The Argus has a front page story today about the police trying to get alcohol licences suspended for a number of shops in Sussex, including three in Crawley, which were caught selling alcohol to youngsters.
Two of the shops in Crawley are the Tesco Express shops in Southgate and Ifield West, the paper did not mention the third one, but there are plenty of possibilities. In the past shops have been caught selling alcohol to minors and staff have received £80 fines. To my mind this is really not an incentive for the shops to sort themelves out. They make a lot of their profits from alcohol, I wonder how much of it is from underage drinkers.
Where I work in SE1, a local supermarket had its licence suspended for 3 months last year. I imagine that having that as a possible outcome is going to worry shops a lot more than the prospect of an £80 fine. I really hope that Crawley Council will be brave enough to impose a similar penalty when these cases are decided, following their referral by the police.
In the past we have always heard the same excuses from shops. It was a new member of staff, or a lapse by one worker who will be re-trained, or something like that. They always stress how stringent the company’s policy is with an implication that they only slipped up once and it just happened to be the time the teenager was an undercover police ‘mystery shopper’, but read the Argus story and you find the following about Tescos (who the Argus really seem to have it in for)
- They failed to have a licence holder employed at a Crawley shop for at least two months.
- 189 shops nationally were tested for three weeks running. The Downland Drive shop failed all three times – so not just a fluke.
- 18 shops across the country failed twice in a row, and three of them were Tesco shops in West Sussex.
- In all cases the staff were given penalty notices and a letter asking their supervisor to visit the police the next day. They did not turn up, saying that head office had told them not to talk to the police.
Of course, Tesco have a clash between responsibility to the wider community and responsibility to their shareholders, and the shareholders always win. (Got to get the funds to pay for Shirley Porter’s gerrymandering fines somehow)
There is a wonderful quote from Jean Irving, the Sussex Police violent crime reduction manager, who said:
I just wish they spent as much time training against underage sales and protecting our children as they do on promoting their Clubcard.
The national figures are just horrendous and Tesco think they’re above the law. They are not showing due diligence or any responsibility to the local community.
It’s about time they started taking responsibility for their actions
Quite right, it is about time, although I feel that the over-emphasis on Tesco makes it look like they are the only culprits and I think we all know that is not the case.
When these cases are decided by the council there will be representations from the shops concerned, and pleas for leniency because of the inconvenience it will cause legal drinkers, with suggestions that the council will be killjoys if they suspend licences. I hope these excuses are brushed aside.
It really would be an inconvenience, especially for drinkers in Ifield West which is a long way from alternative shops, but do not blame the council or the police – blame the shops themselves for letting their greed cause them to turn a blind eye. With any luck the inconvenience caused to adult drinkers will be such that they will exert pressure on their local shop to not jeopardise their licence in the future.
Hmm. That’s my local Tescos on Downland Drive, and it has always had an air of light chaos. They are always advertising for staff, including management. Often the queues get very long and it takes ages for someone to relieve the beleagured sole till-operator.
Mind you, it’s a vast improvement over the pre-Tescos place, which would change manager every few months, and never seemed to get a floor-cleaning.
As much as it inconveniences me, I’d rather that they got a ban and sorted themselves out, than for them to think that they can get away with such lax management.
I have used the shop myself a few times – I pass it on the way home from work. The queues can get long (but not as bad as Somerfield in Broadfield).
Not too much of a problem for you though: you must go past Stanley Balls on the way home every day.
The thing is, I’m not against underage drinking totally. How can I be? We used to get the odd contraband bottle of rum or scotch at school. Its just that 30 years ago most teenagers were happy enough with the thril of having had an illegal drink but didn’t actually drink that much. Between 16 and 18 we went to pubs but would just have a few pints and a few games of darts. I don’t know if we would have wanted to get totally wasted like everyone does now, but I do know we could not have afforded to. I think that we used to go out in much smaller groups too: 4 or 5 people mostly.
Not that the under-18s are really any worse than the over-18s, its just that they are the easiest to stop, and maybe stop them getting into these habits.
Another way of looking at it is that its the price to pay for the fact that everybody is a lot better-off now than they were 20 or 30 years ago. Everyone likes to moan, but most luxuries seem to be more affordable compared to wages than they used to be. Its only the necessities which are getting over-priced (train fares, gas, electricity)
Of course if you clamp down on underage drinking then they will just move on to other ‘substances’ for a fun night out – which incidentally seem easier to acquire in Crawley than a can of lager.
I know, but its hardly the answer to say “let them do what they want in case they do something even worse instead”
You might have a point though. When I was at school it was quite easy to get booze but we tended not to, or just often enough to feel naughty. Mind you, if we had Myspace, PS2s, Sky Digital, mini-motorbikes and mobile phones when I was at school I would have been too busy to be tempted.
I dislike the whole topic as its hard not to sound like a middle-aged little Englander. I really, really, do not want to sound like someone writing a letter to the Readers Digest… but its too late.