August 23, 2012

Dutch cleaning women worst off in the Netherlands

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:00 am

Cleaning women in Dutch private households have the worst working conditions of all of Europe, according to Marieke Koning of the International Trade Confederation in Brussels. However, I wonder if she means Europe or the European Union. In the Netherlands, it is normal to do cleaning work illegally and without insurance, as well as without any collective labour agreement or job protection. In short, the Dutch gladly exploit foreign women when it comes to having a clean home despite their good employment behaviour in other sectors.

While France, Spain, Germany and Belgium have cleaned up their act considerably, the Netherlands is a ‘shameful example,’ says Koning who believes that cleaning women have rights just like anybody else. The majority of cleaning ladies are migrant workers from outside Europe, a large part of which are illegally in the country.

Back in 2007 we told you about Hristina Tasheva, a Bulgarian woman who spent years cleaning people’s houses in Amsterdam illegally and became a photographer.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, Photo of Broom on wet floor by Shyb, some rights reserved)

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August 22, 2012

Dutchman selected to sing at Elvis’ Graceland memorial

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:33 am

Singer Bouke Scholten from Emmen, by no means an Elvis impersonator, was hand picked to sing at Elvis Presley’s memorial marking the 35th anniversary of the singer’s death last Thursday, August 16.

Although the Dutch media focused on having a Dutchman sing at the memorial, a rare privilege, his performance was overshadowed by ex-wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie making a surprise appearance together for the first time at a memorial since they started holding them in 1980.

The unknown Scholten had two songs to convince some 800 fans from around the world, and he succeeded in his own way, with his second number, Suspicious Minds.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, www.cbc.ca, Photo of Elvis album cover by Jeremy Chan, some rights reserved)

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August 21, 2012

Teylers Museum discovers three more Raphael drawings

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:24 am

While preparing an exhibition on Italian Renaissance master Raphael, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem got a lovely surprise: instead of owning nine drawings of the artist, they actually own twelve. The three new drawings are: Portrait of a young man (1515-17), Flying Putto (1518) and Joshua speaks to the Israeli tribal leaders in Sichem (1516-18), drawings that used to be attributed to Raphael’s pupils. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam each own one of Raphael’s drawings, bringing the total number of drawings by Raphael in the Netherlands up to 14.

However, Head Curator Michiel Plomp together with a Viennese colleague seem to have come to this positive conclusion at a very convenient moment. Part of the exhibition will be to explain how the experts arrived at their conclusion and asking visitors what they think.

The three discoveries will be on show at the first-ever solo exhibition in the Netherlands devoted to this from 28 September 2012 until 6 January 2013.

(Link: www.elsevier.nl, Photo of Teylers Museum by Tom Clearwood, some rights reserved)

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August 20, 2012

Goat Riders of 18th century Limburg

Filed under: History,Weird by Branko Collin @ 5:11 pm

The legend of the Bokkenrijders (‘Goat riders’) from Limburg knows many forms. Crossroads Magazine poured one of them in an essay in 2008, contrasting the popular form quoted below with the opinion that the Goat Riders were a precursor to the enlightenment.

In the 18th century, while most of Europe was shaking off centuries of superstition and beginning to prepare for the age of reason, the lands which now form the Dutch and Belgian regions of Limburg were terrorised by hordes of flying devil worshippers.

These mysterious robber bands met in caves or at isolated roadside chapels. Riding through the nightly sky on the backs of big black goats, they plundered farms and churches. The Goat Rider owned the night throughout most of the 18th century, until they were finally brought to justice by brave and god-fearing officers of the law. This is a story that practically everyone in Limburg knows to this very day.

And:

If one thing is clear about the Goat Rider, it is the fact that a great number of people must have met violent, degrading deaths while being completely innocent of any crime. Indeed it is quite likely that the Goat Rider’s bands as such never even existed outside of the human imagination.

Via Metafilter. I cannot believe I’ve never blogged about the goat riders before.

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Jackdaw rules Dutch cities

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 11:22 am

The jackdaw (kauw in Dutch) is the most common city bird in the Netherlands, AD reports.

A census held by Sovon shows that of the 375,000 birds counted, 49,000 are jackdaws. Other popular city birds are the blackbird, the wood pigeon, the sparrow and the swift.

The jackdaw population has increased by 15% since 2006, but is only slowly on the rise. In the same timeframe, the Canada Goose has seen an increase of 372%, the stork of 201% and the gadwall of 146%. These are, however, relatively rare birds.

Birds that are rapidly disappearing from cities include the starling (obviously nobody counted birds in front of my favourite seafood store in Amsterdam neighbourhood De Pijp for this one), the robin and the great cormorant, my favourite. Because cormorants need to dive deep for fish, they allow their feathers to get wet. When they sit on lamp posts and in trees, spreading their wings to dry, they look like angels watching over the living.

In Europe, jackdaws are the smallest of the ‘true crows’. You can tell them apart from crows because jackdaws have a shiny, silverish head. They can be domesticated, and indeed we kept one when I was a kid, although keeping them is no longer legal these days. Ours was called Jacky, obviously!

(Photo by Kalle Gustafsson, some rights reserved)

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August 19, 2012

Phone book publisher tries to silence critic with legal bullying

Filed under: General,Online by Branko Collin @ 11:10 am

Phone bookEverybody in the Netherlands still receives the paper phone guide once every year, whether they want to or not, even though in these days of Google and the Internet it is nothing but a vehicle for advertisements.

To help stop this form of harassment, a guy called Alexander Klöpping has registered a URL called sterftelefoongidssterf.nl (diephonebookdie) which redirects to the phone book cancellation form. In other words, if you want the phone book to be eliminated (‘die’) from your life, follow that link. (Actually don’t follow it, De Telefoongids are known to ignore your cancellation request anyway.)

Last Monday Klöpping received a threatening e-mail by the publishers of the phone book, a subsidiary of European Directories, that tells him he is engaged in trademark violation and that he must cease and desist.

Klöpping replied that he will take the URL offline as soon as the dead tree merchant stops shoving the equivalent of “months of advertising leaflets”, and “half a percent of all paper used in the Netherlands” through everybody’s mailboxes, including those of people that have indicated they want to receive no advertisements through the legally binding “ja-nee” and “nee-nee” stickers (yes-no and no-no).

Of course, the lawyers from European Directories would have a case if they were to argue that they don’t actually do anything with the addresses through their cancellation form, and if they could prove that Klöpping knew this. But then they’d have to argue that they are breaking the law on more than just one count and I just don’t expect them to do that.

Update 20-8: As a result of Klöpping’s action, parliament has called for making the phone book opt-in.

(Link: Webwereld)

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August 18, 2012

Preprinted election billboards are on the rise

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 11:26 am

A new phenomenon is emerging in the Dutch electoral landscape, the preprinted election billboard.

Traditionally municipalities provide blank billboards for campaigners to glue their posters to, but amongst others The Hague, Soest, Capelle aan den IJssel, Oosterhout and parts of Amsterdam have chosen to go with preprinted boards this year for the September parliamentary elections.

According to Trouw, spokespersons for the various municipalities quote as reasons “moving with the times”, the desire to have “neater” looking billboards, and the desire to stop parties pasting posters on top of other parties’ posters.

I saw the one shown here near my house (click the photo for a larger version), and I must say, it does feel a bit like curtailing political speech. By printing the posters at the same size and in a neat grid, the individual posters become practically invisible.

I can fully understand the Socialist Party’s protests against this type of billboard. Theirs is the party of no political power whatsoever on the national level, but a very broad base. Campaign posters have traditionally been their medium, where other parties sometimes simply could not be bothered.

See also:

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August 17, 2012

Selling a bank using cheese and blonde clones

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:35 am

Clichés sells, even to our big Eastern neighbours, the Germans who like Dutch cheese, clogs and blondes. However, this commercial kicks it up a notch, with more clichés and a weird German-Dutch accent.

The advert is trying to get Germans to choose a Dutch bank. “What to do you think of when you think of a Dutch bank?” the advert asks. Those blonde clones look like a bad sect, the computers could be Tulips (a Dutch brand — anyone?), the phones are clogs, the orange national color is de rigueur and many more details the makers enjoyed cramming in.

Making banking funny is an interesting stretch: either it works or it backfires, time will tell.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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August 16, 2012

Mysterious Theo van Gogh statues around Amsterdam

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 12:30 pm

Someone has left several statues of what looks exactly like Theo van Gogh, film director and controversial figure who was brutally murdered on the Linnaeusstraat in East Amsterdam back in 2004.

The resemblance is striking, as is the pose of the statue, which is precisely how Van Gogh was found, albeit without the letter knifed into his chest.

The little statues remain a mystery. Nobody knows anything about them yet. According to comments on Trendbeheer.com, it could be the same anonymous scupltor as the lumberjack in the tree.

More about the Unknown Sculptor on Wikipedia (in Dutch).

(Link: at5, Photo of Breast sculpture by Stacey B, some rights reserved)

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August 15, 2012

Rotterdames, 3 times 52 odes to the women of Rotterdam

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 11:11 pm

The name may be a bit unfortunate—rot means the same thing in Dutch as it does in English—but what were they to do?

They being three artists who post their own odes to the women of Rotterdam each week at Rotterdames.net, creating a vivid cross section of the second-largest city of the Netherlands in the process. Baschz is the sketch artist, Milan Boonstra the photographer and Janjoost Jullens the writer of the website.

According to De Weekkrant, the artists have already published more than 100 odes and are well on their way to their goal of 156 odes.

The news site quotes Janjoost Jullens about what makes the women of Rotterdam so special: “They are real, more real than anywhere else. They do not need to be pretty in a model kind of way. In Amsterdam the ladies look beautiful from a distance, but when you get closer you see it is all fake. In Rotteram what you see is what you get. We would like to thank the women of Rotterdam for that. Our odes are really a sort of ‘thank you’.”

And in that spirit I would like to tip my hat to Rotterdame Astrid Oosenburg for telling me about this initiative.

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