This is not the first case of its kind, but Tesco recently refused to sell a couple of bottles of wine to a middle-aged professional woman on the grounds she had her fourteen-year-old daughter with her, and might have been going to give the wine to the girl. Of course Tesco apologised afterwards, but it is disturbing that such a mindset exists amongst their staff in the first place. It is yet another example of our growing national paranoia over alcohol. Anyone seriously intending to buy alcohol on behalf of a minor would in any case not take the child into the shop with them. And it fails to recognise the fact that it is not illegal for parents to let their children drink alcohol in moderation anyway.