Last Friday Polish lawmakers voted to ban shopping on Sundays twice a month – but Catholics aren’t pleased because they want Sunday trading outlawed completely, and they want it now.
Instead, the poor dears are having to wait until 2020 for a total ban, according to this report.
The ban was proposed by trade unions that want shop and trade workers to spend more time with their families. A bill received support from the ruling party that’s up to its neck in “Catholic values”, but critics say it would hurt Poland’s economy, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs.
It would especially harm supermarket chains, which are mostly Western.
The lower house, dominated by the ruling party, voted 254 -156 with 23 abstentions to limit Sunday shopping to the first and last Sunday of the month from March 1 until the end of 2018; only on the last Sunday in the month in 2019; and to ban it totally starting in 2020.
There will, however, be some exceptions that will allow Sunday shopping before major holidays like Christmas and Easter, and on the last Sunday in January, April, June and August. Also, online shops and bakeries are to be exempted.
The bill still needs approval from the Senate and from President Andrzej Duda.
Poland’s influential Roman Catholic bishops said in a statement they were not fully satisfied and insisted that all Sundays should be free from work for everyone.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government banned Sunday shopping in 2015 but lifted the prohibition after 13 months because it proved highly unpopular with voters.
Bible bullies on the Isle of Lewis
And speaking of Sunday trading, it was reported earlier this month that a shop owner on the Isle of Lewis is being targeted by “extremist Christians” – because she opens her Tweedtastic gift store on Sundays.
Leona Rawlinson, above, says one lunatic stormed into her shop shouting about not keeping the ‘”Lord’s Day” holy. Another even approached her on a Sunday to express his views on the shop’s business hours and to distribute leaflets. The incident was reported to police.
She was even sent a bible and a warning letter by a posturing nincompoop called Dan MacPhail, Secretary of Day One/Lord’s Day Observance Society, who wrote:
We are concerned for the spiritual and eternal as well as temporal consequences of such actions of Sunday opening and do not believe that lasting blessing or profit will follow.
We are aware of many Christians expressing disappointment that such an interesting shop as Tweed Tastic is trading on Sundays and that solely because of this they are refusing to give of their patronage.
Rawlinson is taking their Christian crap with a pillar of salt:
I will continue to open on Sundays as and when. It is my right and I will not be intimidated.
A spokesperson for the Western Isles Secular Society said:
Leona’s is not the first business to be harassed in this cowardly manner and it probably won’t be the last. This kind of shameful behaviour is typical of a small and hardcore group of fundamentalists.
• The photo at the top of the page shows a gift shop in Krakow, Poland.