'B*llocks to Boris': Bristol club enforces anti-government petition

Will Charley -

By Will Charley, Deputy Editor

Lakota, a popular Bristol nightclub, only allowed guests entry to an event on Friday if they signed a petition criticising the government.

Hours before the event 'B*llocks to Boris', the club announced a 'change of plan' on its Facebook page, ending the sale of monetary tickets for the night.

Rather than charging the £3 plus booking fee that some club-goers had already paid, Lakota made entry free on condition that attendees signed a petition calling for a reversal of the Conservative Government's decision to prorogue Parliament.

This petition, whose sentiment has been widely supported by Bristol politicians, states that 'Parliament must not be prorogued or dissolved unless... the Article 50 period has been sufficiently extended or the UK's intention to withdraw from the EU has been cancelled'.

Whilst Lakota promised those who had bought a ticket a free beer or cider, it told the 2,600 people 'interested' or 'going' on the event that they would only be allowed in if they proved they had signed the petition.

Currently, the petition has over 1,689,000 signatures. The constituency Bristol West has the largest numbers of signatures, with 11,765 at the time of writing. Whilst this is in line with previous anti-Brexit petitions such as 'Revoke Article 50', where Bristol West again had the highest numbers of signatures, Lakota appears to be the first Bristol club that is swapping cash tickets for political signatures.

Bristol West has the highest number of signatures in the UK | Photo courtesy of petitions.parliament.uk

The owners of Lakota were unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

Rob Porter, Chairman of the Bristol University Conservative Association, told Epigram:

'At an event called ‘B*llocks to Boris!’ it is perhaps not hugely surprising that Lakota turns out, shock horror, to not be the biggest fans of the Conservative Party... Sadly, it’s a bit of a waste of time given that the anti-prorogation petition won’t be able to be debated because Parliament will be prorogued.
'We look forward to the inevitable ‘B*llocks to Corbyn’ event. We’ve even seen a petition that could go alongside it. ‘Jeremy Corbyn in Love Island’. It might give him some semblance of being relevant.'

Lakota does not have any upcoming explicitly political events showing on their website.

Featured image: Maggie Sawant / Epigram

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