It always amazes me that the Bible was so specific in forbidding shops with more than 280 square metres of floor space from opening for over 6 hours on a Sunday.
The war over Sunday trading rages on this week.
Some religious people claim that Sunday is "special" (on a cosmic scale this argument would seem flawed), whenever I hear Christians say this, in my head it translates to "stop wasting your life in shops, waste it in my Church instead".. a case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire" if you ask me, market forces and all that. No one is suggesting preventing people going to church on Sunday, or any other day of the week for that matter, a typical case of Christians thinking their own personal belief that some cherry-picked parts of an ancient book are true trumps everyone else's lack of that belief.
Many people make the argument that longer Sunday trading means shop workers suffer, granted there may well be individual cases where shop owners apply unfair pressure on people, but we already have laws to deal with this (like the WTD which limits the working week to 48 hours) It's also worth noting that retail isn't the only sector where there's pressure, personally I can't remember the last time (apart from holidays) when I worked less than a 50-60 hour week but it's my personal choice and I'm lucky enough to do something I love doing (most of the time at least). If people are being exploited then fair enough, the law needs to be applied, on the other hand if people wish to earn a bit extra by doing a longer shift on a Sunday then why not?
2 comments:
Post a Comment