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The Green Party Is Calling For A Three-Day Weekend And Not Just For An Extra Day On The Sesh

The Green Party Is Calling For A Three-Day Weekend And Not Just For An Extra Day On The Sesh

Interesting.

Josh Teal

Josh Teal

The Green Party is calling for the government to introduce a three-day weekend in a bid to decrease physical and mental health problems.

Jonathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas introduced the 2020 manifesto pledge, with the latter asking: "What kind of country do we want to be?"

Bartley added on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "We're facing in the 21st century a very uncertain world with big pressures from corporate globalisation.

Caroline Lucas. Image: BBC/The Andrew Marr Show

"When I was a kid we were told there would be all this wealth created, we'd have this great technological advance, but you know what? What we're seeing is just growing inequality and we feel that people are being short-changed.

"We're seeing a right-wing coup over Brexit which is taking us into an even more deregulated situation. Crashing out of the single market, crashing out of the customs union.

Lucas expanded, saying: "I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests that when people are exhausted their productivity goes down. And what we're suggesting here is that we are now the sixth-largest economy in the world.

"People are working ever more hours, getting ever more stressed, getting ever more ill health, mental health problems as well. What we want to do is take a step back and think, 'What is the purpose of the economy? What kind of country do we want to be? And do we really want a future where all of us are just trying to work even harder?'.

"We're bringing our work with us every time we go home in the evenings, at the weekends."

Video: BBC

Would it ruin Fridays as we know them? Would people be clock-watching on Thursdays at 4.55pm?

Wouldn't it make Sundays even worse, given that the weekend sesh has been extended by 24 hours? Is anyone actually arsed about working Fridays, given that on the dot of 5/6pm they're running out of the workplace and into the nearest bar? There's a lot of questions.

People on Twitter seem to agree.

"The Greens' bold 3-day weekend proposal gives me pause. Exhaustion harms productivity. It's time to confront it," one user wrote.

"We've always been promised that new technology would mean more leisure time. Isn't it about time it happened?" another asked.

However, others weren't so supportive. Tory MP for Ashford Damian Green tweeted: "The Green Party are serious about a three-day weekend! I honestly thought it was one of yesterday's better April Fools."

I reckon we should hold a referendum. They always go down a treat.

Featured Image Credit: PA Images