New Amsterdam campaign
Tomorrow (Thursday), Amsterdam is due to launch their ‘Enjoy & Respect’ campaign, in order to try and reduce troublesome behaviour in the capital. It involves targeted advertising (like the video shows), in order to remind people that their bad behaviour will be punished. Will it work? It may go all out the window after a few drinks.
The target group for this campaign was both Dutch and British visitors, between the ages of 18 – 34. The campaign was started mainly because stag do’s have become a problem in the city. So this includes you too, fellow Dutchies! (but we all know that it’s mainly aimed at us ‘alcy’ Brits, we’ve certainly got enough bad press). With issues such as noise disturbances, public urination and litter – and you know the drill, general extreme drunkness, yelling and throwing up in the street.
Rules are rules
I always absolutely cringe when I see things like this, and it’s so embarrassing to witness in person too (because you also feel like public enemy #2, just for being the same nationality). I would be lying to you if I said that I hadn’t seen pictures or videos on Facebook from people I knew who have organised both stags and birthday parties in Amsterdam. They can range from running naked in the Red Light District, peeing and throwing up in the canals and getting high as s**t and screaming.
I’m not going to sit back and pretend that some of us haven’t been there, and plead my innocence at having never done anything even slightly rude when drunk. Because some of us definitely have done at least something inappropriate in our lives ( it’s okay, that secret is safe with you 😉 ). But this campaign is aimed to remind you that, no, it’s not okay to keep acting like that and it won’t be tolerated either (go Amsterdam!). Just because you are in another country or just another city, doesn’t mean that rules don’t apply to you any more (I sound like your mum now).
But no seriously, jokes aside, I hope this campaign does do something. It’s not nice for anyone to have to deal with rowdy groups of people on a regular basis, who think it’s acceptable to act like that. So tone it down guys, or you’ll be facing fines, or worse!
All sources: Iamsterdam
What do you think about this campaign? Will it work? Let us know in the comments!
It is a sad state of affairs that people have to be reminded to behave and be civilized. I hope the campaign works. Hooliganism should not be tolerated.
[…] wether you want to yell at a misbehaving Brit in Amsterdam, or you want to deepen your Dutch-learning experience, here we’ll show some of the best Dutch […]
Quotation Edmund Burke (1729–97)
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
“Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” 1791.—The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 4, pp. 51–52 (1899).