Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
That’s the title of an excellent article by Tom Crewe in the London Review of Books about the history of the Aids crisis.
It seems so long ago now, and I count myself amongst the lucky survivors, but we lost so many friends and lovers in that dark period. It should not be forgotten.
The Dutch have a reputation for being straightforward, bordering on rude, in their interactions with other people. I had a prime example of this in an encounter yesterday.
My Lenovo wireless keyboard and mouse has been giving trouble over the past month or two. The keyboard and mouse become unresponsive at random intervals – and no, it’s not because the batteries are dead. When this happens, the only thing that will cure it is a reboot of the PC. The fault definitely seems to lie in the Lenovo devices, since plugging in a spare mouse and keyboard will immediately work without the need of a reboot. My spare keyboard has one non-working key, and was the reason why I swapped it for the Lenovo keyboard in the first place.
At any rate, when the Lenovo keyboard and mouse froze again yesterday, I thought enough was enough, and resolved to get a replacement keyboard (I already had a spare mouse). I jumped in the car and sped off to the local computer shop in town. Unfortunately, this being a Saturday, the shop closes at 16:00 – as I saw, with a sinking feeling, on the door as I opened it at 15:59.
“Am I too late to buy something?” I asked. “I’ve just cashed up – what do you want?” came the reply. “I need a new keyboard, because my old one has just died”, I said. “I can’t help, I’ve cashed up”, came the rejoinder. No “Sorry”, no sympathy for my plight, just “I can’t help, I’ve cashed up”. I knew that he wouldn’t help, but could he not have softened the blow with a simple “sorry”? That’s so typically Dutch…
Oh well, his loss – I ordered a new keyboard from CoolBlue, and it will be delivered today (on a Sunday!)…
The LGBTQ+ Pride season is upon us. Today was the London Pride march, with 30,000 marchers. The Guardian also had a story about a treasure trove of LGBTQ+ badges being found in an attic.
That reminded me that I must still have a box containing a small collection of my own. Sure enough, a rummage in a cupboard produced:
A few of these come from the 1970’s. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality badge may well date from 1974, when I helped organise the second annual CHE conference, which was held in Malvern, Worcestershire. I suspect the GLF badge will date from the mid 1970’s, whilst the Heaven badge was produced to celebrate the opening of the Heaven nightclub in 1979.
I attended a number of marches in those days. The early Pride marches, of course, but also anti-Fascist marches and Women’s Rights marches. This photo of me and my mother was taken in June 1975, shortly after I had finished marching (along with 20,000 others) in the demonstration organised by the National Abortion Campaign.
Heady days…
An interview of Jaron Lanier, and why he thinks that Facebook and its ilk are bad for us both as individuals and as society.
He’s absolutely right, of course, but the damage has probably already been done. The one false note in this interview comes right at the end with a truly insulting observation from the interviewer, Krisnan Guru Murphy. Fortunately, Lanier is too much of a gentleman to rise to the bait.
So, today there was a wedding, a Royal Wedding. And while I wish Harry and Meghan to live happily ever after; I remain a republican. This Royal Wedding was unlike any I have previously seen. Today, I witnessed the sermon from the Rev. Michael Curry. And “witnessed” is the apt term.
Yes, I’m an atheist, but I loved this. Probably shook up the congregation a bit, but quite right.
… that’s the title of a sobering article on what has gone wrong with the internet. Well worth reading.
The apology is necessary, but it’s too damn late – the damage is done. I’m not sure how it will ever be possible to undo the damage that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have caused. To many people, Facebook is the internet, and it is a global monopoly. And it has connected people for both good and ill. The recent Buddhist violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka is but the latest example.
A documentary about Ahmad Joudeh. Watch it
That’s the title of an article about Facebook by John Lanchester. Published back in August 2017, it is eerily prescient about the shit that has now hit Facebook’s fan.
It’s a long article, but definitely worth a read. As Lanchester writes:
I am scared of Facebook. The company’s ambition, its ruthlessness, and its lack of a moral compass scare me.
His conclusion is sobering:
Automation and artificial intelligence are going to have a big impact in all kinds of worlds. These technologies are new and real and they are coming soon. Facebook is deeply interested in these trends. We don’t know where this is going, we don’t know what the social costs and consequences will be, we don’t know what will be the next area of life to be hollowed out, the next business model to be destroyed, the next company to go the way of Polaroid or the next business to go the way of journalism or the next set of tools and techniques to become available to the people who used Facebook to manipulate the elections of 2016. We just don’t know what’s next, but we know it’s likely to be consequential, and that a big part will be played by the world’s biggest social network. On the evidence of Facebook’s actions so far, it’s impossible to face this prospect without unease.
I deleted my Facebook account yesterday. I hope that I can remain outside its walled garden.
Joris Luyendijk is a Dutchman who has been living in Britain for the last six years, writing articles for the Guardian. He is a writer, journalist and anthropologist, specialising in Arab and Islamic countries.
He’s recently written an article in the Prospect magazine, provocatively titled: “How I learnt to loathe England”. It’s a good article (i.e. I mostly agree with his analysis). One thing that at first surprised me was that he supports Brexit (I don’t), but as he says:
…by the time the referendum came, I had become very much in favour of the UK leaving the EU. The worrying conditions that gave rise to the result—the class divide and the class fixation, as well as an unhinged press, combine to produce a national psychology that makes Britain a country you simply don’t want in your club.
And that was a novel perspective; the reaction that the EU might well be better off without Britain: good riddance, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out… There may well be something to be said for that stance.
As I head on into my twilight years, the possibility that I will end up living here alone in the depths of the Dutch countryside becomes real, if I outlive Martin. In such circumstances, I may well end up as a “stranger in a strange land”, but quite honestly, I think I would prefer that to a return to what England seems to be becoming.
Some officials know what public service means and fulfil their duties to the best of their abilities, serving the public good. And the people react accordingly.
Eberhard van der Laan, you’ve set an example to us all.
Tomorrow, the 15th March, we in the Netherlands go to the polls to vote for our political candidate of choice. Note that I didn’t say “to vote for our next government” – with 27 political parties to choose from on the ballot paper, it is inevitable that we’ll end up with yet another coalition government.
As well as the mainstream parties (8 or 11, depending on your definition of “mainstream”), the parties also include the “Non-Voters” party (12 candidates), the “Pirate Party” (with 37 candidates) and the “Jesus Lives” party (6 candidates). Somehow, I don’t think Jesus stands much of a chance. Perhaps he needs to hitch his wagon to the “Political Calvinist Party” – the evangelical Christian party, with their 30 candidates – not one of them a woman, because a woman’s place is of course in the home, and certainly not in politics. Yes, it’s the 21st century, but clearly not for some people.
And as usual, Geert Wilders has been generating more heat than light. His manifesto – actually a list of 11 bullet points covering less than one side of an A4 page – lays bare his anti-Muslim and anti-EU soul. He must be fully aware that he hasn’t got a hope of forming a government – few other parties will touch him with a bargepole in a coalition – and one suspects that he only does it to provoke. What is worrying is that his probable strategy – to pull the other parties to the right – appears to be working, at least in the case of the VVD, led by the current prime minister, Mark Rutte. Wilders appears to have goaded Rutte successfully into matching his rhetoric. Rutte is increasingly trying to appeal to Wilders’ PVV voters, and that’s a very dangerous, and populist, game.
Then we have Erdoğan butting in, and inflaming the passions of the Dutch citizens who have dual Dutch and Turkish nationalities. His “Nazi” rhetoric hasn’t exactly helped Dutch-Turkish relations of late, but then, one suspects, it wasn’t intended to.
And on top of all this, our newspaper, de Volkskrant, has been full of vox-pop pieces on floating voters, there seems to be a veritable flood of them. I confess that I am bewildered by the number of people who seem incapable of making up their minds. The choices are clear, at least to me. Tomorrow I’ll be following in my father’s footsteps and voting left-wing. He was a lifelong socialist, as am I, and believed in a caring society. My vote will be going to the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA), and to a woman. Sorry about that, Calvinists.
…and I’m sure we’re only at the beginning of Trump’s nightmare presidency. The Guardian editorial on Trump’s anti-Muslim orders nails it.
The words in the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal famously read:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Sorry, lady, but as far as Muslim refugees from countries where Trump does not have business interests are concerned, your lamp has just been doused.
I see Trump has begun as he means to go on. His first speech as President was, as Gary Younge says:
as crude and unapologetic an appeal to nationalism as one might expect from a man incapable of rising to an occasion without first refracting it through his ego.
This is not the triumph of democracy, but a tragedy.
A sobering article on responsible leadership in the age of populism. Worth reading. An extract:
The way today’s leaders increasingly rely on referenda, petitions and social media to legitimize their action suggests the emergence of a worrying trend of delegation of leadership and therefore responsibility.
In Britain, the Brexit referendum is a case in point, where those who put this issue to a vote and campaigned for the UK to leave the EU did not take responsibility for the consequences. The illusion that politics can simply collect people’s preferences and mechanically turn them into a reality threatens to override the idea behind political representation.
In a representative democracy, the mission of leaders should be to temper citizens’ input and emotional responses rather than to foster the violence of the majority. In other words, the relationship between representatives and represented must be ongoing and should entail judgement on both sides.
The article lists 10 personal qualities that should be present in a responsible leader. The person who will assume the role of the next President of the US in a few days time would appear to lack all of them.
As I’ve written before, Adam Curtis makes amazing documentaries. Tomorrow sees the release of his latest work: HyperNormalisation. Unfortunately, it only seems to be available on the BBC iPlayer – which is geofenced to viewers in the UK. I hope that it will become more widely available…
In November 1990 LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man named David Kirby. I remember the photo very well. It still moves me to tears, and evokes memories of friends who went far too soon. Here’s the story behind the photo.
We moved here to our house in the Achterhoek in the Netherlands ten years ago. Our closest neighbours, a field away were a dairy farmer and his wife. In January 2007, the farmer sold his farm to Herman Bongen and retired. Herman had worked on the farm since he was a teenager, and his dream had always been to become a farmer himself.
So in 2007, the dream became a reality for Herman and his girlfriend José. We, and the rest of the neighbourhood welcomed them to their new home and workplace.
Since that time, much has happened, both good and bad. The good has been the fact that Herman and José have become happily married, and have two lovely children: Baastian and Linde.
The bad has been the struggle that Dutch dairy farmers have had to keep their heads above water in a bad market.
It’s a struggle that has, in the last couple of months, become too much for Herman and José. They have decided to put their dairy farm up for sale. Herman told me the news some weeks ago.
José posted the news on her Facebook on the 27th August. This is what she wrote (translated from the Dutch):
More and more often we are asked: ‘Is it true? Are you getting rid of your cows?’
I waited to get in touch because my plan to write a pointed political essay just wasn’t happening. It was supposed to be my final statement about a hypocritical political system and society which shows such compassion for sustainability and the well-being of animals, but in the meantime allows for the supermarkets to demand the lowest possible price, using mega-margins over the backs of farmer and cow, flushing the market with cheap bulk milk. But my political words are gone.
No, we have not gone bankrupt. We do not have to leave our home. We did not sell the place to Fortis (a Dutch bank). And my husband Herman also does not have Parkinson’s disease. (Could be an interesting research project: how facts change through the grapevine, fascinating!) But we are putting our farm business up for sale.
Up to now we have always been able to pay our bills -something unfortunately not every farmer is able to say-, through hard work and using every bit of our savings. But we have had to surrender to the depressing feeling: ‘what are we doing this for?’. The romance which was still surrounding farm life, even in the 21st century, has gone.
The most straightforward and accurate explanation of our situation I saw yesterday: ‘Farming: the art of losing money while working 400 hours a month to feed people who think you are trying to kill them.’ Very funny, if only it wouldn’t be so terribly true.The reason for our decision is very simple: a milk price of 25 cents at a production cost of 35 cents. ‘A farmer with a brain will not become a farmer anymore ’, I read recently. That is so very true.
We cannot produce our milk any cheaper. Technically we are a success story. The vet and feed specialist are always praising our cows for their healthy looks, our good quality silage heaps, the low level use of antibiotics and how well-run the whole farm is in general. Those very healthy cows, their very well-being, we will not sacrifice any of that, ever.The practical bottleneck is mainly our high mortgage. It never was a matter of course that Herman would become a farmer. It demanded extraordinary cooperation, a sharp mind, long hours and, yes, that mortgage, in order to set up a modern business with 90 dairy cows and 50 hectares of land. I am so very proud of his passion to achieve all this!
Our very nice veterinarian was the first one to know. He was shocked: ‘You are doing such a fantastic job! You’ve got such a great farm!’ He’s right! But for two whole years now we have been totally knackered. We have bottomed out financially, whilst we will still have to replace our big barn from ’72 which includes shifting hundreds of square meters of asbestos. ‘The milk price is finally going up’, the news said yesterday. A bit early, because the new price will be publicized on Monday. But even if it does go up: even 26 cents results into a loss of 5000 euros per month. The bank will probably give us more credit, but the turn-over is low, losing money every moment. So when does one throw in the towel?
Other than the financial bottleneck there is the social one. Because of the low milk price, we cannot hire people, which makes Herman’s days longer and longer. He is more than fed-up with 80-hour weeks, how little time he’s got for the children, how his body is suffering. Also, we are fed up with not being appreciated economically, politically and socially for our efforts; worse at times. How the political parties and media get their knowledge about dairy farms from Wikipedia (how often have I had to write that the use of hormones is outlawed since 1961 and that milk and meat from animals with antibiotics in their system are not allowed to go into the human food chain?). And how new whimsical laws are made whilst crucial decisions are delayed yet again.
With great vigour we have educated ourselves this past year on how to convert to organic: a thought which had been with us for a longer spell of time but never yet got the attention it deserved. Both we and our farm are supposedly very suitable, the organic advisor told us. Only… we do not have enough land. And manpower. And there is already a waiting list. Because the consumer demands but does not buy.
The final straw was when Herman recently heard the news: ‘It is far cheaper for the consumer to buy their organic products in the supermarket.’ ‘Why are we still doing this… Does no one understand that taking good care of our cows costs money?’
I thought I’d given up on the idea of turning this into a political statement, but yet…’When our harvest fails, you are meant to get worried’, a headline said in a newspaper in an article about the loss of harvest caused by bad weather in the south of Holland. ‘When driven, responsible, intelligent farmers give up, you are also meant to get worried’, I would like to add.
Because we are not the first, and certainly not the last. Where will our milk come from twenty years from now? And how much influence will we have by then over the way it is produced? That is what worries me terrifically.
For us the facts are: by getting out now, now that our debts have not dug huge holes and we’re still ‘young’, we hope to be able to make a fresh start. A house in the countryside, being self-sufficient (also twenty years from now we will still remember how to produce good food!), possibly turning it into an educational project for youngsters… you never know.I keep on trying to focus on all of that: how relaxed and fun life could be, yet again. How wonderful it will be to have time for each other again. To have the peace of mind and spare time for a hobby and a normal social life. But that does not come easy, this new kind of dreaming. Because we are leaving another dream behind, a whole life as a matter of fact. Yesterday I watched as in the evening light our cows ambled out of the milking parlour back into their beautiful field, sheltered by woodland. And I could not help myself from sobbing out loud for the umpteenth time…
Her Facebook post went viral, and has been shared more than 18,000 times. She and Herman have been interviewed by the Press, and have appeared on Dutch television. Whilst the focus on the situation that they are in, and which is shared by many Dutch diary farmers, has been good, it does not change it one iota. The hard decision to sell the farm seems to be the right one.
It’s come as a shock to all of us in the neighbourhood, but there seems to be no alternative. I said to José the other week that the best way of viewing this was as the beginning of a new chapter, a new adventure, in their lives. To use a somewhat well-worn cliché, when one door closes, another often opens. It may seem trite, but that has often been my experience in life – I sincerely hope it will be the same for them.
As a fellow Manxman who got married to a Dutch man in the Netherlands, let me wish this happy couple all the best for their future.
With all the doom and gloom around as a result of Brexit; this cheered me up a bit.
How things have changed since the days I went on Gay Pride marches in London. Back in those days (the 1970s), the police were not at all friendly.
So my fellow Brits voted for Brexit. I am depressed beyond words. A sad day for the EU and a glad day for the 51.9% of Little Englanders thumbing their noses at Johnny Foreigner.
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