Should the Government implement plans to extend Sunday opening?
I APPRECIATE Quentin Letts’s trenchant defence of keeping Sunday ‘special’, but I’m surprised that he seems unaware of how the Monday editions of daily newspapers are produced — on a Sunday. Journalists, with the help of office staff, printers and distribution staff, all work throughout that sacred day so we can read their words of wisdom on Monday. Enormous numbers of people work a full day on Sundays: hospital staff, the police, ambulance and fire staff, carers, lorry drivers, sportsmen, actors and theatre staff who give us so much pleasure on a Sunday. Then there are the self-employed, for whom Sunday is often a tenhour commitment doing the VAT man’s job for him. There is a host of other things that collectively render Sunday just a day like any other. Why should
we feel that the gates of Armageddon will open if shop workers are invited to work the same sort of hours? Why should the mere fact that supermarkets will be allowed to open beyond the six hours they now do on a Sunday lead to mass unemployment in the retail sector and the end of the corner store? Aren’t they already competing against 24-hour supermarkets on the other six days and managing to survive? It’s interesting to see that the most liberal country on Sunday opening is Italy. Surely if it’s good enough for the Pope, it’s good enough for us. R. WESTWOOD-BROOKES,
Herefordshire.
THE latest Tory plan to have businesses opening all hours on Sundays (Mail) is an insult to all those hard-working people who need a ‘day of rest’ to be with their families and to practise their faith. Quentin letts’s words are most telling: ‘There is more to life than mere profit and toil.’ If any politicians don’t agree, let them work a Sunday shift to help ‘boost the economy’. Boosting the economy by shopping has always been a damp squib, a short-term profit for the few with more heartache and misery for the many. When will the politicians ever learn? The economy is just so much talk. The idea that london might fall behind Paris or New york is ridiculous. Is it a race? Is our nation worthy of doing its own thing or do we just follow the others, like sheep? Are we being pushed around by the EU or trying to compete against larger countries. The Sunday trading law should be left as it is.
DAVID HARVEY, Chippenham, Wilts.