanted to still celebrate ANZAC day, nothing would stop them. But I bet they wouldn't, and you do have to ask why. Could it be that taking holidays that mean something to you might be more valuable to most people than constructed social conventions like ANZAC day. If not, if everyone wants to remember the glorious dead on that particular day, then they still can.
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Ummmm, how are "tokens for x days off during the year" any different to annual leave?
Law could specify they can only be used one day at a time, not in blocks.
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Four weeks sounds like an awful lot
Oh, you'd hate living in Europe, with their 5-6 weeks annual leave as standard.
And look! look how backward they are! Gosh, we really should model ourselves more closely on the US, with their standard two weeks. I thank our lucky stars we have advocacy groups like the business round table who protect our interests from those nasty socialist cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Ahem. As you were.
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cheese-eating surrender monkeys
I love that phrase
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Oh, you'd hate living in Europe, with their 5-6 weeks annual leave as standard.
Sounds awesome. They can even manage to keep things open, too. I guess it's because they don't have their timetables dictated by the proletarians of the industrial revolution, who fought nay died! so that everyone, even Muslims, can have Christmas off. Well, OK, the ladies organizing the massive scale dinners don't count, because that's not real work.
I wouldn't get any extra leave myself, being self-employed. But I'd probably like seeing friends on their time off.
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They can even manage to keep things open, too.
I went to Spain for a holiday once and was rather taken aback to find that everything did close for a three-hour siesta in the middle of the day. I'd assumed it was some sort of urban legend that didn't apply to english tourists...
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3410,
That's it; I'm fucking going.
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Sounds awesome. They can even manage to keep things open, too.
And again: no, they don't. In Southern Europe at least most shops are closed on Sundays. And you won't find a thing open for Easter in Italy, in fact I remember a fairly epic walk with my son to get ice-cream on Easter Monday two years ago - we went for miles to find the one place I knew would be open and the only other place we found open on the way was a McDonald's. And that was the Monday.
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I'm impressed that you taught him to walk past the golden arches
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Sounds awesome. They can even manage to keep things open, too
Not quite. In Scandinavia at least, pretty much everything would be shut over Easter. Not to mention Epiphany, Ascension, Whitsunday and All Saint's Day. Plus Christmas of course. And that's just teh Christian ones.
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I'm impressed that you taught him to walk past the golden arches
I said it was open. I didn't say we went in it. Not because I have anything against it, but the icecream at gelateria Marghera is something you need to try before you die.
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I went to Barcelona only 3 years ago and the siesta seemed entirely mythical as far as I could see. Which was annoying because I was there for a conference and falling asleep for 3 hours in the middle of the day was exactly what I felt like doing.
In Rome, last time I was there, I was able to buy pizza and coffee on Christmas day. Admittedly no shops appeared to keep what I'd call regular hours - it was extremely difficult in some cases to work out if they were ever open at all. The excuse they made, if I ever did find them open, as to why they were closed the previous day was usually the celebration of some obscure saint or martyr. It didn't tally with the fact that all the other shops were open. It didn't bother me, it was just curious that they felt the need to justify what I would consider should be the norm - the right to work when you felt like it. I loved the fact that Rome seemed to be open all the time, just not necessary open where you thought it would be. You had to search to find the guy who was still fixing shoes as 11pm on a Saturday.
A strange, quirky, cool place, with just the right attitude, except where the rights of women not to be publicly molested were concerned. It's still my favorite place in Europe, but I haven't been to France yet (as an adult).
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On consideration, I'll take my lifelong knowledge of Italian shopping hours over the one holiday you had in Rome.
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I've been to Rome 3 times, for several weeks each. Enough time to work out that the opening hours would probably be harder to learn than the language. At least everyone had the same language.
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Then again, it's entirely possible that I was just subjected to "Opening hours for foreigners", and that natives get a whole different experience.
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Major city centres are a little different and have some dispensations. Some family run businesses might be open at odd hours. But you'll still find bugger all open for Easter and very little open on a Sunday.
I get emails from the supermarket in Mum's area when they open on a Sunday, just to give you an idea, and it's a fairly major operation.
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The same is true here, really. There's different stuff open in the city center to what's going on in the 'burbs. I always stayed right in the middle of the old town in Rome.
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