Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • We Were Here

    A tip of the hat to Alistair Appleton over at Do Bhuddists Watch Telly for his post on the Documentary We Were Here by David Weissman. The film tells the history of the early 1980s when the AIDS epidemic grew and wiped out thousands. As Alistair says:

    More than 15,000 people died at the height of the epidemic in just the [San Francisco] Bay Area. All in the space of four or five years.

    Unlike the films And The Band Played On (which uses actors to portray the actual events of the time), or Longtime Companion (which is a fictionalised account of the rise of AIDS), We Were Here has real people telling their stories of that time and place (San Francisco).

    WE WERE HERE (trailer) from David Weissman on Vimeo.

    Martin and I are of the generation who faced the horror full on, and lost friends to AIDS. We will certainly watch the film (it’s being released next month on DVD) and remember. I also hope that some of the younger generation of gays will watch the film and get a sense of what we went through. The story is not all doom and gloom, however; as the plot summary on IMDB says:

    ‘We Were Here’ is the first film to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco, and how the City’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. It explores what was not so easy to discern in the midst of it all – the parallel histories of suffering and loss, and of community coalescence and empowerment. Though this is a San Francisco based story, the issues it addresses extend not only beyond San Francisco but also beyond AIDS itself. ‘We Were Here’ speaks to our societal relationship to death and illness, our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, and the importance of community in addressing unimaginable crises.

  • Hardhearted Holland

    The Dutch media is currently full of the case of Mauro Manuel, a refugee who arrived here from Angola when he was nine years old. Now that he is 18, the Dutch Government want to deport him back to Angola. The Dutch Immigration and Asylum Minister Gerd Leers has ruled that Mauro had no right to stay in the Netherlands.

    Mauro’s case has been debated in parliament today, but the motion calling on Minister Leers to grant him a residency permit has been defeated by 78 votes to 72.

    Another victory for the baleful influence of Geert Wilders in his process of changing this once-tolerant country into an intolerant one. I don’t feel proud to be Dutch today.

    Update: Abigail R. Esman (also living in the Netherlands) has an opinion piece in Forbes that sums up pretty well my feelings of shame and anger over this case.

  • A Spot of Local Bother…

    Over the past year, there have been a number of cases reported in the Dutch media of gay couples being harassed to such an extent that they have sold up and moved elsewhere in The Netherlands. Such cases usually occur in the housing areas of the large cities, such as Utrecht and The Hague, where you can get very different cultural and ethnic communities living cheek-by-jowl.

    The latest case was reported last Friday, and I was somewhat surprised to learn that it happened just eleven km. down the road in Ulft, a little town of about 11,000 people. We live in the same municipality, and I was pleased to read in the local paper today (and on the council’s website) a statement on the case from the Mayor. It’s worth quoting in full:

    Perhaps you too have seen this on TV or read it in the newspaper in the last week. A homosexual couple will be moving out of our community. They have been harassed for years. Last Friday I spoke with one of them. He stated that he had repeatedly called the police and had also tried to pass their complaints about harassment to me. Only after four calls to the municipality’s office was an appointment made. By that time, they had already decided to move. Because they were so upset that they felt compelled to leave their beloved Ulft, they made the media aware of their displeasure.

    Apparently their complaint over harassment was not taken seriously enough for a meeting with me or the police. I want this to occur in the future. Meanwhile, I have made an agreement with the police that they are more alert over bullying, and over cases reported. In the Municipal Office, we will also be more alert. The Police have found no reports and the complaint is not known to the police on the beat. It is not an unwillingness of the police or municipalities, but bullying can be underestimated.

    The lesson for me is: when people call with complaints about bullying, then it deserves more attention than this couple has received. We shall be more alert. I find it too crazy for words that people were bullied out of their village because they are ‘different’. Let’s be on our guard about this, so that respect and tolerance are important values and remain so in our communities. We are jointly responsible for ensuring that everyone has a place, regardless of origin, race, orientation or religion. Everyone needs a safe place to live in and to live. If that is not the case then we must, depending on the specific conditions, get around the table and look together at what can be done. I want to know how many bullying problems there are. Therefore I make this appeal to you.

    Are you being bullied or know of situations where something like this is happening? I hope that you will report this to me. Naturally I will respect your confidentiality.

    I like the fact that the Mayor has looked beyond the fact that the trigger here was a case of harassment of a gay couple, and used it to assert that harassment of anyone ‘different’ in the community is unacceptable. Quite right too.

  • “The Consequences Are Real”

    I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I’m very lucky to be able to live in a country that has Civil Marriage for both same-sex and different sex couples. Some countries have only Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples, reserving Civil Marriage for different sex couples only.

    Many people think that these are, for all practical purposes, the same. But they are not. In Ireland, for example, the differences can have real consequences.

  • Through The Looking Glass

    Sometimes I feel like Alice – I’m in a looking-glass world where black is portrayed as white, good is bad, or up is down. It’s at times like these when I’m likely to throw a Victor Meldrew fit at the apparent stupidity, cupidity or just plain bare-faced effrontery of those in charge, who have the power to dictate what we will experience in our daily lives.

    What’s brought on this latest attack is the publication in yesterday’s Volkskrant newspaper of a two page spread covering the likely future of rail transport in the Netherlands.

    The kernel of the report was the finding that breaking up the national rail network into separate chunks and putting services out to tender will reduce delays, according to research by network operator ProRail.

    Let’s just savour that, shall we? And why would that proposition be true, in any meaning in the real world? Ah, we read, it’s because services will not be so interdependent, reducing the domino effect of delays, ProRail is quoting as saying.

    Dear god in heaven, do these people not have two braincells to rub together?

    Let’s just take a practical example. I want to travel from Amsterdam to my home – nearest station Varsseveld. That means that I’m using the Dutch National Railways (the NS) from Amsterdam until Arnhem, and then changing over to Syntus for the last hour from Arnhem to Varsseveld.

    So excuse me, but surely for me, these services are interdependent – I want to step out at Arnhem and step onto a train bound for Varsseveld with the minimum of delay.

    As a matter of fact, at the moment, Syntus (one of the independent rail operators that the Dutch Government is so in love with) offer what can only be described as a truly shitty service. I’ve lost count of the number of times that services have been delayed or cancelled, while the hapless train drivers run around like headless chickens, glued to their mobile phones receiving zero practical information.

    On more than one occasion, I, together with my fellow travellers in the outer regions of Hell, have been herded from one platform to another in Zevenaar at the behest of the Syntus staff for what seemed like hours at a time. “The next train for Winterswijk will leave from platform 3”, “no, platform 4”, “no, that’s going back to Arnhem”, “Platform 1”, “no, we’re putting buses on” – so three train’s worth of passengers have to fight for seats on a single bus.

    So, ProRail, don’t tell me that delays are not interdependent. Wherever they happen, they will have a domino effect on the individual traveller, if that traveller is where the delays are.

    I note, with a roll of my eyes, that the ProRail research report was carried out at the request of the private rail operators. I can’t say I’m totally surprised at the findings then, although it only serves to underline the fact that we are indeed in looking-glass land.

    And, oh joy, because of the love affair the Dutch Government have with the idea that more independent operators make for more efficiency, we have the situation to look forward to that if we want to travel from Amsterdam to Varsseveld, we will have not two, but three train operators to deal with: the NS, Breng and Syntus.

    It’s at times like this when I earnestly wish to be face to face with the authors of these research reports and the faceless bureaucrats who decide our transport fate and slap them hard around the face with a wet fish.

  • Amsterdam Canal Parade

    Today is the 6th August, 2011, and it’s the day of the annual Canal Parade in Amsterdam. I usually travel the 150 km to Amsterdam and join the 400,000+ onlookers to watch it, but this year I’m staying home. However, my thoughts will be there, in particular for my old colleagues from Shell who will be dancing on the Company Pride boat. Good luck, guys and gals – hope the weather gods smile on you today!

    My photos of some of the previous Canal Parades can be found up on Flickr.

  • The Buurt’s New Baby

    It’s become something of a tradition here in this part of the Netherlands that when a baby is born, the neighbours (the buurt) will celebrate the fact by erecting a wooden stork, festooned with clotheslines of baby clothes.

    This week, our nearest neighbours had the birth of their first baby, a boy. Since we are noaste naobers to them, it fell to us to organise the decorations in celebration of the fact. So, together with the other neighbours, we did. Naturally, we had to have the traditional stork:

    20110723-1113-55

    But Martin thought that we should also push the envelope a bit. Since José and Herman have referred to their new baby as their “little prince” (kleine prins), we thought we’d take them at their word…

    20110723-1139-21

    20110723-1115-43

    20110723-1115-32

  • The Psychopath Test

    Some weeks back I mentioned that I should put Jon Ronson’s new book: The Psychopath Test on my list of books to read. I did, and I’ve now read it.

    I liked it very much. Ronson’s style of writing is easy to read and often laugh-out-loud funny, although there are parts of the book that also made me gasp in astonishment. Don’t get it expecting to read an academic study on psychopathy (as some people who have reviewed the book on Amazon.com appear to have done, and who are then pissed-off to find it’s not). It’s not that at all. It’s more an exploration of some of the ways in which humans can behave, for better or worse. His jumping-off point is the strange story of a mysterious book: Being and Nothingness by an author Joe K (not Jean-Paul Sartre) copies of which were sent, out of the blue, to a number of neurologists and other academics. Ronson is invited by one of the recipients to get on the trail of who was behind the book, and along the way becomes intrigued by what defines mental illness.

    From there he meets Tony, an inmate of Broadmoor (one of Britain’s three high security psychiatric hospitals) who claims that he faked a mental disorder in order to get a lighter sentence, but who is now stuck there, because nobody believes he is sane.

    At the end of his book, Ronson returns to the story of both the mysterious book and Tony. Along the way, he meets many people involved in the “madness industry”; those who define the various labels of madness, those who wear the labels and those who use the label-wearers to make a living.

    I found chapter 8 – The Madness of David Shayler – the saddest. Partly because it tells of the impact on Rachel North, who survived the Kings Cross bombing of 7/7, only to discover that conspiracy theorists claimed that there were no bombs and that she herself was a government mouthpiece who had been tasked with disseminating disinformation. And partly because it tells of the journey of David Shayler from being a former MI5 security officer to someone who believes that he is the Messiah. Ronson charts the degree of media interest in Shayler and concludes:

    David Shayler’s tragedy is that his madness has spiralled into something too outlandish, too far out of the ball park and consequently useless. We don’t want obvious exploitation, we want smoke-and-mirrors exploitation.

    At the heart of the book is the Hare PCL-R Checklist, used to identify psychopathic traits. Ronson meets Bob Hare, the inventor of the checklist, on a number of occasions. The checklist becomes a leitmotif in the book, with Ronson musing on particular checklist items whilst describing the behaviour of those he meets, or even whilst describing his own behaviour and thoughts.

    It’s a good book.

  • Gawd–That Voice!

    Meryl Streep is playing the role of Margaret Thatcher in a forthcoming biopic. The first trailer is now available. Streep has caught the voice to a “T”, as it were, and it sends shivers down my spine.

    I’m torn between wanting to see the film, and dreading all the negative emotions that will be dredged up thinking about the impact Thatcher has had on British society.

  • All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – II

    I mentioned how much I was looking forward to the new series of documentaries by Adam Curtis: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

    Actually, the first episode was last week, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped for. I never realised, until Curtis made it clear, that there was a close, if not intimate, connection between Alan Greenspan and the ethical egoist-cum-sociopath Ayn Rand. Pause for shudder…

    Tonight’s episode will look at how our view of Nature, as interconnected ecosystems, echoes our view of machines. Should be good. And next week, Curtis will look at our view of the human being as machine, and tell the riveting, and almost outlandish, story of George Price, who was one of the first to come up with the idea of the Selfish Gene.

    Adam Curtis has also been on Little Atoms, talking about the series and the ideas behind it (the second link on this page). Well worth a listen.

    The underpinning theme of All Watched Over… is that of Cybernetics, with which I was fascinated when younger. I wonder whether Curtis will mention William Grey Walter and his cybernetic tortoises? I built one of those when I was a teenager, but really, one was not enough, you really needed several to be able to study the emergent behaviour…

    At the very least, I hope that Curtis gives a shout-out to Anthony Stafford Beer, who was invited by Salvador Allende to implement Cybersyn to manage the planned economy of Chile. Unfortunately, like so much else, the experiment was swept away in the military coup of 1973, which was, surprise, surprise, endorsed by the US.

  • My Heart Bleeds…

    I see that Adele is complaining that she has to pay 50% Income Tax on her earnings of, apparently, £8 million for last year.

    I pay more tax (52%) on my earnings that, last year, amounted to less than 1% of her income. Somehow, if I were in her shoes, I think that I would be able to struggle by on an after-tax income of four million quid.

    Feet of clay, feet of clay…

  • Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill

    The appalling David Bahati is still pushing on with his abhorrent piece of anti-gay legislation in the Ugandan parliament. It would seem that it is now reaching a crucial point. This travesty has been going on since 2009. Perhaps it’s always useful to have scapegoats ready in order to deflect the population from the real problems at hand.

    Update 14 May 2011: the current Ugandan parliament ran out of time to debate the bill, so it’s been shelved. Unfortunately, that probably means that Baharti will try and re-introduce it in the next parliament.

  • All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

    Adam Curtis makes documentaries. But these aren’t just plain documentaries, they are visual poems that contain much food for thought. His latest effort is All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – to be broadcast on BBC2 on 23rd May at 9pm UK time. Can’t wait.

    Oh, and it has Ayn Rand – the stinking fart in the face of the Enlightenment…

    Here’s the background to the films.

  • The Writing On The Wall

    Further to my entry about the fact that the Dutch Government is thinking of banning the concept of dual nationality here in The Netherlands, I see that the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics is reporting that a majority of the Dutch are in favour of this change.

    According to their survey, a large majority are in favour of banning dual nationality. Unsurprisingly, members of Wilder’s PVV party are 90% in favour of banning Cabinet Ministers from holding dual nationality.

    It’s funny, when I first moved to The Netherlands in 1983, the Dutch had a reputation for tolerance, but now, in 2011, it seems to me that it’s no longer so self-evident. I would not be surprised if I will formally have to renounce my British citizenship in a few years time. Frankly, I think it reflects badly on the Dutch – a raising of the barriers to draw a line between “us” and “them”.

  • Courage

    Via a post on PZ Myer’s blog, I have discovered the blog of a lesbian in Syria: A Gay Girl in Damascus.

    She has courage, and a brave father. I hope that they both manage to come through the current troubles in that country.

    Update 13 June 2011: Sigh, the internet strikes again. The lesbian in Damascus turns out to be a 40 year-old American married man studying in Scotland: Tom McMasters.

    While I don’t like to be fooled, his idiotic actions have not helped genuine LGBT voices in the Middle East to be heard. Shame, shame on him.

  • Wise Words

    Christopher Hitchens was due to address the American Atheist Convention, but had to cancel because of illness. So he wrote them a letter instead. Hitchens writes like an angel wielding a flaming sword, and the letter is an excellent example of his way with words. Example:

    Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.

    Do go and read the rest. By coincidence, his friend, Martin Amis has a biographical sketch of him in today’s Observer. Also worth reading to catch a flavour of the man.

  • “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”

    That’s the title of a short story by Harlan Ellison, but it is also a reference given by Roger Ebert in his stunning presentation at TED last month.

    Ebert is a brilliant critic of film, but cancer has removed his jaw and his ability to speak. His presentation at TED is an example that being born into this particular “box of time and space” where PLATO, HAL 9000 and the DEC Rainbow all occurred, together with advances in medical science, have ensured that Ebert’s voice, in all its manifestations, can continue to be heard. Wonderful.

  • Managing Expectations

    Another thought-provoking post from Jan Chipchase – this time from Cairo. It’s about managing expectations in foreign situations, and being aware.

    Reminds me of the time I went on a business trip for Shell to Cartegena in Columbia and being met by the Computing Manager at the small airport. His driver had a slight bulge under his left armpit, and I thought, hmm.

    The Hilton hotel had been bombed a month before and two days after my arrival, the airport runway was blown up by guerillas. The pilot of the Shell plane announced that there was 1500 feet of usable runway left, and he could take off with 1350 feet. I remember thinking that 150 feet didn’t sound like an enormous margin for error. Still, as you can surmise, I lived to tell the tale.

  • Goodies and Baddies

    The inestimable Adam Curtis has another blog entry that stops the heart, if not the tears. Such a steadfast view of humanity’s foibles is often more than I can bear. But bear witness, we must.

  • Dual Nationality to be Phased Out?

    I was born in the Isle of Man and, as a result, hold a British Passport. Having lived in the Netherlands since 1983, I also became a Dutch citizen in 2006 – so I currently have dual nationality.

    Today, the minister for home affairs, Piet Hein Donner, has introduced proposed legislation that will mean that anyone who wants to adopt Dutch nationality will soon have to give up their original nationality if that is legally possible.

    Obviously, the question in my mind is: will this also apply retroactively?

    Frankly, I see this move by Donner as a step backwards – a sop to the burgeoning nationalism fanned by the likes of Wilders and the PVV. I actually feel proud of the fact that I am able to hold dual nationality – I feel it gives me a broader horizon – a step towards being a citizen of the world. If Donner has his way, I’ll be forced to retreat to a narrower view of the world. I’m not happy about this.

    Addendum: a friend of mine who’s in much the same boat (born a Scot, lived in the Netherlands for years and now has dual nationality) wondered if he could add a new word to the English language:

    Wilderize
    – to change a tolerant country into an intolerant country.

    I think he has a point.