UK public holidays were introduced as Bank holidays in 1871, with the intention of giving the poor a day off for reading and self-improvement. The poor improved their complexions instead by sunning themselves on the beaches, and have done so since. These days, however, the August public holiday is often punctuated more by the rhythmic whir of windscreen wipers than by the distant call of seagulls.

Paul Simons, who writes the Weather Eye for the Times, pleads for the August holiday to be moved to the first Monday, as it used to be, on the grounds that the weather is better. My colleague Eamonn Butler thinks the whole concept of public holidays is outdated (see below), cramming everyone as they do onto overcrowded roads and facilities.

As one who prefers the cool scents of Autumn to either blazing heat or driving rain, I cannot pretend to be objective, but I would like to put in a case for moving the spring public holiday. We have quite a few around that time, including Easter and Whitsun. It was superfluous when the Mayday holiday was added to them to honour labour (and by a Labour government).

It always seemed significant that Europeans celebrate labour in Spring, the time of planting and promise. The US celebrates it in autumn when the harvest is in. The former takes place in hope, the latter in achievement. Mayday is a socialist holiday, full of expectation of what might be. US Labour Day seems to be a more capitalist holiday, celebrating wealth which has already been garnered. Socialism promises, capitalism performs.

If further argument were needed, I could add that Mayday in Britain is rarely warm enough for a picnic or barbecue, whereas September nearly always is.