Archive for July, 2009
July 16th, 2009 | 
Author: A Happy Shopper has been caught selling alcohol to children – just days before its licence was due to be suspended for being caught out three times previously.
Mr Mohammed Ahmed, who runs the Happy Shopper on Briercliffe Road, had his licence suspended on 18th June. The suspension was due to run for four weeks starting Monday 13th July, which allowed time for him to appeal before the suspension took effect.
But police and Trading Standards officers went back on Friday 10th July and took a teenager with them to conduct a test purchase. They found that the shop was still prepared to supply alcohol to children.
Local councillor Liberal Democrat Coun Darren Reynolds said, “The Council’s stated policy is to take breaches like this extremely seriously.
“It’s a shame some licensees take a different attitude to their licences. Clearly the four-week suspension didn’t work. The Council now needs to do what their policy says and impose an extremely serious penalty.
“Burnley is one of the worst areas in the country for alcohol misuse and it’s part of my job to fix that. When kids get drunk in the street it’s a tragedy.
“It damages communities, it damages families, and, worst of all, it damages the long-term health of the children.
“Complaining that someone’s job depends on the licence is no good. Assassins’ jobs depend on being able to assassinate people, but we don’t make that legal just because it creates jobs, do we? In my view this licence should be revoked permanently.
“Other licensees take note: sell to children, and this councillor will get you.”
Coun Reynolds said that he was grateful to the police and Trading Standards for pursuing the problem vigorously, and said that his council colleagues from all political parties now needed step up to the mark to make their contribution to solving the problem.
Posted in 
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Nick Clegg has described Gordon Brown’s policy plans as “a hotch potch of unrelated Whitehall schemes” with no unifying” vision from a prime minister who was “running out of steam”.Mr Clegg said both the Prime Minister and David Cameron were treating the voters as if they were children who were “too young to know the truth”.
He said: “Neither are willing to come clean on the difficult long-term savings we will need to make to balance the nation’s books.” |
| “It’s like a big hoax: they trade insults and numbers but hide the truth.” The public had been promised a vision based on decentralisation and personal entitlements but many of these entitlements were “just the recycled versions of old targets”, he said.
“Last week you called a cut an investment. This week you are calling a target an entitlement. Can you tell us exactly what’s the difference?” The Liberal Democrat Leader concluded that the Prime Minister’s statement was nothing more than a “hotchpotch of unrelated Whitehall schemes, a ministerial cut-and-paste job”. |
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First they closed the A&E to emergencies
Now they are closing the Childrens ward at Burnley General
Join the campaign today
Now they are closing the Childrens ward at Burnley General
Join the campaign today
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