TO SHOP or not to shop on Sundays? The question is divisive. Margaret Thatcher's efforts to let shops stay open as long as they like was shot down in a rare defeat. Her successor, John Major, placated angry Christians and trade unions with a compromise: small shops could set their own hours, but large ones could only open for six hours between 10am and 6pm. That has stuck. Yet free-market-minded politicians continue to wonder whether longer store hours might help stimulate the economy. So, to coincide with the expected surge of Olympic visitors over the summer, the government experimented with relaxed Sunday trading laws for eight weeks. The trial, which ended on September 9th, failed to boost spending. But it did reveal what shoppers want. August saw the "worst sales growth this year," according to a report from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), a retail analyst. Like-for-like sales were down 0.4% from last year. Admittedly, the Olympics appear to have suppressed spending generally (apart from on televisions during the first week of the games). Online sales grew at their slowest rate since the BRC began collecting data in 2008, for example. Parts of west London were almost deserted. Yet the brief relaxation of Sunday trading restrictions appears to have encouraged shoppers to move from small shops to bigger ones. Paul Cheema, who runs a Costcutter convenience store in Coventry, reports that Sunday sales slipped by up to 7% during the summer. He hopes they will bounce back this weekend, now that the trial is over. Other convenience stores have reported a loss in Sunday trade of up to 20% this summer, with up to 30% less foot traffic, says Shane Brennan at the Association of Convenience Stores. "The law wasn't broken," says Donal Horgan, managing director of Londis, a franchise of small stores, which also saw a decline in Sunday sales. Now it should go back. Consumers are keen to while away their Sundays in superstores, in theory as well as in practice. A YouGov survey commissioned by DWF, a business law firm, found that 45% of people believe shops should choose when to open. But few supermarkets are lobbying for a permanent change in the regulations, not least because they now have thousands of smaller outposts around the country. The politicians are unlikely to come away from this experiment motivated to tinker with the law. Sunday's distorted market appears safe for now.