The UK tabloid press spent a decade drumming up hysteria about teenage knife-crime, and MPs responded on cue, passing a series of meaningless, overbearing feel-good measures that require shops to refuse to sell anything knife-like to teenagers — meaning that seventeen-year-old art students can’t buy xacto blades, and 16-year-old carpenter’s apprentices can’t buy utility knives.
This silliness has burrowed deep into the automated systems and psyches of English society. A 16 year old boy who tried to buy a pack of teaspoons at a Tesco automated checkout was flagged for an “age check,” and when an employee came to check it out, she or he explained to the teen that he was not allowed to buy any cutlery at all.
Tesco later apologised, but even the kid’s stepmum says that she can understand why her stepson shouldn’t be allowed to buy forks or butter knives, and the BBC story doesn’t question why the state (or Tesco) should be intervening in teenagers’ cutlery purchases — why a kid who is old enough to marry and rent a flat isn’t considered old enough to buy cutlery to eat with in that flat.
But staff refused to sell the 57p pack of teaspoons to Liam, from Deardengate, because he was not 18.
His stepmother Yvette Whelan said the decision was “daft”. Tesco apologised for staff not using their judgement.
Mrs Whelan said she sent Liam out to buy the spoons because he and his brother, Josh, keep losing them.
Tesco refuses to sell Liam Whelan, 16, teaspoons pack [BBC]
(via Neatorama)
(Image: Yvette Whelan.)