De(con)struction of a country
The Christian government’s War on Fun is plodding along at a glacial pace here. This can make it difficult to get a decent picture of how bad things have gotten. Luckily, over at the Yak’s forums, somebody who calls themselves DutchLlama has provided a list of battles lost and about to be lost:
- A total ban on magic mushrooms (effective as of 1 December 2008)
- Proposed closing of all coffeeshops by 2010 (already a reality in some border towns)
- Proposed closing of the Red Light [District] (already a third of the windows have shut down)
- Closure of the famous Yab Yum brothel (it closed in january of this year)
- Likewise the Casa Rosso and the Bananabar
- Smoking ban in all restaurants and pubs
- A Christian Union MP has now proposed to ban smoking in cars as well “to protect the children”. To force equality in the law she also wants to enforce it when there are no children in a car.
- The blasphemy law was scrapped but instead the [anti-]discrimination law is strenghtened to cover criticism of religion
One thing DutchLlama forgot is the ban on flags in the inner city of Amsterdam, as these make the city look too cheerfulcommercial according to some politicos.
I should point out that although all of these bans are right up the alley of the Reformed government (the Reformed are a protestant sect), the measures taken in Amsterdam can likely be subscribed to nimbyism, as they’re often based on decisions taken by the council of the city center borough.
Yak is the pseudonym of brilliant games programmer Jeff Minter, the guy who almost single-handedly brought the concept of author’s voice to the video game world, and kept it there against great opposition.
Via Cloggie. Photo of the spire of the Westerkerk by Mararie, some rights reserved.
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