Retailers back right to sell ‘lads’ mags’

The chief executive of a body representing Irish newsagents has defended a shops’ right to stock “lads’ mags” on their shelves as they are operating fully within the law.

Vincent Jennings, of the Convenience Stores and Newsagents Association, responding to a letter from 11 lawyers in Britain to The Guardian newspaper calling for high-street retailers to “immediately withdraw lads’ mags and papers featuring pornographic front covers from their stores”.

The lawyers had claimed: “Such exposure is actionable where it violates the dignity of individual employees or customers, or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.”