Council urges army drinkers to break the law At least one northern council – and possibly others – is publicly advising the owners of licensed premises to break the law. Is this a cynical attempt to avoid bad publicity? Or, as council officials describe the advice, simple "pragmatism"? The issue arose last month, with reports in This is Cheshire that Corporal Jon Dykes …
Actually you are not obliged by law to carry your driving licence with you at all times when driving. The Police are entitled to ask to see your licence at any time and if you do not have it immediately, you will be ordered to produce it to a Police Station within 7 days. Failing to produce within that period of time is an offence.
"hands up who knows what the current military ID card looks like. I bet no more than 1% of the population" Well me for a start and certainly each one of the approx 450,000 members of the armed services (not including all those ex forces, family members etc). Not exactly known for its rarity value then?
Hands up all those who know what a CitizenCard ("The UK's Leading Proof-of-Age Scheme") looks like.
Hands up all those who knows what a 'Validate UK" National ID card looks like
Hands up all those who knows what a 'ProofGB" National ID card looks like
Hands up all those who knows what a 'Young Scot" National ID card looks like
Hands up all those who know what each one of the 15 regional ID cards looks like
How to publicans and shop owners know about all these different forms of ID? Simple really, they have sample copies sent to them by the licencing department for comparison reference. Just how difficult would it be for the numtys in the Licencing departments to suddeny realise that there is such a thing as the Military in this country and add a Military ID to that sample poster?
"Why should everyone in pubs be expected to recognise and accept forces ID when for a few quid he can do what the rest of the population is expected to do?" Well simple really. Why should he, he ALREADY HAS a perfectly valid ID issued by the Government, with his date of birth, already in his in his pocket.
John, you imply that there is just one military id card. Which one would that be then?
I currently have the F1250 issued by the RAF, but when it expires it will be a MOD 90. There are different cards for contractors, family members, civvie workers, and even locally produced cards specific to individual stations.
Now why is it that if my age was questionable, I wouldn't be able to use an ID card that gets me access to some of the most secure premises in the country? It's ridiculous that a card that allows me to draw a bootfull of automatic weapons can't get me a pint in my local, but a card that's issued by the portland group, that doesn't require security vetting to issue, does.
I agree with Stevens point. What is the law? Surely it is that somebody drinking in the premises is over 18?
If some overzealous fuzz then pulls the licensee up on ID regarding military personel all he does is say that he didn't check ID because they looked over 18 anyways.
If these fellows are old enough to risk their lives in Afganistan the least the authorities should do is allow them an unhindered beer.
Why would you ask for ID? Answer: because you think they might be under 18. Now I know it's possible for squaddies to sign up at 16, but honestly it's pretty rare, so the fact you're wearing uniform is a fair indication you're old enough for booze. (You might be a mean drunk, granted, so people might not *want* to serve you. But that's personality, not age.)
It's clearly possible to take the whole ID thing too far. A few years back I was in Detroit, and a lot of restaurants have a blanket policy of "if you ask for alcohol, we ask for your ID". I personally saw a guy with a big white beard most of the way down to his belt being asked for his ID, just in case he happened to be under age. This kind of thing just wastes everyone's time.
Any sensible member of the Forces WON'T be in a pub in uniform. I think you'll find it's an offence against Queen's Regulations to be drinking on licensed premises in uniform.
There was a case recently where one of our more rabid tabloids was laying into staff at a Weatherspoon's (I think) for refusing to serve two squaddies in uniform. Wetherspoon's pointed out they were doing the guys a favour as they were preventing them breaking the rules.
...smart-donkey kids actually took to going to Hollywood lengths to alter their appearance: to the point of even looking like old codgers. There's also the problem of people with accelerated aging so that they look pretty old even though they're only kids or teens.
PS. Many states in the US require the license card (which is in fact the only thing you get, no paper document) to be on your person when you drive.
Warrington boozers are full of violent drunkards just itching for a fight. Letting in underage squaddies (or even some of the overage ones) will do nothing to allieviate that problem. As far as i am concerned the more regulation in that town the better.
Now a nice evening out on the tiles in runcorn old town is different. You are less likely to be punched and more likely to be glassed.
"In a situation where a soldier, without other forms of ID, entered a licenced premise (and where there were no other factors of drunkenness or unruly behaviour), we would consider enforcement action against the premises owner for allowing military ID to be used, to be inappropriate and disproportionate."
So do the bar staff know on entry who is going to become drunk and unruly? If not, then the safest thing is to refuse to serve and stick to the conditions of the license.
Agreed with the AC above that the bars should stick to the law, the laws should have been properly thought out in the first place. Yes, I feel sorry for the soldiers but they should be making a complaint and getting publicity to get the law changed as well.
Clearly military IDs (Valid one's at least, not sure how easy/difficult these are to forge), would not be incorrect in terms of the information on them. (Except if the person printing the id wasn't paying attention at the time. Hopefully a rare occurence). So it's difficult to see why it should not count as a valid form of id.
The problem starts when things go wrong. (I.E fights, drug dealing, clearly a bigger problem in some places than others, but not always something that can be effectivley dealt with or predicted, especially fights. I've worked in pubs.). and pub staff come before the licencing board and find themselved up against someone who'se going to play by the book.
It could be that extra bit that costs someone thir job that they've done something technically wrong, but which has been 'agreed' to be let go.
Soldiers are allowed to buy alcohol for personal consumption on Army property from the age they are deemed able to die for their country - seventeen years and six months. A Forces ID Card (MOD 90) is accepted as a valid form of identification for EU flights. The fact he can't buy a pint in his local using it is ridiculous.
Warrington, though, is a complete sh1t hole, with loads of fighting in the streets at kicking out time. It hasn't been the same since the Hitman and Michaela Strachan stopped going to Mr Smiths...
@Richard81 - lots of high street places do still give Forces Discount, that I've seen, but don't advertise it very much and not all the PFY's on the check-outs know this, but if you ask they normally ask a manager. Even Apple gives Forces Discount of 15% - though not the 50% discount that they need to make some of their kit affordable... The MOD run a website listing about 1000 UK based websites offering all sorts of services which give the discounts, and ship internationally for free when serving abroad. So it's not all bad for young people wanting to spend large amounts of disposable income!
Mixing automatic weapons and alcohol usually ends in disaster.
A more serious response is that someone who is under 18 (or who isn't clearly over 18) is far too young to wield killing power.
If the minimum age for the armed forces was 40, there would be no more wars because no one would want to fight. Think we can get the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to agree to that?
"Think we can get the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to agree to that?"
Not yet, and not there, but the demographics in Iran (not currently a model of liberal secularism) are quite interesting. The war with Iraq meant that just about every adult who wasn't a cleric was put on the front line and a large fraction didn't come back. Of their children, many of them were then sent to replace them. What's left is a country where two thirds of the population are under 40 and just about all of them would gladly sign up to your proposal.
"If they are driving forces vehicles on a public road then they need a license and just like the rest of us they are obliged by law to carry it."
Wrong. If you are driving you must have a current driving licence, but you are not obliged to carry it with you. If you are stopped and don't have it with you then you are given seven days to produce it at a police station (the same as your other documents). For that matter, if your licence is being updated by the DVLA (change of address you might be without it for up to three weeks. There is no requirement in UK law to carry any form of documentation with you, that's why there was so much fuss about ID cards if they were made compulsory.
(In fact, the only place I've been in the UK where I was required to carry ID has been -- military establishments! Probably some pubs might ask for proof of age, but I haven't been in any which do so.)
As an ex-serviceman myself I can relate to the issue in this article, Army ID when i was in wasn't on an official proof of ID list due to a number of reasons one of them being the fact that the Army amongst all other branches of the military will not share its data with any other government agency as well as the ability to easily forge the details of the ID.
That made things a bit tricky for me as I didn't have a drivers licence or a passport but whilst it wasn't on any official list people would typically apply a pragmatic approach if I displayed it to prove my age but (and whilst it was a pain in my arse), if I was refused then there was nothing I could do. They should incorporate the Military ID as a form of "proof of age" but to stop it being abused am sure they will need to make some changes such as improving the security measures.
As to military discounts, originally the average pay for a squaddie was extremely low as you got free food, quarters etc so whilst the basics were taken care of there was never a lot of liquidity available in the ole wallet. The other reason was the owner wanting to show their support for the services or to draw in the servicemen themselves, these days though with how the military are viewed in some areas that is starting to fall by the wayside and I have to say looking at some of the comments here it seems to be a worrying trend in the general populace as well.
Support for the Armed Services does appear to be dropping much to your own detriment and who is at fault here? The men and women who join the services and are to some foreign country for purposes not fully understood by the people or the politicians who do the sending?
Those men and women do a tough and very demanding job every day, one that is truly 24x7 and yet you people want to begrudge them a bit of gratitude when they come home and want to relax?
I have to say I am severely disappointed in that fact, I had assumed that a majority of El Reg readers were smart enough to understand that it’s not the people on the front line who deserve our ire.
"Support for the Armed Services does appear to be dropping much to your own detriment and who is at fault here? The men and women who join the services and are sent to some foreign country for purposes not fully understood by the people or the politicians who do the sending?"
To my own detriment? I hadn't noticed!
I didn't ask anyone to join the Armed Services, and no-one forced them to do so. Of course I wish absolutely no harm on any of them, but they shouldn't be surprised if they receive limited support from people like me who see them fighting a war which we didn't want, wasn't necessary, and which has made the UK less, not more secure. Yes I know you have to follow orders without question, but that was discredited a long time ago, and earns no respect from me.
Getting back to the original subject, if someone is refused service in a bar, then they can always go elsewhere. As folk have already pointed out, if a publican breaks the licensing regulations, then that could be the end of their career. So I'm with the licensees here, and whether it's Service personnel or the local nunnery's day out is irrelevant.
As has been pointed out, many times now, there is no legal requirement in the UK to carry *any* document, at any time.
Licensing laws are different council to council, locally the licensing laws state that anyone who looks under 25 should be asked for ID (this goes for the sale of alcohol anywhere). This does provide for some funny encounters, i've known people close on 40 to be asked for ID.
Military ID may not be known to everyone, this is very true, but it is well known for anyone who lives in a town with a barracks in or near it (I live in a town with 3 barracks in it and one just a few miles outside).
Finally, military discounts - given the existence of the NAAFI, i'm not sure why anyone would expect discounts to be available off base.
As long as its a valid army ID I cant see any issues...apart from some anal landlord deciding use it as an excuse to stir things up at the council about there rules. Knowing what these guys and girls go through in Afghanistan (Have pals over there at the moment) I would happily shake and service persons hand and buy them a drink myself.
That'd be right: he's old enough to kill or be killed on behalf of his country yet not old enough to go into a pub.
In the land down-under and source of most of the world's idiotic ideas such as Internet filters, we used the same moronic logic when we passed into law the conscription of 20-year-olds for the Vietnam War without giving them the right to vote. We expected young blokes to kill or be killed but they weren’t able to vote for the mongrels who landed them in that horrible and immoral war in the first place.
I'm beginning to think Democracy is irredeemably stuffed (especially as it's practiced in English-speaking countries--UK, US, Oz etc.). Everywhere we look, we see examples of fucked rule-utilitarian law screwing us up. Just about every human activity we dream up the law then inextricably fucks seconds later. There's no getting away from it, no matter who's in power the democratic process continues to dish up a never-ending source of idiotic rules and this ID card issue is just the latest.
If we could assign democracy with an IQ then it'd be permanently at room-temperature figures; for that’s the inevitable outcome of process. That's just how it is in democracies! Seems to me we'd be better off with an enlightened benevolent dictator; whether we liked his laws or not, a human being'd made them rather than them having evolved out of some sort of primordial democratic soup as they seem to do now.
…And we actually have the temerity to expect the Iraqis and Afghanistanis to accept our Democracy as it is now! Seems they're smart and we've rocks in our heads.
As Mark Twain's the ultimate master of the gift of the gab I'll let him sum up Democracy's woes for me:
"Surely there is not another system of government that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp as Democracy. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of millions of pages of rules and regulations and hundreds of years of legislation, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience of the democratic process."
(Apologies to 'The Tramp Abroad', Appendix D, 1880).
As far as I understand, it IS the council's fault.
The Licensing Act doesn't specify what is acceptable ID, and doesn't require you to ID people. It sounds as if the council have imposed conditions on the licence that they issue that restrict which forms of ID are acceptable, and possibly state who should be IDed.
Businesses don't offer discounts in order to be nice to people. They do it in order to maximise their profits. You offer a lower price to people who don't have much money because you get more sales that way. If there were such a thing as a "Poor Person's ID Card" you'd give discounts to people who had it. Since that doesn't exist, things like Student ID are used as a surrogate. (Some students are rich, and some non-students are poor, but on average students have less money than non-students.)
In fact there's more to it than just how much money people have. There's also the question of how stingy they are and what alternatives they might have available to the business or service you are trying to sell to them. In particular, if your competitors are offering a discount to a certain group then you might have to, too.
No-one's mentioned Student Discounts in the same way as Forces Discounts, which I'm not so surprised at - chances are that a large number of us on these boards has benefitted from third level education, and therefore those student discounts have been had by many of us. The students! Won't anyone think of the students?! A poor student is more likely to move on to becoming a well paid professional, whereas a member of the Forces is more likely to go through a career with incremental pay increases until they retire at around 50 having fought their way up to a career woth £35k-£40k. And bear in mind that when deployed, you're working 24hours a day, seven days a week. It's not like you can clock off and not get hit by a mortar. I worked out that the lowest paid soldier who is deployed as soon as possible gets about £1.50 an hour. You don't actually get to the UK minimum wage limit until you reach the lofty heights of Warrant Officer Class 2 (A Sergeant Major) which normally takes about 17-20 years service. For the money they are on and the job they have to do, having a shop taking a hit on their profit margins is a small showing of appreciation.
That lost profit wouldn't be passed on to other consumers - other consumers would get cheaper products in shops that didn't offer discounts if that were the case, and so the shop would get NO profit at all. Give some discount to certain consumers and those consumers would become repeat buyers from their outlets, they'd sell more stuff, profit targets attained! And in a shop why not haggle. There's normally a margin built in to most shops to allow discounts for most items.
As for the arguement about the current operations they are involved in, and personal agreement with that or not, the point of the Army is to be there for our protection, putting their lives in danger for our safety. Your approval or otherwise of current operations does not negate that point, and the respect that should shown to those who put themselves in that position. It is to someone's detriment that they fail to realise this concept and have the attitude of "Well they took that job..." Whatever the reasons were for taking that job, they still took it for our collective benefit.
The purpose of the law in the UK is to offer protection *when it is required* (my emphisis). To wit: who's ever been in a 'lock-in'? Odds on, you were technically buying drinks after hours - the escape clause is that the publican will ring up the sale in the morning & so it's 'legal' (no after hours sale, M'lud).
In practice, we all benefit from an Authority who can use discretion in their interpretation of these laws (noisy lock-in that's causing grief? They have the power to shut it down. Motorist that's doing 80 on a quiet M-way in clear weather: turn a blind eye). Without this discretion, we all lose many of our civil liberties.
To the topic of the initial article: A military ID is available to 16 year olds as I remember - and someone this age isn't technically allowed to drink. Now, the original purpose of asking for ID was that the valid holder of such must be 18+ ('cause they're not available to anyone younger) but military service would cause a hicup in proceedings: our dear bouncer ^H^H^H^H^H door control officer has to subtract 16 years from today's date - not something I expect them to do with any great accuracy! Far better to instruct them like this: "Kevin, if you don't see an ID that has their photo on, don't tel 'em in'. Simple, binary rules for the doorman - and yet, it gives the publican room to move; if there's trouble, his neck is exposed (thus encouraging him to keep a tidy house). On the other hand, he has a pub half-full of squaddies and there's no trouble, the authorities simply won't care to examine the drinking age of the punters.
To me, that's English law in action: you're only phucked if you're truely incapable of behaving reasonably.
....or if you have a bad silk - but that's another topic entirely ;-)
"To the topic of the initial article: A military ID is available to 16 year olds as I remember - and someone this age isn't technically allowed to drink."
Not quite - certainly no 16 year old is allowed to buy alcohol in a licensed premises, but there are conditions under which he/she can drink wine and beer (but not spirits). That is with a "table meal" (a packet of crisps won't count) and there must be an adult present.
Note that the only absolute age limit on drinking in the UK is for those below the age of five (at least in England & Wales - Scotland may be different). In theory parents can give alcohol to children above that age, although one suspects that any family who allowed young children to get obviously intoxicated would come to the attention of social services and could lose custody if this was regular. They'd also be liable to various legal sanctions under various statutes involving the care of children.
The strange thing in this situation is that a driving licence is not an identity document but it is accepted as proof of identity
The DVLA and the Secretary of state for transport will agree that a driving licence should not be accepted as a form of ID, so how can pubs be legally allowed to accept a document that isn't proof of identity?
A friend of mine, chubby-faced and clean shaven but a married man of 26 was challenged for proof of age in an off-license. It hadn't happened before and he was genuinely taken aback and at a loss for words.
He'd not got any proof of age and struggling to think what might identify him as an adult, he stuttered out "But I've just fitted patio doors".
That proved to be sufficient evidence and he got served.
I wholeheartedly agree. People only go into Warrington to fight or pull slags. If the soldier really wanted a drink there are loads of places he could go without issue.
Most Warringtonians invade my quiet trendy suburb of Stockton Heath - the women looking for a better class of bloke, the blokes looking for a better class of women, thus bringing that area down as well. So now we have to go elsewhere (not saying where though for fear of it being ruined!)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
