IT was definitely over-the-top, but also thought-provoking and worthy of comment. This week’s letter to the JEP’s editor from a well-known St Helier store owner objecting to the relaxation of the Sunday trading laws certainly raised some interesting points, but it was wide of the mark, for several reasons.

Did he really mean it when he wrote that ‘the recent decision by the States to allow shops over 700 square metres to open on Sunday is the greatest attack on the Island’s way of life and culture that I have ever witnessed’?

If it was, indeed, such a cataclysm waiting to happen, why didn’t he warn us before the event? I believe that the correspondent is on the executive council of the Chamber of Commerce and presumably knows how to lobby States Members.

Perhaps he did, but they didn’t listen, so now he apparently expects that by going public he will force the States to review their decision just a week or so after having made it. That’s a strange position for a former Deputy to take when everyone complains about the States being brought into disrepute because they are constantly changing their minds. Or perhaps he is just trying to preserve another aspect of the Island’s way of life – prevarication. And, presumably, he meant ‘under’ 700 square metres, not ‘over’.

Regardless of the process, the arguments made by the storeowner against liberalising the Sunday trading law are sound ones – up to a point.

The crux of his argument is that by allowing so many stores to open on a Sunday (the vast majority of them, he points out), the States have ‘at a stroke, created a potential demand for many thousands of hours of additional labour’. Some of the 1,300 or so unemployed might well think this is a good thing, but I can see why some retailers would not.

The strength of his argument is based upon the belief that if one more store decides to open on Sunday, they will all be forced to do so. But history does not provide much evidence to support this theory.

I can remember when it was extremely difficult to buy a pint of milk after about five o’clock, except from the rare corner shop that bucked the trend and opened a little bit later.

Eventually, of course, many more shops opened in the evenings, so that now you can buy a litre of milk even up to ten o’clock at night although, sadly, not much later.

But not all of the shops are open late. They open at different times to cater for different customer needs. If the store owner’s argument were true, they would have all been forced to follow the shop that decided to open the longest.

So all the States has done is to widen the choice available to shop owners. They can open on Sunday if they want, and they will decide to do so if they think it worthwhile and they can cope with the more complicated staff rostering.

Now you would have thought that a decision by the States – which effectively cuts red tape – would have been welcomed with open arms by Chamber of Commerce members and other businessmen. They have been complaining for years that they are stifled by bureaucracy and petty rules. Now the States decide to do something about it and they are criticised by one leading businessman for destroying the Island’s ‘way of life and culture’.

In fact, my only gripe against the States decision was that it didn’t go far enough. All restrictions on Sunday opening should have been scrapped, which would have been a real blow to red tape. However, apparently we can’t rely on all businesses to behave responsibly.

There are other decidedly dodgy arguments against expanding Sunday opening. For example, moving to seven days of trading is said to merely spread business over seven days, instead of six. It therefore increases inefficiency, according to the letter writer. Obviously the logical conclusion is that six days trading is not as efficient as five days trading and five days trading is not as efficient as four days trading. We must therefore look forward to the time that the store owners get together to decide they are only going to open four days a week. They won’t do it, of course, because they have to think about the customers, as well as the staff, and they have to try to stem the flow towards internet shopping.

Which brings me to the really amazing aspect of the long letter from the St Helier store owner. Nowhere is there any reference to the most important person of all in this debate – the customer. I’m absolutely sure that the correspondent doesn’t run his business without putting the customer at the centre of everything he does. The customer is king, according to the trite phrase, so if the customer wants to shop on a Sunday – and I suggest that many of them do – then the shops should be open to accommodate them. Turning the argument round, so that the needs of retailers and even their staff are put first, is a sure fire way of seeing more business lost to the internet.

There remains, of course, the argument that we should try and keep Sunday special ‘when families could do things together’, according to the letter writer. That’s doing things except shopping, of course. As the correspondent knows much better than I, shopping is now not just a chore, but a social activity and even an activity that tourists like to indulge in. But we mustn’t destroy another Island tradition by bothering about what the tourist wants.

The sad fact of life is that Sunday is no longer the day when everything closes down and we all switch off. For the many people who work unsocial hours (even including retail staff) it’s the only day they can go shopping. For others, it’s a day to go out and do things – even explore the shops. However, it never was a day designed to make life easier for retailers.

Peter Body is the editor of Business Brief magazine