FARCICAL

NZ Truth, Issue 1203, 20 December 1928, Page 6

FARCICAL

Sunday Trading Absurdity

A TRIVIAL ACT

The farcical and harassing restrictions relating to Sunday trading have frequently been the subject of comment by this paper. Almost weekly cases come under notice where the pettifogging methods of the police give further evidence of the bureaucratic stranglehold which is swooping down.

TN a country where the police force is ***■ undermanned and overworked; it is astounding' that its officers have the time, having regard to • the amount of crime that is going- undetected, to worry themselves about such trivial matters as suburban shopkeepers observing to the letter the most unreasonable of the clauses m the Act governing Sunday trading. 7" It is futile to suggest that ah end has been put to back-door trading, though the activities of the police and the Labor Department inspectors have largely reduced this practice m metropolitan areas. „ This paper, does not advocate that any law should be disobeyed, but it is the harassing enforcement of minor technicalities which never should have been inserted m the Act which the police could well leave - alone, and divert their attention to more Dressing claims, such as ensuring public safety from the housebreaker, the bag snatch-, er and the pickpocket. An instance has come to the notice of this paper from a Christchurch suburb, where a few sweet and drink shops have been supplying tramway men with tea for their "snacks" each day of the week. In return, the tramway men give their custom for their modest requirements of groceries and fruit. In spit© of the fact that the' men. pay for the cup of tea by the week— and some of them regard the Sunday tea as a gift— the police department has decided that the shopkeepers are violating /the Sunday trading restrictions' by supplying the tea, and the shopkeepers have been commanded to cease the practice. ' Such pin-pricking enforcement of the regulations merely amounts to unnecessary harassing of suburban-shop-keepers, who are providing a welcome and appreciated convenience for men whose misfortune it is to labor on the seventh day, and as "N.Z. Truth" remarked recently regarding the consumption of ice cream by juveniles at the place of purchase, we know of many things at which the police could more profitably spend their time than hounding people who niay be violating •a useless and suoerfluous regulation.