Lap dancing club owners in the UK on Tuesday tried to fight off an expected government clampdown on their burgeoning industry by telling British members of parliament (MPs) that sexual stimulation was “contrary to our business plan.”
The claim was greeted with skepticism by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, who appeared to refuse to believe that there was no sexual attraction involved.
“On that basis you would have a lot of dissatisfied customers,” a Conservative MP said.
Simon Warr, chairman of the Lap Dancing Association, was making the point in an attempt to remain classified as part of the entertainment industry for licensing purposes. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is expected to announce shortly that the clubs should be treated as “sexual encounter establishments” for licensing purposes, giving local residents a much greater say over whether clubs should open.
“One of the biggest problems we face is that not enough people understand the business blueprint of our clubs,” Warr said. “Actually, our premises are not sexually stimulating. It would be contrary to our business plan.”
He insisted that the clubs were to provide alcohol and leisure, but when skeptical MPs questioned that this was the main motivation for their customers, Warr replied: “All right, the entertainment may be in the form of nude or semi-nude performers, but it’s not sexually stimulating.”
But club owner Peter Stringfellow of Stringfellows said: “Of course, it’s sexually stimulating. So is a disco … so are the Chippendales and when I went to see them I was the only man there with 3,000 females.”
He said what his colleague was trying to explain was that it was not 100 percent sex: “It is not, ‘I am going to go home and get divorced and look for a dancer to live with.’ It doesn’t go like that. Our environment lasts three minutes. Their clothes are on and off before you can blink. It’s a lot more to do with personality. It’s a lot more to do with the ambience of the club.”
Stringfellow did not like the idea of the clubs being classed as a sexual encounter establishment, which would mean paying £30,000 (US$46,000) for a special license from London’s Westminster City Council. He tried to convince MPs that local officials had the powers to deal with lap dancing clubs by attaching conditions to allow semi-nude or fully nude dancing.
But Sandrine Levesque of Object, which is campaigning for a tougher licensing regime for such clubs, said they needed to be regulated as part of the sex industry.
Meanwhile, Minister for Women Harriet Harman is urging members of the country’s largest women’s organization, the Women’s Institute, to complain to editors who run sex ads in the classifieds, saying ads for massage parlors or escort services try to disguise that what is being sold is usually sex.
“Many are young women from Eastern Europe, from Africa or Southeast Asia, tricked and trafficked into this country and forced into prostitution,” Harman said.
But a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes, which promotes the decriminalization of prostitution, said this is not true.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS