Lap Dancing in the South West

Lap dancers at a Bristol club have been giving customers more fun than the miserable council allowed.

One performer has been suspended and two have been reprimanded by bosses for kissing and other physical contact.

Magistrates fined the venue around £16,500 for five licensing breaches. Temptations' manager Valerie Hoare was also ordered to pay £1,550 for two breaches.

Bristol Magistrates Court heard how CCTV from Temptations examined after an unannounced visit from licensing staff in January showed three dancers getting closer than the council allowed in the private booths .

Bristol's Sexual Entertainment Venue licence states that customers and performers are not allowed to touch each other during a performance. But the prosecution said: The footage from all three cameras showed extensive and repeated contact between customers and performers. The court heard this included one stripper holding a customer's face and giving him a kiss while he had his hands on her buttocks. Other footage showed a dancer sitting on a customer's lap, while in another booth a performer touched a man's leg with hers.

Recommended by Nutters

A handful of Bristol miserablists have raised a petition calling for the closure of Bristol's two table dancing clubs and its only lap dancing club at Temptations.

The petitioners are recommending:

• Central Chambers 9 St Stephen's St, Bristol BS1 1EE
• Urban Tiger 4 Broad Quay, Bristol BS1 4DA
• Temptations T3 46 West St, Bristol BS2 0BH

Offsite: Counter petition

7th September 2013. See  article from  southwestbusiness.co.uk

Update: Counter petition outstrips nutter petition

11th September 2013. See  article from  southwestbusiness.co.uk

As of yesterday afternoon, the nutter petition had 166 signatures, but in only four days the pro lap dancing one had already garnered support from 271 people.

Carrie Hale's online petition went live on Friday in response to one started last month. It reads:

This petition calls that Bristol City Council allow lap dancing clubs, gentlemen's clubs, strip clubs and pole dancing clubs, otherwise known as SEVs, to operate in Bristol.

The licensing policy has already been implemented and decided that the suitable number of SEVs in Bristol was three, with two other venues being forced to close to reduce numbers.

There is huge demand for these venues, otherwise they would not exist and they do not only cater for men.

The women and men that work in these venues are not exploited, neither are they forced to work in such venues.

The people of Bristol should have a choice to visit such establishments and by having a nil cap this choice will be taken away.

The petition runs until January 22 and can be signed at epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2386 .

Update: Licence Granted

18th September 2013. See  article from  sevlicensing.wordpress.com

9 objections from the public were received about the renewal of a licence of Central Chambers. It has been reported that this was renewed yesterday (16th Sept) with some fairly colourful language apparently used by a campaigner to describe the head of the three-strong licensing committee.

Feminist campaigner Bristol_Jane was live tweeting yesterday's hearing at City Hall, during which she called Conservative group leader Peter Abraham a sexist, misogynistic fuckface . The offending tweet has now been removed.

A strip club has been banned from using images of women dressed up as schoolgirls after miserable claims that the images somehow sexualise children .

Urban Tiger, a strip club in Bristol, promoted their St Trinian's style evening by using dancers dressed in white shirts, short tartan skirts and high boots intended to look like school uniforms.

Another similar image was posted to the club's Facebook page, asking punters: Like women in school uniform? Come along tonight.

Roz Hardie of the moralist campaign group Object whinged:

If you've got the sexualisation of children through adverts it does help to create the context where schoolchildren are being seen as sexual objects.

Urban Tiger's licence has now been altered to state:

Relevant entertainment shall not include any word, action or imagery that endorses or depicts, or might reasonably be taken as endorsing or depicting, or be promoted as including, any conduct which, if taking place in reality, would amount to a criminal offence.

Killjoy Sally Lewis, from the Independent Chair of Bristol Children's safeguarding Board, said this is an issue that may never have been thought about before , and that they want to raise awareness . She spewed:

We aren't trying to be killjoys or ruin anyone's fun. I don't think films like St Trinian's should be banned or anything. We have to look at this in context, she added.

...[BUT]...

I can't think why any right-minded person would think this was appropriate.

For years campaigners, including Labour councillors, police and feminist groups, - have urged Bristol Council to ban strip clubs. The only problem for this miserable coalition was that the strippers themselves wanted to carry on stripping to earn a living.

Adult performers were celebrating on Thursday after persuading a majority of the city's council to reject the proposed ban on strip clubs and other sex entertainment venues.

One self-described exotic dancer told the council's licensing committee:

Stripping has allowed me to have a flexible enough schedule to pursue my dream career while simultaneously enabling me to live a comfortable life - not living in constant stress due to living from paycheck to paycheck.

Such was the strength of feeling among the female dancers and performers that Guy Poultney, a Green Party councillor, received a round of applause when he accused women's rights groups of arguing that we should discount the voices of some women in order to empower them and to restrict their choices in the name of equality and take away their jobs for their own good. He also said they were acting as if some women can't be trusted to make choices for themselves.