“The Centre for Economics and Business Research says that if bank holidays were scrapped, Britain’s GDP would be £19bn higher every year.” (BBC website)

In a usual year there are 261 weekdays, of which 8 are taken as Bank Holidays. But why stop at Bank Holidays?

Britons on average get 26 days holiday per year – if these were abolished we could boost the economy by a further £59.8bn, or £78.8bn with Bank Holidays.

Saturdays and Sundays are even bigger possible sources for boosting the economy – making the work-week 7 days would add a massive £239.2bn to GDP, brining the total boost to GDP up to £318bn or equivalent to a 23% boost to GDP.

And of course we fritter away a lot of time lazing about not working – playing with the kids, sleeping, watching the TV, etc.

Roughly speaking we spend about a third of our time working, a third lazing about and a third sleeping. If we could shift the decadent British “work-life balance” so we spent more time on productive work we could boost the economy hugely…. A modest increase to a 10 hour working-day perhaps? If a 7-hour a day off costs us £2.3bn, that should add another 43%.

Before you know it we could have doubled GDP. And pigs could fly.

The point of this little exercise is that the sort of figures peddled by CEBR are nonsense and a just a PR gimmick for what is a commercial outfit, not a “think-tank”. Why does the BBC give such prominence – free advertising – to such garbage?