Mal Fletcher comments on the 2015 Budget and Sunday shopping

Offline retailers will continue to face a challenge from the digital space, whatever the trading hours available to them. They will need to become more creative in finding ways to promote and enhance the shopping experience.

Like online gamers, they will need to offer the basics online but add the premium experience only for those who come into the store.

Finally, it must be said that whilst governments should not absolutely dictate our choices, they should encourage wise decisions. Creating fair shopping laws in which economic concerns are balanced by social ones, encourages us to balance our own lives better.

Some libertarians will react to this idea, as if it suggests intolerable interference or the denial of rights. It does not.

Governments encourage certain types of behaviour all the time, both through the passing of laws and, less forcefully, by restating the shared cultural values and aspirations of the society.
In the latter case, as the marketers have it, they 'nudge' our behaviour in certain directions, by suggesting or restating the norms in our social environment.

Of course, governments can and do sometimes cross the line between encouraging certain types of behaviour and involving themselves in social engineering. We, the people, need to be vigilant on that score, watchfully holding politicos to account.

Yet leadership at its best is partly about establishing cultural architecture.

Leadership, as distinct from the pragmatics of management, facilitates an environment, a milieu, in which people are supported in making productive, socially beneficial and socially accountable decisions.

Turning Sunday into just another shopping day will not destroy the fabric of our society, but it certainly won't help us deal with pressing familial and social issues.

If one is inclined to view such things only through the prism of economics - as the Chancellor may well be doing - the case needs to be made that these problems incur huge economic costs down the track.

In the long run, extending Sunday trading may eventually lead to the introduction of 24/7 shopping on other days of the week, because the same arguments can be used to justify both.

Either would represent a loss to the human experience, in terms of families, friendships and general wellbeing.