Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

by Ben Coates

For a while I jotted down in a notebook examples of what I denoted ‘Crazy Dutch Liberal Policies’. I soon gave up when I ran out of room. Cannabis was almost as easy to buy in the Netherlands as coffee, and nudist beaches as common as non-nudist ones. Terminally ill children could be euthanised; speeding moped riders need not bother wearing helmets; prostitutes were entitled to sick pay and pimps lobbied the government to cut payroll taxes. Gay couples had been able to marry and adopt for more than a decade, and 95 per cent of people said they would be comfortable having a gay prime minister. The whole country had roughly the same number of police officers as New York City, and in 2009 the Dutch justice ministry had announced plans to close several prisons because (despite offering to accommodate some of Belgium’s prisoners too) there were simply not enough criminals to fill them. Dutch soldiers were able to join trade unions. The few prisoners who did remain in captivity reportedly were entitled to visits from clairvoyants to help them contact dead relatives. The list went on. I considered myself fairly liberal, but even I sometimes recoiled at news headlines that Dutch friends took in their stride, such as the thirty-five-year-old woman who was legally euthanized because she was depressed,