September 15, 2009

C’est fini: no more cross-border drug buying

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 11:04 am
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Next Monday is the premiere of the film ‘C’est Fini’ (It’s over’) in Antwerp, Belgium, a comedy film made by the Dutch cities of Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom near the Belgian border to inform drug tourists about not being able to buy drugs anymore in both cities.

As of tomorrow, coffeeshops in both cities will no longer be allowed to sell soft drugs (hashish and marijuana). Coffeeshops that do sells drugs will be shut down for five years after a first warning. About 90% of all the drugs sold in these cities are to Flemish youth, which adds up to some 25,000 drug tourists.

The film’s plot has three Flemish guys trying to score a joint in the Netherlands. You can catch the trailer here (warning, nasty splash page).

The Dutch could just stop selling soft drugs altogether, some do say, others think that it’s still better to be relaxed about soft drugs in order to dissuade people from taking hard drugs. The current trend is that most people would probably not have the Netherlands known as some sort of coffeeshop and prostituion heaven, but hey, it’s part of the country’s identity at this point and it does attract the right tourists in some places. The jury is defintely still out on this, so to speak.

And don’t ask me why the poster has three languages on it (English = cool, French = cool to the Flemish, Dutch/Flemish = to be understood).

(Link: parool.nl, cestfini.be)

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May 18, 2009

Bodybuilders flee doping check

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 12:47 pm

All 20 contestants of the Belgian bodybuilding championship fled the venue in the Dutch city of Vlissingen, Zeeland, yesterday when three doping inspectors entered the room. The championship was cancelled, and the 300 or so spectators had to go home without seeing a single bodybuilder compete.

One of the inspectors, doctor Hans Cooman, told Nieuwsblad (Dutch): “I have never witnessed anything like it.” Nieuwsblad insinuates that the organisers of these contests often move their competitions off-shore in the hope of escaping doping tests even though these tests can be held anywhere. Says Cooman: “Sometimes sports federations take the initiative and invite us to come by, like the cycling union does. But we have never had an invitation like this from bodybuilders.”

(Photo by Jo Christian Oterhals, partially based on a photo by Lin Mei, both some rights reserved)

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February 28, 2009

Crash victim booted from hospital, opts for pot

Filed under: Aviation,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:07 pm

Crash

Ron Ledford, an American who survived the plane crash this week at Schiphol airport helped crash victims out of the plane and walked to the nearest hospital. As you may have read, it took the emergency services some 40 minutes to get to the crash for whatever reason.

When the emergency services finally arrived, the man decided to walk to the Lucas Andreas hospital to have himself checked out. He was asked to pay 250 euro for the visit, and since he didn’t have it on him, he claims to have gone to a coffeeshop to ‘self-medicate’.

The hospital is looking into this incident and says it will issue a statement. I should bloodly hope so. Amsterdam’s local TV station AT5 met Ron Ledford at a shop downtown where he was being fitted with a free new outfit, thanks to a shop owner who met him and obviously cared about his story (unlike the hospital). He was then brought for more help to the police.

(Link: at5.nl, Photo by flickr.com user Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, some rights reserved.)

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December 2, 2008

John keeps socks on, gets busted

Filed under: Fashion,Weird by Branko Collin @ 8:51 am

A man got arrested last Sunday after he kept his socks on for sex. The prostitute at the Doubletstraat in The Hague whose services he was availing himself of thought his behaviour was strange and asked him about it—she thought maybe he had cold feet. The man admitted that he was carrying a valuable load of drugs in his socks, and even offered to sell some of it to his supplier of sex. Instead the woman called out to two police officers who were passing through the street and who in turn arrested the man and discovered that indeed, he had hidden “229 drug balls, 32 pony packs cocaine and 2 bags of marijuana” in his socks, according to the Telegraaf (Dutch).

Photo by Lauren Weinhold, some rights reserved. Boy is there a lot of sock porn on Flickr.

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October 4, 2007

Happy World Animal Day! Have some space cake

Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:56 am
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In good Dutch finger pointing tradition, Stichting Wakker Dier warns us about eating non-politically correct space cake with eggs from laying battery chickens. To point the space cake eating crowd in the right direction, they have come up with a sticker to place on “chicken friendly” space cake, made with deep litter eggs (from chickens that do get to run around somewhat).

The coffee shops, Dutch for those places that sell weed and hash, are quite happy to oblige them.

(Link: rtl.nl)

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April 20, 2007

Headaches about headaches

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:25 pm
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Forget those recent articles about Belgians pissed off at Dutch drug cafés being moved closer the Belgian border in the Southern province of Limburg. Now there’s a whole new reason for the Belgians to cross border shop: paracetamol. To protest against the high cost of painkillers in Belgium (4 to 5 times the Dutch price), the Flemish KWB (‘Christian Workers Movement’) has organised a bus trip on 21 April to the border province of Zeeland just to buy paracetamol. Even the mayor of Hulst, who will be welcoming the buses in more ways than one, will have maps and drinks ready for his Flemish visitors.

(Link)

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March 28, 2007

Running drugs is tax deductible

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 8:14 am
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A fisherman in Arnhem convicted of smuggling drugs could deduct the cost of buying and shipping hashish to The Netherlands from his income on his tax return. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that the smuggler appealed to the Arnhem court after being slapped with a tax bill in the millions of euro. The court ruled that because he had only been convicted of drug running and not trading he could deduct the cost of buying and transporting the drugs on his tax form, which cut his tax bill in about half.

In 2005, judges in the city of Leeuwarden ruled that witches can write off the cost of schooling in witchcraft if it increases the likelihood of employment and personal income.

(Two clichés for the price of one: we’re all on drugs and women have no serious career plans)

(Link)

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