Your views online

Trading Standards officers say one in four Capital shops sell cigarettes to under-18s. Holy smoke!

It should be illegal for under-18s to buy tobacco products and they should be prosecuted if they attempt to do so.

english charlie

As usual, paltry fines and ineffective bans are levied. If we were serious about this, then the second time a shop was caught, it'd have its alcohol and tobacco licence pulled for that address because they were unfit to sell them. This would hit both the income of the shop, and its resale value as a business, and it is only this that would make shopkeepers take the responsibility of their licences seriously.

A friend of Fernando Poo

Many 16-17 year olds look much older, especially girls – how many 16-20 year olds could you accurately age out of a sample of 200 or so?

Nitpicking

Great Britain. You can get married, have children, join the armed forces, gamble, all at 16, but you can't buy a legal product. Keep picking on the smokers. That will make all you anti-smokers all feel better about your bitter, empty lives. I say "free fags for everyone".

The cleaner

It should be mandatory to ID anyone attemping to buy tobacco or alchohol who looks under the age of 25. I have no sympathy for anyone selling cancer to children, but the government needs to set the rules and do more to stop under-age smoking.

Lux interior

I would point out that where tobacco is concerned the law is actually very ambiguous. It is an offence to sell tobacco products to minors, I have no problem with that at all, I do have a problem in that it is legal for minors to buy tobacco, a product which is not lawfully allowed to be sold to them.

Soapy100

It is all part of growing up – trying to get a drink before you are 18 or into the X certificate pictures under age. If people want to smoke and drink, why should the nanny state stop it?

Not available

Cigarettes are responsible for around 108,000 deaths a year in the UK ( probably higher). BAN THEM.

Hibeehawk

If you look at some of the haggard-looking schemies who often appear in the paper, many could pass for mid-40s when they are in fact only 22.

Friesian

Around-the-clock surveillance by local people has stopped rare baby falcons being stolen from nests in the Pentland Hills.

It is nice to hear of good results by volunteers, police and rangers rather than of vandalism unchecked. Just one bit of information that needs to be clarified. How do the authorities know that it has been humans removing the chicks over the past years? Has equipment been left behind, birds tracked through DNA testing, people caught red handed? We lost some ospreys locally about 3 years ago, pine martens were the culprits.

Dido Bendigo

As well as being the fastest-living creature on earth, the peregrine falcon is also the most intelligent and dexterous; as they are able to calculate pi to 1338 places whilst completing a Rubiks cube.

digestive biscuits V

Waste of time watchin' flyin' rats, Give your time to charity if you can spare it.

Glasgow stinks