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Monday, 15 March 2010 13:13 |
 Dutch "coffee shops" have announced they are going on strike on 9 June, the day the country will hold parliamentary elections. The idea behind closing for the day is to encourage all those who like to smoke a joint to get out and vote for the parties which will ensure that coffee shops will not be banned in the Netherlands.
Nol van Schaik, who owns a coffee shop in Haarlem, launched the campaign because he feels the current government is biased against "shops" like his.
“We have been under a lot of pressure in recent years because of a very conservative government”, he says. “The pressure on us is mounting and with the possibility of a new right-wing cabinet, I think we should mobilise people to vote for parties that are cannabis-friendly”. |
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Monday, 25 January 2010 19:15 |
 Amsterdam councillor Mr Asscher has launched a plan to raise the minimum age of prostitutes from 18 to 23. Mr Asscher wants to clean up Amsterdam's Red Light district and is proposing a whole raft of measures.
In addition to raising the minimum age, he also wants the Red Light district in the Wallen area to close down between 04:00 and 08:00 in the morning.
One of the councillor's aims is to strengthen the position of the women who work in the sex industry.
He told NOS public radio, "We recently saw the escape of a people trafficker who used extreme violence to pressure very young girls who were far from home into prostitution in the Wallen area. An 18-year-old girl from Bulgaria, for example, is less able to fend for herself than a woman who is older. |
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Monday, 03 August 2009 14:50 |
 A radically conservative talk show about the city on the U.S. TV channel Fox has led to a vivid rebuttal on YouTube from an angry inhabitant of the capital of The Netherlands.
'Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, prostitution and crime. It is anarchy.''
Even in the US TV channel Fox is not seen as a nuanced news source. Especially Bill O'Reilly - 'Amsterdam is a moral disaster area' - is not the most liberal anchorman. His 'O'Reilly Factor' saw the tightened policy towards coffee shops in Amsterdam as a wonderful occasion to denounce the city and seamlessly warn 'Hussein' Obama, who - in O'Reillyland - wants to turn the whole of the US in one big Amsterdam. |
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Monday, 01 June 2009 08:58 |
 As the credit crunch keeps away sight-seers and business travellers, the owners of Amsterdam's brothels, escort agencies and sex shops all grumble that those visitors who still do indulge in the pleasures of the flesh are increasingly tight-fisted.
Eva, a 25-year-old prostitute in the city's red-light district, gestures angrily in the direction of a rival who has slashed her rates as the economic crisis emboldens sex tourists to haggle.
"People like her make it very difficult for the rest of us," scowled the leggy, blonde Estonian as she dragged on a cigarette in skimpy black-and-white lingerie, all the while posing seductively for men passing the window in which she flaunts her talents.
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Monday, 25 May 2009 08:26 |
 We’ve all heard tales of Amsterdam: the great European city of bacchanalia. Arriving by train, weary travellers walk along a canal that radiates outward from Centraal station and venture down any of the many narrow side streets that splay forth from each canal, leading to the city’s best-known attractions. From the live sex shows and scantily clad prostitutes of the red light district to the so-called “coffee shops” where modest portions of cannabis and hashish can be bought and smoked, the city’s core is brimming with a degree of naughtiness that comparatively puritan North Americans find jaw-dropping.
Nevertheless, as any recent visitor can tell you, there’s something strange in the Amsterdam air these days — a distinctly different kind of stink than the acrid odour of an expertly rolled blunt. While the culture of permissiveness remains intact, it has been thoroughly rattled by a recent series of legal reforms. Nestled alongside policies that would see the red-light district scaled back by half, new rules designed to restrict the sale and consumption of soft drugs are on their way down the pipe; some have already arrived.
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