On the Isle of Lewis and the Day of Rest

[lethargic_man]

During the course of work this morning, I came upon the following old news story:

Stornoway Golf Club is to decide whether to take legal action to allow Sunday golf on Lewis.

The club leases its course under a long list of regulations laid down by landlord, the Stornoway Trust.

At a meeting last month, the trust said it was "not inclined to accept" an application for club members to be allowed to play seven days a week.

The club claims the 100-year-old rule could be breaching its members' human rights.

Good grief—since when was playing golf on a Sunday a human right!?

Actually, I feel for the traditionalists on Lewis. The impression I get—no doubt biased due to an incomplete understanding of the situation (but hey, what can you expect from a few newspaper articles?)—is that until recently this was one of the last places in the country where Sunday was observed as a Day of Rest, and the relentless pressure of consumerism stopped, for a day, right across the island; but in the last few years with the advent of flights and ferries to the island, consumer society has been relentlessly assaulting the island.

No doubt some of the islanders welcome this. But for others, it means an end to their world: the genie's out of the bottle, and now there's nowhere to go to get away from it all. And as a religious person myself surrounded by an aggressively secular society, I can sympathise.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm not clear how a “day of rest” leads to prohibiting leisure activities. You could coherently prohibit professional golfers from playing on Sundays on that basis, but not people doing it for fun.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Not my religion; I don't know the rules.

Though possibly I'm conflating two issues here: the encroachment of mainstream society into Lewis does not actually have to bear upon whether golf is a human right.

[naath.livejournal.com]

People work on the golf course to ensure that the fun-having players have fun.

It's a "human rights" issue (if it is) because I have the right to not have anyone's religion forced on me, not because I have the right to play golf whenever I like. This is pretty tenuous, since the golf course management are presumably allowed to decide that they don't want to be open whenever they feel like not being open. However if the shut-ness is enforced not by a management that says "yep, day off for us" but by *the government* then that would step into human rights territory. This situation seems to be somewhere inbetween.

I think it's a good idea to give everyone at least one full day off per week; and indeed the Working Time Directive says something very similar. However having *everyone* take the same day off is extremely inconvenient, as it means that people who only have that day off can't go shopping on their day off; a system that works fine when everyone has a wife at home to do the shopping and rather less well when every adult in the household is engaged in full time work.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm not a golfer myself but I'm not convinced you actually need paid staff on hand just to have a game of golf - I'd have thought no more would be needed than turning up at the course with your gear and hitting balls with sticks in the way golfers like to do. Doubtless the course requires maintenance at times and people get employed to do that but there's no reason it has to be done on Sunday as such.

Indeed, people also shouldn't have other people's religions forced on them. But my main point is that the religious argument is incoherent too here.

[naath.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that they need someone to check that only members and paying guests are using the place; but I could ask Mum (who has taken up golfing).

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Somehow I suspect that if you can't make time to do whatever needs to be done during the working week, you're unlikely to be living on Lewis in the first place...

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Lewis has it's fair share of people who work tills in shops...

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

...but is probably the kind of place where you can still get away with sticking a sign up saying "Closed, back at 2:30".

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

Which, unless everyone staggers their closing times, is counterproductive.