Be Excellent To Each Other

BBCness



I'm pretty sure 15 year old children are allowed to drink wine if their parents have bought it for them any way!

Malc

That is silly, so my wife can't buy me beer if our son is with her?

Malc - Yep, they are. Asda are staffed by numpties.

I just checked and you can drink at home from the age of 5!

Malc

Yep. You can also drink in restaurants and beergardens from 16 if you're with your parents, or somesuch. Our drinking laws are seriously confusing and messed up.

Also don't supermarkets have the right not to serve anyone?

So I've got 13 years of drinking to make up for?!

If the staff believe that the man is buying the wine for his underage daughter then they're not just exercising their right not to serve anyone, but also their right to not get hit with a fine of £80 for breaking the law.

Surely they would have to prove that the man was buying it for his daughter somehow?!? They can't just presume he is and not serve him.

I think that's a bit over the top.

From the way the story reads I suspect that she was the one who put the wine on the checkout belt, even if she was just carrying it.

You have no idea how many people will see someone get refused, and then offer to buy the refused item for them.

If they refused person cannot prove their age, then I'm not going to serve their family member with the exact same item so they can flaunt the law. That's why it's also an offence to attempt to purchase an age restricted product with intent to supply.

But it is not against the law to buy some alcohol and give it to a child at home. How can a supermarket know if you're going to give the wine to a child at home, or round the corner? And surely it's not the supermarkets problem at that point, but the person who then sells it to the child?

Malc

Malc

I tried to make this point with some little twerp getting his mum to buy an 18 certificate game for him a few weeks ago.

That's the difference between being inside the off licence or outside of it. The clue is in the name.

Yes, once you have sold it to a legit person and they go round the corner and give it to the kids you are safe, but if you knew they were going to give it to the kids, then you have not exercised your duties as a responsible retailer.

So back when I was 16, and went with my parents to the beer store, you'd call the cops if I carried the empty case from the car in for my dad on the grounds that as I was now touching the case filled with empty bottles, I could have been the one who drank them?

Geez. The times when I took the empties back on my own would easily be twice as bad, then! Throw me in jail and toss away the key!

And don't ever think of selling alcohol to someone who's come to the supermarket in their car - they might decide to neck that bottle of vodka in the parking lot before drink driving!

And think if the daughter had been 15 months instead of 15 years! Giving alcohol to a BABY! He's a worse version of Hitler! Hell, I bet he doesn't even send his daughter to bed in a chastity belt to stop her masturbating, and so she's still walking freely around the house and might SEE HIM DRINKING the wine! And trust me, it's one just step from seeing your parents drinking a glass of wine to wanking off boys in the back of a stolen car while HEPPED UP on GOOFBALLS.



No, you imbecile, this is again dangerously close to thought crime. I shouldn't be allowed to buy garden shears and garbage bags, as I might use the shears to dismember a body and then dispose of it in the bags! And cleaning products - dear god - I might go around pouring it into rabbits' eyes.

Why are you shouting at the retailer? It's not his fault he's concerned about the tight UK laws. From where I'm standing, Asda were just being very careful about a tricky legal situation. I'm not sure I blame them.

Meaty, you make some compelling points. I'm going to write to all the supermarkets to make sure they never sell you anything. Just in case, like.

I want to get hepped up on goofballs.

So either he is stupid enough to bring her in with him when he's buying her ILLEGAL WINE... perhaps once it's paid for he'll pat her on the head and give her a silly straw to guzzle it while still in the store?

Or perhaps let them ring it through and then scream 'WHAT? THIS GIRL IS 15? FOR ALL YOU KNOW I COULD HAVE BEEN BUYING THAT WINE FOR HER! AND THEN WHEN SHE'S DRUNK, INCEST RAPE! ASDA CONDONES THIS, DOES IT?'

This still isn't as infuriatingly stupid as that "if our idiot staff don't think you look 25, we'll refuse to sell you alcohol" shit. Even if I could find it, I am not ever going to bring my bloody passport with me to the shops. Idiots.

Have a dry night then, it won't kill you.

I'm going to duck out of this thread now.

Our stores run a Think 30 policy to protect us, for which won a responsible retailer award last year. We don't get to question the laws that are written, or the terms of our licence.

The law remains exactly the same with regards to the refusals you make, but with the amount of testing from the police and Trading Standards and mystery shoppers that go on, and the fear of the fine and instant dismissal that goes with it, I would have been worried as well.

In the story above though, the cashier could well have been a dick though. There are no details in order for me to assess the situation, such as their manner on approaching the checkout, or who was holding what, who had what money, did she try and buy it on her own first (or jokingly pretend to), was the man a known person who buys for kids, or acted suspiciously etc etc etc.

...if you cannot subsequently produce ID to prove you are over 18.

You've got one side of a story, and the other side is someone who could lose their job for making a bad judgement call. Get the fuck over the fact that you couldn't have your bottle of wine, you little bitch, and go get one somewhere else.

How come it was all right for a mother to buy her son an 18-rated computer game when I brought that up before, then?

Because the age restriction on games is a voluntary one with no legal penalty for the retailer, I believe.

I meant 'ok with the people here', not 'ok in the eyes of the law'.

So BBFC ratings don't apply to games with them on, then? What's the point in them being on there?

An ID card would be useful...

I'm pretty sure BBFC ratings are legally enforcable, and that there's a sticker behind the counter that says it's illegal for them to supply an 18 or 15 game to someone younger than that.

At "Bouncer school" we were told to card anyone that looked under 25. No card, no entry. Simple as that, really.

Same with the whole proof of age thing.Would it fuck, who I am has no bearing on whether I can buy alcohol & there is already a voluntary proof of age card (in Scotland at least, but I think it's UK wide). & yes I do realise your being funny, but... BBFC ratings have to be enforced AFAIK, the other ones don't.

Er, of course it would. This is about the only good thing about the ID cards, I reckon, it would solve most age issues almost instantly (as long as carrying it was compulsory).

So the situation that I saw, which was a child holding an 18-rated BBFC certified game in their hands; giving it to their mum who gave it to the guy behind the till; the child then tried to take it back to which he said, 'oh sorry, I have to give this to you' before handing it back to the mother. He must've known it was for the child.

That to me is just as bad as buying alcohol for minors, but for some reason seems more socially acceptable.

I like wine. I like 16 year old daughters. But which is better? There's only one way to find out! DRUNKEN ORGY!

Dude, they complement each other. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

But he's risking his own job by doing that. He's willingly putting himself at risk. This cashier has chosen not to - it's not about the rights and wrongs of selling it, it's about allowing the cashier to make a judgement call where his own job is on the line.

No, how old I am is the only thing that matters & there's already an existing proof of age scheme in place & it turns out it's national. The only ones I've seen are the Young Scot & Citizen cards. http://www.brc.org.uk/pass/default.asp? ... nt_id=22#4 They also have the advantage that you can apply for them from the age of 12 so you can prove you're still young enough to get a Child fare on public transport.

EDIT: Also, no proof of age, no alcohol, no problem.

Meh, my ex (with no parental responsability) keeps on buying my teenage son alchol for him and his friends, it's causing some anit social behaviour around here at the moment but the police say there's nothing they can do about it unless the kids are prepared to make a statement and stand up in court saying they had it off him.

Yes, but it's not compulsory, so there's an excuse for not having one.


Well, quite.

I got asked for ID at an Asda in Blackpool at Easter when I was trying to buy some cider. Obviously since I'm 29 I have long since stopped carrying any photo ID around with me. How is it right that their inability to tell a short spotty scrotebag from, um, someone who is underage should fuck my drinking plans for the morning right up the Pavilion End?!?!? I demand answers from my MP!

No driving license?

Were you on Anges Hen do?

Obviously what needs to be done is genetically engineer all children to have movable moles on their faces that display their correct age at all times. Make them have a watermark on them or something so they can't use a marker pen to falsify. Encode their genes to move the moles on their birthday to the new positions. This should be made as painful as possible, so they'd actually start dreading their birthdays.

Girl to wine - "Hello bottle of wine, you look lovely and drinkable today"
Bottle of wine to girl - "I can't talk but if I could I would say thank you, and you yourself look very *snip* (now now - Legal Ed)"

No but I have a driving licence. But I'm so old that it is one of the old paper ones without a picture on it, they didn't start to issue photo licences until 6 months after I passed my test. I usually unfold it and say "look, that shows how fucking old I must be!" to them in these situations, but I didn't even have my wallet with me at the time, just a fiver in my hand.

whatever, dick


I'm way older than you (or I passed my test way before you), so I had a paper one for a while. But aren't we all supposed to have updated them by now?

so you still live at the same address that you passed your driving test?

Or crystals on their hands that change colour on their birthdays & when it turns black you kill them.

You don't actually have to until they expire. I've attempted the form about 5 times and given up out of laziness every time.

It is not that hard to fill in

I tried to do it on the website once. It's got a very good system where instead of having to get photos taken, you can put in your passport number and it grabs your details from the UKPO. Only, I got to the end, then it told me to print out the form and send it with my passport by post to the DVLA. These people really don't understand technology at all.