UK Lap Dancing and Strip Clubs Latest

Edinburgh's moralist councillors have voted to ban lap dancing clubs. The city's regulatory committee voted to ban sexual entertainment clubs in the city from April next year by a majority of five to four.

Councillor Cameron Rose claimed that the Scottish government's policy of preventing violence against women and girls gave a national definition which included commercial sexual exploitation, defined as lap and pole-dancing as well as stripping.

Performers and managers from Edinburgh clubs gave evidence at the online meeting. Alexis, who has worked as a dancer for 15 years, said she was proud of her job and did not want to find another job because being a performer did not fit into the committee's moral values. (We are) educated women making educated decisions about what's best for our lives , she said.

United Voices of the World, a union representing exotic performers, said it would go to court in a bid to overturn the decision, and said it would request a judicial review.

Danielle Worden, legal case worker for the union, said:

The union is extremely disappointed that the council has chosen to disregard its legal obligations and the relevant evidence by adopting a policy that discriminates against women.

Not only does this violate the Equality Act 2010, it is an act of cruelty to remove the livelihoods of hundreds of workers as we enter the worst economic crisis since the 1970s.

A Westbury night spot will be allowed to stage more strip shows after winning a sexual entertainment licence.

A director of Comus Leisure, which owns Venom, said it needed to run more events because it had been hit hard by the pandemic and months of lockdown. He told Wiltshire Council's licensing panel:

We just need to do these events more frequently because my venue was closed for 18 months and costs £20,000 per month to run. We've got to do more of everything to survive.

Under the licence the club on Quartermaster Road, West Wilts Trading Estate will be allowed to host events with lap dancing, stage strip teases and strip shows with full nudity.

No objections from the public were sent in to Wiltshire Council during the consultation period for the bid.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021 includes a walking play to take audiences to city's lap dancing quarter. This will be one of the key locations in a walking audio play which will also visit the site of an old meat market, a nightclub and a job centre.

Audiences for the play, which is being designed to be experienced individually via their own mobile phones or mobile handsets collected from the Traverse, will be taken to the currently locked-up Burke and Hare lap dancing club during the show, which will be able to be downloaded from 20 August. Audiences will be able to experience the walking play Eavesdropping individually using their mobile phone or on mobile handsets which can be picked up at the Traverse Theatre.

The show is being developed by Manchester-based theatre company ThickSkin and the Traverse, with all the locations within walking distancing of the theatre, which is at the heart of Edinburgh's cultural quarter.

The event is said to be aimed at encouraging audiences to look differently at the rich tapestry of people you may walk past every day, whether you see them or not. It has been written by two Edinburgh-based playwrights Hannah Lavery and Sarah MacGillivray, and will be set to a soundtrack by composer Finn Anderson.

Strippers have accused Bristol City Council and feminist campaigners of sexist double standards for trying to ban women performing but allowing men to go ahead.

Dreamboys, an all-male collective that has spoken out in support of female strippers, is scheduled to appear at Pryzm nightclub in Bristol. The performance comes as local MPs seek to shut down all lap dancing clubs in Bristol by changing their licensing rules - with the council currently contemplating a ban on the venues.

Tuesday Laveau, who is based in Bristol and has been stripping for 16 years, told The Independent:

One of the fundamental arguments of anti-sex worker feminists is strippers and sex workers are tools of the patriarchy.

But they have no problem choosing what men do with their body. We are not mad at the Dream Boys. They are just working.

The point is the double standards of local MPs and Avon and Somerset's police commissioner. They have no issue with men behaving sexually provocatively for money.