Public holidays are a bit of non-event for a lot of people. Like a lot of people I have a job to do - over the cycle of of a year none of my work disappears just because there is an extra public holiday. A few years back we traded 3 public holidays during the year in exchange for an extra weeks annual holiday. This was also a bit of a joke. Nobody suggested there would be any less work to do, same jobs (no, wait - there have been more jobs since then) same deadlines (no, wait - some deadlines were shortened).