As inflation soars and recession looms in Poland, a break from mortgage payments will be a much-needed reprieve for Jakub Rdzanek and his wife.

The couple have seen their monthly home loan bills soar more than 70 per cent since the start of the year, as the country’s central bank has raised interest rates to combat rocketing prices.

“Our mortgage has suddenly become terrifying,” said Rdzanek, who bought their Warsaw flat last August.

The Rdzaneks are not the only household breathing a sigh of relief after the Polish government placed a moratorium on mortgage repayments last Friday.

The move will allow borrowers to suspend payments for eight months, split between this year and next. But while the Polish government is granting mortgage holders a credit holiday, banks are warning that it will wipe out their profits.

Lenders also claim that the rightwing government is gifting borrowers the mortgage holiday to

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On Sunday, England’s Lionesses won the Euro 2022 final beating Germany 2-1 and fans are calling for an extra bank holiday if they win.

Goals from Ella Toone and Chloe Kelly secured the win for Sarina Wiegman’s side and brought football ‘home’ for the first time since 1966.

Now the prime minister, Boris Johnson is facing calls to give us an extra bank holiday to honor the Lionesses’ victory, after the PM refused to rule it out during the men’s competition last year but did concede that announcing it prematurely would have been “tempting fate.”

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Bank holiday is now trending on Twitter with people demanding that Johnson honors his pledge from last as after all the only thing that has changed on the pitch are the players and their genders. It’s still the same game and the same achievement.

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Sony has said it’s aiming to increase the production of PS5 consoles in order to increase supply ahead of the end of 2022 and the holiday season.

Sony made the announcement in its latest earnings results (opens in new tab)in which it also explains that software sales and gameplay engagement have dropped year-on-year, stating that engagement in particular is “a much lower level of engagement than we anticipated in our previous forecast.”

As a result of this, Sony says it intends “to take action to increase user engagement in the second half of the fiscal year, during which major titles including first party software are scheduled to be released”. Its primary way of doing this will be by “increasing the supply of PlayStation 5 [PS5] hardware and promoting the new PlayStation Plus service.”

Sony says it’s not changing its initial forecast that it will sell 18 million units for

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Changing the ‘psychological contract’

Despite this endorsement at worker level, experts warn mandatory vacation time isn’t a complete solution – because its ultimate success still depends on building the kind of company culture that allows workers to take time off.

“If you have a boss that you know will hold it against you if take leave, even if you have, say, 18 days of mandatory time allowed, you won’t be able to take it off,” points out Anat Lechner, a clinical associate professor of management and organizations at NYU Stern School of Business.

This raises the question of how effective mandatory leave policies can be if there are no mechanisms for enforcing them in some organisations. Lechner points out that employees generally aren’t the ones standing in the way of their own vacations, suggesting enforcement measures at them miss the point. But she acknowledges that without some kind of enforcement,

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