Dear oh dear what a Nanny nation we have become!
I refer you all to the recent case of Charlotte Howard (11 years old), who went to a 99p Store in Sudbury to buy a pack of coloured pencils.
Sadly for Charlotte the "till operative" refused to sell them to her.
For why?
They contained a pencil sharpener!
Nanny regards pencil sharpeners as "dangerous".
The situation became even more ludicrous when Charlotte's mum went back to the store with her, and tried to buy them herself.
Can you guess what happened next children?
Yes, that's right, the "till operative" refused to sell them to her in case she then gave them to her daughter!
The 99p Store chain's commercial director Hussein Lalani told the Daily Mail that he was "proud that our processes restricting the sale of certain items to under-18s have been proved to work".
Errmm..is this man living on planet earth?
By the way, surely a sharp pencil is just as dangerous as a pencil sharpener?
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Just think of the problems if a child carrying this 'bladed implement' was to trip over a fallen acorn!
ReplyDeleteIt's just another of those things that Nanny needs to take care of.
http://tinyurl.com/32lu2ye
//Staff at the Brentwood Community Hospital in Essex erected the sign [reading "PLEASE BE AWARE OF FALLING ACORNS" - next to an oak tree] after a patient stepped on an acorn last year and suffered a slight sprain to her ankle. <_> The Brentwood hospital yesterday defended the move, citing the slip last year.
A spokesman added: ‘Our groundsmen now sweep acorns up and they have put the signs up just to be on the safe side.’//
Pencil sharpners have a blade safely set inside them so that one cannot cut oneself with it although, when I was a very young lad, I did put my little finger into one and sliced some skin off my little finger; my mother told me it was my own fault for being daft however, a lesson was learned and I have never done it since and I can confirm no long term harm was done to me by the said sharpener.
ReplyDeleteA sharp pencil is indeed more dangerous than a pencil sharpener; I saw a couple of nasty incidences, in both the prisons and the forensic psychiatric units when I worked in them, involving sharp pencils, eyes and stabbings. Indeed, one very high profile patient, in a secure hospital, is almost blind today due to an attack involving a felt tipped pen and his eye.
I am saddened that a checkout drone feels they are more qualified than a child's parent to decide what is best for that child.....I am also saddened that the manager drone would back such stupidity.....Perhaps it takes a special kind of person and mentality to go into retail.
I have never heard anything so ludicrous! As has been pointed out, if one is that way inclined, one can do far more injury to someone with a pencil than a pencil sharpener. And how typical of the 'commercial director' drone to justify their action!
ReplyDeleteThe simple solution if this happens to you is to raise your mobile phone to your ear and say loudly and clearly,
ReplyDelete"Hello! Is that ? Good. I'm in and they are refusing to sell me a . Yes... I'll wait here until your reporter arrives!"
Ken, you'll no doubt be completely unsurprised to hear that generally, pencils are sold these days in an *unsharpened* form, with no sharpener included.
ReplyDeleteFear not, for these days the little blighters won't bother trying to use pencils anyway, with the latest Super Call Of Warcraft III proving a more interesting use of their time.
The problem is that in some schools, and I've worked in one, the little darlings take the blades from the sharpeners and by wedging them into a pencil make a crude "shank". The wounds inflicted by these little gits can be remarkably serious.
ReplyDeleteThe decision of the shop is quite hard harted and, perhaps a little lacking in common sense but these have been used quite effectively as weapons.
Anon;
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a retired forensic psychiatric nurse and prison officer, you are correct to say that blades can be used to make shanks.....Blades from Bics melted into a toothbrush being a con's favourite however, I have known patients attempt to hang themselves with toilet paper by twisting it up and platting it to form a ligature.....The question is this; Where do we draw the line? Almost anything can be used as a weapon by a determined person, should everyone be made to suffer just because one or two nutters wish to use a perfectly legal item to fashion a makeshift weapon out off? Soap in a sock used as a cosh?...Hot water with a lot of sugar in it thrown over someone so that it burns and sticks to them? If every potentially dangerous item was banned for sale, we would be able to buy nothing.
Quite clearly, it is 'wrong' to sell pencils. They contain WOOD!
ReplyDeleteNot only does the use of WOOD contribute to climate change and environmental destruction, but 'sharpening' produces small fragments containing many potentially harmful (toxic) chemicals which might be inhaled or get into children's' eyes - and a single pencil can generate several thousand individual pieces of 'waste' that are likely to be discarded in an inappropriate fashion.
I say NO to pencils! - IF you really MUST 'write things down' - use a computer(which has the advantage that everything can be checked and regulated by 'nanny').
I'm surprised that nobody in Nanny's magic Kingdom has yet alerted the public to the grievous harm that can be inflicted by the careless use of ICE.
ReplyDeleteIn a drunken state one summer in years past, I decided it would be a Jolly Good Idea to take the ice tray from the freezer and place my tongue upon it. Imagine my chagrin when I found that said ice had, in an instant, grown rather attached to my tongue and had decided to hold on to it for dear life. A large chunk of my tongue skin was thus deposited on the ice tray.
Without any thoughts of sueing the council for compensation, my dad duly clobbered me round the ear and told me what a stupid b*st*rd I was.
I have never repeated the stunt.
How long before being in possession of ICE gets you nicked on suspicion of making explosives?
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of 'dangerous chemicals' - visit http://www.dhmo.org/
Any fule no the pencil sharpener was introduced to obviate the need for a pen knife - but the latter is still the only device which will sharpen a pencil properly.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Tonk, where do we draw the line? Some years ago I attended a course (not open to the general public I hasten to add) given by a rather scary ex-special forces chap. In it we were shown how just about anything can be used as a weapon. The bits about credit cards and plastic cups were most enlightening(*).
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day if it can be used as a weapon, someone will use it. If it cannot then they will combine it with something so it can. The only way to stop it would be to ban everything.
(*) Even now, a colleague who, it turned out attended a similar course, gets a strange glint in his eye when near the water cooler at the same time as a particularly loathed fellow colleague :)