Scotland Home of the Brave?

People may remember there has been a consultation in Scotland about how to regulate SEVs. Well the results are in and make interesting reading (pdf here). In fact in part is shows the bias that the Scottish Government has towards pushing their own agenda no matter what the public thinks.

"In total 1,017 responses were received. Of these 941 were largely identical in substance and reflected a campaign organised by the Scottish Association of Licensed Adult Entertainment Venues. It is presumed that the majority of these responses were from those who work in the industry together with customers."

This is taken direct from the summary of response where 92% of respondents wish clubs to remain open. The way the statement is written has got my hackles up as if it was Object organising a campaign or a similar group I can see that being perfectly okay but the clubs, dancers and patrons decide to write and the council just want to point out what everyone else had said even though it relates to less than 8% of responses. Not sure in the long term how it will pan out but so far not happy.

There are whole areas of questions I could make comments but I want to pick a couple of choice ones that gave me the giggles "the regime would need to be supported by inspection and monitoring arrangements by staff trained in violence against women and gender equality". Now given that Eaves commissioned the Lilith report you do feel that people with this "training" will see violence everywhere. I also loved the comment about the high quality employment Scotland needs. Struggling a bit to not laugh my head off.

I note that the wording across the report seemed to suggest that 92% of opinions were not as important as fleshing out opinions of the minority. Given the fact that the only "report" previously in Scotland is the Bindel one for Glasgow that is totally useless and just a voice for the opinion of Ms Bindel, shoddy methodology but it seems to echo the opinions of a handful who unfortunately seem to be MPs and Councillors. Obviously this was just a summary and we can but hope that when the report in fully is put out the majority view is recognised.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)