Tooley Street lapdancing club

deek wrote:

Ivan - well said.
I have no intention to visit a lapdancing club if it opens, but I don't endorse Ken's use of taxpayer money to challenge the licensing decision.

I'd be more than happy for him to spend the 4,000 getting the Dungeon out of London Bridge, however. What a ridiculous excuse for a tourist attraction!

It's all well and good for Ken to say residents don't want a lapdancing club - but they didn't want a congestion charge either.

I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the next mayoral election.

Agreed - I can't stand the London Dungeon - the combination of the crowds blocking the entrance to London Bridge Station, the Ice Cream vans parked up on the pavement meaning you have to step in to the road to get around it, the litter the crowds produce...

And if Ken was really concerned about women rather than blowing his own trumpet, why hasn't he mentioned the glorification of rape in the London Dungeon shop? A whole window facing Tooley Street devoted to a man who mutiliated and murdered women, including tour t-shirts giving dates and locations where he killed his victims. Nice.

Perhaps the Dungeon deserves a thread of its own.

Ken Livingstone is apparently hosting this meeting tomorrow night at City Hall. Hope to see some of you there.
Karen
Naomi Judge Sent: 20 April 2006 13:28 Subject: Tooley Street
Dear Colleague
The Mayor of London has recently supported an appeal against the decision of Southwark Council to grant a license to open a lapdancing club in Tooley Street.
The Mayor believes that the proposal for the club will have a negative effect on the regeneration of the area and will harm the quality of life of people living and working in the area as well as the many tourists and children who come to the area to enjoy its many visitor attractions.
An information meeting for local stakeholders will be held on Monday 24 April between 6.30pm and 8pm at City Hall, the Queen's Walk, SE1 2AA. You and your colleagues are cordially invited to attend. Please allow some time in order to enable you to pass through security when you arrive. Light refreshments will be provided.
Please rsvp to Laura Croft on [email protected] For enquiries please call Laura on 0207 983 4061. For enquiries about disabled access please also call Laura. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.
Kind regards Clodagh O'Donnell
Head of Service
Public Affairs

I read in the londonSE1 interview with Cllr Nick Stanton Interview
that the lapdancing club must adhere to the following conditions:
Quote
"The conditions, which nobody is reporting, are really tough: no nude dancing before 9 o'clock, no advertising within a mile radius - which I think is actually a really important one."

How is Southwark Council going to prevent the club advertising on the north side of London or Tower Bridges,
which must be within 'a mile radius'.
If a dancer is wearing only a scarf around her/his neck, are they classed as clothed?
Does this mean that clubs in other boroughs can advertise in SE1.

Gees phoney, you have some colourful graphics going on there!
I've heard about this 9pm watershed before..maybe the council can round all the children up along Tooley Street and send them to jail for the night if they're out too late. That way, the bankers and high court judges - who'll use this facility - will be safe within the law. Doh!

Also in the Nick Staunton interview, he explains that the only way Westminister was able to refuse the club permsission is because of a 'saturation policy'; that they already have too many clubs/brothels etc.

So how many more strip clubs in Southwark will it take to declare saturation? 100? 500? 1000 ? or maybe 'only' 50?

I dont beleive a word of it. As though their hands are tied. Nonsesne. Of course Southwark can do something; they can at least impose such strong conditions as to make the club a profitless endevour. But they dont, because they benefit. Them and some seedy club owner, while the community has to live with the risks. Its absurd.

Last night's meeting: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/2132

misfit wrote:

Also in the Nick Staunton interview, he explains that the only way Westminister was able to refuse the club permsission is because of a 'saturation policy'; that they already have too many clubs/brothels etc..

Hang on though. However much one may disapprove of a strip club, it IS a different thing from a brothel.

It is also a different thing from a club where people go to have sex with each other (I can only assume), which is what makes the objections from the hospital (see James' coverage of the meeting, linked to above) so clumsily put.

misfit wrote:

Of course Southwark can do something; they can at least impose such strong conditions as to make the club a profitless endevour. .

Running a strip club is LEGAL. Many people may not like it, but it is legal and so people will run strip clubs as long as people want to visit them (and work in them, let's not forget). You're suggestion is that the council start taking the law into their own hands, which many citizens would object to on all sorts of grounds.

Overkill, imho.

[edited to add: It's interesting that someone from Shad Thames Residents' Ass'n was speaking against the club. Do we all have a right to be heard about things happening quite a long way from where we live, or is it only reserved for people living in very expensive riverside houses?

The most laughably hyocritical quote from that collection of hypocrites was from Colin Thomas, manager of London Dungeon, who described the proposal for a lapdancing club as "irresponsible and incongruous".

Not as irresponsbile and incongruous as celebrating and profiting from rape is it Colin?

And to the biggest two-faced hypocrite of them all - Livingston. Don't recall his personal intervention campaigning to close down Southwark clubs where people openly go to have sex - say The Fort on Grange Road rather than just a tame strip club? I've got nothing at all against such clubs as The Fort, but come on Ken show some equality in your views about such establishments.

We keep getting propaganda posters stuck to the entrance doors to our flats from this group. They seem to be waging a campaign against the granting of the license for the lap dancing club on Tooley Street.

There is a contact email on it, [email protected] but of course when you mail it a message comes back saying that the address doesn't exist! Very shadey...!

Does anyone know who "Southwark Stakeholders Concerned about Licensing Policy" are, who founded it and who it consists of? It wouldn't be anything to do with Ken at the GLA would it?

Use of the word "stakeholder" implies to me that they have, at best, only a faint hint of a direct connection with the issue.

If they were directly involved/demonstrably affected, they would campaign under a name which alluded to that connection.