To think it's time to abolish Sunday trading rules in England

[CurdinHenry]

And just have a more normal week

‘Whenever’?
Shops opened between 8&9 and shut at around 5.
Half day closing on Wednesday.
Early closing on Saturday and not open at all on Sundays.
And you know what - no one died!

If shops have to be open then why not make it EVERYHWERE.
Offices, Factories, all NHS departments. Councils, civil servants, everything,
Apart from schools.
Kids still get weekends off.
See how many of you want it then when you don’t get a choice about which days you work and you never get two days off in a row. Same applies to bank holidays, especially Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. Needs of the business.

hlskj

I’m job hunting for a non weekend job three years now. I worked in offices for years then had kids and after three kids had to leave. Now the jobs I did are pretty much gone and people don’t seem to want a 46 year old whose skills were word, excel and document management systems that are null and void. My jobs were extremely basic and my cv which I’ve changed over and over rarely warrants a reply let alone an interview. If I could earn more money and not work weekends I would.

Another vote for close them entirely. Sunday closing is one of the reasons I’d love to live in Germany.

Far better hours in Northern Ireland in my opinion, even though they’re allowed to be open for 1 hour less than in England and Wales. I’ve lived in parts of England and Wales where the shops are open 10-4 and I think that is a big part of the bugbear people who want Sunday trading restrictions to be abolished or relaxed further have the issue with.

I’m old enough to remember Sunday trading before 1994. Sundays were always a drag of a day and to an extent they still are. I’ve long thought it daft the rest of leisure and hospitality is open as usual but larger shops are shut. Times have changed considerably since the early 1990s. What we have is a compromise and a relic of a bygone era. It’s time to move on. The argument of spending more time with the family doesn’t stack up for those in other unaffected sectors who are working on Sundays; the many single people or those of us who prefer to spend as little time with their family as possible.

When the government relaxed the restrictions for the 2012 Olympics I took full advantage of shops being open for longer. I think at some point we will see Sunday trading relaxed further. The sooner the better.

Except it wouldn't though. Large retailers will likely have their full-time staff working Mon-Fri (with some split shifts if they open early/close late). Then, they'll have a different lot of staff (part-time/students etc) working only Saturday and Sunday and maybe one late night midweek. I reckon those staff would be grateful for the chance to earn more money on a Sunday. I know I would have back then.

This grates on me so much. "Most people aren't Christian," Says who? You? The Daily Mail? The BBC? Your friends and peers, who aren't Christian, and to whom you decided means "most"?

There are a LOT of Christians in this country. One could go as far as to say "most people are Christian" but we don't tend to shout it from the rooftops for the Daily Mail to honestly report it for clicks.

On to Sunday trading, some people (Christian or otherwise) like to stay home with their families on Sunday, get things done on this day they don't have time for in the week, pursue hobbies or religious activities.

We have enough shops open on every other single day so Sunday should remain as it is for those who appreciate it. There are many who appreciate it.

YANBU

I also find it odd that so many businesses, who rely on the custom of working people, choose to close on a Sunday. Hairdressers for example. If you want to get a cut and colour it can easily be a 3-4 hour appointment, and most people with money to spend on things like this work full time during the week. This leaves everyone trying to get a Saturday appointment, while the salon is dead during the week. It makes no sense. If you want to sell to people then be open when they are off work!

No. It's our culture. Church day.

On to Sunday trading, some people (Christian or otherwise) like to stay home with their families on Sunday, get things done on this day they don't have time for in the week, pursue hobbies or religious activities.

You could choose to do that even if shops were open.

I agree needs to go, was just talking about this today actually took the kids out then the play place finished would have been nice to nip in the shop after, but nope all closed! Mad to think this is even still a thing when most people aren’t religious anymore, feels really old fashioned.

Not very inclusive of you.

Church is definitely not part of my culture, never has been.

Yes, YABU.

Live in Scotland, work retail. Won't say which as outing, but not vital goods like groceries. We usually shut at 8pm, (although often aren't leaving until 8.30pm or after), except for 6pm on a Sunday - which is nice when you're the one shutting up shop.

Still, I have people rattling my locked doors at 6pm on a Sunday, or coming in at 3 minutes to close expecting a service that takes us past closing - complaining and expecting my staff to stay late when they want to enjoy what's left of their evening (and unpaid, because the company has set hours allocated!)

I like retail, and I adore customers. But it has to be said, those fuckers rile me. Because at the end of the day, we are open 11 hours every single weekday, and 8 hours on a Sunday. Why on earth can people not manage any of the other 70+ hours over the course of a week?

And don't get me started on 'I work X amount of hours per week so it's hard' - yes, I'm well aware, because I'm one of the retail workers stuck working until most of the other shops close at 8pm, too! I still manage to do my shopping..

And yes, worked retail in England where I was born, and the 4pm close on a Sunday was absolute bliss.

Everyone wants everything available to them, all the time - that's the problem. Even GP practices don't open on a weekend at all, for goodness sake. Nothing is that vital shopping-wise.

Should go back to shops closing on a Sunday and half day on a Wednesday.
If anything, having the option to buy everything online should make life easier. We don’t need everything open all of the time.

If we shut for siesta, we would be prepping for climate change and likely would encourage a café culture.

Some Christian sects keep their Sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday evening, anyway.

Have just read you’re in Scotland. So this has absolutely no effect on you at all.
Bizarre.

I was thinking the same about Switzerland

When I was a kid you could buy almost nothing on a sunday. Shops, cinemas, cafes and everything were closed. Sunday was for church and visiting. One day the fuse in the electricity meter went. The local shop would not sell fuse wire to my mother so she could fix it and cook the dinner. Even though she begged the woman said she was sorry but if someone snitched she would get into trouble. A little later the shop woman came to the back door with a card of fuse wire. She told my mother that she could not sell it on a sunday but there was no law to say she could not give it away. That was how people were in the 50s.

But the people serving others aren't able to if they're working. We would do well, as a society, to look outward and not always from our selfish perspective.

Shops open later and every day of the week is one of the reasons I love living in Japan! I don't understand why many clothes shops for example in England seem to be open from about 9:30 to 17:30. No wonder the high street is dying. Here it's more like 10:30 to 20:00 and there's barely a boarded up shop around me. Some indie restaurants or more specialist shops will close midweek, which makes more sense than closing one day of the weekend.

I went to Wurtzberg in Germany a couple of years ago to visit a friend in January. We had no idea it was Epiphany weekend. Everything was shut. It sucked. The worst thing was that the water in the hotel was rank tasting and there wasn't even a kettle to make a cuppa to mask it. No convenience stores, not even a Spar. We ended up buying bottled water from a kebab shop.

I don't understand what you mean by a normal week?

Surely for many people a normal week means work/school Monday to Friday, shopping and other jobs on Saturday and Sunday as a day to take it easy, go out,spend time with family etc. Other people have a different shape to their week and that is what they call normal.

Or by "normal week" do you mean no difference between the days at all. Personally I wouldn't like that as I think it is nice to have some days that are different.

In England it is the large chain stores and supermarkets who look upon restrictive sunday hours as "lost" trading time. However I believe it is a fallacy to believe they would sell more goods overall with longer trading hours. There is only a certain amount of money available for discretionary spending. So the result is that the same amount of trading would take place but just over longer hours.

Being able to open for longer hours on sundays, bank holidays (especilly the christmas period) is one of the few advantages which smaller shops have over the big retailers. Its they who would mainly suffer if the laws were liberalised.

All the comments so far seem to believe that the Sunday Trading Hours are to do with Church - they're really not. Not since 1994, anyway.

Before 1994 shops just couldn't open on Sundays, at all. That was probably because of the Church. When the 1994 Act came in, big shops had their hours restricted and little shops didn't. This was because the big supermarkets were already putting little shops out of business - they had the economy of scale and could undercut the small retailers.

It was felt then that the big supermarkets were well on their way to being an oligopoly (like a monopoly, but spread between a small number of players); and that if they were allowed to drive all their smaller competitors and completely control the market, it gave them too much power. They were already in a position to be 'price makers' and not 'price takers' - meaning that they told suppliers how much they would pay for their goods, rather than suppliers telling the supermarkets how much they would charge them for their goods. If you can force e.g. farmers to sell you their milk at below what it costs them to produce, when you've got 60% of the market - what can you do if you control 100% of the market? It also opens up the possibility of collusion, where all members of the oligopoly watch each other's prices and when one puts their prices up, so do the rest. Effectively, choosing not to compete any more, because they can all make more profit that way - together.

So that's why, in loosening Sunday trading hours, big retailers still had restrictions beyond the small retailers. Because if they didn't, they'd drive all the small retailers out of business, dominate the supply chain, control the market by operating an oligopoly, and be able to charge us whatever they damned well pleased, and we customers wouldn't be able to do a thing about it because there'd be no-one else to buy from.

So, no - these laws are not 'old-fashioned' and 'inconvenient' - they are what keeps the big retailers in check and competing on price with each other.

Why do we want a cafe culture, go live in France8f you want a cafe culture.if you want a sociable drink inc coffee, do the British thing and go to a pub

Actually loads of pubs are family friendly friendly. Most pubs aren’t rowdy. If you want cafe culture live in France.

Ok, let us bring back Norman rule.