Sunday, August 19, 2012

"I don't remember starving...."


Peter Hitchens, Younger brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, is a brilliant writer.   In the village that I grew up, the store and garage were closed on Sunday, and none of the farmers harvested on the Lord's Day.  Here he laments the opening of supermarkets on Sunday:


"Those who thought Margaret Thatcher was a conservative should have realised she wasn’t when she wrecked the British Sunday.

Is there anyone who really needs supermarkets and other big stores to be open on Sunday? I don’t remember starving back in the old days when such shops were closed.

As for it being vital to our economy, Germany – whose economy is vastly healthier than ours – has the strictest Sunday closing laws in the world.
Doesn’t every home need a still, untroubled day of rest, when everyone can relax at the same time?

Even Joseph Stalin, at the height of his Marxist rage against private life, failed to abolish the Sabbath. It took Britain’s Tories to succeed where he failed.

And now, after an ‘experiment’ in longer Sunday hours during the Olympics (and what have the Olympics to do with Sunday shopping in the first place?), Downing Street is talking about extending it.
 
This will mean more pressure on shop workers to work on Sunday, and more small shops put out of business by the incessant greed and ruthlessness of the supermarkets."