Well done, Poland.
 

I work on Sundays just about more than any other day except Saturday. I'm working tonight. I like having Monday off. The people I work for on Sunday greatly appreciate it.

Never understood why religious inflexibility should get in the way of trade and employment. Limits on working hours and health/safety at work are more important, and having been an employer and an employee, I'd say that in the UK we have it spot on. Zero hours contracts can be tough for those without skills in demand too, but I'm on a zero hours contract now, and worked my ass off to make sure I would be in demand since as long as I can remember as I saw it as a way out of poverty.

can't see it without signing up.

3/4 of polish don’t live in Poland

Sundays used to be fantastic.

Quiet on the roads, a relaxed day in the household and a bit special.

They are as chaotic as every other day of the week nowadays !

I drove down France on a Sunday, beginning of October.
I chose a Sunday as a) no lorries except livestock or refrigerated goods are allowed on their roads and b), hardly any shops open, so it would be quiet.

NO chance!

Johnny foreigner ignored the restrictions on lorries and the french police have all but been replaced by speed cameras, so those who used to escort lorries breaking the law to a rest stop, then fine them, were not about.

And EVERYONE seemed to be on the road, either going TO lunch or coming home FROM lunch...drunk.

It was a freakin nightmare.

I had the opposite; Started my trip back to Blighty on Sunday from Châteauroux, admittedly taking the tolls. Blasted it to Calais with barely any traffic, had my lunch on the Chunnel..got to Folkestone and blasted up the M20...so far so good...

Then I hit the M25 mid afternoon, where every idiot that usually only drives during rush hour during the week is driving throughout the whole day; 4 lane motor way everyone hogging lane 3and 4, I ended up undertaking a load just by cruising below the limit in lanes 1 and 2. Not helped by obviously clapped out heaps breaking down because nobody ever lifts the bonnet until after it breaks down (in Lane 3). I got off early and skipped round the M4 instead on to the A404. It got no better when I reached the M40 as somebody southbound had crashed and rubberneckers gawking clogged up my side. After clearing that mess I then made the huge mistake of making s toilet break at Cherwell services forgetting the still gridlocked Southbound carriageway had also gridlocked the motorway services in both directions :facepalm: I also forgot at Cherwell you have walk a mile to get to the bogs as they are at the opposite end to the entrance: Took me an hour to get on and off the motorway!

Previous Sunday trips have been uneventful and empty road bliss all the way, admittedly I would reach the M25 by about 7:00am well before any feejit is awake. Then I can just about get to San Sebastian by 8:00pm depending on traffic through Rouen and exiting Bordeaux.

I find mid week to be the best, I set out from notts at about 10pm ish on tuesday, booked on the 4am ferry, fill my face when I get on the ferry and have a kip ;) then I've got all day to get across to italy, when the traffic builds up I stop and fill my face again, have a nap or drive until i'm tired and have another kip, food makes it easy to fall asleep for 2/3hrs and by the time I wake up again the roads are usually clear... 24/26hrs to do ish 1300 miles sticking to the speed limits.

Ferry's cheaper and you don't get the traffic either side of the weekend.;)

I think it would be better to pass legislation saying retail stores had to close one day a week, but of their choosing. Don't agree with forcing everywhere to close all at once at the same time.

If they go down that route, they should also stop TV and radio, see how popular it is then!

It's such an outdated concept now with online shopping. You can even get deliveries on a Sunday!

Past few years I've been taking the Cap Finistre from Portsmouth to San Sebastián. Mainly due the French striking and blocking roads or creating fuel shortages. It was touch and go if we had enough fuel the last time, and the added migrant trouble at Calais made me knock it on the head and take the overnight ferry instead. That was until they cancelled the ferry due to bad weather...I was en-route and 1 hour out of Burgos when I found out (they sent a text message to the wrong number).

To finish it off I had a deformed rear tyre that kept putting on the flat tyre alarm on the dash and vibrated at 70-80mph.

That said...paying for fuel in France on a Sunday...all pay at pump, card only....and praying the card works as HSBC had a habit of blocking the transaction then flagging up a security alert which fubared the card entirely. Oh well, at least it wasn't at a unmanned toll booth!

Its a joke, and purely to keep the religious happy clapper at bay.

Detractors are not on the side of European culture and the family and the working man, instead they prop-up a doctrine of ultra-materialism either wittingly or otherwise.

The thing is JT, Sunday is the busiest shopping day of the week. Therefore this is very much the European culture and supports family life.


You argue on a materialistic basis, yet I suspect that's not really your beef with this :)

Postmodern materialism is not European culture it is European anti-culture. Atheists should go to church on a Sunday and sing hymns and listen to the sermon and have coffee with people from their community in our often beautiful churches and cathedrals. Going to B&M Bargains to buy stuff is stultifying at best and more likely nihilistic. People need meaning in their lives, acquisition is not the antedote. Europe has a Christian cultural heritage stretching back at least 1600 years; to think we can strip this out and remain intact is absolute lunacy.

So believe in a fictitious character, like we believed in Santa to deliver presents on Christmas eve as children.

I'll stick with shopping

Either as the God-man or as a mythological archetype, Christ offers meaning.

Why would anyone want to do that? There's absolutely nothing to be gained by standing in a church on a Sunday (or any other day for that matter).
Unless you believe that god created the earth in 6 days and took the Sunday off, then it all seems a bit arbitrary anyway.


It's the clergy I feel sorry for...being forced to work Sundays when they could go shopping :)

This is a falsehood, my friend.

I suspect not.


Tell me this, with all the billions and billions of hours spent praying and singing in church, can you point to a single tangible benefit to mankind?

Each to their own and all that, if you wish to believe in this stuff, then its entirely up to you.

Martin2005 is right, there is nothing to be gained from being in a church on a Sunday, listening to some boy pontificating for an hour.

Then there is the catholic confessions, where you go into some box, tell this old priest your sins, for him to resolve them, and make everything all better again.

Who resolves theirs after they've buggered some poor alter boy stupid

I’m amazed you’ve asked me this. Read the Sermon on the Mount.

JT I did use the words 'tangible benefits' :)


Anyway, we're never going to agree on this. I'll continue to try and convert you though :)

The holiest man in the world has no influence on inter faith rivalry and killing

Christ (the God-man or the mythical archetype or the man Jesus of Nazareth) absolutely revolutionised the way Western humans think and feel. This permeated just about everything right up until the turn of the last century when we decided that God was dead. When God dies, man worships what he has created and deadly ideologies rise-up. Whether God is literally true or conceptual is irrelevant, He is necessary.

I don't think that really answers my question about church.


As for Jesus, well I 100% believe that Jesus existed, was an incredible human being, and his message was true and necessary.


Where I 100% disagree with you, is the idea that you have to sign up to organised religion and doctrine to be saved. That has to be BS

Setting aside differences of opinions on faiths / beliefs / religion etc, I used to really like Sundays as they were when I was a kid. Nothing was open, nothing happened, and traffic was almost non existent (this was early 80's btw.)

My family were committed Christians (Baptists) on Sunday the TV would not have been on in our house, my brother an I weren't allowed to play outside, Sunday had to be different. I kinda liked it because it was different to other days of the week, and was a time to spend with family, either my own immediate family, or we visited extended family or they visited us.

Okay, well that last point is not in play here and is a denominational, doctrinal and theological issue. What I state here is essentially humanistic: irrespective of the supernatural, the west is better off with Christianity at its heart than without and that includes having Sunday as a day of rest.

Mmmm, Europe had several thousands of years without Christianity before about 400AD, I'm sure it can handle change again!

There was no such thing as a European identity prior to Christendom! And in response to your second point, we need to be extremely cautious about who or what fills the God-sized void created by postmodernism. Man’s arrogance, particularly when coupled with his ignorance, always ends in disaster. I get that we need to push the boundaries and that we’ll get things wrong, but let’s not get things so wrong that it proves fatal.