We have upgraded our Flickr account to the pro version, which means we can now put more and larger photos there. We use a lot of CC licensed photos as illustrations for our posts, and we’re returning the favour by publishing our own photos on Flickr using an equally liberal license.
August 13, 2009
Flickr update
Belgian telecom advert offends the Dutch and Flemish
There is no lack of references about Belgians in the Netherlands, often referred to as ‘our southern neighbours’ by the media. When they do something stupid or brilliant, the media is on the front lines either poking fun at them or praising them for their ingenuity. However, poking fun at people’s lesser national traits, albeit a top sport in Europe, is not always appreciated.
The Belgian organisation for ethical advertising (JEP) has reprimanded the new Belgian mobile phone company Vikings because of their questionable slogans. “Gratis is voor Hollanders” (“Free is for Dutch people” – ‘Hollanders’ is a pet name for the Dutch in Flanders) has the press buzzing. The company’s French-language slogan “Gratuit, c’est pour les Flamands” (“Free is for the Flemish”) plays on the stereotype of the Flemish being cheap and is not going over well either.
AustralianSwedish telecom provider Tele2 (shown here) has had adverts in the Netherlands for months using the concept of cheapness. The idea here is two-fold: the sheep are a reference to ‘being cheap’ (the ads in the Netherlands are all in English and subtitled in Dutch) and point out the similarity of the words ‘sheep’ and ‘cheap’ with a talking black sheep standing out from the herd. Although boring to look at more than twice on telly, Tele2 is doing it right, while the southern neighbours are doing it wrong.
Why the cheap jokes? The Dutch have a reputation (deserved or not) of going on vacation to France driving through Belgium with their caravans and bringing all their own food to save on costs. The goal is to enjoy the weather.
The Flemish part of Belgium used to be poor and frugal I would imagine. Today the Flemish part of Belgium (including Brussels or not, technically a governmental no man’s land) is the most dynamic part and the Walloon part has many economic problems.
(Link: zibb.nl, Photo: pleasecopyme.blogg.se)
Tags: advertising, Belgium, caravan, stereotypes
August 11, 2009
Motorbiking to Kazakhstan to help fight cancer
Together with his friend Tom van Ees (left), Martin de Vries, 35, (right), plans to drive by motorbike from their hometown Den Bosch (‘s-Hertogenbosch) all the way to Kazakhstan, his brother proudly started telling people online the other day.
Saturday, 15 August, they will set off on a 17,000 km route to the capital of Almaty and back, going through 15 countries on the way, with the goal of raising money to fight cancer. “Still one in every three people in the Netherlands gets cancer. That is way too much. We are paying for the costs of our trip ourselves, so all the money we raise will go to this great cause.”
Find out more about their plight, the blog and their pictures by visiting the specially setup website around2seas.nl.
(Link: Lykle de Vries, Photo: Martin de Vries)
Tags: cancer, Kazakhstan, motorcycles
August 9, 2009
Pollster Maurice de Hond too reliable for TV ad
The Dutch advertising authority has judged a TV advertisement non-compliant because well-known and presumably very impartial pollster Maurice de Hond is pushing the wares of a utility company, reports De Volkskrant (Dutch).
In the ad, De Hond compares rates of competing utility companies, and claims that viewers can make substantial savings. The advertising authority, Reclame Code Commissie, says (largely paraphrased):
Maurice de Hond has been famous for years as an impartial researcher. He (still) has a certain trust with a substantial part of the TV audience. The advertisement uses this trust, because De Hond refers to his own research.
The advertising authority therefore feels that therefore the ad is in violation of article 11.2 of its own code, which states that advertising and other programming must be clearly separated. Since the authority has no legal, er, authority, it can only ask the advertiser to stop broadcasting this particular ad.
De Hond responded on Twitter: “Glad they did not say ‘not reliable enough!'”
(Photo by DJ, TV host, Wikipedian and De Hond’s son Marc, some rights reserved.)
Tags: advertisements, advertising, advertising authority, electricity, energy
August 6, 2009
Women have low impact on Dutch work force
As an immigrant, there will always be about 10% of Dutch quirks I will never understand, and one of them is the preponderance of part-time work. It’s very difficult to explain to my friends and family in Canada or elsewhere why it looks like nobody really works here, especially highly educated Dutch women who, as they tell me jokingly at networking events, ‘have men who bring home the real bacon’.
“The Netherlands has the highest rate of part-time workers within the European Union, and it applies to both men and women.” The Dutch also have a very high standard of living which is not reflected in the amount of hours they actually work. I recently read that the Greeks worked the most hours, but earned very little for it. That nonsense about working hard to make money they spoon fed me in North America is one huge myth here in Europe.
“In 2008, nearly half of 15 to 64-year-old Dutch worked on a part-time basis and three quarters of Dutch women work on a part-time basis. In all other EU countries, at least half of working women had full-time jobs.”
My gut says when the Dutch do something spectacularly different than the rest of Europe it’s either brilliant or skewed. In this case, I think it is the latter, and so do many different groups in Dutch society pushing to change this image of women being rather passive members of society. To quote a female television journalist I met recently, “women can always choose to work less and that is not frowned upon, but have to fight if they want to work more”. Ironically, the Christian government is both ‘encouraging’ women to have more children and also trying to make them feel guilty for not becoming top managers. In other words, not only are women hearing two totally different messages, both of them are backwards and do nothing to alleviate the situation of women who want both – just like in the rest of Europe and the Western world.
The usual excuses for this state of affairs includes women automatically taking 100% care of children (tradition), not wanting to let other qualified people handle their children (guilt), not being able to combine motherhood and work (logistics), men not doing their fair share (not my male friends, but other ones), having no ambition (huge cover stories in magazines keep repeating this), foreign women having much more ambition (why do they manage and the Dutch don’t?) and all kinds of other stuff that comes up at parties.
It’s a big ol’ can of worms, it’s complicated, it’s difficult to understand, it’s even tougher to live with, but something is definitely wrong here.
(Link: crossroadsmag.eu, Photo: hamac.fr)
Tags: Dutch work force, part-time work, women
August 3, 2009
Embedding radio stations a costly affair
We recently wrote about Dutch copyright collection agency Buma/Stemra, (pet name: B/S) charging big bucks for using embedded radio players. Since bad news often travels in packs, people who embed stations and streams on their sites will have to pay 312 euro a year to do so. Oh, and payment is retroactive to January 2009.
Since I own a webradio, I am now considered a ‘source site’ by B/S, while anyone restreaming me in the Netherlands is a ‘target site’. I don’t know anyone who restreams me and if they do, they probably don’t live in the Netherlands. As usual with new rules and rates from B/S, the Dutch ‘twittosphere’ is buzzing with more questions than answers, while the Managing Director of B/S twitters about his new office furniture (well, pretty much) and answers no tweets. Grow a pair and defend your policies already.
Imagine having to pay to embed YouTube on a blog! Imagine paying for anything embedded like conferences or a film of your dog doing tricks because you posted it on Facebook first or something. And why do people have to pay almost as much as I do for just adding a link?
And I will quote myself: “The Dutch are used to paying for everything and even want to do so like I do, but not when they have no idea who or what they are paying for. It remains vague, incomprehensible and frustrating.”
Sigh.
(Link: marketingfacts.nl, image: Oh La La)
August 2, 2009
Straight talk deeply ingrained in Dutch culture
Why are the Dutch so impolite? The German-born historian Christoph Driessen proposes a couple of hypotheses in yesterday’s NRC (Dutch).
The Calvinist is interested in the essence of things. Everything else is unnecessary. In that view politeness is quickly seen as hypocrisy in the Netherlands.
The republican form of government of the Netherlands [from 1581 – 1795, Branko] may also have led to a very direct and uncomplicated form of contact. In other countries, manners were largely determined by the aristocracy—hence the word courteous. […] One of the leaders of the republic, Johan de Witt, was mighty enough to oppose the Sun King [Louis XIV, Branko], but when he tried to wear a gold and silver garment to underline that position, instead of the simple black every other Dutchman wore, the troops he tried to inspect jeered and laughed at him.
Considering the Dutch saw themselves as burghers before they became Protestants, I am guessing the second hypothesis may carry the larger weight. Unfortunately, Driessen does not expand on why the republic was such a successful idea in the Netherlands long before it became popular in other Western states.
The historian also points out that since other countries like Germany are letting go of class-based societies, the Dutch head start may actually turn into a disadvantage. Unlike people from other countries who now also learn how to talk straight when needed, the Dutch cannot easily reverse gear and use politeness to sugar coat unpleasant messages, as they have not been brought up in a culture of politeness. Driessen suggests that children could be taught manners in school to remedy this.
(Drawing of a Goop by Gelett Burgess, from a 1903 children’s book on manners.)
Tags: calvinism, culture, Dutch Republic, manners
July 31, 2009
Anne Frank diary added to Unesco world register
Anne Frank’s diary has been added to the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO. UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Register to protect documentary heritage reflecting the diversity of the world’s peoples, languages, and cultures from ‘collective amnesia’.
Although often mistaken as a Dutch girl by many probably because she wrote her diary in Dutch, Anne Frank was a Jewish Germany girl who wrote about the two years she and her family spent in hiding in the Netherlands during WWII.
I still find it fascinating that Anne Frank is seen a source of Dutch pride — with good reason of course — while the growing amount of populists in the Netherlands do not think any Dutch person with a second passport qualifies as ‘part of the club’.
(Link: unmultimedia.org)
Tags: Anne Frank
July 29, 2009
It’s anarchy here, Fox News said so!
You’re a cesspool of lies, Fox News. And you’re going to hell for all eternity.
Check your facts, you pathetic puritain morons.
We know you’re jealous.
Tags: Amsterdam
Cross-border speeding: Dutch cash in on Belgians
Down South in soft-spoken Maastricht, Limburg, the police raked in a cool EUR 2.5 million from Belgians caught for traffic violations last year, 37,417 of which were speeding violations.
And what about the Dutch on the Belgian side? An estimated 15,000 Dutch people brought in EUR 1.5 million according to the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, which is a lot less.
The amusing part is that Belgian Limburg has twice as many speed cameras as Dutch Limburg (Yes, both countries share the name of a province).
As an exercise in pure unfounded speculation, the Belgians have more physical room to get their motors going whereas in the Netherlands you’ll miss four exits if you bat your eyelids too long. Germans often get caught speeding into the Netherlands because slowing down is not fun and takes time. When you’re going a roaring 220 km for like an hour (been there, done that, yes it sucks petrol fast), slowing down to 50 km feels like going backwards in time.
(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo by Wikipedia user Naaldenberg, some rights reserved.)
Tags: Belgium, Limburg, Maastricht