Yet Another Round Up

Coming towards the end of the year so rounding up the craziness that is Xmas spirit by some councils. The attitude and timing of some of the actions seems an effort to kill Xmas business. Not sure why but hey thats what grinchy councils are there for.

La Salsa in Halifax is due its hearing tomorrow (16th) now it is interesting because the club opened in the same week and same street as WomenCentre Ltd back in 2002. All of a sudden after 11 years of operating now it seems there is a concern of exploitation and that the club could act as a deterrent. strange they have only just figure this out. Of course now that the clubs have the branding sexual entertainment venue it does create a picture that does bear any relation to reality. 3 public objections have been received 2 associated to the women centre, there does seem to be several bars and restaurants in the area so will be interesting to see if any police complaints are centred on the club.

As people have been expecting the clubs in Leeds have decided to fight, Deep Blue and Wildcats have both been given permission to trade while seeking a judicial review. There could end up being 3 of these and each could run up a bill of £1m per review. Time to feel very sorry for the Leeds public who will have to foot the bill given that the council is already talking of cutting services. Add to that the clubs will be trading when the tour de france starts there this is a big slap in the face for Reeves and Charlwood. No doubt the legal people will be looking at the links between the licensing committee and SAR. Just what has been said behind closed doors and why has this been hidden from the public? Should make a good book out of this.

Upstairs in York is due for it's first license renewal, York Feminist Network has go an online petition going. The use an Object banner and claim that the lobby group Object are in fact a human rights organisation. Once again there is a claim that clubs are linked to sexual violence but don't mention lilith. No matter how many times that zombie stat/woozle is killed it rears its ugly head at the next battle. Either none of these groups talk to each other or they just cannot admit their claims have no place in reality. Nearly all the meetings for the last 2 months of the licensing committee have been cancelled so it is hard to actually confirm what is going on. However I will start digging further into this. Nothing like a new group of people to check out and find out what they are up to. I was looking through the signatures for the petition and there is a Dr Grandhighpriest on there once I stopped laughing I started to wonder how many signatures are based in York and it appears that very few do. Still not even 20% towards their target so we can assume it is not going to amount to much.

Worcester will get it's club Black Cherry after all, Ash Patel had dropped plans to open one in a location called the Butts (must not make inane jokes) but dropped it as the location was an issue with a councillor who as we had previously pointed out had been misleading people into believing the objection was from the council. Well now he has taken over the old DNA nightclub which has most of the licenses in place. So looks like at least we will get one new club.

Newmarket's Heaven's Gentlemen's club had its license renewed even though the signage is a little bigger than it is suppose to be, considering that it is co-located with a night club with a really big sign I can see why the sign was allowed, also is is not one of those that would titillate the public. The local press has done the usual anger aspect of reporting even though only 3 objections were sent in. If people had a problem then they should use the established process and not just try and get their names in the paper.

Finally Flirtz in Nottingham renewed it's license in the face of no objections. However it still had to go before the committee. This does beg the question why? Surely if a legal business has no one objecting the license should be approved, if the police had issues it would have come up as an objection so no reason at all really for the meeting apart from councillors trying to look like they are doing something.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)

Leeds Council - If This Isn't A Conflict of Interest..........

Chasmal write again on the crazy situation in Leeds

On the first day of Christmas

Leeds Council gave to me:

The loss of my job and social insecurity.....

Well it's getting very interesting in Leeds. On the Yorkshire Evening Post, someone tried to draw a comparison between the clubs being axed and the recent closure of the local Remploy factory. The person that made the comparison was trying to say that the only reason that people were protesting against the Council with regard to the clubs was that they wanted them to stay open and if they were being genuine about things, they would have complained about the closure of the Remploy factory, which none of them did.

The two situations bear no comparison and the person making the comment is a fool, but nonetheless, they did give me an idea about presenting the situation in a different light....

I want you to imagine that within Leeds there are a number of gay clubs, all of which have been threatened with closure. One reason for this is that certain people within the Council believe that gay clubs lower the tone of the area and put families off from visiting the City. So the Council do a survey about the future of gay clubs and maybe their best location. One thing becomes clear and that is that it has been decided that there should be no gay clubs near the town hall, largely because what people imagine goes on inside them. The Council have a committee that will decide what to do about gay clubs as well and they are going to decide.

There is an issue however.....

One of the people on the committee has publicly stated her distaste for gay clubs and homosexuals and has been campaigning for years to have them chased out of town. Furthermore there are a number of religious organisations in the City that loudly campaign against gay clubs, in fact they have a report, published by a grossly homophobic organisation that states that incidences of male rape sky rocket in areas where there are gay clubs and that men fear walking down any street where there are gay clubs because they are terrified that they will be assaulted and bum raped.

The day of the big decision arrives and the Council decide to close three of the gay clubs, because they are in 'sensitive locations'. But what are sensitive locations though?

Well, obviously you cannot have gays near schools because, you know.....This is despite the fact that school closes at 4.00 and the clubs don't open until 11.00.

You can't have gay clubs near places of worship because as the Westboro Baptist Church state, 'God Hates Fags'.

You can't have gay clubs near a railway station because of........well, something or other but it can't be allowed to happen anyway.

You can't have a gay club near an art gallery because the gays might start hanging around outside or even try see some of the artworks.

Play areas are right out because, well you know what they say.......

Youth facilities ar the same, they must be protected from gay clubs....

Gay clubs near a cinema? No way, the last thing that cinema goers want to see after going to a movie is the gay cub opposite.

Places of celebration or commemoration? Forget it, the people celebrating or commemorating would be put off by what they imagine goes on inside a gay club and wouldn't feel able to celebrate or commemorate anything.

Retail shopping areas cannot have gay clubs near them just in case the gays do some window shopping after the shops have closed.

Historic buildings? Gay clubs play Jimmy Somerville records and his falsetto might damage the foundations of the town hall.

Sports facilities? Can't have gay clubs near sports facilities as the gays might try and peer into the gents changing rooms.

Banks. No way for anyone of a number of reasons, but actually no one bothered to ask the banks what they thought, they just decided to decide for them.

So as I said, three gay clubs are closed. The Council committee that decided to close them down was made up of five people, two of which were ardently homophobic so in the light of objectivity they pulled out so it left just three people to do the deed.

Just one problem...

One of the directors of the most vocal anti gay club organisation (the one that rejoiced about the closure of the three clubs and said 'three down, three to go') is Facebook friends of the chairman of the committee that decided to close the three gay clubs.

Now if this was reality, there would be uproar. In fact if any city council made a move against gay clubs on any grounds they would be finished by next week. But if the decision to close was made by a person with homophobic friends, the police would be knocking on their door tomorrow morning.

So whats the point of the story?

Well, Cllr Ghulam Hussain, Chair of the Licensing Committee for SEVs, the same one that decided to close Wildcats, Red Leopard and Deep Blue is Facebook friends with Miriam Leontine Moss, who is a director of SARSVL, the same organisation that campaigned against lapdancing clubs, the same organisation that were deliriously happy to see them closed and implied that this was just the beginning of the closures.

You see minorities are protected in this country and a good thing too because if they weren't, all sorts of arseholes would spend their waking moments thinking of ways to persecute them. Stripper aren't protected though. They can be blamed for anything and lets face it we all know what goes in those clubs don't we. wink wink. So they can be deprived of their income at a weeks notice, who cares, they're only strippers or 'gender traitors' as someone on Mumsnet once said.

Leeds City Council have, in concert with others behaved in a manner that is despicable and cowardly and will be held to account.

Oh before I forget.....

You should also realise that Deep Blue, one of the lap dancing clubs closed by Cllr Hussain, seems to be geographically close to the building used by SARSVL, one of whose directors is Miriam Leontine Moss, his Facebook friend...

Ps

If you want evidence, have a look at the frame grab below before Miriam changes it.....

Leeds Council - An Absence of Common Decency

Chasmal has been writing about the issues in Leeds and here has the latest on the issues there.

December is a period that many bar owners look forward to. It's christmas party time and takings can soar, which is good because January is always a very quiet month. The same of course applies to lapdancing and strip clubs, the dancers have a great opportunity to earn well...........unless of course they work at a club in Leeds, specifically Deep Blue, Red Leopard and Wildcats. This is because Leeds Council Licensing Sub-Committee decided on 29th November not to renew the licenses of the clubs. The Council are demanding that the clubs should close on Friday 13th December at 4.00am in the morning. 

The Licensing Sub-Committee consists of Cllr Karen Bruce, a long time opponent of clubs, Cllr Ryk Downes, Cllr Ghulam Hussain, Cllr Ashgar Khan and Cllr Chris Townsley. They are of course ultimately answerable to Cllr Becca Charlwood, who in an article in The Yorkshire Post seemed keen to distance herself from direct involvment in the decision, despite glorying in the fact that the clubs are to be closed and that 200 people will lose their jobs three weeks before Christmas.

These people must hate dancers and the clubs they work for to an extent that I find quite frightening. If anyone in the Council that had even the remotest connection to this decision had even a shred of comment decency, they could have at least let the clubs run until the New Year, at least let the people who rely upon the venues for income to save some cash. But they didn't do that. In act what they did was worse. They decided which clubs would close on 29th November and then kept quiet about it for 5 days, saying only today (5th December) that the clubs could stay open for just over a week.

It's not of course just dancers that will be affected, the club has bar staff, cleaners, door people and administrative staff as well. All out of work after next friday, all out of work 12 days before Christmas, all facing uncertain futures, all because of a group of vindictive, self righteous moralists want to get their own way.

I found it amazing how Becca Charlwood strives to justify what has happened.

 “.....I’m very pleased that the committee have applied the policy of the council.....".

In other words Becca is expressing her delight that the security and futures of scores of families is now threatened because their main income was derived from something that Becca disapproves of.

“This policy change was created through public engagement and was heavily consulted upon".

Really. Do you mean the Leeds Citizens Panel? Where apparently 1092 people said there should be 4 or less clubs in Leeds? Do you mean the 25 boiler plate objections that referred to the Lilith Report?

“These were no doubt difficult decisions to make, but I think it is right to use the powers we have available to us as a council to help fulfill our ambition to be the best city in the UK for all our citizens and visitors.”

Sorry? '.....The best city in the UK for all our citizens....'. Becca has just made 200 of them redundant so its hard to see where she is coming from there, but it's interesting that she thinks it's 'right' that 200 people are going to lose their jobs.

I find it fascinating that the deliberations of the Licensing Sub Committee have been embargoed by the Council. So in other words we will never know what was said, or how they arrived at the decision to close three businesses that have never violated the terms of their licenses.

The owners of Wildcats and Red Leopard have stated publicly that they will take legal action against the Council. It is my sincerest hope that this materialises because if nothing else, court action will see some light shone on what I see to be a very murky set of decisions.

This is going to be a short article. I have others planned that will run all the way to Christmas. Now that Becca Charlwood has played her hand, we can respond and I ask readers of this article to consider something very important.

On July 18th of this year, I published on this blog an article that predicted that Red Leopard and Wildcats would be lined up for license refusal. How is it that I was correct?