Posts Tagged ‘netherlands’

The BBC recently published a report on the Dutch parliament voting on a proposal to ban ritually slaughtered meat – and it’s expected to pass.

I found the BBC news report rather biased. For example, when reporting on a Halal butcher, she said that if the law came into force he would “be forced to leave.” This is entirely misleading, it sounds like they are about to get kicked out of the country or something, not just having to sell meat slaughtered differently – which he could do. Or get another job. Or import his meat from outside The Netherlands. Or use pre-stunned Halal meat, like they have in New Zealand.

Not to mention that the debate genuinely is about animal welfare. There is a reason we have independent advisory boards, and the Farm Animal Welfare Council has spoken on the issue.

Of course, ultimately they lose the argument thanks to a good bit of Godwin’s Law. Much like Chanoch Kesselman’s offensive video broadcast on Channel 4, the rabbi in the news piece equated the banning of Kosher meat to Holocaust. I fail to see how one appalling act of slaughter justifies him committing another, but it doesn’t matter, he resorted to Godwin’s Law and therefore loses the argument by default.

As some of you know, myself and a few friends recently hit the road for a bit of a trip across Europe. I didn’t want to blog during it because I wanted to actually enjoy it, or at very least spend the time trying to de-stress from all the traveling. But now I’m sat in a villa in France with a recently liberated internet connection, I thought I would write a bit up about our adventures.

We took the ferry over from Hull to Rotterdam which was a nightmare – I didn’t manage to sleep the whole night and there is just something depressing about being sat in a bar, which isn’t open, by yourself at 5am in the morning. Still I managed to come away from the casino £1 up so all is good.

Having arrived we headed up to Amsterdam for our first night. Amsterdam is a fairly boring place in the day – it’s basically London, it’s dirty, there is lots of litter, everyone speaks some degree of English and it’s full of traffic.

However by night Amsterdam really comes alive. The Red Light District was amazing, I don’t have any photos of it as I didn’t fancy taking my camera round there at night for fear of it getting swiped but it looks pretty much like this picture someone called Laura took.

The cafes were great as well. Not only can you just go in there and order a joint but they also have interesting quirks such as the cat sat on the bar that we found – with a notice saying “please don’t give our cat cannabis – it already get’s stoned enough!”

Another real bonus of Amsterdam is that it was the only place in Europe in which we saw a KFC!

They also seem to love Argentinian steak houses of which there seemed to be hundreds. As a consequence we decided to give one of them a try – it was no River Plate but it was very nice none the less. As was the little cafe we found for breakfast the next day.