The Lodge Gentlemen’s Club, Oxford’s only lap-dancing club, has lost a High Court appeal to have its sexual entertainment licence renewed.

The club first had its licence revoked by Oxford City Council in 2011. At that time it was operating in Pennyfarthing Place, next to St. Ebbe’s Church, and was accused of having premises in an unsuitable area. It then moved to its current location in Oxpens Road. However, despite the move, the club was yet again denied a licence by Oxford City council in October 2012. The reason given was once more the inappropriate location of the club.

The council’s criteria for areas considered inappropriate for sexual entertainment licences included parts of the city near historic buildings or tourist attractions, schools and play areas. St. Thomas Day Nursery, a parish church and the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College are all within a few hundred metres of The Lodge’s new premises. 

The club’s owner, Alistair Thompson, appealed to the High Court due to what he argued were “irrelevant and inaccurate factors” taken into account when considering the suitability of the club’s location.

Yet a recent High Court decision will uphold Oxford City Council’s refusal of a sexual entertainment licence to the club. A High Court official, Mr. Justice Haddon-Cave, dismissed Thompson’s grounds for appeal. He also dismissed the possibility of a third factor, that of supposed bias by a member of Oxford City Council’s licensing registration sub-committee.

Thompson now intends to take the matter to the Court of Appeal. He said: “We are shocked and very disappointed with the judgment. It has huge implications, not just on our business, but for the night time industry as a whole. Our legal team advise us we have a very strong case to take forward an appeal.”

However, Councillor and Council leader Bob Price, had a very different opinion on the outcome. “We are pleased the decision of the panel was upheld, which was based on the careful application of the criteria agreed by the council in 2010 to define suitable locations for sex entertainment venues.”

Keble College student Heli Copley also agreed with the decision. She told Cherwell, “I think the sexual entertainment industry is quite an outdated industry, and is particularly unhelpful in a city that has quite an impact on a lot of young people.”

Although The Lodge’s website describes it as “Oxford’s most opulent and exclusive club”, promising “stunning stage shows throughout the night” and going on to mention that its “stunning dancers” would treat patrons like “Kings”, many other students share Copley’s opinion.

Physicist David Harris stated, “I for one hope nothing ‘pops up’ to make the licensers reconsider.”

Meanwhile, first year lawyer Chris Jenkins seemed completely unaware of the club’s presence, saying, “We had a lap dancing club?”

A new study by Oxford researchers has suggested that an individual’s place in the British class system is closely linked to the position of their grandparents, not just their parents.

Working in cooperation with sociologists from the University of Durham, the researchers have found that social advantages and disadvantages can be transmitted across multiple generations. Even where the influence of parents had been taken into account, the odds of grandchildren reaching managerial positions are at least two and a half times greater if their grandparents were themselves employed in managerial roles.

The researchers reached their conclusions after collecting more than 17,000 responses from three nationally representative surveys of Britons born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. For the purposes of the study responders were asked to reveal their occupation as well as the occupation of their father and grandfathers.

Using this information researchers calculated that among men with both parents and grandparents in the professional-managerial class, 80 percent stayed in those advantaged positions. But among men with upwardly mobile parents (those with grandparents in unskilled manual occupations and parents in professional-managerial occupations), only 61 percent managed to stay there.

Dr Tak Wing Chan from Oxford’s Department of Sociology said, “The ‘grandparent effect’ in social mobility is found to operate throughout society and is not restricted to the top or bottom of the social class structure in Britain. It may work through a number of channels, including the inheritance of wealth and property, and may be aided by durable social institutions such as generation-skipping trusts, residential segregation and other demographic processes.

“Further investigation needs to be done to establish the precise mechanisms by which the grandparent effect endures, but our study of 17,000 Britons reveals that grandparents have a substantial effect on where their grandchildren end up in the British class system.”

The report also concluded that today’s older generation are now healthier, wealthier and more likely to assist with childcare, as well as passing on financial advantages to grandchildren in the shape of property and savings. Beyond the influence of the grandchildren’s formative years, wealthy grandparents might make financial transfers to help pay for their grandchildren’s education, and well-connected grandparents might use their networks to help secure jobs for their grandchildren.

In response to the results of the research, one second-year Keble historian said, “The really interesting results will only come when we start to look at the social mobility of our generation, i.e. people now in their teens and early-twenties. They’re the first generation in modern history who face the very serious prospect of being materially worse off than their parents.

“It seems almost certain that if nothing changes then the major political divisions of the future won’t be ideological or class-based, but rather intergenerational as the young and the old compete for increasingly strained resources.”

The Oxford Union has invited Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League leader branded a “fascist” by opponents, to a nationalism debate at the society in Michaelmas.

Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary Weyman Bennett has said that the organisation, which has campaigned against the EDL since its inception, “opposes the invitation to Tommy Robinson and will call a peaceful demonstration”.

Secretary’s Committee member Simon Blackaby, of St John’s College, tweeted Robinson saying “the Oxford Union would love to host you as a speaker” and requested an email address to send a formal invitation to. Robinson tweeted back asking Blackaby to “[direct message] me your number”.

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Union President Parit Wacharasindhu confirmed the invite was genuine and defended the decision, saying that the society was “founded on the principle of free speech. It provides a neutral arena where political views can be aired so long as they are contested”. 

However he said that there would be “security concerns – an issue raised by both parties – which need to be resolved” before a formal invitation letter could be sent. 

The EDL was founded in 2009 as a street protest movement. The group describes itself as a “human rights organisation” that “protests against radical Islan’s encroachement into the lives of non-Muslims.”

Wacharasindhu also stated that the debate format “ensures his views are extensively questioned and scrutinised” and denied claims that the Union had affiliated itself with the EDL in any way. 

“No speakers are ever given a platform nor are their views ever endorsed by the society or any of the individuals in it”, he said. 

In January the Union revoked an invitation it had extended to Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, to debate the motion ‘This house would be glad to have gay parents’. 

The society later claimed that the invitation had not been authorised by senior members and said it would take “disciplinary action” against the junior member responsible. The Union said that it “does not wish to be associated with the BNP in any way whatsoever” and that it “strongly disagree[s] with their views.”

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Lennon, was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of obstructing officers in east London. 

Robinson and his co-leader Kevin Carroll were staging what they claimed was a charity walk to Woolwich, the scene of a gruesome terror attack last month. However the police pressed the EDL to take an alternative route that avoided the East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets, which they refused.

Blackaby did not respond to requests for comment.

Pembroke students have voiced their dismay after the college hosted a ‘silent auction’ run by Abingdon School, a leading independent school, which included the auctioning of internships. One Pembroke second-year student branded the auction “disgusting”.

The auction, which took place at the end of Trinity term, included lots which offered placements at The Berkeley Group and Cancer Research Technology. The practice has come under fire in recent weeks after MPs released an open letter to Westminster School, which conducted a similar auction, calling the practice “explicitly favouring privilege”. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, an alumnus of Westminster, was also vocal in condemning his alma mater.

Felicity Lusk, Headmistress of Abingdon School, responded to these claims by saying, “The silent auction was organised by the Abingdon School Parents’ Association in order to raise funds for the School.  As with any school we are very grateful to all the people – individuals, parents and former pupils – who support the School.  We are very appreciative of any company or organisation who offers work experience opportunities.  The internships offered in the silent auction are open to whoever the person who bid for them chooses – they may or may not be a pupil at Abingdon School.  Abingdon School very much values being part of the local community working alongside other schools, most recently in providing science, music and and language teaching, to further education for all children.”

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Despite this, David Messling, the OUSU Vice-President for Access and Academic Affairs at the time of the auction, responded by stating that, “The selling of internships flies in the face of any professed concern for social mobility. It is a practice so backward and obnoxious that by any modern standards of equality of opportunity it belongs in the middle ages. On behalf of students, we hope that the University and colleges are not permitting any such auctions to take place in Oxford. They are an insult to all the excellent work colleges, including Pembroke, are doing to make Oxford open to all.” 

Pembroke’s JCR President Becky Howe told Cherwell that she found it “bizarre that internships – which are usually offered to students who have displayed their merit – can be awarded as prizes in an auction.” Will Brown, a Pembroke History and Economics student and Chair of the Living Wage Campaign, condemned the actions, stating that “flogging off internships to the highest bidder is an affront to the basic principles of meritocracy and fairness and I’d hope that such an ugly form of elitism would have no place at Pembroke. The college should be doing more to ensure that no student is excluded from internship opportunities by their financial circumstances, rather than helping to further entrench inequalities of opportunity.” Pembroke College was unavailable for comment.