Oh Those Crazy Cloggies

Your (rolling) papers, please

Published on November 3, 20101 Comment

Amsterdam coffeeshop

With a new rightwing government in power in the Netherlands it was just a question of time before the coffeeshops would be targeted again. Attitudes towards cannabis and coffeeshop culture have been hardening on the right in the past decade or so, at least amongst national politicians and there’s less and less support for continuing the policy of tolerance towards cannabis users. The latest argument in this battle is the nuisance coffee shops supposedly cause, especially those aimed at foreigners.

Normally we do everything to lure visitors to the Netherlands, but as soon as they come here to toke up without risking jail, it’s a nuisance. Sure, there’s no denying that some coffeeshops do annoy their neighbours and the mega popular ones down by the Dutch-Belgian and Dutch-German borders are not places you would like to live next to, but on average coffee shops cause much less disturbance than e.g. pubs routinely do. People who’ve enjoyed slightly too much hash are more likely to fall asleep than cause trouble after all, unlike your average lager lout.

So the government has come up with the brilliant idea to introduce a “wietpas“, a membership scheme for coffeeshops, where you have to get a pass to be able to buy cannabis. Only Dutch people would be able to get such a pass so no filthy foreigners will get their hands on our weed.

You can guess what that would mean for tourism in Amsterdam. One of the few things that makes the city something more than a secondrate Vienna is the ability to score cheap, safe weed and enjoy it without harassement. As the Amsterdam bureau for tourism has calculated (Dutch), of the four and a half million tourists who visit Amsterdam each year, roughly a quarter visits a coffeeshop during their stay. That’s more than a million people, who each stay on average two days and spent around 100 euros — and not just on cannabis either. How many of those will continue to come to Amsterdam if they can’t get their fix anymore?

Dutch football to Wilders: F-off

Published on October 25, 2010

amateur football

Sometimes rightwing populism backfires, as Geert Wilders’ party the PVV found out last week. A PVV member of the Den Haag city council proposed an “allochtonenstop” in amateur football, in response to the supposed “flood of problems” football clubs with too many non-western immigrant members were having. According to Richard de Mos (also a PVV member of parliament), such people don’t volunteer for their clubs, are disrespectful and responsible for daily violence on the football pitch. To combat this behaviour clubs should stop accepting new non-western immigrants as members.

Deliberately controversial, this sort of proposal is what helped make the PVV into the third biggest party in the Netherlands. You just make up a lot of stupid but tough sounding shit about Muslims or “non-western immigrants” that reinforce already existing stereotypes in your base, let the experts explain why you’re wrong but emerge as the party of common sense, in touch with the public mood, unlike the elitist eggheads who refuse to see deportation of all muslims to Texel is the right answer to Holland’s crime problems.

This time, it failed spectacularly. Because this time the PVV talked nonsense on a subject their voters actually knew something about. Too many people voluntarily spent their weekend running around wet and cold football pitches to believe this nonsense about foreigners running amateur football. this time therefore the backlash came not just from the experts, but from the very same people the PVV normally has on their side. Richard de Vos forgot that if you want to bullshit people, best not attempt that on subjects they actually know something about…

In short: the PVV got roundly thrashed on this proposal, with everybody from the Dutch football union on down ridiculing it.

Sint!

Published on October 24, 2010

Above is the trailer for the new Dick Maas horror movie, Sint, in which Sinterklaas (the original Santa Claus) goes bad and starts killing children instead of giving them presents. Not an entirely original idea and I’m sure there are some Santa Claus horror movies too, but Dick Maas has a good track record for horror movies, with De Lift and Amsterdamned, the latter of which scared me stiff when I first saw it as a fourteen year old. His new movie has been the subject of a mild controversy, as some of the posters used to advertise it are thought to be a little bit too scary by the usual numbnuts. An official complaint to the advertisement standards agency was made, but failed. And so it should.

The posters aren’t that scary, we do not need to “childproof” our cities and the people making these complaints are the sort of creepoids who’d want nothing better than to move Holland back to the fifties with brussel sprouts for dinner every evening. If you don’t like the movie, don’t watch it.

Meanwhile the real horrorshow happened in Eindhoven, as evil, hated outside of Brabant PSV defeated my poor old Feijenoord 10-0. It’s isn’t fair. And yes, I am a Feijenoord supporter living in Amsterdam — guess how much fun I’m going to have at work tomorrow…

The Fug? No kissey cheeks for Dutch lawyers

Published on September 10, 20103 Comments

So two years ago a lawyer greets a client and friend of his with the usual awkward three kisses on the cheeks. An assistant D.A. is offended, gods know why and complains to the tribunal. Wheels of justice grinding incredibly slow, this important case only reached the tribunals on the 25th of august. The verdict: cheek kissing is a no-no. The guy in question did not act according to the standards of the profession and he should’ve kept his distance even if he was friends with this client.

I’m not sure who has the biggest stick up their arses: the tribunal for reaching this verdict or the numptie who complained in the first place. What the hell is wrong with you you start a complaint because somebody kisses a friend on the cheeks?

What you get when not freaking out about teen sex

Published on September 9, 20104 Comments

Comparison of number of gonerrhea cases in Holland and America

33 times fewer gonorrhea cases in the Netherlands amongst teenagers than in the United States for a start. But also drastically lower rates for HIV infection, Syphilis, teen pregnancy, abortion, undsoweiter. It’s almost as if treating teenagers having sex as a normal part of growing up and sexuality something you can teach your children about to treat with care and respect you can actually avoid or drastically lessen the dangers of sexualy ignorance… Honestly, even the danger of getting killed by a serial killer when losing your virginity is less in Holland. The Dutch approach isn’t perfect of course, there have been setbacks in recent years, but on the whole it scores so much better than trying to scare teenagers away from sex.

But even if the Dutch system was perfect, it still has one big flaw that would always keep it from being adopted in the US: it’s not punitive enough. Too many people do not want their — and others’ — children to be safe so much as punished. It’s the old idea that good people don’t have sex until they’re married and if they can’t wait, they deserve what they get. Let’s not even mention homosexuality or other “deviant” behaviour…

What’s strange is why America has gotten so fucked up about, well, fucking, when European countries like the Netherlands have long since outgrown such feelings. Holland used to be a strict calvinist, moralistic country as well after all, but we changed while the US slid back. Even our religious nutters are so much less strident than we’ve seen from across the Atlantic. It’s a mystery.