Trading on E. Sunday, not for me or thee to decide

 

After years of shops being shut on Easter Sunday because religionists and unionists say so, I guess it should be good news that New Zealand’s archaic Easter trading laws have finally had an overhaul.

But like a presidential candidate unwilling to directly address an issue by punting it down “for the states to make that decision,” the Key Government has amended this one by punting it down to councils to make the call.

To councillors. Whose biggest decision every year is whether to put rates up by a lot or by an awful lot.

So expect an annual three-ring circus to erect its tent at every town hall about six weeks or so before Easter as every whacko with an agenda heads in to lobby his local loony about what he thinks other people should do.

The “argument” for punting th decision to council goes, I guess, that decentralised decisions are best. But only, I suppose, when the decision is a politically sensitive one.

But if decentralising decision making were truly valued, then what would be wrong with decentralising the decision to open or shut shops to the owners of the shops themselves. To individual shop owners.

I mean, they do own the shops, don’t they?

So who else’s bloody business is it anyway?

Yours?

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