The problem with PR is always the other guys

I was in The Netherlands over the new year and one evening went out for dinner with friends. Our walking route to the restaurant took us past a small concentration of what the Americans quaintly term "Adult Bookstores" (although books are about the one item you're guaranteed not to find in them). Now you can't walk past without having a quick look in the window can you and I noticed something seemed to be missing.

"Hey," I asked my Dutch mates, "Where's the horseporn gone?" for indeed there appeared to be a dearth of magazines depicting, as Bill Bryson once put it, "A horse receiving a certain oral service a horse would not normally expect to receive, not even from another horse.

"Oh it's been banned. It's illegal to sell it or even possess it now."

I was rather shocked. Not because I have any fondness for horseporn beyond its comedy and shock value, it's about as erotic as a wet weekend in Whitley Bay, but it, along with similar "on the edge" forms of porn, are to my mind a good bell-weather of how free a society is; a measure of a state saying "You know what, this is not hurting anyone so its absolutely none of our business." and it saddened me to see a country I'd rather admired for its socially liberal values take a lurch towards the kind of blue nosed "we know best" shite we have to put up with here.

Not only that, but my friend told me that they have made any representation of bestiality illegal, so I suppose the Rijksmuseum will have to had taken this down.

Now the reason for this is down to a small political party, the PvdD (Partij voor de Dieren, "Party for Animals") who, thanks to proportional representation, gained a couple of seats and this rather ridiculous law was their price for playing ball in the coalition that was formed (and subsequently collapsed as it happens).

Now you might think that not being able to legally buy the collected DVD box set of Bodil Joensen's barnyard movies is no big deal in the grand scheme of things* but just for a moment swap "Party for Animals" with "Party for Sharia in the UK" who, with PR, win three or four seats in a hung parliament.

What would their blood price be?

Now PR has been kicked into the long grass here thanks to Nick's university fee U-turn and some clever play by the tories but it'll come around again and you'll be asked again to vote on its introduction. Before voting ask yourself whereas you might be happy with your little party getting some power all those other little parties will as well and you might just find the pork gets banned along with the piggy pr0n.





* especially as Teh Interwebs has more or less made all forms of censorship moot.