Sunday trading.

[Suff]

If you knew that you needed some shopping you had plenty of opportunities to do it during the present opening hours. The fact that you wanted to do it 'when you wanted' is tough, but that is just the way things are.

Ah, yes, I could have bought the perishables, put them in the car and left them in the car park in high summer, all weekend, so that I could have them available to me when I flew in on Sunday night.....

Not really. Hotels don't tend to keep things in fridges for guests who check out for the weekend and coolboxes tend to drain the entire battery over the weekend....

I know I'm not the average person, but I'm also not exactly unique. There are many reasons why an increasing number of people would like late Sunday shopping. As we've already established, 24x7 shopping is nothing of the kind. It is an option for shops who have a market...

[Workingman]

Sorry, Suff, we got at cross-purposes.

I was meaning in the general run of things, not specific cases. We have all had times when there is something we need but the shops are shut and it is damned annoying, but it is life. Under most circumstances we can organise ourselves so that 99.9% of the time things are covered.

[Suff]

Lost my reply on the train wifi dying...

The requirement is there but is small. That is what business does, it adjusts to the requirement. Just like today in Scotland where 24x7 trading is available, only some places even use it on a Sunday, let alone 24x7. In fact after the first flush of shops opening 24x7, they then started to close them down until only those shops with a need remained open, the rest are shut.

Some will embrace it and some won't. Just like Mrs S embraced the odd hours of the community teacher job she applied for and others simply shrugged their shoulders and said that they would not disrupt their lives for this "new fangled" thing which was just an imposition on them.

When, however, Mrs S took 2 full weeks off in term time after school had returned, because she ran a summer play scheme for two weeks which was extremely popular with the parents; those teachers who had poo pooed the scheme were jealous and wanted to shut it down.

I've used extended shopping a LOT in Scotland and during the week in the UK as a whole. A superstore the size of ASDA keeps one extra person on to man the self service tills during off hours. They don't even keep a checkout open, only the self service. If someone does a huge shop the same person who supports the self service opens a till and does the checkout.

It's hardly like half the shop has to work during the night. Extended hours are a fixture and are not going to go away, they bite into the family far, far, more than 24x7 does and extended Sunday shopping does. If we are really talking about the impact to the family, it's already happened and if we insist that shops close at 8pm to make sure families get "quality time" together, everyone would be up in arms.

Which is the paradox I was talking about before. People have already accepted extended hours and the impact of it. 24x7 will be accepted in the same way and will have only a fraction of an impact that extended hours have already had.