ROYSTON, UK — Is nothing sacred? Such may well be among the thoughts had by a rattled vicar and an angry town councilor. The latest travesty against decent, god-fearing, family-loving men is a bathroom located vending machine that sells scandalous products.Vibrators and handcuffs are among the items that men using the bathroom at the Old Post Office can purchase during their visit to the convenience room. Naughty Vend, the company that owns the machine, can also provide the curious and daring with inflatable sheep and a penile erectile potion called Choco-Agra.
The thing is, according to councilman Rob Inwood and the Rev. Lesley Harman, these are not the kinds of items that belong in an establishment open to people of all ages. Inwood, in fact, contends that the pub owners need to make up their mind about whether they’d rather sell sex toys or serve food to children.
“It’s a bit bizarre,” Inwood observed recently, “that they encourage families to use the pub until 7:00pm — and have sex toys for sale! If they’re going to go in that direction, they should be an over-21 club.”
Harman, on the other hand, sees it as another example of society’s declining moral standards. “As you can imagine, I don’t have a very high opinion of it,” the vicar of nearby St. John the Baptist Church observed. “It’s part of the whole process of the sexualisation of society and it doesn’t help people to treat sex in the right way.”
The vicar is worried that the sale of such items won’t stop with the pub. “It heralds the advent of sex shops in our high streets,” he foretold.
John Birks, assistant manager for the Old Post Office pub sees things differently. According to him, the machines do exceptionally well and only sell miniature versions of the real things for laugh-out-loud novelty purposes. Furthermore, Birks says that “there are no filthy pictures on it and it does no harm to kids. It’s child friendly.”
The folks at Naughty Vend believe that their products are “just a bit of fun for people to buy when they have had a few drinks” and say that their machines are available in a number of pubs throughout England.
The North Herts Council, after having the issue brought to its attention, has concluded that the Old Post Office doesn’t need any kind of special license to sell the toys because they are not the primary reason for the pub being open. Nonetheless, according to a spokesman, “now the council’s aware of this, it will be investigating.”
