You’d think that any measure that would help to get people out spending would be all to the good, wouldn’t you? Well, not so. The government’s latest genius idea for rebooting the retail sector is to abandon Sunday trading laws for a year, at least in the case of the larger supermarkets. Those laws at present mean that Brits cannot actually spend the entire day of rest shopping; just six hours of it. Rishi Sunak and Dominic Cummings are both said to be all for the idea, which, I suppose, makes it a shoo-in.
Personally I think it’s an abominable idea. For starters, the likelihood that at the end of the year, Britain will revert to the status quo ante is precisely nil. It’s far more likely that the laxity will extend to the entire retail sector. Me, I’m all in favour of some kind of day of rest, some break from the frenetic round of bloody shopping that characterises national life outside the pandemic.
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