Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Leeds Once Again, no surprise really!


This is TonyN writing for the blog as we finally have something worth discussing.

Well nothing has been written recently as councils are facing up to the worry they may end up in court. Already in Leicester a club has won the legal right to continue trading. In Oxford the Thirst Lodge has continued trading while the owners take the council to court and you would think any sensible council would wait until the results are in before risking tax payers money.

Well any city that didn't have Rachel Reeves as a MP or a Chrlwood as a councillor. As discussed on this blog previously there are people striving to close clubs, put dancers out of work and turn the night time economy into a wreck.

There is a public consultation being run by Leeds City Council with all the details being on (http://www.leeds.gov.uk/Business/Pages/Sex-Establishments.aspx) and the actual consultation page on (https://consult.leeds.gov.uk/leeds/kms/dmart.aspx?LoggingIn=tempVar&noip=1&filter_status=1) that is open to the public. Apart from the requirement to actually write something there are no mandatory fields. I would say if people do decide to make comments please be clear in your opinion. We don't want anyone saying you are for closures of legal businesses if you are not.

So how did we get to this stage? It seems by the miracle of a citizen panel, which of course tends to be full of people who have agendas. The average citizen will probably find more enjoyable ways of spending their time. As the questionnaire is on the Leeds website I read through it, several times, and to me it seemed structured to get one result. Any proper questionnaire would make sure that you can't go through just ticking one box, Leeds however made everything against the clubs be the first box including the number of clubs being zero. Laziness or people who want others to fill in the questionnaire in a certain way had it very easy.

We also have the wonderful new section on the Child Friendly City and the comments on site with sensitive uses. So how many young children are in the city centre at 10pm? How many schools are open at 10pm? How many churches are having services at 10pm? As far as I can tell the child friendly sensitive council thinks parents don't control their kids and they will be going to church and school in the middle of the night.

The council is suggesting that the appropriate number of clubs is 4, the city currently has 7. So what will happen to reduce the number of clubs? Refusing to renew a license? Well the council have stated on the new policy that under the human rights act Article 1 of the first Protocol states everyone is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his or her property and this will include licenses. Any decent lawyer will be able to use that in court is my guess so why go about the process in the first place? To me it seems the council wants to make sure no more clubs open and that the selling of an existing club would be difficult in the extreme.

Also within the suggested council policy is reference to violence against women. If people do decide to either mail the council or fill in the questionnaire it would be worth pointing out there is no causal link between clubs and sexual violence. This idiocy stems from the failed Lilith report and certain members of the police looking to score brownie points.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, comedy and other Chasmal standards, if I need to write again I will try to include more to make it fun. Chasmal himself has a lot going on in his life but there is a need to communicate this as the council has asked on their website that people spread the word. If anyone needs to follow up you can use tonyprince@acdcfan.com to contact me.

4 comments:

  1. Leicester tried to close clubs last year by reducing the numbers and lost on appeal. There is also the Thurst Lodge stuff in Oxford coming up. Aparently they have taken legal advice but really I can't see how they can take the license off a legally operated club for no reason other than to meet some arbitrary number they have come up with. No doubt if it does come to this there will be some location reason given {in Leicester they said Angels was too close to a University sports centre !} but if challenged it will be shown as nonsense in court. The problem is that if they lose this I think they will fix the number at 7 and then refuse to give a new license to any club changing hands { a nil policy by stealth as one of the Hackney councillors put it} which will eventually mean clubs dying out anyway.

    Tyke

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    1. I have no doubt Reeves and Charlwood will do anything to strangle the industry even if they have no remit to do it. If the businesses cannot be sold the owners are not able to enjoy the license as described in European Law. You would think that people would learn lessons. Hackney, Portsmouth, Tower Hamlets and Leicester have all seen that the council cannot just impose its will illegally and that the public are against Nil Policies. I have another council trying to do this and will be blogging about it in the next couple of days.

      TonyN

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  2. Hi Tony, Great to see you at the helm, i was worried this blog had finished.
    Reeves and co just don't give up do they? Over here in Leamington they have now decided to do a public consultation for SEV's, as a result of the moral outrage from certain District Councillors who want to try and force through their agenda. At the moment they are in the process of deciding the details and format of this consultation, but i'll keep you updated if I hear anymore.

    Also in Coventry they have imposed a nil cap on all clubs, but have thankfully excluded Coventry's only lap dancing club(club Heat)from this. Still not good though!
    http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2012/12/17/coventry-council-to-ban-sex-clubs-92746-32439711/

    Looking forward to more posts,

    John Ridgely

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