UKH

I was wanting to buy some spare crampons for (hopefully) taking clients out in spring snow. (Yes, I realise this might be optimistic, but the government self employed grant allowed me to make the speculative purchase!)

Anyway, I found a good deal on Monte Rosa's on Go Outdoors which I thought I would go for. However, they won't let you buy, or even reserve for click and collect, online as it is an age restricted product! 

I have never heard of crampons being age restricted before! Decathlon let me buy some from them instead with no age checks! 

Seems pretty unusual to me. Anyone else had this before?

I am pretty sure I've observed it in passing but it was not notable to me as I wasn't wanting to purchase anything, so it only got about a quarter of a Roger Moore raised eyebrow from me before I moved swiftly on.

I once had to take a slackline out of my hand luggage and check it into the hold on a flight back from France on the grounds that I could use it to tie up the crew and then beat them round the head with the ratchet part.  Or maybe it was the other way round.

When I flew out though Liverpool they hadn't questioned it, presumably on the grounds that they knew what a proper offensive weapon looked like.

And this is linked to age restrictions on items making said items impossible to order online because....

I enjoyed the story, made me laugh!

Crampons being an age restricted product does seem a bit weird, but the idea that you can't buy an age restricted product online seems weirder.

Ok, maybe a bit tangential, but both relate to a rather over-enthusiastic interpretation of a what might constitute an offensive weapon.  Presumably crampons qualify as bladed weapons.

Actually, I've just checked, here's HMG list of banned weapons.  Check out the penultimate one.

Banned knives and weapons

It is illegal to bring into the UK, sell, hire, lend or give anyone the following:

• butterfly knives (also known as ‘balisongs’) - a blade hidden inside a handle that splits in the middle
• disguised knives - a blade or sharp point hidden inside what looks like everyday objects such as a buckle, phone, brush or lipstick
• flick knives (also known as ‘switchblades’ or ‘automatic knives’) - a blade hidden inside a handle which shoots out when a button is pressed
• gravity knives
• stealth knives - a knife or spike not made from metal (except when used at home, for food or a toy)
• zombie knives - a knife with a cutting edge, a serrated edge and images or words suggesting it is used for violence
• swords, including samurai swords - a curved blade over 50cm (with some exceptions, such as antiques and swords made to traditional methods before 1954)
• sword-sticks - a hollow walking stick or cane containing a blade
• push daggers
• blowpipes (‘blow gun’)
• telescopic truncheons - extend automatically by pressing button or spring in the handle
• batons - straight, side-handled or friction-lock truncheons
• hollow kubotans - a cylinder-shaped keychain holding spikes
• shurikens (also known as ‘shaken’, ‘death stars’ or ‘throwing stars’)
• kusari-gama - a sickle attached to a rope, cord or wire
• kyoketsu-shoge - a hook-knife attached to a rope, cord or wire
• kusari (or ‘manrikigusari’) - a weight attached to a rope, cord, wire
• hand or foot-claws
• knuckledusters

 Actually, maybe a slackline would be included as a kusari? 

The first time I saw it (possibly not Dave's but a very similar variation) I sort of smirked. Unfortunately multiple versions of it - all, no doubt, true - have been posted on here over they years, usually in threads started by people asking if they can blag all their equipment for a Euro climbing trip as hand baggage. 

it's item 4 that now has me doing a 75% Roger Moore eyebrow!

I also wonder what a 'gravity knife' is. Some kind of guillotine? Or something with a blade for cutting gravity, that involves some sort of mind-bending and horrendously dangerous physics?

I also wonder if the ban on sword-sticks had an inadvertent part to play in top-hats and capes falling out of fashion

It’s true, I never have any problem with my subtly lethal anti-gravity knives.

Or pull-daggers.

ive recently bought both an axe and a new billhook online. Both were age restricted, but the courier id me on the door (ok, one of them said "you're over 18, then" and buggered off)

Rather boringly, it's simply something a bit like a flick knife, but without a spring. You hold it pointing downwards, press a button and the blade drops out of the handle (due to er.. gravity) and locks.

However that doesn't explain why crampons are age restricted, as that's a list of things that are completely illegal to possess.

Also does a hex (or microwire) constitute a "kusari (or ‘manrikigusari’) - a weight attached to a rope, cord, wire"?

Or you open it with a flick of the wrist.  (Unlike er.. a flick knife.)

The other kind of gravity knife sounds like something I could definitely do with on my climbing rack.  Would I use it to trim the gravity away from me, I wonder, or the crag?

It sounds like a yoyo does.  Do you get the impression a lot of this stuff was outlawed by some very poorly thought through knee-jerk legislation in the midst of a kung-fu movie inspired moral panic?
(Sort of like a 'dangerous dogs act' for cutlery.)

Back to the OP, is there a store near you that you could have used for Click and Collect if it had been an option?

I personally operate in Leonard Nimoy eyebrow raise percentages. It's slightly more difficult because if I want to be truthful I'm limited to 1-5%, but I can exaggerate to great effect.

You have room for improvement at least!

In normal times, yes! At the moment, I can't go there but my cousin lives near so I would have ordered in his name and asked him to collect and send them to me

Yep.

We have:

Does that mean if I eat the knife in front of the copper who stops me, or play with it, I'm ok?

So if I have inspirational quotes and images of fluffy kittens on my zombie knife I can take it to the pub?

Thank God, I feel much safer knowing that curved  blades over 50cm are illegal, I'm quite happy to be stabbed and slashed by straight blades over 50cm.

A pair of crampons you could sort of semi understand some people might consider them as a potentially dangerous weapon, I certainly wouldn't want to get hit or kicked with one in anger. 

But I once had to show ID at BnQ self checkout for buying a small plastic palette "knife" which was nothing more than a slightly larger version of what primary school kids spread glue with. But apparently as it had the word knife in the name it was considered a knife so had to be treated like all other blades. I suspect a store policy rather than law. But still a bit over the top.

so although click and collect is not available, if you’d wanted those ones you could have called the store, explained the situation, and had them put aside as a non-click-and-collect store purchase, if my understanding of the website statement “stores are open” is correct. 

I probably could have, but at that point it becomes not worth the hassle when I reckon the Decathlon ones will be fine. I was more bemused by it than anything.

I went to the Alps to meet a friend just after leaving uni so was super tight money wise, went with just a small backpack and wore five layers (it was July). I flew from Manchester, passing through security no problems.

10 days later flying back from Germany, airport security ask me to empty my bag having seen the x-ray. I pulled out a Swiss army knife which I had forgotten about on the way out but had found midweek.

The security guard looked at me, opened the main blade and held it against her credit card sized security pass. The blade was slightly shorter than the length of the pass, she shrugged, closed the knife and handed it back to me. I must have looked shocked because she asked me to repack and move on. Schnell! 

No, but I had my hair spiral confiscated at the airport.  I was very cross. 

(Like a hair slide but twisted.  No sharp bits, it goes in your hair, it's not dangerous.)  

https://images.app.goo.gl/CqRDytBTxTyE45EeA

B&Q had work benches down as an age restricted item last time I looked at one on line!

Nah kittens are evil things and so imply violence. Just have flowers instead.

It is fun watching the ban the bogey weapon of the week although works better in some US states where they have stuff like flick knifes and bowie knives are specifically banned but its fine to carry a colt 45 on your hip, a revolver on your ankle and a gravy seal issue AR-15 slung over the shoulder because those are far less dangerous in the wrong hands than a 3 inch flickknife.

For crampons it makes sense I guess looked at the right way. I mean a knife only has one point but those crampons have ten. Thats getting into zombie knife terrority.

Come on people, don’t you remember Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love and her poisoned mono points? Clearly crampons are a dangerous weapon.  

Just don't shop at go outdoors anymore,  of anyone's interested why you can tell them your allergic to pathetic ShiteHawks

Maybe next thing will be passing tests and background checks if you want the dangerous 12 or 14 point ones! 

Where do I sign up for the gravy seals? Sounds the best sort of special forces  

they are salty sea-dogs. It’s the African-American division. 

I thought that the problem was that girlymonkey was too old, and hence had show that she was less than 40, otherwise she might harm herself in crampons.....

:-}

(Ducks shower of fancy knives being hurled by GM).