What do Edgar Savisaar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have in common?

They both deny what is blatantly obvious to just about everyone else in the world.

A couple of days after the preposterous Persian president insisted there are no such things as homosexuals in Iran, our mayor and saviour has made the [far less offensive but just as wilfully blinkered] claim, to all intents and purposes, that there is no such thing as underage drinking in Estonia. Or at least that if there is, they're not buying their alcohol from anywhere that shouldn't be selling it to them.

The issue kicked off in the last few days when it emerged that a check-out operator working at Prisma in the Kristiine shopping centre had sold a couple of cans of beer to some 17-year-olds. Hardly the most heinous of crimes, you might think, but it has since cost the supermarket its liquor licence - due in no small measure, I suspect, to Edgar Savisaar sanctioning such a move in the media.

Makes you wonder what City Hall's going to do when every shop and supermarket in Tallinn is found to be selling fags and booze to teenagers, something Northern Police Prefecture head honcho Raivo Küüt has gone on public record as describing as 'out of control'. Of course, you have to believe that's actually the case, and that the city's police know what they're talking about. Our Itkar does not.

"I'm sure the case of Kristiine Prisma is an exception to the rule," he said. When quizzed on the degree of justice that would be brought to bear on a store not caught selling beer to the almost-of-age but, say, vodka to a 13-year-old, Savisaar gave the kind of answer that is the verbal equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. "Impossible," he stated. "But if it were, if a 13-year-old were to be sold vodka in Tallinn, City Council would have to have a serious discussion about it."

You have to feel sorry for Prisma, since they're very clearly being made an example of here, but in a totally pointless and unsustainable way that quite possibly also has no basis in law. I'm not making excuses for the check-out operator who failed to ask for ID, and I'm not saying that 17-year-olds drinking beer isn't an issue. But there are much more effective ways of making your point than reacting in such a knee-jerk manner with your eyes closed to the heart of the problem.