There are no Hooters restaurants in the UK
Insult to Democracy and Common Sense
Pub landlords beware: from next Sunday it will be an offence, punishable by unlimited compensation orders, to allow customers to chat up bar staff.
No, this isn’t an early April fool. It’s a European directive, sneaked into British law by Women’s Minister Harriet Harman.
From April 6, employers will risk being sued if a bar worker or waitress complains of being called “love” or “darling”, or if staff overhear customers telling sexist jokes.
So serious is the threat that lawyers are advising pub owners to cover themselves by displaying warning notices declaring: “Harassment is not tolerated.”
Meanwhile, the Government Equalities Office estimates that complying with the new rules will cost hard-pressed small businesses more than ï½£10million.
The Mail makes no defence of boorish customers who cross the line between good-natured banter and offensiveness.
But why do we need yet another law – and yet more red tape – to enforce what has always been a matter for common sense, to be dealt with by the landlord’s ancient right to ban difficult customers? Isn’t this an invitation to employees to cash in on imaginary grievances?
In fact, everything about this new law is an affront not only to common sense but to democracy itself.
Nobody voted for it. It was dreamed up by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and is now being imposed on Britain without parliamentary debate or division, after a ruling by an unelected judge.
This is worse than banning smoking in bars. If a guy can’t give a drunken compliment to a waitress or tell a T&A joke to his friends at a bar, then what exactly is the reason to go?
Found at Right Thinking
The predictable result of all this balderdash?
SPEAKEASIES!
Yep, those Prohibition-era private clubs will make a comeback. They will siphon off so much money from the hospitality industry that some pressure will be put on the dot.gov over there to end this nonsense.