Today I noticed 'Morrisons' put their copies of 'FHM' and 'Nuts in boxes so the front covers can't be seen.

[TotorosOcarina]

I'm not someone who frequents this topic but was curious as to how this would be seen, especially in this topic?

Personally I welcome it, I have no problem with te naked body but the way women are presented in these magazines makes me feel queasy.

DH asked, when I told him, if the papers were still on show, the ones with topless women on the front, but TBH I didn't look.

god vesuvia - I'd better stay out of there before they put me in a bag with "Elephants" in large black print on the outside :o

Totoros (love totoro) - thanks for letting us know. And do frequent it! It's nice round here honest

Good for Morrisons, if people want to buy that garbage then at least make them look like saddos while they are doing it.

Slightly off on a tangent but there is a newsagent in my town that has the biggest selection of pornography that you are ever likely to have the misfortune to see outside of a truckstop in Lithuania - I really don't want to see the tits and bums of 70 year old grannies when picking up one of DH's specialist sci-fi mags. They have them on the shelf in age-preferred order - 18+ all the way up to 70+ - .
I think I loitered a bit too long, I also noticed a UK Swinging clubs magazine!
I couldn't work in there, I'd be sacked for laughing at the sad gits.

There is a charity called the Front Page Campaign, who are petitioning the government to make this standard across the UK, you can find them at www.thefrontpagecampaign.org.uk and sign the petition!

thanks, meg

Thanks for this, meg. Your timing couldn't be better. Just this morning, my husband and I stopped to get petrol at a BP station and my husband came out complaining about the explicit magazines they had on the shelves in open view of everyone. Apparently some magazine was right next to the cash desk, where he was paying for petrol, with an entirely nude woman masturbating on the front cover. Neither of us are prudes but on a feminist and basic human decency level, we were both pretty appalled to see pornography openly available in a petrol station. I had thought there was supposed to be a law now against explicit imagery in shops but apparently not. Or if there is then this shop was ignoring it. I have signed the petition now and am going to ask DH to as well.

On the way back home we wondered where we can complain to about this because if they're breaking the law, then I'd like the store owners to be made aware that they could be prosecuted. Does anyone know if these BP petrol stations are run by BP or are they some kind of franchise?

Hi all
I'm a member of Object and a few people have been posting over the last week that their local Morrisons are now stocking the lads mags with covers. Great news!

Sainsbury's have been doing this for a while, following customer feedback. I tried complaining to Tesco and WH Smith but, after much correspondence, they basically stuck two fingers up and said they weren't going to do anything.

WHSmith told me that they had a height minimum of 1.2m for their lads mags. I went on to the Department of Health website and found a height/weight chart for children and it said that the average 6/7 year old is 1.2m tall. I wrote to WHSmith and asked where they got their 1.2m minimum from and what their definition of "child" was. Needless to say, I never did a response other than basically "sod off" from them.

We weren't asking for much - just to move them on to the top shelf and put a cover over them so a guy would have to move his arm up just a little bit more and behind a cover to get his ThomasTank mag. But no - it seems that the extra effort that a horny man/boy would have to go to far outweighs the offence caused to customers by having to see these magazines every time they want to buy a pint of milk.

If they have to cover up these magazines, it does beg the question of why they are selling them in the first place.

And I have noticed that the Daily Sport now usually carries a full page photo of some barely legal girl bent over with her crotch on view on nearly every cover. When did we become so desensitised that people think this is acceptable to have on view in shops?!

@InMyPrime - the trouble is, there are no rules as yet, just some voluntary guidelines that have been published by a national group of newsagents (can't remember the group off the top of my head). The Front Page Campaign would like to see the guidelines go further and to be made law.

Thankfully, the sales of lads mags are dropping hugely whilst the sales of more health/fitness magazines are staying static or are increasing (I've been monitoring the sales for the past 2.5 years when they are published every 6 months). So it seems that the novelty of the tits/football combo is even wearing a bit thin for lads now.

Oh, and I also found a quote from a former MD of WHSmith in which she defended their decision to start stocking 'Playboy' again by saying that the cover of 'Playboy' is usually no worse than something like FHM. Yet they put one on the top shelf and cover it up and the other on the middle shelf next to the teenage girls' magazines! Some Superdrug stores have been known to stock them next to the CBeebies magazines!

InMyPrime - the only thing you can do, unfortunately, is to take a photo and send it to the head office of BP and complain. The more customers who complain, the more likely they are to do something about it.