Dear runner,

Thank you for that. Newton subscribed to the superstition of his time. Some people still believe that natural laws are an expression of God. Darwin once studied to be an Anglican parson but later abandoned religious belief.

Religious people are both good and bad. Non-religious people are both good and bad.

Newton was religious and a great scientist.

Darwin was non-religious and a great scientist.

In Newton's time one could not freely question religious belief. Maybe his remarks about God and atheism were an honest expression of his thought. Maybe not. However, in his time, he could not say otherwise and retain his position.

david f,

if you dug a little deeper you will find that Darwin did not reject God on scientific grounds but he became bitter after the death of a close family member. He also rejected that God could send people to hell. I suggest to you that people beleiving in the something from nothing and chaos to order fantasies are not only totally illogical but far more superstitous than Newton's generation. Look at the totally failed gw prophets of doom and the masses of followers (usually finacial beneficaries).

The warmist already celebrate earth hour. They need a religion bereft of any decency and morals as they see themselves as the makers of law.

Yep Rhrosty, I never could understand how we could be so stupid as to develop extended shopping hours. There was plenty of shopping, with a good mix of leisure time before the frenzy of 7 day shopping. Five days with Saturday morning & Thursday night was enough for any organised person.

I wonder if people realise how much more they have to pay for the privilege of having weekend supermarkets. It can't have increased supermarket turnover very much. The wiping out of small corner stores would not have added much, but the extra trading hours would have added greatly to their wage bill.

For their employees it has hastened the rush to casualization, & loss of permanent jobs. To manage the hours with different levels of staff required has required many casuals, & many of the full time jobs went, to make it easier to run a casual roster.

As for public holidays, I always found, as an employer, funding them was difficult, but they are a tradition, & I enjoyed them myself.

We must resist most strenuously any change to them by these Johnny come lately's, who want our advantages, but want to change our country to their liking. Leave if you don't like it must be the situation.

In that vein, a show day holiday is also a tradition throughout much of Oz, precipitating much trading before & after in the towns. In country towns, & probably in cities, a huge number of ladies buy a new outfit for the show, it was often the major outing of the year. Anyone who can't see that is simply a dill.

The only change I would want is to make Labour Day a national holiday on the same day, instead of scattering it through the year with different dates in different states. This scattering lessens its impact and importance as arguably the most important holiday of the year.

A national Labour Day holiday would give us more opportunity to create a sense of national labour identity, to have a national parade, and to reflect on and celebrate the considerable achievements of past labour movements. At a time when these achievements are under very serious threat, we need such a national holiday now more than ever.

I certainly hope the author's question 'Is it still necessary to celebrate the achievements of Australia's labour movement with a public holiday?' was merely rhetorical. Would anyone dare to ask such an offensive question about Anzac Day?

Dear Killarney,

<<Would anyone dare to ask such an offensive question about Anzac Day?>>

Yes, I do.

I oppose the very idea of public holidays because their purpose is sinister: to promote a national identity.

People, or voluntary groups of people, should be able to choose their own holidays according to their own values.

Yuyutsu

I was being ironic. I can't stand Anzac Day and everything it symbolises.

However, national holidays do enforce a sense of what a culture values and what it doesn't. The fact that Labour Day has been deemed a 'lesser' holiday, and left to the states to decide when to commemorate it, speaks volumes. While our military history of participating in almost unanimously dubious overseas imperial ventures is deemed sacred and of national importance, our labour history, with its almost invisible media coverage from state to state, is treated with barely disguised contempt.