Extended Sunday opening hours

[ProfessorDavey]

Apparently, in his budget tomorrow, George Osborne is going to give elected Mayors and councils in England and Wales the option of allowing the larger stores - currently restricted to 6 hours - to open for longer on a Sunday.

Putting any religious concerns to one side, do folk believe that this will boost the economy, or will it simply transfer monies from smaller shops, currently allowed to open all day on a Sunday, to the larger stores - and hence, in time, do more damage to the economies of many local places than boosting them?

This is good news and too long coming.

England and Wales really have been terribly backward on this. My Dad before he died lived in Dumfries and it was so much more civilised on a Sunday than south of the border. Go out all day on a Sunday, perhaps for an extended walk or down to the beach safe in the knowledge that the supermarket would still be open at the end of the day to stock up on supplies (my Dad never bought in enough for a visiting family of five).

[ProfessorDavey]

Ok. Enjoy your headlong rush into meaningless consumerism. I sincerely hope it brings about the "choice" (scare quotes for you there) that you so cherish.

Actually exactly the opposite - longer opening on a Sunday allows me to fit the necessary but boring chore of shopping around our normal hectic family life, not the other way around.

[Shaker]

Apparently, in his budget tomorrow, George Osborne is going to give elected Mayors and councils in England and Wales the option of allowing the larger stores - currently restricted to 6 hours - to open for longer on a Sunday.

Putting any religious concerns to one side, do folk believe that this will boost the economy, or will it simply transfer monies from smaller shops, currently allowed to open all day on a Sunday, to the larger stores - and hence, in time, do more damage to the economies of many local places than boosting them?

This is good news and too long coming.

England and Wales really have been terribly backward on this. My Dad before he died lived in Dumfries and it was so much more civilised on a Sunday than south of the border. Go out all day on a Sunday, perhaps for an extended walk or down to the beach safe in the knowledge that the supermarket would still be open at the end of the day to stock up on supplies (my Dad never bought in enough for a visiting family of five).

Unsurprisingly I'm in full agreement with you on this (as with so much else), Prof.

So what is it, do you think, that explains the fairly remarkable level of hostility to the idea? Why is it seen by some people to be such an affront that, while they are at home, shops are open which they don't have to visit?

[ProfessorDavey]

Apparently, in his budget tomorrow, George Osborne is going to give elected Mayors and councils in England and Wales the option of allowing the larger stores - currently restricted to 6 hours - to open for longer on a Sunday.

Putting any religious concerns to one side, do folk believe that this will boost the economy, or will it simply transfer monies from smaller shops, currently allowed to open all day on a Sunday, to the larger stores - and hence, in time, do more damage to the economies of many local places than boosting them?

This is good news and too long coming.

England and Wales really have been terribly backward on this. My Dad before he died lived in Dumfries and it was so much more civilised on a Sunday than south of the border. Go out all day on a Sunday, perhaps for an extended walk or down to the beach safe in the knowledge that the supermarket would still be open at the end of the day to stock up on supplies (my Dad never bought in enough for a visiting family of five).

Unsurprisingly I'm in full agreement with you on this (as with so much else), Prof.

So what is it, do you think, that explains the fairly remarkable level of hostility to the idea? Why is it seen by some people to be such an affront that, while they are at home, shops are open which they don't have to visit?

I think some people just hate the idea of change. And also there is a level of parochialism about it. I'm sure that there are plenty of people in England blissfully unaware that you can pop into Morrisons in Dumfries at 8am or 6pm on a Sunday and that the world hasn't fallen in and nor are the 'workers' up in arms about being exploited.

Actually on work, I think there will be plenty of students absolutely delighted by this - they now have the ability to work a bit longer on a day that is available to them and won't interfere with their studies. And I also suspect that currently in England many workers hate being rostered on a Sunday because it effectively knocks out the whole of the day, but only allows them to work 6 hours, rather than the standard 8-9. So a lot of disruption for not a lot of reward.

[ProfessorDavey]

Dear Berational,

Yep, just a rant but one from the heart, for me Sunday opening is just part of a bigger malaise, work harder, work more hours for what!!

Me I prefer, work smarter, work fairly, work less hours, work happily.

Gonnagle.

Sure I understand the issue of long hours working etc etc. But I think you are missing the point.

One of the key things that people want these days is flexibility - the days when people clocking in at 9am and clocked out at 5pm Monday to Friday are long gone. People have complicated lives, needing to fit their work commitments around their families, leisure activities etc etc, which don't necessarily work well with that old fashioned work schedule.

And people do need to shop - but they want the shop's opening hours to work around them, not for them to have to work around the shop's opening hours.

So here is a good example - my own upcoming weekend.

Saturday morning is filled with kids stuff, so two kids who need to be taken to piano, and then one that goes to a gymnastics class later in the morning. So that is Saturday morning out for any shopping.

Saturday afternoon we at a summer fete all afternoon and then straight out to a friend's 40th birthday do. So that is the rest of Saturday out.

Sunday we need to be on standby to pick up our eldest coming back from Duke of Edinburgh expedition (from about 12) and I have a rehearsal and two performances with my choir in the afternoon and into the evening. Yet there are all sorts of things we need to get in preparation for holidays etc - kids shoes, clothes etc. If the shops were open at 9am on a Sunday that would work, but because they don't open until 11 that's going to be a real problem.

And that is pretty common.

[Aruntraveller]

I wonder how we used to cope. It must have been so very difficult to survive.

In fact I wonder how Germany copes now - when all major department stores and supermarkets are closed on a Sunday.

Oh that's right. They cope perfectly fine.

[ProfessorDavey]

I wonder how we used to cope. It must have been so very difficult to survive.

In fact I wonder how Germany copes now - when all major department stores and supermarkets are closed on a Sunday.

Oh that's right. They cope perfectly fine.

Why should I have to settle by merely being able to cope.

I don't want simply to cope - which effectively means fitting life around when the shops are open, I'd like it the other way around, being able to fit shopping around my life. What's so wrong with that?

[BeRational]

I wonder how we used to cope. It must have been so very difficult to survive.

In fact I wonder how Germany copes now - when all major department stores and supermarkets are closed on a Sunday.

Oh that's right. They cope perfectly fine.

You can make do with any situation if you had to.

Why do we have to?

[ProfessorDavey]

I wonder how some of you would cope in the rest of Europe.  Most shops and banks close at three. And that's in the week.

But in many places they open again and stay open until late into the evening. Perhaps not the case for banks, but certainly for shops.

[ProfessorDavey]

I wonder how some of you would cope in the rest of Europe.  Most shops and banks close at three. And that's in the week.

Just an example (plucked because it is a UK company), the M&S in Amsterdam is open until at least 8:30 every evening 7 days a week.

[Aruntraveller]

As I have already said the situation is unlikely to revert to former days, I don't know why you feel the need to persuade me that unfettered consumerism is a good thing. I don't think it is. You aren't going to change my mind anymore than I am going to change yours.

It does appear in some posters eyes to be almost criminal to have a different pov on opening times on Sundays.

My apologies for suggesting that restricting the time you spend choosing your brand of prosecco or baked beans might be a good thing. Or for even mentioning that there are 6 other days of the week when you can do this and in my part of the country, 24 hours a day in the Tescos up the road.

Clearly I am wrong and Tesco's, SBS General food, KJS etc, etc all have our best interests at heart. Happy shopping.

[ProfessorDavey]

As I have already said the situation is unlikely to revert to former days, I don't know why you feel the need to persuade me that unfettered consumerism is a good thing. I don't think it is. You aren't going to change my mind anymore than I am going to change yours.

This isn't about consumerism - quite the reverse it is about the 'shops being the slave of me' (i.e. open to fit around my life) rather than 'me being the slave of the shops' (i.e. I have to fit my life around them).

It does appear in some posters eyes to be almost criminal to have a different pov on opening times on Sundays.

You are missing the point - no-one is forcing you to shop on Sunday - that's your choice. If you decide not to shop on a Sunday that's absolutely fine by me (and I think every other person here arguing for extended opening). But the reverse isn't the case. You want me to be prevented from shopping on a Sunday (or rather the extended hours). So you are imposing your view on me, I am not imposing my view on you.

My apologies for suggesting that restricting the time you spend choosing your brand of prosecco or baked beans might be a good thing. Or for even mentioning that there are 6 other days of the week when you can do this and in my part of the country, 24 hours a day in the Tescos up the road.

Clearly I am wrong and Tesco's, SBS General food, KJS etc, etc all have our best interests at heart. Happy shopping.

But the point is that this restriction regularly means I have to change what I would ideally wish to do simply because the shops aren't open when I need them to be (see my earlier post). And if Tesco (actually Morrisons near me) wants to open longer hours, there are people happy to work during those hours, and customers who would find it more convenient and less disruptive to their lives to shop during those extended hours, why on earth should we be prevented from doing so?

[BeRational]

As I have already said the situation is unlikely to revert to former days, I don't know why you feel the need to persuade me that unfettered consumerism is a good thing. I don't think it is. You aren't going to change my mind anymore than I am going to change yours.

It does appear in some posters eyes to be almost criminal to have a different pov on opening times on Sundays.

My apologies for suggesting that restricting the time you spend choosing your brand of prosecco or baked beans might be a good thing. Or for even mentioning that there are 6 other days of the week when you can do this and in my part of the country, 24 hours a day in the Tescos up the road.

Clearly I am wrong and Tesco's, SBS General food, KJS etc, etc all have our best interests at heart. Happy shopping.

I am not saying that. If that's how you feel, that's how you feel.

I just wanted you to appreciate that others, like me think differently that's all.

The changes will not affect you if you do not want them to, but I will find it better.

You can shop once a week between 15:00 and 15:30 if that's good for you, I prefer 24/7.

[Shaker]

As I have already said the situation is unlikely to revert to former days, I don't know why you feel the need to persuade me that unfettered consumerism is a good thing. I don't think it is. You aren't going to change my mind anymore than I am going to change yours.

It does appear in some posters eyes to be almost criminal to have a different pov on opening times on Sundays.

My apologies for suggesting that restricting the time you spend choosing your brand of prosecco or baked beans might be a good thing. Or for even mentioning that there are 6 other days of the week when you can do this and in my part of the country, 24 hours a day in the Tescos up the road.

Clearly I am wrong and Tesco's, SBS General food, KJS etc, etc all have our best interests at heart. Happy shopping.

Not very long ago quite a few people let it be known just how unhappy they were - really unhappy in some cases - with the likelihood that couples of the same sex would be allowed to get married the same as opposite sex couples. It didn't feature with them that they themselves were probably straight and therefore never had any intention of going in for this same sex marriage thingy; the fact that they disliked it as much as they did was sufficient justification, to them, for wanting to stop other people, a fairly small number of people in the great scheme of things, doing something that they didn't want to do.

You didn't accept that tack with equal marriage; why with Sunday trading?

[Shaker]

And here's another, in my view not especially tenuous comparison with equal marriage.

Some people are afraid that extended opening hours on a Sunday or the maximal version, a 24/7 society, will have deleterious and damaging effects on society somehow. That's a legitimate concern - nobody wants society to be damaged - but how realistic is it? Anti-equal marriage people argue that equal marriage somehow damages society in some nebulous, vague, wavy-handy way. The point is that this isn't an untried experiment; it isn't something you have to guess at; you don't have to sit in an armchair puffing away on your pipe, pondering it, wondering "What if ...?" The first country to make equal marriage law was the Netherlands. That was back in 2001. Others have followed suit in dribs and drabs, but they were the first. Fourteen years on I think Dutch society, certainly in terms of social cohesion, liberalism, tolerance and equality, is doing just fine.

Skip to Sunday trading. Here the argument is stronger, because Sunday trading here goes back to 1994. It was done in the usual half-arsed, spit-and-sealing-wax fudged way that the British so often (preferentially, it seems) do things, but be that as it may or may it be not as it may not be, we had the change in the law twenty-one years ago. Are we worse off now than any time up to 1994, and specifically for that reason? I can't see how. The opposite, I think. I think we're better off in certain respects for the reasons that Prof. D outlined in an earlier post: it offers greater flexibility for those who need it, which often means working folk and especially working folk with kids and otherwise busy lives.

[ProfessorDavey]

My apologies for suggesting that restricting the time you spend choosing your brand of prosecco or baked beans might be a good thing. Or for even mentioning that there are 6 other days of the week when you can do this and in my part of the country, 24 hours a day in the Tescos up the road.

So come on then when would you prefer me to shop.

I've given the situation over this weekend - Saturday is completely out. But what about this week and last weekend.

Well last weekend I was away all weekend (left Friday afternoon, back late afternoon Sunday - after the shops had shut.

Monday-Friday - work as normal, which usually involves leaving the house at 8am and returning at 7pm.
Monday evening, we had a relative staying and my wife was out at the gym
Tuesday - Governors meeting 7-9:30
Wednesday - choir rehearsal leave house at 7:30 - back at 10
Thursday - choir rehearsal leave house at 7:30 - back at 10
Friday evening - yup it's free, but guess what Fridays are kind of sacrosanct to me and my wife - we like an evening in the two of us.

A touch more manic than usual, but not much.

Our shops aren't 24 hours so the only time would stop us having our Friday evening. And even if they were, after work and evening commitments, I'd kind of like to unwind and sleep.

So you see having the shops open for a sensible length on Sunday helps me to fit shopping around my life, otherwise I have to fit my life around my shopping.

[Aruntraveller]

You are missing the point - no-one is forcing you to shop on Sunday - that's your choice.

I am not missing the point. I have understood everything you and others have posted. I still don't like it. I cannot change the way I feel. sunday was a nicer day for the shops being closed.

Indeed when I'm in Germany as I am every year on holiday. I always feel that Sunday there is better becasue the shops aren't open.

I accept that it isn't going to be that way here - partly because it is more convenient for some - and partly (a larger part) because it is what big business wants. I still don't have to like it. Or think that it's a good thing. Because I don't.

got a color TV for a limited time.
and you can have it by tonight, it'll bend your mind.
I wouldn't just sell it to an ordinary fool,
y' have to be sure that the fool has cool.
Since you look like a man with heart and soul.
If you buy it from me now, you get a free mixing bowl.

I'll even let you have a little button I' got
that says have a nice day , you're gonna like it a lot.

Popular music is the national craze.
Rock and Roll stars have the kids in a daze.
But twist the knob around for a different point of view
and you'll twist that knob till it comes unscrewed.
There's only one song that the TV sings and that's
Pennies From Heaven, while the register rings.

So it's easy to see, right from the start
that what makes good money, makes good art.

[BeRational]

Trent.

Ok I accept it is nicer for you.

Do you accept that it is not nice for me?

Do you accept that the change need not affect you if you do not wish it to?

Why would you want to impose your view of what is nice on me?

[ProfessorDavey]

You are missing the point - no-one is forcing you to shop on Sunday - that's your choice.

I am not missing the point. I have understood everything you and others have posted. I still don't like it. I cannot change the way I feel. sunday was a nicer day for the shops being closed.

Indeed when I'm in Germany as I am every year on holiday. I always feel that Sunday there is better becasue the shops aren't open.

I accept that it isn't going to be that way here - partly because it is more convenient for some - and partly (a larger part) because it is what big business wants. I still don't have to like it. Or think that it's a good thing. Because I don't.

got a color TV for a limited time.
and you can have it by tonight, it'll bend your mind.
I wouldn't just sell it to an ordinary fool,
y' have to be sure that the fool has cool.
Since you look like a man with heart and soul.
If you buy it from me now, you get a free mixing bowl.

I'll even let you have a little button I' got
that says have a nice day , you're gonna like it a lot.

Popular music is the national craze.
Rock and Roll stars have the kids in a daze.
But twist the knob around for a different point of view
and you'll twist that knob till it comes unscrewed.
There's only one song that the TV sings and that's
Pennies From Heaven, while the register rings.

So it's easy to see, right from the start
that what makes good money, makes good art.

But what you are saying is that because you don't like shops being open on a Sunday they mustn't be, even if the shops want to open, there are people perfectly happy to work there and customers who would prefer to shop during those extended hours than the current restricted hours (perhaps because it helps them to enjoy their life more, so more stuff with family etc). Despite the fact that them being open a little longer doesn't have any real impact on you whatsoever and their is absolutely nothing that will force you to shop on a Sunday if you choose not to.

That seems to me to be a rather selfish view to me.

[Gonnagle]

Dearie Me,

Shaker was bored on a Sunday, good news he can now spend his time walking the aisles of Tesco.

What a thread, Sunday opening is a bad idea, you all know it, plus it is a Tory dodge, big stores putting the little guy out of business but you still insist Sunday opening is a good thing.

Tories are all for the working man, bullshit!

Tory ethos, work 24/7 spend 24/7.

Gonnagle.

[BeRational]

Dearie Me,

Shaker was bored on a Sunday, good news he can now spend his time walking the aisles of Tesco.

What a thread, Sunday opening is a bad idea, you all know it, plus it is a Tory dodge, big stores putting the little guy out of business but you still insist Sunday opening is a good thing.

Tories are all for the working man, bullshit!

Tory ethos, work 24/7 spend 24/7.

Gonnagle.

No you are wrong.

I do not know that it is a bad idea.

In fact I thing the reverse is true.

You know it's the correct thing to do as well.

[Hope]

Your Sundays must have been different to mine, then. As I remember them, they were absolutely bleeding awful.

Though mine weren't the highlight of the week - I played competitive sport on at least 5 of the other days of the week - but they were in no way 'bleeding awful'.  In fact, it was a day on which I could regather my energy. 

Conformity, by the way, is when everyone does the same thing, which is apparently what Rose wants to see; what BR and I want to see is the opposite of that.

Thankfully there are a number of shops, both large and small, who decide not to conform to society's wish that they open 7 days a week.

[BeRational]

Your Sundays must have been different to mine, then. As I remember them, they were absolutely bleeding awful.

Though mine weren't the highlight of the week - I played competitive sport on at least 5 of the other days of the week - but they were in no way 'bleeding awful'.  In fact, it was a day on which I could regather my energy. 

Conformity, by the way, is when everyone does the same thing, which is apparently what Rose wants to see; what BR and I want to see is the opposite of that.

Thankfully there are a number of shops, both large and small, who decide not to conform to society's wish that they open 7 days a week.

I do not mind if they choose not to open.

Why do you want to stop those that do.

[Hope]

Why would you want to impose your view of what is nice on me?

The same could be asked of you in regard to wishing to impose your view on what is nice, on others.

[Shaker]

Dearie Me,

Shaker was bored on a Sunday, good news he can now spend his time walking the aisles of Tesco.

That's right - I could do if I wanted to. I don't - I can't remember the last time I shopped on a Sunday, actually - but it's nice to have the option.

What a thread, Sunday opening is a bad idea, you all know it

No, I think it's a very good idea.