At what point does someone become forced to work? It isn't a Black or White answer.

Of course everyone complaining of a lack of shopping hours could just organise their life better.

A lot of people are basically trapped from 0800 - 1800 Mon - Fri so only have access to services outside these times.

Like I said, I can live with the situation we have now, mostly thanks to out of town supermarkets and internet shopping. The high street is pretty much a death zone for me because it's so incredibly hideous having to battle with all the other people on a Saturday and it's shut any other time I can go; I just don't do it unless I'm dragged by the hand with the promise of a shag at the end of it. The horror would be halved if everywhere was open on Sunday too.

Do you just not go earlier? That's what I do. If I need to head into town to do some shopping, I'm usually done before 1100. I cannot stand queues or huge numbers of people so I go early in the mornings when there's no one around.

It's pretty damned busy by 9am, and frankly that's ungodly early for a weekend...

I usually do my supermarket shop after 10pm in the week. Often there's more staff than customers. I can cope with that; but obviously not an option on the high street where everything is shut by the time I come home from work.

When I used to live down south and had to worry only about myself, I used to do shopping on a Monday night. The weekend rush was gone and fresh produce was brought in. Nowadays, I have to think about family and that means shopping around midday on Sunday. Hate it.

The question has to be "Should we change Sunday trading law".

Banks are open Mo. - Fr. 09:00 - 12:30 and 14:30 to 16:30

Most chemists are open similar hours, plus Saturday mornings. Outside of those times, you need to find which one has emergency service.

My bank doesn't even have branches, I have never found this to be an issue at all. There are many services which we require but which can now be quite satisfactorily handled by other communication channels. Nevertheless there are certain physical goods which we obviously still require to be able to buy.

However, all the supermarkets near me are open '24 hours' - which essentially means from 7AM monday morning until Midnight Saturday, then 11Am until 4PM Sunday, as allowed under current UK trading regulations. If my post-it note maths is correct, they are open 142 hours in the week and only closed for 26 hours (or 85% and 15% respectively). They don't even have a big staff for most of that time - I have actually been into a 24-hour supermarket at 4AM, and you had to use the self-service checkout. They effectively had one doorman to make sure you didn't walk out with a load of stuff and that was about it.

I'm sorry, but of you can't sort your life out enough to go to a shop that is open 85% of the entire week, I can't honestly say I have an awful lot of sympathy for you.
Shops do not need to be open the whole of Sunday. There's plenty of time when they are open for everyone to do all the shopping they need to. Some may want them to be open that remaining 15% but that's simply a desire for the world to to conform to their lifestyle, rather than managing their lifestyle better.

Jon

In the UK, most chemists have taken the contract for late night services so there are some that'll be open until 11pm on the weekends as well as weekdays. What this means though is that there are no longer 24 hour chemists as there used to be.

once they change the Sunday trading laws they will remain in place forever

just a pity that most retailers pay no extra to staff for any weekend working ...

There’s athletics? I thought it was another chance to sell credit cards, fast food and fizzy sugared water.

Put me down for the fast food and fizzy water, I'll sort the economy out if nobody else will