Regular readers will be aware of my views on faith and religion.

Faith is fine, if that’s your thing, but religions have caused more wars and misery in the world than anything else.

Personally I don’t go in for the mumbo jumbo, but I’m happy for others to believe whatever they like, providing it causes no-one any harm and they don’t try to foist it onto others.

So, the Roman pontiff doing his thing at Easter was okay with me, as was Justin preaching about Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan etc, including a special mention for the royals.

This is obviously a busy time of year for them and it’s important the heads of all faiths which ‘celebrate’ Easter mark the relevant dates with due deference.

However, as I sat in the pub on Easter Monday, with last orders called at its usual Monday hour of midnight, and looked at all the young people enjoying themselves around me, I realised the religious significance of this holiday period has been completely lost.

I know there will still have been some folk who traipsed off to church over the weekend and for whom it has been important to do their praying.

But, for the vast, vast majority this has now become just a very pleasant couple of days off around a weekend.

So, given this change in thinking, to the point where most people don’t give a jot, I reckon it’s time to completely rethink our policy on holidays.

Rather than schools feeling compelled to grant days off around ancient, and largely irrelevant, religious festivals each establishment should be free to give staff and pupils time off at more suitable times.

The fact these times would be different for different schools means they, and we, could be more flexible working around better dates.

And you never know, it might just have the added advantage of many people no longer being ripped off by travel companies who simply hike their prices for these traditional breaks.

Whether school administrators would also take this opportunity to reschedule teacher’s time so they no longer receive such absurd amounts of time off would be down to them, but in any event, it would make schools more efficient.

At this stage I’d only suggest this change for Easter as it would be less contentious than Christmas and also because Easter always falls on a weekend (when religious folk wouldn’t be working) whereas Yuletime celebrations fall on weekdays too.