Have the Fireworks Finished yet? A mid November Round Up

So this is a bit of a round up of things over the last couple of weeks and of course my wit and observations, only without the wit.

Firstly I want to pick up with the recent ruling in Halifax where it seems striptease is a lot more tease and a not quite so much strip. The club had asked that a condition of it's license be waived and that dancers be allowed to remove their G Strings when performing private dances. Now there are clubs within 20 miles of including Leeds where there are more clubs without the restriction you will find in Halifax. Now given this you would think if you are going to allow a business to operate you would allow them to compete on an even footing with other business in the locality. But of course this would not be the UK world of striptease without different conditions on clubs based of the sensibilities of the local council. This is one of the reasons the dance industry has so many detracters because there is now standard practice and no accepted best practice. So dancers will get totally different experiences in different clubs and this will reflect on how they deal with customers.

Bournemouth Coucil and in particular Councillor David Smith gets our attention next. Seems a guy got drunk before going into Spearmint Rhino, waved 3 credit cards around and ran up a £7,500 experience. Now this was a while back and wehave had one license renewal without this being mentioned but now it seems as the councillor can't find anything else to use to try and shut the club he is using something that is old hat to try and lever something out of the club. The guy actually signed agreements that he was not being coerced into spending this money and one sort of wonders if the gentleman concerned was having a hard time explaining his expenditure to his girlfriend. Crazy that when someone does something stupid with their credit cards no one worries normally but the moment a guy sign consent forms and authorises his credit card in a club it is grounds to close it down???? There seems to be something very smelly here as the club went through it's license renewal last year without any issues but now this has been dug out of the archives to try and stop a renewal over a year after the event.

Now we saw police raids on the strip industry in Scotland a few months ago where the biggest issue was men working illegally, a dancer with an offensive weapon and one worker with some canabis, no dancers or female staff had any employment issues so everything went quiet. And now we have had clubs raided and closed again, dancers have been interviewed and fingerprinted in Aberdeen and other raids taken place. Now I don't know Steve MacDonald who owns several clubs but the police do seem to be targetting him which is strange when you consider he is the chair of the Association of Adult Entertainment Venues which represent clubs in Scotland. Actually not that strange that he is targetted but the claims that his clubs have been financed by crime. Now the police are claiming as the venues are licensed they have the right to "inspect" venues but not sure teams of 50 officers are really needed unless they are expecting vicious attacks from howling mobs of dancers? Seriously what is going on up there? Now I may be a little paranoid but that doesn't mean the police aren't trying to intimidate the clubs. I would love to see where all the crime information has come from as I am sure Mr MacDonald would. However the Scottish Government do seem to have a coordinated plan to scaremonger the clubs out of existence.

Now we can go TOWIE (The Only Way Is Essex for my non UK Readers), as it seems a lot is going on. Foresters which has been an old fashion strip pub for years is finally going to go with redevelopment plans for that part of Southend, however an application for a venue in Southend Town Centre has been put in, the period for support or objections has passed and given the expected closure of Foresters one could expect the license to be granted but that would just be to easy. Also an application for a venue in Benfleet has been sent in to Castle Point Council for a venue on Manor Trading Estate. Objectors to this have cited a dance school as a reason to not grant a license but realistically most people would agree a trading estate would be a non central propostion and I would think the dance shool could tout for business to teach dancers at the club. So it seems that Essex is getting a little hot under the collar at the moment.

Next readers of the blog will have seen in the comments of my last piece Object intend to protest the after party for the Paul Raymond Awards which will be held on 24 November at Spearmint Rhink in London. Object are particular upset because a website called fake taxi is up for an award as the word fake is something they don't understand it seems. However nothing like a little rabble rousing by Object as they don't get column inches anymore. This time we hope the police will arrest and charge anyone who is protesting without notifying the police as long with anyone who attempts to force entry or use stink bombs (as suggested by one prospective attendee). It is coming up to Christmas perhaps I should buy Roz a dictionary and highlight the word fake? We look forward to pictures and videos of the event.

And finally I wish the ELSC and Sexual Freedom Awards all the best as they are holding events that I would have loved to attend but my health is not what it should be and I am really limited at the moment with the amount of time I can spend out.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)
twitter @StriptheIllusio