Many of the people opposing this development aren’t against it because of the location – in reality they want to ban all lap dancing venues completely regardless of how appropriate the location might or might not be.

I don’t frequent such establishments but I’d certainly defend anyone’s right to set one up and any employee’s right to work in there.

There’s a worrying coalition of anti-sex religious conservatives and extremist anti-male feminists both joining forces to stamp out anything sex related – be it magazines, pornography or lap dancing.

The Uk is supposed to be a free country – if they’re so against such things they should live in a country where censorship is welcomed and sex is viewed as something terrible – Saudi Arabia perhaps?

You also say there is a time and place. I’m wondering just where that place is. It is not in Crouch End, not even in the middle of the town centre, in place of All Bar One for example. It is not in Muswell Hill. Our campaign has lots of support from Muswell Hill. I believe it is not immediately opposite the Civic Centre In Wood Green. Nor next to the WhiteHall Theatre near where you work, I think. I believe the City of London has decided not to allow such places at all, so there are a lot in Hackney, just to the East of the city. But, there are more people, I’d wager, in Hackney, who do not want such places than there are those who do. Most of the residents of Newquay don’t seem to think that there is the place. So I’m afraid I don’t agree with you on that point either. And why should there be a time and place for a quasi-legal set of overbearing (mainly) male “entrepreneurs” to employ vulnerable young women on an extremely disadvantageous basis in a degrading and risky form of activity. There is neither a time nor a place.

You also, very misleadingly I think, refer to “the same license as the rest of the sex trade”. This puzzles me. Where does a pimp go to get a licence, or a prostitute, or a kerb crawler, or a girl who squirms in front of a web cam for money? Do the pornographers who flood the internet with their product have licences? My education is clearly lacking in this respect – or perhaps what the proposed bill is doing is actually validating the “sex encounter” as a modern, taxable form of commerce, i.e. not taking a step forward but a huge retrograde step for human dignity? The only sex trade licences I can find are for sex shops and sex cinemas, in both cases the goods are inanimate objects, there is no suggestion that these tightly controlled outlets can sell sexual encounters with real live people. I think you are either guilty of, or being gulled by, the old political con trick of passing a law so abysmal (the 2003 Licensing Act) that any change to it, however misguided, seems like an improvement. I am not taken in.

I really think you should withdraw your support for this bill, or pass an amendment which bans lap dancing.

Regards

Adrian Essex

Is it too much to contemplate that perhaps the market for lap-dancing might be local residents? In fact you probably have to be relatively affluent to afford to go to a lap-dancing club.

Crouch End isn’t exactly a transport hub so I don’t buy the idea that this is going to attract stag parties, And if the market was really men from Wood Green/Tottenham/other less well-to-do areas surely it would make more sense for the owners to simply open a club there.

I’m not personally that keen to see this opened, but I don’t think pretending that it would only be visited by ‘outsiders’ moves the debate forward at all. Frankly it’s just a bit snobbish.

Young men are both most likely to be perpetrators and victims of violent crime, of course. But what i am talking about is sexual harassment of local young women fuelled by the experience of some testosterone-fuelled night out; I can’t see why other types of crime would increase as a result of a lap-dancing venue. The wider issue here is about what sorts of attitudes towards women and sex such establishments encourage. There always seem to be two opposing theories about the sex industry – one states that it provides an outlet for social and sexual inadequates and therefore makes them less likely to engage in harassment or sxual crime; the other that it provokes and encourages it. There are reasonable arguments on both sides. In some ways, however, that is besides the point regarding this one specific venue we are discussing. It’s about what we want to see in our local community and what we don’t. What exactly do you imagine a lap-dancing club will bring to the people of Crouch End?

Also I find it HUGELY offensive how Lynne and everyone involved in the campaign goes on about the safety of women, when in reality it is almost always young men who get violently attacked in the street.
(and after than older men too).

Women are way, way down the list of those violently assaulted and it is completely wrong to pretend they are always the victims and create hysteria when if you look at the facts it’s men who need to be worried – whether it is a lapdancing venue or any pub or bar or anywhere else.

Of course the government is equally guilty in this area but it is still insulting to all those male victims of violence whoever is spreading these myths. I have a friend who has serious brain damage as a result of a completely unprovoked violent assault outside a bar by a stranger (of course it goes without saying that’s said friend isn’t female).

“We have lots of young women that hang around the clocktower and library, and in front of the old town hall in the evenings, as I’m sure you know, and I don’t think they deserve to be exposed to verbal or other harassment from packs of morons on stag weekends, etc.”Morons on stag weekends are usually found near bars. Still not much of a point here.

We have lots of young women that hang around the clocktower and library, and in front of the old town hall in the evenings, as I’m sure you know, and I don’t think they deserve to be exposed to verbal or other harassment from packs of morons on stag weekends, etc.