UK Sex Sells News

The ETO Awards are voted on by the UK businesses associated with sex shops

• Services To The Industry: Nick Orlandino of Pipedream.
• Best Sales Team: ABS Holdings.
• Best Store Manager: Renee Denyer from Sh! in Hoxton.
• Best Erotic Journalist: Cara Sutra.
• Best Erotic Author: KD Grace.
   
• Best Online Retailer: Lovehoney.
• Most Innovative Retailer: Lovehoney.
• Best Individual Store: Harmony Oxford Street.
• Best Retail Chain: Ann Summers.
   
• Best Lingerie Distributor: Kevco Wholesale.
• Best International Distributor: Scala Playhouse.
• Best Pleasure Products Distributor: ABS Holdings.
• Best Specialist Products Distributor: Cyrex (ElectraStim).
• Best Fetish Products Distributor: Mister B.
   
• Best Lingerie Brand: Dreamgirl.
• Best Erotic Books Brand: Xcite Books.
• Best Consumable Brand: ID Lubricants.
• Most Innovative Brand: Rocks-Off.
• Best Pleasure Products Brand is awarded to Lelo.
• Best Fetish Product Brand: Fetish Fantasy Series from Pipedream.
   
• Best Product Marketing: Pipedream.
• Best Product Packaging goes to Lelo.
• Best Consumable: Give Lube Premium.
• Best New Range: Ceramic Pleasure Pottery by Pipedream.
• Best Couples Toy: We-Vibe 4 by Standard Innovations.
• Best Male Product: Pulse from Hot Octopus.
• Best Female Product: Key Comet II by Jopen.

The government consultation document results are reported as follows:

Introduction

This report provides a summary of responses to the Scottish Government's Consultation on the licensing of sexual entertainment venues (SEV.s). The consultation ran from 24 June to 24 September 2013, and sought views on proposals to establish a new licensing regime for sexual entertainment venues such as lap dancing bars.

Number and Type of Responses

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. The remainder of the responses were predominately from organisations with a direct interest in the proposals such as club operators, the Police, local authorities, gender equality and violence against women groups and organisations representing mainstream arts. There was also a small number of responses from interested individual members of the public.

...Read the full consultation results [pdf]

Adult Entertainment Industry man Steven MacDonald has been targeted by police raids supposedly suspecting illegal goings on in his clubs. Inevitably nothing of consequence was found.

The police spent a fortune on scores of policemen involved in the raids on three clubs and the home of businessman Steven MacDonald. Officers were looking for supposed victims of human trafficking, illegal workers and drugs.

One woman was arrested at Diamond Dolls after allegedly being in possession of an offensive weapon. Another worker was reported to the procurator fiscal after being found with a small quantity of cannabis.

Last night, MacDonald accused the authorities of hounding him because he campaigns for the rights of adult entertainment workers in Scotland. He is the head of the Association of Adult Entertainment Venues, who represent 17 strip clubs in the country. He said:

This shows that the police and? the Scottish Government want to shut down the adult entertainment business in this country at all costs. More than 200 officers were involved -- and my neighbours counted 55 of them at my home alone. It was aggressive, over-the-top and completely unnecessary.

All they found was a girl with a pen-knife and another with a small amount of cannabis.

The police raided Diamond Dolls in Glasgow, Baby Dolls in Edinburgh, and Club Earth, a nightclub in Livingston.

An appeal against the decision to reject plans for a strip joint in Doncaster town centre has been launched.

The planning application requested permission to change the Loaded pub on Printing Office Street into a lap dancing club, was rejected in December on morality grounds citing the usual bollox, in this case, the supposed side effects on women's group, Changing Lives.

Enterprise Inns Plc have submitted an appeal, presumably in the form of a Judicial Review,  against the refusal to Doncaster council, which is currently in progress.

Under threat of having to justify their bollox excuse for a ban of Paradise Table Dancing Club to the High Court in a Judicial Review, Birmingham Council have agreed to hold a re-hearing for the bar's licence application.

Paradise is a proposed club on Broad Street, Birmingham's nightlife centre. Council moralists previously refused the licence ludicrously claiming that a 4th table dancing club would somehow change the dynamic of Birmingham's bar and nightlife quarter

Eutony, the company behind the club, vowed to fight the decision and wrote to the council asking them to reconsider before lodging papers for a judicial review at the High Court.

They were told that the council had quashed their original decision and the committee will hear their application again at a new hearing. It effectively puts the City in exactly the same position that we were in before receiving the original application, a report said.

Update: Council meeting delayed

16th May 2014.

It seems that councillors are keener on electioneering than moralising and so have postponed consideration of the Paradise application until after the upcoming elections.

A bump in the sale of blindfolds, whips and handcuffs believed to have been inspired by erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey was not enough to prevent the Irish business of lingerie and sex toy retailer, Ann Summers plunging into the red last year.

Accounts for the British retailer's two Irish firms showed combined pre-tax losses of EUR421,669 for the 12 months covered by the latest report which coincided with the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon.

In the aftermath of the trilogy topping the book charts in the summer of 2012, Ann Summers reported an increase in sales in a host of products associated with the books across its store network. In the months after Fifty Shades hitting No 1 in the book charts, the retailer also reported a 60% increase in the sale of blindfolds; a 35% increase in the sale of rope ties; a 30% increase in sale of leather and metal handcuffs and a 15% increase in the sale of both whips and restraints.

However, that short-term jump in sales for those items didn't translate into higher revenues for Ann Summers in Ireland.

The Salvation Army has collected 665 names on a petition which calls on Cheltenham Borough Council to ban sexual entertainment venue licences in the borough. There is also an online version of the petition with 373 signatures currently.

A 12-week consultation exercise was launched by the council on April 14 to gauge public opinion on whether there should be a limit to the number of venues, such as lapdancing clubs and adult cinemas, in Cheltenham.

This follows in the wake of a licence being granted to Bath Road Property Limited, to turn Voodoo club in Bath Road into Diamond Gentlemen's Club.

In a letter of objection to the council, The Salvation Army's commanding officer for Cheltenham, 'Captain' Steve Smith said he was 'concerned' about Cheltenham becoming known as complicit in the selling of the services of vulnerable females as mere sexual commodities .

Chester's table-dancing club has won a High Court appeal against a council decision to close it down.

Platinum Lounge, had its licence revoked by Cheshire West and Chester Council's licensing committee last September for no real reason. The committee claimed that the nightclub, which has been open since 2005 without incident, was somehow too close to residential properties. The committee ruled that where Platinum Lounge was situated was no longer suitable due to an increase of 94 in the number of people living nearby.

The High Court judge ruled Cheshire West and Chester Council violated its own constitution when it refused to renew the licence of a lap-dancing club in the city's historic heart. Mr Justice Stuart-Smith overturned the committee's decision on the sole ground it was taken in breach of the council's constitution. He said it was clear the decision should have been taken by a three-member sub-committee, rather than the full committee of 15:

It is clear beyond argument that the constitution said and meant that Bridgerow's renewal application should have been decided by a panel of three members, drawn from the full committee on a politically proportionate basis. Equally clearly, that is not what happened.

Unfortunately the judge seemed to confirm that the council bollox that 94 new nearby residents was enough to close down an established business with a staff of 40. He commented that the reasons given by the committee:

while they could have been fuller and could have been more clearly expressed -- were perfectly comprehensible.

The club has had its licence reinstated until a new renewal application is considered.

A director of a table dancing club has lost his battle with HM Revenue and Customs to exempt the hiring of private booths from VAT.

Sugar & Spice club in Norwich told a tax tribunal that VAT should not be added to money generated from the supply of booths used by dancers. The club argued it provided an exempt supply of land for an agreed duration.

But a tribunal panel concluded that VAT should be added to monies collected at the venue.

The Birmingham Mail ran a report about the city council considering its policies for lap dancing. A lot of these clubs are located in the middle of the main bars and nightlife areas of Broad street and Bradford Street. Surely Friday and Saturday night revelry will result in inevitable above average crime rates. And the Birmingham Mail decided to imply that all of this general violence was somehow related to the small percentage of lap dancing bars. The paper ran with the large font headline:

500 violent crimes in a year outside Birmingham lapdancing clubs

A few lines later the Mail reported the reality in the body of the article, but only after the damage was done:

Police recorded 90 cases of actual bodily harm within 50m of the nine lapdance clubs in the city between March 1, 2013 and February 28 this year A lap dancer at the Rocket Club in Birmingham

More than 500 violent offences and sexual crimes, including rape and robbery, have taken place within close proximity of Birmingham lapdancing clubs in the last year.

But West Midlands Police said just ten of the crimes were directly linked to the venues.

Disgraceful!

 

Comment: A culture of violence

21st April 2014. From Alan

The Brum Mail's treatment of this story is ludicrous. I've never been to a lap-dancing club in my life, but I regularly attend two of the establishments responsible for the violence in Broad Street. Whenever I stagger out, pissed as a newt, from listening to Mozart in Symphony Hall or watching Shakespeare at the Rep, I duff up some hapless victim. Then the violent thugs, inspired by the Oxford English Dictionary, stagger out of the new Library of Birmingham and join the fray, while the yobs from the City Museum and Art Gallery rush to get stuck in to the mayhem......

Bolton Council have a approved a new policy effectively banning new table dancing clubs and sex shops.

Under the guidelines pole dancing clubs, strip shows and sex cinemas will not be allowed to open near schools, houses, parks, tourist attractions, religious buildings or any existing entertainment venues.

Cllr Nick Peel, the member in charge of licensing, said in reality it means new applicants looking to open a sexual entertainment venue in Bolton will find it very difficult. He said:

The criteria doesn't really leave much left in terms of areas.

We have not been overrun with sex applications -- it just doesn't happen -- but the government said we had to have a policy.

Existing establishments will probably be okay with the new rules, as this is not retrospective and they will continue to apply for the licences every year in the usual way.

The owner of a former lap-dancing club in Oxford has said it plans to stay open as a burlesque bar until December.

Last year, Al Thompson, who runs The Lodge took his fight against the council's moralistic decision to ban the club to the High Court, but lost. He said:

We are hoping to be there until Christmas and then we will be gone. We are always looking for other sites but we won't reapply for the sex entertainment licence unless there is a site where we can keep everyone happy, but I can't see us finding that, to be honest.

City council spokesman Chris Lee said:

The Lodge has restyled itself as a burlesque club, thus not requiring a sexual entertainment venue licence. However, it should be noted that lap-dancing is legally permitted less frequently than once per month without the need for a sexual entertainment venue licence.

Thompson has applied for a new premises licence for the venue to open from noon until 5am Monday-Saturday and noon until 2am on Sundays. Currently it is open Monday-Thursday noon to 2.30am, Friday noon to 3.30am, Saturday noon to 2.30pm and Sunday noon to 2pm.

A flood of tributes from across the political and public spectrum have been paid to the Scottish politician Margo MacDonald, who died on Friday aged 70 after a long, public struggle with Parkinson's disease.

From the moment she burst on to the scene with the SNP in the 70s to her bitter bust-up with the party and reinvention as a popular independent politician, she never relinquished her role as a political firebrand and maverick operator.

Serious yet charismatic, Ms MacDonald was hugely influential within the Scottish independence movement for more than 40 years.

She was also known for high-profile campaigns, from protecting female sex workers to legalising assisted suicide for the terminally ill - an issue which took on a deeply personal significance.

In fact she also stood up for workers in other adult industries, notably lap dancing.