h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

4, in a pub including spirits, is what the law allows. Although most licences granted in the last ten years or so don't accomadate this.

* gapes *

I didn't know that.

One can probably assume, though, that most pubs don't allow that...

*bes dubious*... not as far as I'm aware... I think "clubs" can supply children of "age 5 and above" with alcohol, but I still maintain that age 14 is the youngest age at which children can enter a pub (unless the licences premise in question has a Children's Certificate) and other than purchasing and consuming (at age 16) with a meal (restricted to beer, porter, cider, and perry), u18s can't consume alcohol in public...

I've taken my 7 year old in pubs when we've been on holiday, even when we've just stopped for a quick drink for refreshement, and I've never been told to take him out. This is during the day though, and maybe pubs in well known holiday type places are more lenient. I get told to get the dog out more then I am to get my son out.

When the landlord of the pub I was running the cellar of in Ipswich went for his license one of the questions he got, oh yeah they get a test, was what was teh lowest possible legal drinking age. Apparantly all of them there that day got it wrong.

Most of the time, it is left down to the landlords discretion though. As long as the pub gets by without causing any problems for the police or local residents they tend to get left alone. As long as they don't flaunt things. It's sort of the same with regards to opening hours. The pub I was cellar manager of in Leicester never really closed. It was on the edge of one of the rough estates (in Leicester there are many) and the way the police seemed to look at it was this, if they were in the pub, they weren't out mugging people.

mmm... I'm pretty sure that's wrong.


Also, there's a difference between the laissez-faire attitude that police often take (which is in itself morally and legally dubious.. after all, the police are a non-elected civil body designed to enforce law, not to interpret it) and the law and interpretation of as dictated by the judicial system...

Unfortunately, while that works on paper, in practice it's impossible because there are never enough police to do everything that needs to be done. Hence the compromises that have to be made for things to keep going.

Oh, yeah... but the debate's about the law, isn't it? Not the idiosyncratic British Police Force.....

We were having a debate?

Not in the strict sense, but in the therearetwoormorepeopleandtheykindadisagree sense.

It's a word I tend to drop in in place of words like "discussion", "rant", usw. (Not that I'm implying that either of those have any bearing on the thread.)

Yeah, it's the actual law that's important here. I just can't stay out of it when someone mentions the police and the way they do what they do...

*nod*

Why, don't like the way they go about things?

No, I don't like it when other people don't like the way they go about things, except when the way they go about things is bad, in which case I don't like it when other people don't understand why they go about things in the way they do, because it usually seems fairly obvious to me.

Except on rare occasions.

Did that make any sense?

It does to me, cos BluesShark is like it as well. He works quite closely with the police.

*nods*

But when is it, you'd say, that the way in which they went about things was bad?

Not very often! But occasionally there are things I don't agree with. Often caused by individual officers doing things they shouldn't, something which of course shouldn't happen but unfortunately does - human nature doesn't really allow for anything else.

and nitpick I will, being a committed law student...the relevent act is the Licensing Act 1964 ammended by Licensing (Young Persons) Act 2000.

s.169 A-C basically prohibits sale to under 18s, and to adults supplying to under-18s in certain circumstances, and makes purchase or attempt to purchase by an under-18 and offence.

s.169D reads: Sections 169A(1), 169B(1), and 169C(1) and (2) of this Act do not apply where-

(a) the person under eighteen has attained the age of sixteen,
(b) the intoxicating liquor in question is beer, porter or cider, and
(c) its sale or purchase is for consumption at a meal in a part of the licensed premises which is not a bar and is usually set apart for the service of meals.

So basically, over 16s can buy alcohol provided it is beer, porter, or cider, and it is with a meal.

Konrad

That's what I said, as far as I can remember.

It certainly was.

K

(haven't found what the pre2000-ammendment law was...could be interesting from a purely legal point of view.)