Moralist Olympics in Leeds - Purple Door and Deep Blue

Yesterday two clubs had to face the Licensing Committee, Purple Door and Deep Blue. This article will look at the objections raised against Purple Door first. Essentially, the objections were identical to those submitted against Liberte on during Mondays hearing. The numbers are as follows....

Overall 32 objections were received, Rachel Reeves of course had pride of place with her letter being marked as Number One. Bernard Athas e-mail regretting that he couldn't make moral judgements appeared again as well. After that it was the same as usual from Cllr Christine MacNiven, Lisa Mulherin and Kamilla Maqsgood.

The same three kinds of template letters used against 'Liberte' also appeared again and accounted for 23 objections. The remaining entries were again identical to those submitted to the 'Liberte' hearing. I do however have some observations to make...

It has been proposed that a 'welfare pack' a raft of measures be adopted to help ensure the safety and well being of dancers in Leeds clubs. This of course is totally unacceptable to Object, who justify their view that the dancers welfare is best served by making them jobless, by rolling out a quote from their tired 'Lapdancer Testimonials' portfolio.

I hate it when Object lie by trying too convince us that they care about dancers.

Furthermore, it seems that the Object Leeds have decided to try and be really clever and use Teela Sanders own research against the industry. As you can see above, Object have copied and pasted an article from the Yorkshire Post, itself culled from Dr Sanders. I am not sure what point they are making by doing this, apart from seeming to support the view that pole dancing skills are in decline and bemoaning the money that hard working dancers can make.

The best original comment is below....

One group of objectors decided that they would justify their view that womens right to equality is best achieved by making 500 of them jobless, by framing the club scene as a modern day equivalent to the 'Black and White Minstrel Show'. It is of course an idiotic comparison, because if Leeds Council closed a club where 'black people put on shows for whites', the council itself would be justifiably accused of being racist and there are clubs where 'gay individuals' dance for the straight community. Many straight females use gay venues to socialise in so I fail to see the comparison. It is essentially an intellectually half baked attempt to make a point, but quiet frankly, apart from our amusement it has little or no value.

I wonder if the writer would be happier of the customers were 'half-naked' as well.

I also want to make the point that I hate it when people of colour are referred to as being 'black', as I find it racist.

So that was the opposition to Purple Door, essentially the same group of cynical politicians and moralists as yesterday...

Lets look at the next hearing, which was considering the application of Deep Blue.

The count stands at 32 objections. Reeves, Atha, MacNiven, Maqsgood and Mulherin submitted the same letters as they did for the last two clubs and the template letter count stands at 20. The rest of the objections were of course the same as on the last hearings.

Was there anything interesting? Well kind of....

Here the writer admits that ordinary night clubs can be 'very intimidating', a fact that anyone that has walked past one knows. But hang on...I thought it was just the lap dancing clubs that caused problems? Clearly not. I also have to let the writer know that 'there is this kind of lap dancing bar there' now and trust me you be a lot safer passing it that any normal night club. In fact I am amazed that the writer clearly hasn't even noticed Deep Blue and I also wonder if they objected to the venue when it was a normal nightclub and 'very intimidating'.

Above we have another example of an objector getting vicarious thrills by implying the dancers are prostitutes, an accusation they make without any supporting evidence.

In summary, the objections are quite frankly incredibly weak and any standard nightclub that was faced with them would walk away unscathed. But in this case we must remember that we are talking about lap dancing clubs, that by their nature have to accord to a different set of license conditions, set by bigots and petty minded moralists and that is a whole different ball game...

Postscript: Tomorrows Moralist Olympics will feature the hearings for the clubs that everyone (well 30 people maybe) seem to love to hate - 'Wildcats' and 'Red Leopard'. From what I have heard so far about what occurred, I will have an incredibly entertaining report for you to read.....