Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.
Lovers of nighttime-based Dutch activities rejoiced this week when a court ruled that the country’s curfew should be lifted.
Judges in The Hague said the 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. curfew violated freedom of movement and the right to privacy. However, shortly after the ruling was handed down, the government won a last-minute appeal temporarily reinstating the curfew to stop people flocking onto the streets to celebrate whatever it is that Dutch people want to do at night that isn’t staying in and not spreading a deadly virus.
What Prime Minister Mark Rutte should have done is shown the court footage of a semi-naked man overcome by ijskoorts and skating on a frozen Amsterdam canal before face-planting into the water, and then the curfew would have been extended (maybe even to 24 hours a day) rather than lifted.
Speaking of skating on thin ice, people in Belgium are being reminded that they can be fined €350 if they are caught spitting in the street. Local authorities in the municipality of Jette have been inundated with complaints about the unsavory activity and have put up posters that read “You’re not a llama, so don’t spit on public streets.”
How the mighty have fallen. It was less than a year ago that scientists from the U.K.’s Rosalind Franklin Institute announced that they had used specially evolved antibodies taken from a llama called Fifi to make a COVID-specific “antibody cocktail.”
Al Paca, a spokesman for the International Llama Union, said he was spitting mad at the use of llamas in the poster campaign.
While we’re on the subject of oral hygiene, crafty Irish people have been getting around the country’s ban on non-essential foreign travel during the pandemic by booking dental appointments in sun-soaked European destinations such as the Canary Islands.
Ireland’s National Immigration Bureau said around a third of travelers to Tenerife are claiming they must take a flight for essential medical reasons and show an email confirmation of a dental appointment to prove it. And yet, sadly, their discomfort is so great that the vast majority of them get to their destination and can’t make it to the dentist, and instead try their best to dull the pain with swimming, sightseeing and downing vast quantities of piña colada.
My heart (and gums) really does bleed for them.
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Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our postbag (there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).
“Please, let me show you Russia’s reliable stock of vaccines, in the Navalny Suite…,” by Mike Oehlers
Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.
