Timezones and Holidays

[Peter Ilieve]

> Hello All,
>
> Anyone have information on a location that would describe local/ 
> official
> holidays in some sort of global format like the timezones?
>
> Bill Raymond
> braymond <at> arinc.com

Where I am, Scotland, finding this information makes keeping track
of the timezone data look easy. :-)

In Scotland, dates of public holidays are set by each local
authority. They choose different dates and this is deliberate.
It allows people in an area where they have a holiday to
go to visit, or shop in, another area where things are open.

See <http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/LivingintheUK/DG_073741 
 >
for a UK government explanation of this. This shows that even bank
holidays aren't the same in Scotland as in the rest of the UK.

See <http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/01/bankholidays>
for a Scottish government explanation of holidays. This doesn't
attempt to give any dates for local holidays.

I haven't found anywhere that gives anything like a complete list.
A starting point is <http://www.glasgowchamber.org/page.asp?id=31>.
This gives Glasgow holiday dates and has a list of links
to other local authority sites, going direct to the local
public holiday page where it knows that.

It's not as simple as each local authority having one set of
dates either. The Highland Council page at
<http://www.highland.gov.uk/livinghere/servicepointnetwork/localholidays.htm 
 >
has different dates for Inverness (a town) and Lochaber (a region).
I'm surprised there aren't more as Highland Council's area
covers a lot more than Lochaber. I suspect the page is incomplete.

Another starting point is a Scottish Courts Service page at
<http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/locations/index.asp>.
If you select a location from the list you can then use the
Court opening times and local holidays link to get the local
holidays for that location. Some of these haven't been updated
for a while so it's not easy to compare dates for a particular
year.

It might look a complete mess but Scots seem happy with it.


		Peter Ilieve		peter at aldie.co.uk