Sex Sex Sex That's All He Thinks About

You will almost certainly by now have read or heard about Cllr Jon Collins and his stance against the Parliament St sex shop.

It's yet another one I missed. As you've probably gathered I do trawl around council committee documents on the NCC website. I saw this mentioned and thought "naah, there won't be a story in that."

So this is a bit of a catch up post. Pretty much everything has been said in this really rather excellent post by Alan-a-Dale, aided and abetted by a nicely crafted comment by Cllr Alex Foster. There's really not much to add.

Well, I suppose we could have a look at the actual report, seeing as I missed it before. Collins' letter is included at the end.

What's interesting is how similar the Interim Corporate Director of Development's comments are to JoCo's grounds for objection. Looks like her job interview for the permanent role starts here. She claims, without a scrap of evidence, that -

"This investment by the public and the private sectors will be put at risk if this sex shop continues to operate."

That's pretty unequivocal and some might say casts negative aspersions on the way the establishment has conducted itself. Collins claims that the shop acts as an 'obstacle to regeneration', again without anything to back it up. He seems to be trying to sort-of-but-not-really link the increased number of closed down premises to the existence of the shop (I honestly thought that was what he was actually claiming on first reading) but gets out of it by accepting that the great and terrible loss of 'Liberty's' was due to fire not public disgust at the way the neighbourhood's gone downhill.

The report says there are no equality and diversity implications to refusing the license. Really? None at all? Well, now that the Tesco 'Value' Strap-On is available* (next to chilled goods seeing as you ask) I suppose lesbians do have alternative provision for those special shopping needs. But frankly I've led a bit of quiet life and I'd need to go get the encyclopedias out if I wanted to expand any further in this area so I think I'll just leave it for now.

Collins says that his objection isn't a moral crusade and, despite the rather pearls-clutching tone of the main report, I'm sure he's sincere on that one. I suspect that this particular sex shop is just unlucky enough to be in the way of one of his grand schemes. If it was a florists we'd be hearing about the dangers of hay fever in a built up area.

Personally I'd close the place down tomorrow, oh yes. A sex shop? In the middle of the city, next to a BUS STOP by George? It ain't right I tell ya. They'll be havin' them ladyboys dancing in the Market Square next and then where...oh.

*It isn't really