Can I have a drink, Nanny?

The Observer tells this sorry tale of Nanny State and her equally stupid sister, Nanny Corporation, and their latest misguided idiocy:

Management consultant Jackie Slater thought she was completing a normal shopping trip to Morrisons until the checkout assistant demanded to see her ID before scanning two bottles of wine.

"I told her I was really flattered, but I was the wrong side of 50," she said. But the assistant pointed to her 17-year-old daughter, Emily, and her 18-year-old niece, Annice, who were standing at the end of the checkout chatting.

"She asked: 'Are they with you?' I said they'd come to help me carry the bags back to the car. The assistant said: 'You could be buying the wine for them. It's the policy – I have to see everyone's ID to make sure they are all over 18'."

In vain, Mrs Slater insisted that the wine was for herself and her husband, Peter. But the assistant and then the store manager refused to budge.

Nor was their decision deemed an over-enthusiastic interpretation of company rules. Morrisons' head office last week backed the store.

"Head Office last week backed the store"? What the fuck? Now, this is the sort of mindless corporate stupidity that really boils CF's piss. How dare you, till girl? How dare you, you spotty trainee store manager? How dare you, purveyors-of-battery-hens-to-the-masses Morrisons?

How fucking dare you unilaterally decide what a grown woman - a customer - might or might not do with the stuff you sell them, and refuse them on that basis?

Obviously, you had at the back of your tiny, greasy, hair-netted minds the fact (and it is a fact) that the legal age for the purchase of alcohol from an off-licence, store or supermarket is 18.

But Emily, 17, wasn't actually trying to buy it, was she? She was, apparently, 'standing at the end of the check out'. Not offering a wad of notes and a loyalty card to the gurning imbecile behind the till, who fancied being sheriff for a while. What would you have done, you fuckwitted Morrisons jobsworths, if she'd been just a bit further away? Where do you draw your arbitrary authoritarian line?

  "This wine is not for the person I can see sitting in that car over there in the car park, is it?"

  "You're not buying this wine for the child I remember seeing in here with you last week, are you?"

  "Married, Madam? Any kids? What sort of age would they be then?"

But no, you decided what was going on all alone, didn't you? Had to see "everyone's ID", didn't you, Morrisons till girl? What exactly did that mean, in your small, addled X-factor-and-Heat-magazine-filled brain?  Everyone in 'your' checkout line? Everyone in 'your' shop? Everyone, perhaps, in the fucking country? Imagine the power, the responsibility.

It is, of course, possible that having bought the wine Mrs Slater may have taken it home and shared with it any number of people. Including Emily, her daughter. But get this, Morrisons, as you would all know if you had more brains than God gave the most retarded goose, that would have been perfectly fucking legal.

Even if Emily had been 10 years old, instead of 17, she would be legally allowed to consume alcohol at home. That is also the law. The law you deluded yourselves you were bravely upholding.

So, rather than saying the wine was for herself, Mrs Slater could legitimately have said. "No, the wine is for my daughter. She is going to drive me home, then consume the entire bottle herself." And you would still have had no fucking grounds for withholding it. It's nothing to do with you, see? You're a bloody shop, not the moral fucking maze.

Dear God, the fuckwittery.

Coincidentally, CF's eldest daughter is 17 years old, and he's taking her for a driving lesson later this afternoon. Perhaps on the way back, we'll stop in at the Morrisons in Cambourne, and get a bottle of wine for tonight. She prefers white.

_