Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

Let me, as an original Dutchy, speak a few words about what it really means to me to be Dutch. I means besides having been born in a country you could only point out on a map if you squint your eyes, and where the houses when you visit look like carboard boxes and you are just not sure if the plane didn’t land in Madurodam.

Okay, we do play some nice soccer. I dont know how its even possible that we always end up amongst the final eight countries in the world. Maybe its the milk or the cheese, who knows. But of course as a dutchman I am proud of our boys and I think there must be something about the ‘dutch way’ that actually works.

But there is another side to Holland. A side foreigners know little about, a side so ridiculous a sane person can do nothing else but conclude its sheer manifested evil. It’s the insane overplanned bureacracy of the Dutch I am talking about.

Yesterday on the news: The National Heatplan was now in effect. The National WHAT? Is there an emergency? What’s going on? I read the article. There’s actually a government agency that made a NATIONAL HEATPLAN that comes in effect, dig this, ‘when its over 27 degrees Celsius for more than 4 days’.

Over 27 degrees Celcius? 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a Government Agency starts up an Emergency plan from tax payers money? Is this an episode of Monthy Python? Did we land in an episode of Groundhog day? No, this is the Netherlands, the country where even sexual intercourse would be taxed if they ever had any.

The institute that governs the National Heatplan is called ‘Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu’ meaning the ‘State institute for Public Health and Environment’. When the National Heatplan is executed this institute informs all the ‘GGD’ (Municipal Health Services) to start inform everyone about how to behave. And what information does this Municipal Health Service spread?

You should stay in the shadow. You should drink water. A cold shower could also help.

Serious! This is the advice they spread around using taxpayers money when the temperature rises above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you even for a second imagine what it feels like to live in such a country, that according to a recent investigation has 10 ‘advisors’ and ‘consultants’ for every existant journalist? So for every person that asks questions, there are about 10 persons employed to think of possible answers in the Netherlands.

So you wonder why the Dutch are angry? I can tell you why. They are treated like little kids by a totally incompetent elite of mediocre people. And that seems a rather Global phenomenon, but in case of the Dutch its effects are, well, just a tid bit more absurd.

Admirers of bureaucratic inanities can download the National Heatplan here

Tony Hayward and his sailing trip

I have been reading a lot of comments in European media about how the Media in the US is supposed to be biased about the British origine of BP by publically calling them ‘British patrol’ which is nothing less than their real name. Hell, if they ruined one of the most beautiful sites in my country you can bet your ass I would call them by their real name and a lot more. I find it weird that the government by definition seems to think that BP had the experise to solve this problem. Isn’t deep sea drilling a relatively new technique? If so, how can you say that a company has ‘expertise’ when they just started doing so, apparantly without the necissary safety standards?

To make matters far worse, Tony Hayward, amidst all criticism of handling this oil disaster in an absolutely incompetent way, decides to go on a sailing trip. A sailing trip? Yes, this ocean lover goes on a beautiful sailing trip with his son to the Isle of Wright, a very very British island with very very British people on it.

The isle of wight

Are British guys all named Tony? And do they all exhibit this sort of inexcusable level of indifference to public sentiment? If I would be an American I’d be pretty close to the ‘rabies point’, I can tell you that. This guy thinks he can go sailing on unspoiled waters on his yacht in the midst of the greatest oil disaster of all time caused by his company? Is he even sane? Is there a more typical example of the absolute carelessness of our political elites, of the absolute contempt they feel for, well, reality? These people live in a dream world at the expense of mankind. It’s about time we, the public, make companies and their leaders accountable for their actions.

Maybe its also that Europeans are horribly insensitive to propaganda in general. I dont even think it’s possible an American CEO would even consider going on a yacht trip under these conditions.

On the other hand, it raises questions about these ‘guilt trials’ in the American senate that clearly only serve the function of smoothing the public anger. It all seems to be puppet guilt – how can we take such confessions serious under these conditions? The show must go on. I just had the idea to revise the logo of BP. I will post that revision later on.