Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2023

  • One for the List

    Our very good friend Carolien treated us to lunch yesterday by way of celebrating Martin’s 70th birthday and our 25th Wedding Anniversary. She really pushed the boat out and found a restaurant in nearby Braamt (only 20 minutes drive away): Karels.

    Absolutely magnificent. They even had footstools for the ladies’ handbags! A tradition, I believe, of classy French restaurants, which I first heard about from Jay Rayner. Fortunately, if Jay ever reviews Karels, I feel sure that he won’t give the same stinker of a review as he did for Le Cinq…

    Every course was a work of art – and tasted sublime as well. Service was friendly, knowledgeable and attentive. A restaurant to be added to the list of places to return to.

  • Pulling the Plug

    The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, has pulled the plug on his Cabinet and the government has fallen.

    Rutte and his VVD party want to bring down the number of asylum seekers, so they went for a proposal to prevent families of asylum seekers fleeing a war zone from coming to the Netherlands for at least two years. Absolutely insane and morally contemptible – and two of the other parties (ChristianUnie and D66) in the coalition refused to accept the proposal – quite right.

    So it looks like elections in November. Naturally, Wilders’ PVV will want to limit immigration on all fronts, and it looks like the VVD are going down the same route.

    There’s also a question over whether the D66 party will be led again by Sigrid Kaag. Two of her (adult) children have said that they have misgivings over her safety in public, and Kaag is taking this seriously.

    She’s a very interesting and capable woman; married to a Palestinian and has (had?) a home in Jerusalem as well as the Netherlands. Her Wikipedia entry is more than impressive. I wish more of our politicians had her experience.

    Instead, we have politicians like the appalling Wilders and Baudet. Then there’s the newcomer Caroline van der Plas of the populist BBB party. She has a single seat in the Tweede Kamer (herself), but her party recently swept to power in the provincial elections. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that her people are inexperienced and chaos looks likely to ensue. As far as I can see, the BBB has the standpoint that the farmers can do no wrong, and to hell with nature and the climate crisis.

    We live in interesting times…

  • By Way of Contrast…

    I see that the US Supreme Court has just struck a blow against LGBTQ+ rights.

    By way of contrast, last Wednesday evening, I went along to an event organised by our Local Authority, which essentially asked its LGBTQ+ community: “What can we do better for you all?”

    I heard personal stories from members of the community, songs from our local gay choir: Shansons, and was able to contribute ideas for improvement to the local authority for consideration.

    I know which society I want to live in – and I’m there now.

  • “He lied because that is what he does”

    We’re talking about Boris Johnson, of course. That quote is taken from today’s column by Rafael Behr in the Guardian. The column is headed: “Boris Johnson is gone, but his toxic Brexit myths will go on”. I’m afraid that is very true. Johnson has both damaged and trivialised British politics , perhaps irreparably.

    Behr’s column is well worth reading.

  • Time Flies…

    We can’t quite believe it, but a couple of days ago (the 12th June) marked 25 years since we were married – our Silver Wedding Anniversary. Time is passing far too fast these days.

    We celebrated the fact last weekend by inviting friends to join us for dinner at the Hotel Heerlyckheid in Bredevoort. We had packed our dog, Watson, off to the local kennels for an overnight stay so that we could do the same at the hotel.

    The evening was a great success, and thanks go to the staff and the chef at the hotel for making it so.

    Somehow, given both our ages, I doubt that we will make it to the Golden Wedding, but we can look back on this with pride and satisfaction that a significant milestone was reached.

  • YouTube and Adverts

    I don’t think it’s just me, but I feel sure that adverts on YouTube have become a lot more intrusive than they used to be. These days, I rarely manage to complete watching a YouTube post without adverts, both long and short formats, frequently interrupting the flow.

    YouTube also keep trying to push me to subscribe to their YouTube Premium service, but since this costs €11.99 per month – well, I’m damned if I’m going to pay that much. I’ll just continue to curse YouTube and their adverts.

    Today, however, I noticed something interesting: they’ve introduced a “YouTube Premium Lite” tier for €6.99 per month. This does not include the YouTube Music service or the ability to download content for offline viewing, so it seems to be aimed specifically at providing an Ad-free experience.

    Apparently, Google are testing the waters here; Premium Lite is only available in a handful of European countries.

    Well, it is certainly cheaper than Premium, and I am primarily interested in an Ad-free experience, so is it worth it to me?

    I pay WordPress €30 per annum to keep my blog Ad-free for my readers. That, I think is acceptable, and all my readers experience this for free. To ask every consumer almost three times that amount to experience an Ad-free YouTube does seem to be pushing things a bit far. I suspect I’ll just continue cursing Google, YouTube and their intrusive adverts.

  • Uganda – Back to the Dark Ages

    Uganda’s President has signed the anti-LGBTQ+ law, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts and up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”.

    An appalling act from an appalling President that will damage the lives of innocent people. The witch-hunts will continue and grow in ferocity.

  • RIP Tina

    The force of nature that was Tina Turner has left us. Not only a powerful singer and performer, but she also gave us some great screen roles – Aunty Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and (my favourite) The Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s Tommy.

    I would quibble with her obituary in the Guardian which says “her performance [in Tommy] was one of its few critically acclaimed moments…” Few? What film was the writer thinking of? Ken Russell’s Tommy is a visual tour de force with Ann-Margret giving her all along with Tina…

    This tribute from George Miller (the director of Mad Max) gives a better sense of who she was as a person.

  • The Coronation Concert

    I’m in the study pottering behind the computer while Martin is in the living room watching the Coronation Concert for King Charles III on the Beeb. I can hear the sound – and so far it seems to consist of interminable voiceovers telling us how memorable the whole thing is going to be. It sounds as though it’s going to be absolutely dreadful…

    Dear god – we’re 20 minutes in and it hasn’t even got under way. Where the f*ck are Charlie and Camilla?

    By way of contrast, we watched the Liberation day concert a few days ago which is held each year in the presence of Willem-Alexander and Maxima on a stage by an Amsterdam canal, and many of the audience are in boats. It went like clockwork and was brilliant. Take that, you Brits!

    Martin’s given up watching it. Thumbs-down from him. Oh well, it’s Eurovision this week – something to look forward to…

    And I’m glancing at the Guardian’s liveblog about the concert, which proves to be much more entertaining than the real thing…

    There’s a little slider on the Guardian’s liveblog page marked “Show key events only”. I fear that if I activate it, the whole page will disappear into electronic oblivion…

  • King Charles The Last?

    I’m a couple of months younger than King Charles III. Since I’m not a monarchist, I won’t bother watching the coronation today – I’ll be doing something useful, like working in the garden. I suspect that the glory days of the British monarchy have passed with the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

  • The Summing Up of Trump

    Randy Rainbow nails it.

  • Compare and Contrast

    Yesterday was an interesting day in the life of UK Politics. There were two Select Committees sitting. One was hearing evidence from the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson claiming that he did not wilfully mislead Parliament and the other was Baroness Casey being questioned by MPs about her report on the Metropolitan Police.

    Let’s look at the performance of Baroness Casey first.

    She marshalls her evidence – note, evidence, not conjecture – and delivers it calmly and clearly. And what devastating evidence it was. The pause she makes before answering the question from Adam Holloway, the Conservative MP for Gravesham, is very telling and almost electrifying. It’s as though she cannot quite believe how stupid he is for not understanding what is meant by the term “institutional racism”.

    Now contrast that with the performance of Johnson.

    His defence appears to be be “I was told that the parties (some of which I attended in person) were not in conflict with the guidelines, so I didn’t mislead Parliament”. Or in other words “I am an idiot”. No, Mr. Johnson, you are not an idiot, but a narcissistic habitual liar with a huge sense of entitlement.

    If there is any justice in the UK’s Parliamentary Democracy, he will be suspended from Parliament for wilful misleading of his fellow MPs.

  • Stepping Down from Heelwegs Belang

    The annual members’ meeting of our local village community council, Heelwegs Belang, was held on the 7th March. I had been a board member for a total of nine years (three terms of three years) and the statutes rule that this is the maximum that I could serve, so I stepped down. The post of secretary has passed to another board member. Although no longer on the board, I remain as their webmaster and the IT department, administering the Microsoft 365 Business system for Heelwegs Belang.

    When a board member steps down, it is usual for them to be formally thanked in the members’ meeting and presented with a bunch of flowers and a small gift. So I was expecting this as part of the proceedings of the members’ meeting. What I did not expect was that the Mayor (Burgemeester) of our Local Authority also showed up and thanked me for my work, not only for Heelwegs Belang, but also for my work in bringing the fibre-optic network to the area. He presented me with the obligatory bunch of flowers, but also a wünderkamer – a “cabinet of curiosities” artwork made by a local artist.

    Photo: Roel Kleinpenning

    I was also pleased that the board did not forget that another member of our community, Jan Geert, had worked with me on the network project, and he was formally thanked by the board that evening for his efforts.

    The board presented me with a certificate proclaiming that I was now an Honorary Member of Heelwegs Belang.

    Martin had apparently been plotting this together with the other board members for over a year beforehand. I was totally unaware of all this, so it all came as a total and pleasant surprise on the night.

  • How to Foretell the Future Accurately

    John Major, in this interview with Andrew Marr a few weeks before the Brexit Referendum in 2016, has been proven right in every respect. Brexit has proved a disaster.

  • “Brexit is a Colossal Mistake”

    There are still a few wise Tories, but unfortunately they ain’t in the shower in power at the moment…

  • Brexit & a Clueless PostNL

    We received a letter from the Dutch Post Office (PostNL) last week. It told us that they had received a packet addressed to us from abroad and that they were legally obliged to make a Customs Declaration on it. The letter further stated that there were no details on the contents of the package and that we needed to give these details online.

    I went to the website (post.nl/track-en-trace) and filled in the reference code given in the letter. I found myself faced with a series of questions:

    • Was this a purchase or a gift?
    • What was the nature of the contents?
    • How many items were in the package?
    • What was the value of the items?

    Since we hadn’t purchased anything from outside of the EU recently, it had to be a gift, but since it was a gift, how the devil would we know what the package contained, how many items there would be, and what the value would be?

    I said as much in my reply, and gambled that if it was a gift, the value would be no more than €20.

    That seems to have satisfied PostNL, because the package landed in the letterbox today. It turns out to be chocolates sent as a Christmas present by my niece in Scotland. She posted it two months ago, and as evidence of the utter cluelessness of PostNL, she had a signed and dated Customs Declaration label on it stating that the contents were chocolates, and of a value that did not attract import duty. Furthermore, she had her return address on the package – why couldn’t PostNL tell us this, so we could have put two and two together?

    By way of contrast, there was a second package in the letterbox for me today. This was a second-hand book that I ordered just last week. It also came from abroad, but since it came from Ireland (in the EU), it just tootled across to the Netherlands without generating paperwork and delays.

    Brexit is a disaster, both great and small.

  • Fireside Chats We Could Do Without

    Thank heavens that Michael Spicer is on hand to pull aside the curtain.