Businesses are now responsible for ensuring that employees have perfect holidays

When I worked on a three-day-a-week rota for BBC News, there was this bizarre rule that if one of your off-days coincided with a Bank Holiday, you were allowed to claim an extra day off so you wouldn't miss out. And you got paid extra for working on a Bank Holiday. While I'm sure such practices have long been outlawed by my old employer, the European Court of Justice has decided to keep the flame of madness burning bright by insisting that  workers who get sick  on holiday are entitled to claim extra time off to make up for it.

Their employers will have to pay for that time off, and we, the public, will ultimately have to pay for it through the extra costs that will undoubtedly be loaded onto goods and services.

While the words  Court and Justice mean about as much in this context as do Democratic, People and Republic in the name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, I think it would be lazy to attack at the ECJ in that boring, standard, Eurosceptic way – you know, pointing out that it’s made up of incompetent, intellectually-challenged wastes of space who are unfit to decide which colour socks they should wear that day, let alone to promulgate laws which affect the whole of Europe - laws whose logic an averagely intelligent pigeon could demolish in 20 seconds and still have time to empty your bird feeder and crap all over your car. Instead, we should come at these "judges" from the opposite direction by pointing out that they haven't gone far enough in abolishing the concept of bad luck, and that until all workers enjoy the same quality of outcome when it comes to holidays, there's still work for them to do.

Let’s say I go on holiday to the Algarve. When I get there, the hotel turns out to be a half-completed fly-infested dump next to a gypsy encampment, the temperature never dips below 105 degrees, and it’s more humid than the Congo. The nearest and only beach is covered in faeces and used condoms. An enormous apartment block's being built across the street and construction work starts at 4.30am. Organisers set up a three-day “Rave” event in the empty field next to the block, which means there’s no chance of catching up on sleep in the evenings. On the fifth day, gypsies break into my room and steal all my stuff and I have to spend two days at the police station filling out forms and being interrogated by two fat, hairy cops who suffer from halitosis and BO in a very small, airless room. When my patience snaps and I impugn the honesty of the Roma people, I am charged with hate crime.

I'm only allowed to return to England after paying an enormous bribe. This hasn't been a relaxing holiday, and I return to work even more stressed than when I left. 

Well, hell, aren’t my employers honour-bound to fund another holiday for me, preferably all expenses paid? I wasn't ill - but I had a lousy time. 

What if you go on a holiday with your family, and your spouse or one of your kids falls ill and have to go into hospital or you have to fly them home early? Again, why shouldn’t your employer compensate you? After all, they'd give you a few days off if a member of your family fell ill at home, wouldn't they? 

And what if I fall asleep on the beach on the first day of my vacation and wake up six hours later suffering from third degree sunburn, heat-stroke, and severe dehydration, and have to spend a week in hospital recovering? Obviously, it’s my fault – but, nevertheless, I'm genuinely ill, and they'd pay for me to take time off if I suffered a heart attack at home brought on by over-eating, which, again, would be my own fault. 

And what if I make myself sick drinking the local water when I'd been told not to? Or have to have my stomach pumped after consuming a bottle of aguardiente, Portuguese firewater, under the mistaken impression it was just a particularly filthy variant of Dao - the local wine?  

And what if I'm on vacation and it snows in England and everyone in my company is given a day’s paid leave because the country has ground to a halt due to a half-inch of snow? I reckon I’ve missed out on a day off, and should be compensated on my return.

Likewise, if I get held up in a traffic jam on the way home or the journey takes two hours longer than usual because underground workers have gone on strike to demand full pay for a 12-hour working week (atually, they may already be on that deal..) - well, shouldn’t the rapacious capitalist swine who pay my wages allow me to take those hours off in lieu?

Better yet, why don’t we give everyone who works at the ECJ (who are evidently all visitors from the Planet Tharg, where suffering, bad luck, personal responsibility and the private sector have long since been abolished) a fully-paid 52-week annual vacation in perpetuity. Paying for it would be annoying, of course – but a lot less annoying than the stream of almost inconceivably imbecilic, wealth-destroying laws that constantly gush out of their vast, lardy bottoms... and a lot less expensive in the long run.