A 92-year-old asked for ID? I need a drink

By Martin Samuel - Sport for the Daily Mail
Updated: 08:12 EDT, 4 November 2011

Plain stupid: 92 year-old Diane was refused a bottle of whisky because she didn't have her passport or driving license

Diane Taylor, a 92-year-old great-grandmother from Harlow in Essex, went into her local One Stop shop for a bottle of whisky. She was asked for ID. Diane produced an over-60s bus pass, an OAP card and her pacemaker certificate, to no avail. As she did not have a passport or driving licence, her purchase was refused.

‘We are sorry for the inconvenience, but staff are required to ask all customers for ID,’ said a spokesman. He claimed the shop had to enforce a strict policy or risk losing its licence, although there is a simpler explanation.

Some people are just really, really thick.

Unfortunately, they often end up in the service industries most governed by regulations and without the wit to assess a situation on merit (a 92-year-old widow probably won’t have a driving licence, or carry a passport, particularly if she is only nipping out for a bottle of Famous Grouse).

It is beyond them to fathom that an OAP card is also proof a person is over 18, even if the precise date of birth is not displayed. This would take something called common sense. It is an increasingly rare commodity.

A short while ago, I had the misfortune to attempt to travel from London to Newcastle with British Airways. The helpful staff let me check in and pass through security, without revealing my flight had been seriously delayed, making the journey redundant. My remaining hope was to make a quick turnaround and drive north — but first I had to clear the airport.

‘You can’t come back through here,’ said security. ‘You have to be escorted out.’ This is how I found myself, with a crowd of similarly stranded people, in front of a useless BAA official who was to be our guide. ‘How long will this take?’ asked a woman. ‘I won’t lie,’ said the useless one, ‘it might be around an hour and a half.’

She said we had to go through immigration. I reminded her, in considerably more measured tones than the situation deserved, that I was a domestic passenger. I wouldn’t have had to go through immigration if I had completed my journey successfully. I didn’t even need a passport to travel. So surely there must be another way for me to exit the airport, without joining the end of a long queue of international travellers?

‘I don’t want confrontation,’ she said. And there our argument stalled. Whatever logic I attempted to inject, she didn’t want confrontation. Not that there was any.

There were just frustrated people looking to get on with their day, with the thick and useless forces of authority in league against them. The rules made no sense, but could not be questioned in any way.

Eventually, I went home. Somewhere, no doubt Diane Taylor got a drop of the hard stuff. Maybe if the world was given its long overdue intelligence upgrade, at 92, she wouldn’t have such need for it.

And the mythologising continues. Steve Jobs’s last words, apparently, were: ‘Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.’ He achieved death, according to his sister, Mona Simpson. We all will, eventually. There are some pretty dumb people on this planet, but they will all be able to pull that one off.

Achieving death: Apparently Steve Jobs's last words were 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow'

Of course, some people say ‘wow’ in reaction to pain, or to the amount of drugs a dying man would be given, but we all know now that in our consumer-fixated society the Apple co-founder is close to being canonised, a very modern saint, like Diana. His last words must therefore have meaning. They showed a ‘capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal’ according to Simpson.

Meanwhile, over in Bonn, Germany, a suburban café called Apfelkind (Applechild) is being pursued by Jobs’s company over its logo. This shows a red apple with a cut-out silhouette of a child in a hat. Apple Germany aggressively claims it resembles their own. Christin Romer, the café owner, says she may lose her business if the challenge is successful. Oh wow.

Forget 4x4s, Ken, what about 5x3s?

Ken Livingstone has broken off from his busy schedule pretending to still be Mayor of London to write a book. Yours truly gets a passing mention. Ken quotes from a column in The Times in April 2008, after it was revealed he had fathered five children by three women. Ken selects a sentence to give the impression I had a moral objection. He’s clever like that.

Jack of all trades: Ken Livingstone has broken off from his busy schedule pretending to still be Mayor of London to write a book

Actually, the piece was about over-population. It drew comparison between Ken’s £25 levy on fuel uneconomic cars (4x4s as they are known), and the far greater ecological toll on a planet overrun by Westernised humans (like Ken’s five by three). This is a man who saw fit to advise the population of the capital on when it was right to pull the toilet chain, to save water.

Yet five more humans mean five times the chain pulls, five times the waste, five times the consumption and each citizen lasts, on average, roughly 80 years. Humans stuff up the planet a lot more than the life choices Ken presumes to judge: that was my point.

Not that I’ve ever had a 4x4, by the way. Even though we’ve got three kids. I just think that most people are like Ken: very green right up until the point when it starts to affect them. Books that are not printed on recycled paper, for instance. Still, he probably thinks he’s done his bit.