Is there something inherently good, fine, noble, praiseworthy and deserving of protection and preservation about small shops (which for current legal purposes is anything under the entirely arbitrary 280 sq. m/3000 sq. ft.)? I see a lot of standing up for the small shop by the anti-choice brigade on here with no justification offered as to why except that they're small, apparently.
The Government is constantly extolling both the virtues and the necessity of encouraging the growth of small businesses. But, of course the selfish, politically inept, characters on here care only for their own convenience, and the little shops and shopkeepers can go to the wall. Of course, the greedy, grasping supermarkets are to be encouraged to fleece us out of even more money with their grossly inflated prices.
I suspect that the 'small shops going to the wall if this happens' is a slippery slope argument.
Where I have lived for the last 30 years (Bearsden & Milngavie) we have had two large supermarkets (Tesco & Asda) that are both open till 10pm 7 days a week, with the Asda at Clydebank (10 minutes drive away) is 24 hours/7 days a week, and just a couple of months ago a Waitrose (which we don't have that many in Scotland) has opened just a few hundred yards from Tesco.
None of the local convenience shops have closed, and there are at least 6 or 7 of these in the area that have all been on the go for years now, along with Farmfoods, Lidl, Iceland and a small Marks & Spencer food supermarket that is just 100 yards from Tesco - and all seem to be busy. I can't remember there ever being issues here about small shops, and from my point of view they and supermarkets meet different needs and can co-exist: the smaller shops provide convenience shopping for selected items whereas the supermarkets are catering more for higher volume/multiple item-type shopping.
So, from my experience, the 'protect small-shops' argument isn't remotely convincing, and even it is was I'm wondering why should that constrain alternatives that would probably find public support based on the numbers I see in my local Tesco on Sunday evenings. This isn't hypothetical, since it is routine reality here and nobody is forced to use large supermarkets after 4pm on Sunday - but they do, and presumably in large enough numbers to make it viable, and where smaller retail outlets continue to trade.
As far as I can see the ST naysayers in E & W are doing no more than using a fallacious argument from tradition to seek to constrain others from doing routine shopping after 4pm on Sundays - they remind me of this quote from Bertrand Russell;
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
