I never tire of admiring Holland’s trailblazing efforts in bringing ancient laws and practices up to date.
For example, she was the first European country to legalise homomarriage, thus expanding the concept of matrimony and, moreover, laying the groundwork for further expansion into such promising areas as polygamy, polyandry and interspecies marriage. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.
Consumption of soft drugs is legal too, with the Dutch adding a whole new meaning to the concept of coffee shop. Walk into one of those in Amsterdam and you can have all the hash cookies you can eat – bizarrely provided you’re a Dutch citizen. The logic behind this discrimination against foreigners must be based on sheer greed: the Dutch want to keep all the best fruits of progress for themselves.
Holland also is the first country to have legalised killing old people who don’t seem to enjoy life any longer. Of course gauging the requisite degree of unhappiness isn’t something a wrinkly can be trusted to do for himself. Such a responsible decision can only be made by an impartial source, namely a doctor or perhaps a magistrate.
As a result of this progressive legislation, old people in Holland are increasingly scared of going to hospital because they think the doctors may kill them. This reticence reduces the workload of the Dutch health service and, indirectly, the tax burden on the populace. Benefits all around, anywhere you look.
Since all EU members are umbilically linked to one another, progress achieved in one country invariably catches on. Hence one can hardly open one of our ‘quality’ broadsheets without reading lamentations about the unbearable pressure the aging population exerts on the NHS.
While a wholesale cull of crumblies isn’t mentioned as a viable solution in so many words, the underlying longing is clearly discernible. And speaking of underlying longings, Holland has introduced another progressive law that has made me consider retraining as a driving instructor.
Transport Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen and Justice Minister Ard van der Steur have just welcomed the new law making it legal for driving instructors to offer lessons in exchange for sex.
“It’s not about offering sexual activities for remuneration, but offering a driving lesson,” explained the ministers, which is God’s own truth, though not the whole truth.
For any commercial transaction is bilateral. In this case, one side, the instructor, offers a service for which he requests payment in kind. The other side, the learner, accepts the request and offers a service in return. Still, while the logic behind it all isn’t of sterling quality, the spirit of the new law can’t possibly be faulted.
One only hopes that Dutch legislators can see the plethora of exciting commercial possibilities opening up. For why limit this kind of barter arrangement just to driving?
A nubile young girl (or, let’s be truly progressive, boy) could offer services of various ballistic complexity in exchange for groceries, rent, clothes, cab fare, medical services, restaurant bills – you name it. I’m sure that purveyors of all of those can easily accommodate one or two such enterprising young ladies into their daily grind.
As a side benefit, the government could borrow less by reducing the supply of cash in circulation. Fellatio would trump finance as a means of exchange, and the euro would have a better chance of surviving, which is the dearest wish of all progressive people.
Alas, some spoilsports wish to stick an umbrella in the wheel spokes of progress. Even in Holland, a country so progressive that it should be twinned with Sodom and Gomorra, such sticks-in-the-mud exist.
It’s to the whole nation’s credit that their objections have nothing to do with such anachronisms as morality. No, in the good Calvinist tradition some frugal Dutchmen take exception to the tax implications of this exciting development.
Prostitution is legal in Holland, as it must be in all progressive lands. Ladies of easy virtue are licensed and registered with the tax authorities. The temptation is strong to equate girls using sex to pay for driving lessons with prostitutes and hence demand that they register and pay tax.
One can’t deny that this demand has merit, but I’m sure it won’t derail the march of progress. For one thing, most 18-year-old girls (the minimum age for selecting this method of payment) are in such a low income bracket that they wouldn’t pay any tax anyway.
Then of course there exist endless possibilities for evasion. There’s nothing to prevent the instructor from offering his services free of charge, or claiming that he is. And the learner can easily say that, rather than using her body or parts thereof in lieu of payment, she suddenly felt a surge of uncontrollable affection for the chap in the car with dual controls.
Naysayers will be defeated one way or the other. And if any Dutch government officials are reading this, I want them to know that I have 45 years’ driving experience, a clean licence and the urge to march in step with progress.