Deregulate Sunday Trading? But I like Sunday Closing in Hedge End

By LizBea | Friday, July 09, 2010, 08:54

One of the suggestions posted on Nick Clegg’s ‘Your Freedom’ website is to get rid of the laws restricting the hours shops can trade on Sundays. The proposal is to ‘fully deregulate The Sunday Trading Act allowing any shop to open at any time.’

Greggs in Hedge End - closed on Sundays

I thought about this and – although I love shopping – decided this would not be a good idea, particularly for a town like Hedge End.

Of course some shops do open on Sunday, like the supermarkets, but what about the small shops? I think it would put too much pressure on them to have to open, to have to find the staff willing to work – and how much trade would they get? Would it be cost-effective? Staff may even be forced into working on Sundays.

Even with the big shops that already trade on Sundays, are longer opening hours necessary?

The contributor who posted the suggestion is complaining that large stores such as supermarkets and retail parks can only open for six hours on a Sunday.

But if we can’t get our shopping done during those six hours or on the other six days of the week when opening hours seem to be increasingly stretched (including 24 hour opening in some supermarkets, although not here in Hedge End) shouldn’t we be thinking about organising our time a little better?

As a working mum I like the idea of there being a time in the week when I can’t feel pressured into going shopping.

What do other people in Hedge End think about the idea of deregulating Sunday trading? The ‘Your Freedom’ suggestion is listed amongst those that have attracted most comment – some for, some against!

And has anyone else looked at the ‘Your Freedom’ website? Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and Deputy PM, says it has been set up because ‘The Coalition Government is committed to restoring and defending your freedom – and we're asking you to participate.’

When I looked at the site earlier in the week, they were saying that over 2,205 ideas had been posted, 7,419 comments made and 18,000 votes cast on the first day of launch, last Thursday 1 July.

It’s an interesting idea but I pity the people having to wade through the suggestions – one of the latest ideas when I looked was to ‘make smoking illegal’, with another on the list with most comment to ‘repeal the smoking ban’.

Sort that one out!

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Comments

The best idea is to quit trying to control others! Everyone is different and has different beliefs. Why should you who keep be able to force others to observe Sunday too? That is just plain wrong! Don't you believe in religious freedom. You obviously have no respect for liberty of conscience. Doesn't it bother you at all that you are forcing those who observe Saturday or another day as the Sabbath to keep two days a week, since they are forced to keep yours too? When ever the church has obtained political power, intolerance and persecution are the result. You all are perfect example of this, because you are trying to influence a majority and the legislatures to enforce YOUR position upon others, instead of leaving them free to do whatever is best in their own interest. Historically, whenever the church gains any control of the secular, civil power, she uses it to punish dissent from her doctrines. This is the very reason that the Founding Fathers of the United States enacted safeguards, and declared in the very first amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Many protestants, once they escaped papal persecution, were slow to grant religious freedom in their own colonies. Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but unlike them, he saw--what so few in his time had yet seen--that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God's Word had yet been received. Williams "was the first person in modern Christendom to assert, in its plenitude, the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law." He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. "The public or the magistrates may decide," he said, "what is due from men to men, but when they attempt to prescribe a man's duty to God, they are out of place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and another tomorrow; as has been done in England by different kings and queens, and by the different popes and councils in the Roman Church; so that belief would become a heap of confusion."

By logananderson at 17:50 on 13/07/10
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