Sugar Babies
Shemales

Author Topic: Saunas in Scotland Edinburgh/Glasgow  (Read 4445 times)

glassgowguy

  • Guest
I don't know too much about the legalities of these things, but for a good while now I've noticed Gay Saunas in Glasgow and no straight ones?

Also in Edinburgh you`ll find some straight ones? I'm just confused at the politics of this and wondering if someone can clarify why and what's going on?

To me (by the powers behold) something seems a little odd, not that I'm prejudice against gay saunas or straight ones, but it seems someone pulling the strings somewhere has some sort of prejudice to turn a blind eye in each direction?

Lastly I do apologise if this discussion pops up from time to time but it does really does interest me what outlines these things.

Offline Marmalade

cos Edinburgh has been pleasantly sophisticated about it for years, except for the wee blip when some bumped up gay weegie bastard (excusez-moi the franchaise) brought weegie policing to the capital. Glasgow might have cheaper beer but Edinburgh is slightly superior on the saunashag scene. So get your wee weegie willie todger over here and let one of our girls in Blair Street or London St blow it till your ears pop. Day return from Glasgowland, walking distance from the station and back.  ;)

Offline auldie63

In the bad old days of Strathclyde Region, Glasgow chief plod for reasons best known to himself went to war, with the help of certain councillors, on the sauna scene in Glasgow. Strange though that only the hetro saunas were targetted and eventually shut down but the gay ones remained open, I wonder why? 
Guess what, along comes Police Scotland and said chief gets a few more feathers for his bonnet and lo and behold similar occurences in Edinburgh, where the council and indeed Police till that time had had what many thought a sensible attitude towards these places. It seems though that the council in the capital have told this chancer to calm down and whilst some have shut the better ones have remained open and,touch wood, this continues to be the case. Once again the gay premises seemed to go unnoticed.
Marm the man you refer to is in fact English and quit his senior post in London to come to Glasgow for reasons unexplained.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2016, 02:25:46 pm by auldie63 »

Offline Squire Haggard

I've found these articles which might help to explain why Glasgow's saunas have disappeared. Our politicans, councillors, and police have been pushed around by a tabloid 'newspaper', the Daily Record.  It had 'stepped in and exposed' the owner of Aquarius.

''SAUNA boss George Colahan liked to portray himself as an ordinary bloke who was just trying to support his family and wanted out of the vice trade.

He was nothing of the kind. He enjoyed the perks of his sleazy trade, such as the Porsche with the personalised number plate he drove to "work" every day.
Colahan was part of the pounds 200million Scottish vice industry run by major criminal gangs whose are other interests are drugs and violence.
Business was booming at Colahan's notorious Aquarius sauna - until the Daily Record stepped in and exposed him as a money-grabbing pimp.
Today, he is facing jail and financial ruin after being found guilty of living off immoral earnings.''

External Link/Members Only

PS. Sorry about the duplicate post.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2016, 03:03:51 pm by Squire Haggard »

Offline auldie63

To be fair though some of the Glasgow saunas had become controlled by EE traffiking and drug gangs and needed closing. What did rankle was that no change of use etc. permits were being approved to new more 'legiimate' applicants due to pressure being put on the building control by the people I mentioned in my previous post.

Offline Marmalade

Marm the man you refer to is in fact English and quit his senior post in London to come to Glasgow for reasons unexplained.
Yeah, I think he got an award from south or something. I was being too broad brush about it. What he brought was 'Glaswegian' policing methods.

To be fair though some of the Glasgow saunas had become controlled by EE traffiking and drug gangs and needed closing. What did rankle was that no change of use etc. permits were being approved to new more 'legiimate' applicants due to pressure being put on the building control by the people I mentioned in my previous post.

But there was quite a history of an us-vs-them attitude. It always seems to happen when punters and/or prossies are hassled -- many of the ones that stick it are the seriously criminal or else deranged. Although Edinburgh saunas are recovering from spell of chief cunstable madness, the relaxed attitude is the best way to ensure cooperation and monitoring. Not perfect, but more effective to talk to prossies and owners than keeping them on edge. The indie scene suffered as well here in Edinburgh. Some of the best, most decent and most honest girls never came back. There's only so much naming, shaming, and forced flat-hopping that relatively normal girls will put up with.

benstokes

  • Guest
excellent posts guys. proper information

Offline Squire Haggard

The Daily Record view from the article that I've linked above,

''Scare the punters off the street and you take away the demand for sex for sale.''

Here's a Daily Record editorial which describes punters as pervs. I've never before seen so much crap compressed into such a small space. This long running war against the sex trade and punters by the Record could be a factor behind the fact that Glasgow saunas were not allowed another chance under new ownership. The police and local council might have been too nervous about any more adverse publicity from the Record in future. The saunas work OK in Edinburgh, so why not in Glasgow? Too close to the weegie Record perhaps?

Record View: Make pervs pay for crime.

''NEW research has revealed frightening insights into the minds of men who buy sex from prostitutes.
It also dispels the myth that men pay for sex because it is their only option.
Almost half of them involved in the research programme were married or had a girlfriend.
A major concern was that four out of 10 of those interviewed believed that, by using prostitutes, they were less likely to commit rape.
One in 10 admitted they would rape a woman if they knew they wouldn't be caught.
More disturbing still were the attitudes shown by those surveyed.
A third thought rape was just men getting carried away, 12 per cent thought it impossible to rape a prostitute and 10 per cent thought rape laws didn't apply to these women.
More than half of those who frequently used prostitutes also admitted being sexually aggressive with other partners.
Last year, the old Scottish Executive brought in anti-kerb crawling legislation in a bid to reduce prostitution.
For the first time, men faced criminal action as well as the women they exploit.
It was a bold move and one that was frankly long overdue.
Now women's support workers, who helped with the latest research, want the legislation to go further.
They want paying for prostitutes to be made a sex crime - and convicted offenders named and shamed by being placed on the sex offenders' register.
According to the latest research, that would stop nine out of 10 Scots from using prostitutes.
In fact, eight out of 10 admitted that a letter to their partner would be enough to stop them buying sex.
The only way to end this exploitation is to cut the demand - and if that means embarrassing some men, so be it.''

External Link/Members Only
« Last Edit: February 18, 2016, 11:33:01 pm by Squire Haggard »

Offline Marmalade

I wonder if that was some research Rhoda Grant's castration collective pulled out of a crisp packet to justify their salaries coming out of tax payer's pockets...

Offline Squire Haggard

I wonder if that was some research Rhoda Grant's castration collective pulled out of a crisp packet to justify their salaries coming out of tax payer's pockets...

It could be, as the Record supports the same political party.

Offline The Man With No Name

The main problem is that Glasgow City Council are a bunch of backward, incompetent, morally authoritarian cretins who are more interested in enforcing bus lanes and needlessly banging up hookers, than keeping main roads in a safe, drivable condition or sorting out the massive drink and anti-social behaviour problem the city still sees every weekend. Pushed by the hypocritical, puritan Presbyterian establishment with the likes of Rhoda Grant and The Daily Record on one side, and good, old Irish-Catholic guilt on the other, I'm frankly surprised the Glasgow sauna scene lasted as long as it did. Add into the mix the fact that a good proportion of those in the council and most in the Catholic church are of such persuasion, and you also have the answer as to why the sausage clubs are allowed to stay in business.

Further east however, thanks to its profile of being an outward-looking international city instead of being obsessed with parochial, provincial, sectarian backwardness as Glasgow is, Edinburgh has sensibly adopted a far more liberal and manageable attitude to social norms, but to what the "city fathers" in Glasgow would consider "social problems." As a result, things such as drinking outside, longer drinking hours inside and prostitution are handled with far more care and liberal sense, and are therefore far less problematic than they are in Glasgow.

In other words, you can't buy a pint in pub in Glasgow after 11pm, even on a Saturday night. But scumbags can still easily hang around the street, drunk and angry after being knocked back from a club with nowhere else to go, harassing street walkers, who've no saunas to work in. After being told where to go by the streetwalkers, they look for a fight when the clubs, all concentrated into two streets, all spill out at the same time, before getting a chippy all the way up till 5am.

In Edinburgh, however, all pubs evenly spread throughout the city are sensibly open till 1am, at which point a good proportion of people go home. Clubs then close at 3, as do the fast-food shops, but again are far less concentrated and don't cram massive drunken crowds into bottlenecks of take away outlets for a further 2 hours, where nobody can get a taxi, because everyone's trying to get one from the same place at the same time and the night bus service is pitiful. Now, which city is well-handling social norms and which is creating its own problems?

In short, if you wanted extremely contrasting examples of how to run a geographically and physically challenging historical city relatively well (trams aside) and a purpose planned, modern-industrial, concentric-designed city abysmally, Edinburgh and Glasgow are your best bets. No prizes for guessing which is which. The issue of prostitution is just one perfect example.

The bigger issue at play however, is that we shouldn't even be having a discussion about which city councils are more tolerant of what are technically "illegal"  brothels. With every so-called "vice" in society, criminalisation doesn't prevent in the slightest - it only does exactly what the label states, pushing it underground where it thrives in the hands of ruthless bastards who exploit the vulnerable with it. If prostitution was legalised and taxed, instead of being a needless cost of policing to the state, it would become not only an income and economic asset, but also, over time, an accepted and respected way for women of choosing to make a living. Yet like it's morally bankrupt position on drugs (booze and tobacco being the biggest killers of all, of course), euthanasia, censorship and the rest of it, the establishment likes to forget all humans are simply intelligent animals - with such needs - and buries it's head in its hypocritical hangover of Dark Age Christian-influenced backward draconianism, while mainstream society blindly trundles along after it. It's hard to believe that even in the 21st Century Western World "live and let live" is a principle the state still largely ignores. In Roman Civilisation, the most advanced in history relative to its age, prostitutes were legally acknowledged and accepted as an inevitable component of any functioning society. Sadly ironic isn't it, that working girls had more respect 2000 years ago than they do today?

Everyone knows completely legalising hooking would make it far safer, all round, for all those involved, and would also clearly solve the vast majority of other problems that go with it. And even in the worst case scenario where not every problem is solved by its legalisation, doing so can only make it better, certainly not worse. Bait 'n' switchers could even be done for false advertising. Why not?

Offline auldie63

Whilst agreeing that Edinburgh has been far more liberal with regards moral behaviour than Glasgow for many years I must point out that this itself has not created a bed of roses and the capital too has its share of woes. For many years it was the aids capital of Scotland, relative to population size the drug problem is worse there too, and there are areas of the city where even the police avoid after dark.
With regards the closing times of pubs, that nowadays is much more down to the publicans themselves, as under the new licensing laws if a pub applies for longer hours the Board have to actually find a good reason to deny it now, unlike years ago when they could simply issue a flat denial. Even in Paisley most pubs are open till 1am and some later at weekends and the clubs go on till who knows when. 

Offline Marmalade

Whilst agreeing that Edinburgh has been far more liberal with regards moral behaviour than Glasgow for many years I must point out that this itself has not created a bed of roses and the capital too has its share of woes. For many years it was the aids capital of Scotland, relative to population size the drug problem is worse there too, and there are areas of the city where even the police avoid after dark.
With regards the closing times of pubs, that nowadays is much more down to the publicans themselves, as under the new licensing laws if a pub applies for longer hours the Board have to actually find a good reason to deny it now, unlike years ago when they could simply issue a flat denial. Even in Paisley most pubs are open till 1am and some later at weekends and the clubs go on till who knows when.
Regarding the AIDS epidemic of years ago, it is only fair to point out that Edinburgh also lead the way with tolerance, as it has with prostitution. The Edinburgh needle-exchange program and methadone prescribing had a massive impact. I think they were UK leaders in effective responses.
External Link/Members Only
External Link/Members Only
As far as nightclubs, closing times and police-avoidance goes, even Lothian Rd in the centre can unfortunately be almost as bad as any late-night Glaswegian hooliganism.

sparticus_1

  • Guest
DOES ANYBODY KNOW  how martin welsh died and where ? he used to have a few saunas in glasgow

thedoc!

  • Guest
In the bad old days of Strathclyde Region, Glasgow chief plod for reasons best known to himself went to war, with the help of certain councillors, on the sauna scene in Glasgow. Strange though that only the hetro saunas were targetted and eventually shut down but the gay ones remained open, I wonder why? 
Guess what, along comes Police Scotland and said chief gets a few more feathers for his bonnet and lo and behold similar occurences in Edinburgh, where the council and indeed Police till that time had had what many thought a sensible attitude towards these places. It seems though that the council in the capital have told this chancer to calm down and whilst some have shut the better ones have remained open and,touch wood, this continues to be the case. Once again the gay premises seemed to go unnoticed.
Marm the man you refer to is in fact English and quit his senior post in London to come to Glasgow for reasons unexplained.

thedoc!

  • Guest
Don't often agree with this auld so-in-so, but this cop that we are talking about 'had' several super injunctions in place, just like the self-appointed King of Scotland (and before anybody thinks otherwise he is caucasian).

The reason being, that he is bent! He also brought his lover up from the Met to be his depute, it is alleged!

Offline The Man With No Name

As far as nightclubs, closing times and police-avoidance goes, even Lothian Rd in the centre can unfortunately be almost as bad as any late-night Glaswegian hooliganism.

It really can't. I've seen many Saturday nights on Lothian Rd and only ever witnessed one proper fight. The Cowgate's worse but Sauchiehall St even manages to make that look like Disneyland.

Whilst agreeing that Edinburgh has been far more liberal with regards moral behaviour than Glasgow for many years I must point out that this itself has not created a bed of roses and the capital too has its share of woes. For many years it was the aids capital of Scotland, relative to population size the drug problem is worse there too, and there are areas of the city where even the police avoid after dark.
With regards the closing times of pubs, that nowadays is much more down to the publicans themselves, as under the new licensing laws if a pub applies for longer hours the Board have to actually find a good reason to deny it now, unlike years ago when they could simply issue a flat denial. Even in Paisley most pubs are open till 1am and some later at weekends and the clubs go on till who knows when.

I wasn't referring to wider problems such as criminalised drug use (though the problem would be far less if all substances were legalised and more heavily researched, making dependence more effectively treated), public health or areas of social deprivation, but the negative effect mindless, draconian over-restriction - as opposed to sensible public planning - on specific issues like drink and prostitution, has on society.

Glasgow Shitty Council thinks that by restricting drinking hours, closing the vast majority of pubs at 11 and all clubs at, 3 despite them all being in the same place, solves issue of drunks on the street. A complete lack of staggering closing times and locations only creates problems however, as every Saturday night here proves.

What I'm basically saying is that, bigger social issues caused and dealt with at national and international levels aside, Glasgow Council fucks up any regulation it tries to implement, or simply anything it has a hand in. And the proof is there for us all to suffer, every day.

RandyF

  • Guest
Glasgow Shitty Council thinks that by restricting drinking hours, closing the vast majority of pubs at 11 and all clubs at, 3 despite them all being in the same place,

Can only assume that wherever you read and regurgitated this info, with such great authority, pomp and conviction TOWNS...was approx. 15 years out of date  :lol: :D