February 10, 2012

Reporting ethnic nuisance, the latest right-wing rage

Filed under: General,Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

The Dutch extreme right-wing party, part of the elected coalition government, has set up a website where people can ‘denounce’ the violence, crimes and other bad things ‘allegedly’ done by Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, and other Eastern Europeans. Never mind the obvious discriminatory nature of the site, it also does not allow anyone to elaborate on why they think that one Pole stole their job, just a radio button that says ‘yes’ or ‘no’, which is more unreliable that a teenager magazine quiz about your ex boyfriend.

Instead of getting all freaked out, the more sane part of the Dutch population starting coming up with parody sites, including Contact point for Limburgers (poking fun at the head of the right-wing party’s background and support base), Contact point for Belgians, dissing French-speaking Belgians, and Contact point for Dutch people, which is obvious. There are more, and probably more to come as well.

My favourite which I read about on Twitter, is meldpuntwaardevollegezelligheid.nl (roughly, ‘good fun’), set up by Polish-born Dutch rapper Mr Polska who turned the site’s idea on its head to promote himself and partying with Eastern Europeans, an excellent marketing coup. Too bad his sexist view of women in his music is so underdeveloped, he almost provides ammo for the first site.

UPDATE: If anyone wants to read complaints about the Dutch, just pick an English-language expat site.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, Photo of Yellow star by mjecker, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , ,

October 17, 2009

Pillars supporting Amsterdam are slowly crumbling

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 11:16 am

As you may know, Amsterdam was basically built in what can perhaps best be described as a swamp, and as it happens peat is not the best conceivable supporter for brick. Early Amsterdam residents got around this problem by driving huge wooden poles into the bog until it hit firmer ground and then building their houses on top of this wooden foundation.

It turns out, Parool says, that a changing climate is leading to longer droughts, which in turn lowers the water level and causes the poles to dry out and crumble.

It is mostly privately owned houses that are in danger of collapsing, as housing corporations have already replaced their pillars.

The Parool article quotes alderman Maarten van Poelgeest and a spokesperson of Waternet who both say that the situation is serious without going into much detail, although the latter says that “there is no need to panic, this won’t be an issue before 2040.”

(Photo by Wikipedia user Dohduhdah)

Tags: , , ,