I'm generally a fan of longer opening times, but having a day where everyone but entertainment and hospitality has free time simultaneously seems very healthy for both families and society at large.

Unless, of course, they are in a train station. This loophole seems to be _heavily_ exploited.

A silly motivation. Smaller-scale businesses on the "convenience store" model are more likely to provide extended opening hours than any large store operation. That's as close to "Mom & Pop" as it gets.

I talked about the 80s and 90s and a healthy work/life balance was still a political talking point at the time.

(To be clear, I'm not saying everything was great in the days of "all women are house wives" but it would have been nice if the stigma of a house husband went away instead, rather than the actual turn out of "both adults must work").

It was almost an inevitably. Especially for the middle class, I would imagine that both sides of the couple working provided a substantial boost in economic mobility. Or at least a perceived one. At that point its just keeping up with the joneses.

That is a lot of left radicals and only 1 religious party.

And many others besides.

Really, why would you even try to argue something that is pretty much settled history at this point in time? The Netherlands historically had a very strong religious streak running through it and one of the last vestiges of their direct influence on Dutch society is the 'Winkelsluitingstijden' law.

NL is percentage wise (or rather, was) one of the countries were religion was 'on the way out', unfortunately that trend seems to have first stabilized and is now reversing. It's a pity because personally I think religion should have absolutely no place in politics or organized society, though I do believe that people should be free to practice whatever religion they want as long as it does not negatively affect others.

As you mention, it's the religious intolerance that one finds disturbing, not religion (of any kind) itself. It is fairly rare to have one without the other these days, it would seem. The phenomenon is not limited to NL alone, I think.

Gelderland (where my family is from) is definitely more religious than say Amsterdam, but far less than the South of Limburg or the 'Bible Belt'. At the same time, those are all various offshoots of Christianity, whereas if you were to look at Islam you will find the opposite, it is strongly represented in the big cities, where there is hardly any Christian offshoots left (and if they are they are dying).

Churches are disappearing, Mosques are rising up everywhere, and I'm not sure if the longer term will find NL with a more tolerant version of itself or if it will regress at some point.