Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Well it is only an Estimate

Well been a little while since I posted, partly because the weather has made me drowsy which combined with pain killers just meant I could not focus as well as I would like, certainly noticed spelling and grammar fell apart whenever I joined in with local on line debates. I feel that I can go anywhere in the UK therefore I will join in for  those debates in the places other than London. Also I have been playing with figures and trying different key figures to see how it would apply  to the amount of times guys spend in SEVs.

I have to thank SEVLicensing as that blog has picked up on the fact 3 clubs have been granted licenses. Baby platinum has been approved in Wigan, interestingly on that one the clause stopping the removal of the g string has been altered so it can be removed during a dance but must be replaced as soon as the dance finishes. Second Obsession has been granted a license in Liverpool, challenges had been made based on the fact the area is the gay quarter and some felt a club would distract from the area, this given there are already 4 clubs in the vicinity. Third club is Tokyo in York, which has had the usual rants from York Feminist Network which was even copied in on some of the 11 objections. Two objections were from Hamptons by Hilton but neither of those was from the manager herself. Plenty of action in the local online press and the arguments did seem to fall apart very easily.

This entry was originally just going to be about private dances and the number of dances and customers required for the industry to exist as it is. I will make it very clear the numbers are based on estimates using averages. The average number of dancers per club, the average number of dances paid for per visit. Also average number of shifts performed by each dancer at a club per week. I have used 240 clubs which is the approximate number in 2009 when Leeds did it's research into dancers. I used the average earnings found in that research, of course considering the difference in earnings between say diamond dolls in Glasgow and Spearmint Rhino in London there is a massive plus or minus possible. Add to this dancers who will work multiple venues against those who only perform at one. Even down to the fact I have estimated the average year is actually 48 weeks of work even though many dancers I know off will happily take 2 months off.

So I assumed 8000 dancers in the UK as many work more than one venue, some dancers obviously only work the one but if that was the case we would need 14,000 dancers roughly to supply the industry. Based on the figures supplied in the research for Leeds University of average earnings of £240 per shift each dancer would need to perform 75 dances a week based on a 3 shift week. Now if we have 8,000 dancers that equates to 600,000 private dances in a week. And if dancers work on average 48 weeks we end up with 28,800,000 private dances a year.

So it sort of makes an impression on just how many guys are needed to support the industry. Now the way I work it with the number of dances in 240 clubs I estimate as a bare minimum we would require 960,000 customers. Realistically though we are looking at close on 2,000,000 customers will at some point each year visit a club from the once a year to those who do 3 or 4 times a week the number is still a large amount of the adult population. So many people who if asked may say they don't go even though they do. Yeah there are those who don't go but perhaps when people talk about the industry they should realise there is a silent majority that clubs could mobilise as they did in Tower Hamlets and Portsmouth to defend the industry. Perhaps we as fans of the dancers need to vocalise our support more and when we may be affected by a license renewal/applications we actually get active and fight to support what we love.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com) speaking for the millions and millions of fans out there in the UK.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Shame Online Papers can't be used for Chip Wrapping

So over the last couple of weeks I have seen the failure of the press to provide accurate information. We all know sex sells and a good story about any SEV is worth a photo or two of a scantily clad lady while the headline seems to say this is terrible we must get rid of it and protect the community. Facts have no place in these articles but are there to hide partial or "misinterpreted" quotes along with subjective rants hiding moral judgments. And that line I have no moral objection but means you do have a moral objection but you are trying to hide that and come up with an excuse to not allow a club, the moment you throw a but into the conversation you are painting a sign look at me I am modern and have realised the world has moved on since 1958.

So first award on the journalism stake is a man labelled by brute as clueless (which may be rather kind to be honest) Ryan Barrell whose piece for Tab an online Uni paper (here)  had me wondering if it was tongue in cheek at first. Obviously when attending a strip pub and sitting in the corner not intending to enjoy yourself you sort of are setting yourself up to fail at the outset. The fact that he seems to be taking "friends" word for the place begs the question just how much exposure he has to clubs to be able to judge any as "the seediest". Certainly when I asked him on twitter how many clubs/pubs he had been to so that he could make this judgement no answer was forthcoming. No really surprising when you read the language used it comes across as a mixture of prude and rad fem. Certainly judging by his pictures on his twitter feed he is a right foodie and is desperately seeking approval. Sort of junior hipster with a hint of wannabe popular. Still he has managed to make me laugh as he acts like he is knowledgeable in the subject of striptease which hints that maybe he has a secret life? Or else he is just very judgmental with no facts to back his case and I could find seedier without even thinking so really what a joke (note I am being polite here).

Haringey not exactly a hot bed of action considering the council adopted a nil limit and because no clubs exist in the borough no one fought it. Well one bar decided to have a burlesque evening and judging by the on line report the world is about to end in fire and brimstone. According to the Haringey Advertiser there was outrage that women danced and kept their clothes on(maybe not as many at the end as the beginning). Well the outrage was a local bulletin board which when I checked had 5 complaints, the paper and a councillor on it; not exactly an outrage more of a storm in tea cup. Still Haringey being Haringey the bar owner has had a warning. Which considering that the lodge has continued to operate using burlesque suggests that the councillors in Haringey do not understand that in Burlesque no nipples get shown (nor the lower bits) and thus an SEV would not be required. I should point out that the Haringey Advertiser in it's banner states An Independent Family Owned Newspaper, which means exact what? A woman in Leotards and high heels is not exactly a naked image but the press and council have turned it into a horror show (Rocky!).

Now dear friend to this blog Tim Wheeler seems to go out of his way to court controversy (or be an idiot your choice) as noted previously he is prone to make comments that when you examine them make less sense than normal. Well he has struck again, not this time on striptease but it is so amusing I had to share. During the world cup semi finals there was an advert for Dawn of Planet of the Apes which contained violence so Tim Wheeler does a what about the Kids cry because it was shown at Half Time. Now the issue for the we're not football fans out there is the game kicked off at 9pm UK time so the advert would not have been shown before 21:45 which to the best of my knowledge is after the "watershed" in the UK (children expected to be in bed). Also it was a school day the day after so you would expect that youngsters would have gone to bed. Also the film is rated 12A so any child could watch it with an adult. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant by a member of the BBC. We have even seen Wheeler comment on a team shirt that has the Logo TITZ on it which of course is a district of Duren in Germany or a German company, but no its an outrage. Maybe he is the light relief story reporter trying to make a name for himself?

Have to say the press have a habit of misreporting, misquoting, misleading and generally being a misery. I would expect it in the Guardian with the feminists there being behind Object but more and more we are seeing headlines about clubs that bear little relation to the truth but want to scaremonger. I e-mailed the reporter who quoted(?) Cllr Udall and not really any surprise but no reply thus far. And the biggest miss of all is the misrepresenting of a handful of complaints as a baying mob with pitchforks, we see 5 complaints or 8 complaints and this is suppose to be masses depending on the paper/councillor.

This is your friendly blogger commenting on behalf of the thousands of dancers and millions of customers in the UK.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)