Reply to post: Legislation is like bad code....

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a coding puzzle and it's a doozy

AdamT

Legislation is like bad code....

I had to look into all this once (when the UK Gov decided to just change a bunch of Bank Holidays and it broke some stuff).

I think the logic is:

- Christmas Day and Good Friday are "common law" holidays. i.e. everyone knows what they are and when they are

- All other Bank Holidays are described with reference to Xmas and GF by the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971. i.e. that no one can be made to do anything on a Bank Holiday that they can't be made to do on Xmas or GF [1]

- The Bank Holidays are listed in the Appendix to that Act [2]

- The astute observer will note that this list does not include several Bank Holidays that we expect, not does it include getting a Tuesday if Xmas + Boxing are on the weekend

- However, as regular as clockwork, the Queen will proclaim the additional Bank Holidays (because some one in UK Gov asks her to) [3]

So actually it looks like we are mostly governed by really bad code. i.e. hardly anything is re-written, it is just patched and tweaked and then someone sets up a cron job to update something on certain years, etc. etc.

1 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/80/section/1

2 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/80/schedule/1

3 - https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/3846031

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