Woman fined £1,000 for selling a goldfish...

So, today being April 1st, I received a challenge via twitter to buy the Daily Mail today, and see if I can spot the deliberately made-up story...

I got to page 8 and had found 7 of them, with every other story under question...

But one that got my attention was this one:

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Pet shop owner, Joan Higgins, 66, was fined £1,000, put under curfew and warned she could face a year in prison.

Wow! A £1,000 fine, a tag and the threat of a jail sentence? What the hell did she do?

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But this electronic tag has been fitted on a great grandmother who was hauled before the courts for selling a goldfish to a boy of 14.

In the UK, selling a pet to anyone under 16 is illegal. The kid, in this case, was sent to the shop, by police, to see if the shop owner was following regulations.

I’ve spent a while working in a supermarket, and you do not want to be caught selling booze to an under-age customer… That’ll net you up to a £1,000 fine, a criminal record, and it will land the store you work for in hot water, as their booze license can be revoked. And like this, police will send kids in to attempt to buy booze to test if a store is keeping to the standards.

But surely, you’re thinking, a grand fine, a tag and prison is a bit severe?

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Mrs Higgins and her son were charged with selling an animal to someone under 16 and causing unnecessary suffering to a cockatiel.

OOOOOHHHHH! So there was a high-level animal cruelty charge filed as well! I see! But I guess: “Pet shop owner who abused bird receives fine” isn’t as shocking as “Shop owner sells goldfish, receives fine”.

Naturalment, in lieu of doing any fucking work, Richard ‘Smellyface’ Littlejohn has taken up this story… Which, incidently, made the front page of the Express just yesterday.

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The curious case of the great-grandmother tagged, fined £1,000 and put under a curfew for selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old boy reads like a chapter from my latest book, which the Daily Mail has been serialising this week.

Wow! Got in a book plug and a lie in the first paragraph! Well done!

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So they staked out the premises and sent in a 6ft tall schoolboy, just shy of his 15th birthday, to buy a goldfish.

When Mrs Higgins failed to ask him to prove his age, they moved in and charged her with selling a fish to a person under 16, and threw in a second offence of failing to provide appropriate care and treatment to a cockatiel with a weepy eye and a broken leg - something she denied.

‘Causing undue suffering to a cockatiel’ was the charge, not ‘failing to provide appropriate care’. Not that either makes her any less of an animal abuser, IMHO. Oh, and he handily lets go the fact that the attending vet put the bird down due to the severity of its condition.

More info leaks out:

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n court, she had no option but to plead guilty. She was technically in breach of the law,

SHE BROKE THE LAW! EVEN SMELLYFACE ADMITS IT!

Technicalities, my arse! had I sold booze to a 10-year old, technicalities would still see me in court!

You break the law, you pay the penalty. Again, this is coming from a leather-patched, tweed-jacketed, rimless-spectacled, beardy, organic farming liberal, but I do get my knickers in a twist when a fucking pet shop owner cannot take care of a pet.

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although she said the cockatiel was not for sale and she had intended to take it to the vet.

“Oh, I was going to take it to the vet…” THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU???

“I was gonna do it” is not a fucking excuse!

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Selling a goldfish to a minor wasn’t even an offence until four years ago. They were freely given away as prizes at fairs.

I personally have ‘won’ at least 6 goldfish in this way!

Only one of them lived more than six months… Making it to the 8-month mark.

None of which detracts from the crippled, fatally infected, fucking bird!

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You can’t become a JP unless you subscribe to the entire, warped New Labour agenda which is a deliberate assault on natural justice and common sense.

Pardon me but I thought: Break the law = Get in trouble was common fucking sense!

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Mrs Higgins’ ordeal is closely related to the Proof of Identity and elf’n’safety madness which has been sweeping Britain and which has been well-documented in my column.

And it is perfectly indicative of the research standards you keep to, Littlecock.

I was hoping to have a fun filled April fools day… But no, now I’m fucking angry…

But at least I’ve got this to lift my spirits, and this to make me chuckle.

This law is retarded and the country is retarded.

Is there so little crime of in Failville that the police feel they need to cause some?

WD40 STOP STEALING MY BRAIN. They were talking about this on Have I Got News For You earlier. I had to explain to my parents that it wasn't true.

By the by, I would probably vote Labour if they used the Step Outside Posh Boy campaign.

WD40 wrote:

Naturalment, in lieu of doing any fucking work, Richard ‘Smellyface’ Littlejohn has taken up this story…

OK, I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark here and guess you don't like this Littlejohn guy... [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]