UK Sex Sells News

Spearmint Rhino strip club in Sheffield had its licence renewed after the council ruled covertly recorded footage of dancers breaking no-touching rules filmed without consent should not force its closure.

Dancers at Spearmint Rhino celebrated the ruling, made after eight hours of heated testimony from both sides. Dancers had accused campaigners who made the undercover recordings of revenge porn tactics.

A coalition of feminist groups that had sought the club's closure condemned the decision and said they would continue to fight for the venue to be closed.

The feminist campaign group Not Buying It hired investigators to go undercover and make covert recordings in the club in February. The footage led to a council investigation which found that some dancers had been sexually touching customers, themselves and each other.

Despite the breaches, the council said the renewal application would be granted. It said it would publish a full notice explaining its reasons soon.

Moralist councillors in Ealing want to stop handing out sexual entertainment venue licences because they do not support 'their' vision for the borough and the night-time economy.

It comes after the borough's only lap dancing club was stripped of its licence following an inspection last June, when an undercover council officer said a dancer offered to perform a sex act on them in exchange for cash.

During the visit to LA Confidential inspectors were told that, for £100, they could go into a private room for a lap dance where they could touch the naked dancers and let the women touch them, claimed the council. They also said they found a 20-year-old dancer working at the club, flouting the council's minimum age policy of 21.

The club in Ealing High Street closed its doors last month following an extended legal battle with the council over the licensing decision.

The government has spent many years strangling casual work with an ever increasing amount of onerous red tape. Now it has proved itself to be rather desperate for ideas when suggesting jobs for those without qualification. A government DWP web page listed dances in adult entertainment establishments as one option for jobseekers.

But of course this idea is a little politically incorrect so had to be hastily withdrawn when it was noticed. And of course claim that it was some sort ofawful mistake.

The Department for Work and Pensions site - titled work you could do - suggested claimants could search the phrase striptease artist online to find vacancies. Other job suggestions on the same page included becoming a fortune-teller or loading a Bingo machine.

The Mirror was able to browse the page on Tuesday but it has since been taken offline, hours after concerns were raised on an online welfare forum.

A DWP spokesman admitted:

This is inappropriate and we will immediately review this to determine why it is mistakenly listed.

This is not the type of employment our work coaches help people into.

A Whitehall source suggested the information had been sourced from a list of professions on the Office for National Statistics.

Edinburgh's lap dancers have pointed out that banning strip clubs will force dancers to the unregulated underworld.

Edinburgh's consultation on Sexual Entertainment Venues (SEVs) is coming to an end but dancers note that the consultation focuses on how best to drive strip clubs out of the public eye and could force stripping into criminality.

Shiri, a union representative for strippers at United Voices of the World, said:

The motivation to criminalise dancers in clubs comes from a middle-class, feminist point of view. Predominantly those who will suffer from any action to making working in strip clubs harder, are working-class women, who have fewer choices when it comes to career options -- many will be supporting family members or having to work around other commitments.

Creating conditions that criminalise, rather than protect dancers, will only force women underground, where they will face greater dangers to their safety and no protections when it comes to workers' rights.

We believe this consultation should take dancers' views into consideration -- they are the people who will be most affected.

Stacey Clare, who has worked in Edinburgh's West Port clubs for years, said:

We are working very hard with two trade unions to establish workers' rights in our industry, which has long failed to observe correct employment laws.

If strip clubs are shut down we lose the opportunity to do that, and we are pushed further into the precarious gig economy, where it is a lot harder to establish workers' rights.

The Liberal Democrats have said Manchester City Council is wrong to welcome undercover video footage from the anti-strip club campaign group Not Buying It .

The party, which has long-believed in legalising sex-work including prostitution, has warned that if the footage was to leak it could seriously endanger the safety of the workers.

Dancers and strippers involved said they are terrified after the anti-sex work group filmed private strip dances in Manchester-based Victoria's and Obsessions clubs.

Not Buying It claims to have footage of sexual acts being offered and breaches of licensing rules.

Manchester City Council said officials have launched an investigation into the two clubs after the footage from Not Buying It was presented to them. A spokesperson said: We thank Not Buying It for bringing this matter to our attention.

The United Voices of the World Union (UVW) have compared the covert filming to revenge porn, whilst the pro-sex work Liberal Democrats criticised the move as a completely inappropriate invasion of privacy. The party's Equalities Spokesperson April Preston said she was appalled that Manchester Council has welcomed the footage and hopes the same level of scrutiny is applied to the strip club bosses. Describing it as entrapment, Preston added:

Instead of going after workers, Liberal Democrats would legalise sex work and focus on the safety and employment rights of women.

We fully support unionisation to ensure the same scrutiny and accountability you would find in any other line of work and will work with anyone to help reinforce this.

The brainchild of one Sandra White MSP, over the last 15 years has been to launch public consultation after public consultation in attempts to close down Glasgow's adult entertainment venues.

The latest is an ongoing consultation which ends in August seeking to license the clubs in a way which could see them closed down for good.

When I was on national TV a few days ago debating the issue with Sandra, she said she hadn't engaged with dancers many years ago when they petitioned for her to meet with them because she didn't believe it came from the girls themselves.

What she fails to acknowledge time and time again is that dancers in Glasgow's adult entertainment venues are happy, safe and want to keep their jobs! Workers within the clubs are also becoming unionised with GMB union.

There are around 700 dancers working across Scotland and it's time she asked them! I want to live in a Scotland which is progressive and recognises the right of a woman to have autonomy over her own body.

Please sign the petition and spread the word! We want as much tangible info as possible to feed into our wider campaign to keep the clubs open.

See petition from change.org

Strip club dancers have marched through Sheffield to oppose plans to close Spearmint Rhino.

The brightly-dressed protesters stopped traffic in Sheffield city centre, braving driving rain between the Brown Street club and Sheffield Town Hall.

Sheffield's Spearmint Rhino club was targeted by feminist extremists who commissioned private detectives to obtain video evidence and report on anything untoward. They claimed to have filmed inappropriate sexual contact clearly without the consent of the participants. Surely such filming would be illegal so perhaps these may be just claims.

The dancers and supporters, including Sheffield Hallam University women's officer Gabby Willis, told marchers filming of that sort should be classed as revenge porn. Ms Willis said she supported the dancers' right to earn money however they choose. She said:

I think it's really important we stand by women's choice to do that in a safe environment for their job, if they want to.

Club worker Rachael McCoy told protesters:

This is really important to us. This is our livelihoods. I'm a single mother. This job helps me feed my children. This job has actually changed my life for the better.

Plans to create a lap-dancing club have been rejected by Wrexham council.

The owners of XS Wrexham wanted to host full nudity nights twice a week to spice up the town's nightlife which, they said, is in severe decline.

However the council turned down the licence application citing a number of moral concerns. Councillor Krista Childs openly admitted that it was a moral issue. She said:

It's not just a moral issue, it's about generations of children, young people and women and how they're looked upon. We should maximise the safety and well-being of women and I don't think this has a place.

Bar owner David Thomas, chairman of the Wrexham Night Safe and Pub Watch schemes, outlined steps that would be taken to ensure the safety of dancers, customers and the public, including a no-touching policy and the presence of security guards. He also claimed some bars and clubs in the town were at risk of closing if there was no change to the entertainment on offer.

Camden council is looking into claims against Spearmint Rhino by the Not Buying It feminsit group which sent in two former police detectives to gather video evidence in February.

The two investigators claim they were straddled by dancers who touched themselves intimately. One of the men said he was told he could touch dancers sexually if they paid an extra £20.

No word on whether Camden Council will be investigating videoing without consent.

Birmingham City Council has refused an application for a premises alcohol licence for the former Zorbas restaurant on Olton Boulevard East in Acocks Green.

Note that Acocks Green is a suburban location in MP Jess Phillips' Yardley constituency, so no doubt she will be happy.

Pure Gold had planned to apply for a Sexual Entertainment Venue (SEV) licence but now those plans have been cast into doubt.

Around 1,200 people had lodged objections to the proposal citing the proximity of a nursery and children's play centre.

The council's decision came after a Licensing Sub Committee heard concerns from neighbours to the venue, West Midlands Police and the council's own environmental protection department.

Carlisle Council has rejected an application to open a new gentleman's club to be named PC Lounge. The plans had been tabled by nightclub owner Lee Weatherley who wanted to open the club on the site of the Rewind Bar and Grill, previously Mint, in Botchergate.

But licensing bosses refused to grant a licence for a sexual entertainment venue following objections from businesses including the Ibis hotel, the Vue cinema and the Hebron Evangelical Church. The council also received 16 objections from residents.

Barrister Leo Charalambides QC spekaing for the venue noted:

I'm surprised to see a representation from a cinema given that when I go into a cinema lobby I'm as likely to see an advert for Fifty Shades of Grey which promotes sadomasochistic violence against partners, it encourages restraint. I may also see posters that encourage affairs, infidelity, guns, violence drug-taking and other forms of behaviour.

Speaking of the Rouge Culb on teh same street, Councillor John Bell, chairman of the regulatory panel, said:

The panel considers that another sex establishment would exceed what the panel considers appropriate for the locality.

The granting of the licence would be inappropriate having regard to the character of the area, namely the proximity of a place of worship, residential premises, an hotel and a cinema.