I don't know how many people still suffer these stupid laws, some of you probably never have.

Some examples which are currently in effect in this island:

You can purchase a pornographic magazine but not a bible (I haven't put it to the test but it is true)
You can't rent or buy a pre-recorded video/dvd, you can purchase a blank one
You can only purchase alcohol in a shop prior to 1pm (pubs also shut at 1pm for a few hours to get the man home for Sunday lunch on time, he can go out boozing again later)
Only certain shops can open, mostly governed by size (no large ones can open so no DIY superstores)
You cannot buy flowers unless they were grown on the premises, and it is this one which has prompted this thread.

The police have sent out warnings to shopkeepers warning them that unless they grew the flowers on the premises they must not sell any on Sunday (with it being Mothering Sunday). The only flowers which can legally be bought tomorrow are those bought from a farm shop or by the side of the road.

Do any of you also suffer from Sunday (or any other day for basically non-Christian countries) laws?

This link is to an application form for a Sunday permit, if an item isn't mentioned then it cannot be sold.

As a matter of interest, although jewellery can be sold a watch is not considered to be jewellery, it is a functional item and jewellery is decorative and serves no real purpose! So we have the situation whereby a jewellery shop can open and sell diamond rings but not a clock or watch.

In Texas, we have "blue" laws on automobiles. They can be sold six days a week, and must be closed either Saturday or Sunday...one of the two. Also, regarding alcohol, nothing other than beer or wine is allowed to be sold on Sundays, and not before 12noon. [Also, hard liquor shops are closed on Sundays, even if they sell beer and wine.] In Tennessee, all shops that are 24 hours are only open 12 hours on Sundays, because their law states that all businesses must be closed from midnight to noon on Sundays, outside of convenience stores. [I was at a Wal-Mart that is open 24 hours in Hixson, TN (a suburb of Chattanooga (and yes, I've seen the choo-choo!) and their hours were from Sunday at noon to Saturday night at midnight. My fiancee worked at that store at one time, and my father delivered some of the floor tile to that store!]

Edited to add inside of brackets.

It sounds as if Jersey has much the same Sunday trading laws as the UK used to have until they were done away with here in the 1980s.

The UK laws, like those in Jersey, forbade larger shops to open on Sundays. When it became obvious that those laws were on their way out, many supermarkets defied them and opened for about 6 hours (that’s the period for which they can now legally open). What fascinated me was that they restricted the sale of alcoholic drinks to the pub and off-licence hours (12 noon to 2:00 p.m.). They were breaking the law by opening at all and by selling anything at any time, but they knew that nothing was likely to happen to them unless they started selling booze at hours when other outlets didn’t.

As in Jersey, it used to be said that you couldn’t buy a bible on Sunday, but I don’t know whether this was true. I don’t know whether there were any restrictions on flowers: my local Tesco in London sold flowers and houseplants and I don’t remember that part of the store being roped off at all on Sundays.

Interestingly, we just had a state election last Saturday and as well as voting for the political candidates, we also had a referendum on shopping hours. The ballot paper had two questions on it, to which you answered yes or no. One question was whether the voters wanted to have late night trading every night. The other question was whether the voters wanted unrestricted Sunday trading.

I believe that most states in Australia have (more or less) 7-days-a-week trading. In Western Australia, we only have one night a week late-night trading; it's Friday in the city and Thursday in the suburbs and everywhere else. At peak shopping times, like Christmas, Tuesday and Wednesday nights are temporarily included.

The shops are open all day Saturday. Some shops are allowed to be open on Sunday afternoon but there are restrictions - no big supermarkets or department stores, no liquor stores, no major shopping centres, etc. The hardware and DIY shops are open on Sundays. The pubs/bars/hotels have a restricted "Sunday Session" for about two hours on Sunday afternoon where you can drink in person but liquor stores are shut. The Sunday Sessions usually have entertainment and are a bit of a special event.

If you really want to shop on Sunday, there are plenty of little craft and flea markets to go to, as well as all the tourist-oriented places, like souvenir shops.

The main argument for the "no" vote was that extended shopping hours would create a situation where employers might force their staff to work on Sunday (or face losing their jobs) which could cause problems with church attendance, memberhip to sporting clubs and be disruptive to family life. I must say, if you have school-age children here, life does tend to revolve around weekend sport.

The small business sector also waged a "don't let the big guys force us out of business because we can't compete with them" campaign. Currently small businesses make a living by being open during hours when the major retail outlets are closed, offering convenience rather than cheaper prices. Offering unrestricted trading hours probably would be the death-knell to the little corner shop where you can pick up a loaf of bread or carton of milk when you've run out.

I must say I expected the "yes" vote to win but I voted "no" myself. (I really think Sunday should be sacrosanct - definitely church and family day.) Surprisingly the "no" vote won, approximately twice as many no-votes as yes-votes. I worked on the election and helped count the votes. In our area (an ordinary working class area) the ratio was about 3 no-votes to every one yes-vote.

I am not sure if we have any stupid laws with the sorts of anomalies Sue mentioned (like being able to buy jewellery but not a watch). We probably do!

So far as I am aware, we no longer have any restrictions here on Sunday trading. Shops choose their hours on whether they are likely to do enough business to cover the overhead. This means that big stores are open in malls, in the city, on Sunday, but only from about noon to six. In my little town, it is more a question of staffing than anything else - grocery stores, bars and restaurants, liquor stores are open, with somewhat restricted hours, and shoe stores, hardware stores, etc, are closed - those stores are usually run and partly staffed by the owners, who don't want to work on Sunday.
When the laws were changed here, there was some outcry about cutting into family time, but I think that it mostly works out that the Sunday hours are covered by part time staff, who tend to be students. Anyone old enough to have children is usually senior enough to take Sundays off. Businesses that use a lot of part time and casual staff, like restaurants, actually really welcome Sunday opening, because it helps to give enough hours to the extra staff that you need to cover Friday and Saturday nights. That is - it's hard to keep someone on staff if you only really need them for three hours Fri evening, and five hours Saturday night. If you can also offer a full shift on Sunday, it works out to a pretty good part time job.

Every so often the parliament debates the Sunday trading situation and each time the no vote gets it, same reasons as given by MG, eroding into the family, perhaps forcing people to work who don't wish to etc. It is the range of goods which can or cannot be sold which makes our laws so crazy. We have some shops open on a Sunday which display notices saying that people can select and order goods on the Sunday but cannot collect until Monday - a bit pointless.

I remember during the 1960's and before, here in the stateside deep south, stores were just simply not open on Sunday. No markets, few gas stations, no retail businesses or movies. If you didn't like fishing, gardening or scrabble you were just tough out of luck.

Here small shops are closed on Sundays but the hypermarkets are all open. But what I am interested is in Ontario. I lived there in the early 70s and at that time you couldn't buy a drink in a pub unless you ordered food with it. I was going to school in Welland and the local was the Rita Hotel. On Sunday you could drink yourself into a stupor, as long as you bought something to 'eat'. That thing being two slices of rubber bread with one translucent slice of ham stuck between. When you ordered your beer the sandwich was placed in front of you for 65 seconds and 25 cents was added to your bill. Then the sandwich was removed and placed in front of a new arrival. Sometimes that sandwich was in pretty bad shape by the time you got to look at it . I know people who would have paid 25 extra cents not to look at that sandwich, but the law was the law... Does anyone know if things are still the same there?

By the time I left Ontario in the early 80s things were already starting to loosen up, so I doubt it. The laws in Alberta were much the same at that time.

My goodness I hope so. That was pretty bad.

Here in Nebraska, I don't know of any laws governing whether a business is not opened on Sunday, as far as state laws go. Sales of liquor on Sundays are up to local governments. If I'm not mistaken, sometime within the last 7 years (while I've been of age to buy alcohol) my local government has opened Sunday sales up from no hard liquor on Sundays to anything goes. Of course, sales of liquor stop at midnight (or 12:30, it's been a long time since I made a late night liquor run...) every night except for the bars, which can sell until 1:00, and I think sales start at 5:00am, but I'm not entirely sure. (I've NEVER made an early morning liquor run...)

As far as anything else, I don't know of any laws which dictate how long or how late stores of any kind can be open, what they can sell or whether they can be open on Sunday. I believe that aside from alcohol anything can be sold at any hour depending on the prerogative of the store owners. There are some stores which close Sunday for "family and worship" and that's fine for those who save their family time for one day a week or choose to worship on Sundays, but it can be a darn inconvenience for me. Most stores close early on Sunday. A perfect example is our malls, which are open from 10:00am to 9:00pm Monday through Saturday, but only open at noon on Sundays and close at 5:00pm. That's pretty typical of most small to medium stores in this area if they open on Sundays at all. We have a few stores open 24 hours, mostly drug stores (including the pharmacy), the Wal-Marts and grocery stores. Most of the stores that are open 24 hours stay open even on holidays of all kinds, both national and religious. More power to them, I say, since the US is almost 1/4 non-Christian these days, and I'd say growing moreso every year, and not all of us feel the need for our schedules to be dictated by the worship of the Christians around us. (Which is certainly not to object to such worship, just that, as a non-Sunday-worshipper, it can be a bit of a putoff for one of my two days off from full-time work to be dictated by someone else's preference of faith.)

Living near a large city, most of our shops that are open on Sundays usually close at 6pm or 7pm, whereas Monday through Saturday, they close at either 9pm or 10pm. Depending on the season, some open as early as 6am on the weekends, but usually around 8am during the week. On Sundays, it's either 10am, 11am, or 12noon opening time. I have been told (I'm not sure how truthful it is) that being closed Sundays actually is more profitable.