Summer holidays: a warm welcome?

Forgive me but I am going to combine holidays with politics in this article. As usual though we start with words.

The word holiday in English comes from the term 'holy day', from the Old English hāligdæg. It is thus associated with Saints' days and feast days. As industrial urban life took over from agricultural and rural life the idea of a holiday extended in time and space- first by railway (to the English coast, mainly), later by cruise ship (only for the very rich) and finally by airplane. By the 1970's British people were measuring one another by the destinations they visited. Parts of the coast of Spain were the first to be visited in the age of aircraft. Package holidays to…