Celebrating 10,000 Page Views - Its Charlie Dacke Week!!!

I know I keep going on about this, but I am just so chuffed that something that I started in January will soon achieve its 10,000th page view and our readership continues to grow as well. Have a look at the StrippingTheIllusion world coverage map...

As you can see we have a good chunk of the globe popping by to see for themselves what is going on in Britain and how we are highlighting the lies of prohibitionist fascists that seem to be everywhere at the moment. Now, I was wondering exactly how to celebrate not only our 10,000th page view, but also reaching the finals of the 2012 Erotic Awards. I thought about it for a while and then realised that maybe a series of articles that essentially define what the blog is about and also provide an unflinching analysis of why this blog exists would be a good way to do things...

All I needed was a subject, I wondered whether Anna Van Heeswijk would make a good topic, but lets face it, Object have got a bit boring of late. I considered Rania Khan as a good subject, but Rania is busy fighting the militarisation of Tower Hamlets. Then, this morning I received some cool frame grabs about a Facebook campaign to close 'Elegance', the lap dancing club in Portsmouth and that's when I realised that the best way to celebrate would be to focus on our old friend Charlie Dacke. I actually have a weeks worth of material for this as well and it starts with the frame below, so tighten your seat belts, because we are in for a wild ride, because its.......

Its Charlie Dacke Week

Jani Franck really wants to object to Elegance but isn't really sure what to say though. My best advice is to be honest and say what you think. If you don't like something, state your position clearly and honestly and you can sleep soundly knowing that you've done things for the right reason. The problem is that Jan is worried that her reasons of objecting won't hold water so she asked Charlie Dacke what to say....

Charlie responded and advised Jan to object about 'no-go zones' and feeling unsafe while walking past clubs. But if the 'no-go zones' existed, Jan would know about them already, wouldn't she? Maybe she needs to walk past Elegance herself to experience the 'no-go-zone-of objectification' herself, that way, when she objects its based upon experience, as opposed to something she's been told to write.

Charlie advises Jan to complain about illegal parking, which is an absurd assumption unless you watched where the drivers of the illegally parked cars went after they illegally parked them. Jan is then told to discuss how she feels about lap dancing clubs and I just hope that she is honest in her objection, because otherwise its a bit of a conspiracy against freedom of expression and that is something that Jan Franck is very much against...

I cannot imagine there are too many Jan Francks living in the Portsmouth area, so I hope that I am right when I say that the Jan Franck who was conspiring with Charlie Dacke to close Elegance is the same one that was interviewed by The Guardian when the art house cafe of which she is a director of, were going to screen a film called 'On The Verge'.

What happened was as follows....

'SmashEDO', an activist group made a short documentary about EDO, a Brighton based arms dealer. The police it seems did not come out of the documentary covered in glory and it seems that there may have been a group conspiring to ensure the film was never publicly screened. Now Jan, decided that her art cafe would make an ideal place to screen the film, but she received a visit from the police....

"It was frightening. The police officer asked me if I knew anything about the smashEDO people. He said they were leftwing anarchists. I grew up in South Africa and this felt like the sort of thing the police there would do. It felt like political policing."

Well Jan, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it seems that you value freedom of expression, apart from when it comes to lap dancing clubs and the people that work in them, when political policing is suddenly a very cool, rad thing to do.

Its amazing how time and circumstances can turn freedom fighters into prohibitionists. Freedom of expression is freedom of expression and exists for everyone Jan, not just for some people and not others based upon political convenience.

Now, as I said earlier, I have a weeks worth of material and comment about Charlie Dacke, so stay posted for the next instalment, which should be on this blog by Monday evening.

Remember, please tell your friends that its 'Charlie Dacke Week' at StrippingTheIllusion.

In our next episode, prepare to be mindblown as Charlie Dacke tells Kathryn Rimmington all about the 'den of misogyny'  that is 'Elegance',