A couple of years back, I blogged about Nina Paley’s short animation: This Land is Mine. Two years on, and nothing seems to have changed in that part of the world. The only winner, as Nina pointed out, is the Angel of Death.
Category: Society
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On the Wrong Side of the Track – Both Sides!
We live in the so-called Achterhoek region of the Netherlands – the name literally means “back corner”. It’s predominantly farmland and countryside, and tourism is, after farming, the major industry. Many Dutch people living in the densely populated Randstad come here on holiday seeking a bit of peace and quiet, and some, like us, retire here.
As the years go by, the pressure increases on what remains of the countryside. The latest turn of the screw is the Noordtak Betuweroute. This is a proposal to lay a new railway line (the Noordtak – literally, the “North branch”) through the Achterhoek, connecting the current goods train line (the Betuweroute) at Zevenaar in the west through to the Dutch/German border in the east. At present, the Betuweroute currently goes south of Zevenaar to cross the border and connects with Emmerich and thence to Duisburg. This is the Zuidtak (the “South branch”).
The Noordtak proposal was originally the brainchild of the Port of Rotterdam Authority, who were looking to increase the flow of goods from ships unloading in Rotterdam through to German industries in the Ruhr. There was a study into the Noordtak carried out in 2012 by the engineering firm Movares on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. It looked at three alternative routes through the Achterhoek. When word got out about the two favoured alternatives, it galvanised protests from communities through which the routes passed.
As a result, two of the three alternatives have effectively been killed, leaving just one. The Port of Rotterdam Authority then joined forces with the two provincial governments in the Achterhoek and commissioned a “Quick Study” of this third alternative route. The outcome, surprise, surprise, was what the PRA wanted. According to a press release issued jointly by the PRA and the Provinces, the proposed route would be “faster, safer, and less nuisance” than the rejected routes.
But, guess what, it would pass quite close to us (it’s the route in purple in this map):
We live near to the village of Heelweg, and it will be a lot worse for them. Heelweg actually consists of two hamlets, Heelweg-Oost and Heelweg-West (Heelweg-East and Heelweg-West). The Noordtak line would go straight through between them, a metaphorical stake through the heart of the community. As you might imagine, the inhabitants are not best pleased with the proposal, and we are joining forces with other action groups, such as the Gelderland’s Nature and Environment Federation, that are now springing up along the proposed route.
Now you might think that this is simply a NIMBY reaction, and to some extent you would be right; whichever route such a railway takes, it is bound to affect someone. However, we feel that some of the bigger questions need satisfactory answers. What will the overall effect on the economy of the Achterhoek be? Even the press release mentioned above is cautious about this, admitting that:
“The effect on the regional economy is difficult to estimate. Perhaps the maximum number of trains on the track (36 per 24 hours) is too small to make investment in a new goods train terminal cost-effective”.
The press release also quotes a member of the regional government as saying:
“There may well be indirect effects, such as an increase in industrial activity alongside, and in the area of the railway. This is, at this moment, not quantifiable in monetary terms.”
Frankly, I find this ridiculous. Since the goods trains won’t be stopping anywhere in the Achterhoek, why should that be attractive for firms to build facilities alongside the railway? And if they do build, they simply cause more damage to the tourist economy by destroying the very asset that makes people want to come here and spend their tourist euros.
A further question that needs to be answered is whether the Germans are wanting this new line. They have dragged their heels over connecting up with the Zuidtak, and all the signs are that they have little or no enthusiasm for connecting up with the Noordtak.
The Dutch Minister for the Environment is due to give her decision on whether she supports the Noordtak proposal in the next few days. Even if she does support it, there will have to be a further, more detailed study done on the environmental impact of such a line. I would hope that an equally long hard look would also be taken at the economic justification for such a line. Many people are far from convinced that the figures would add up.
We live in interesting times.
Addendum 18 June 2014: The Minister has spoken, and she’s not convinced that the case for the Noordtak has been sufficiently proven, or that the figures in the “Quick Study” add up. She (or her successor) will take another look in 2020 to see if anything has changed that would require starting up a detailed study… So we can chalk that one up to a Minister showing commonsense. Nice to see.
Addendum 25 January 2022: Well, here we are again. The Rotterdam and Amsterdam Harbour Authorities have been doing some hard lobbying over the past year, and the Noordtak is back on the agenda. There was a vote last November in the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament on looking again at the route. 148 members voted for the motion, and one against. The sole vote against belonged to the only member of parliament who actually lives in the Achterhoek.
The politicians in the local and provincial authorities have finally woken up and are now fighting back. They are demanding proper involvement in the ongoing research over the possible route, but perhaps more importantly are demanding research into whether there is a good business case for the Noordtak in the first place. The Germans are still lukewarm about connecting with the existing goods train line (the Betuwelijn), and it’s highly unlikely that they would want to connect with the Noordtak. They are looking to improve rail routes to their own harbours of Hamburg and Bremen.
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Welcome, England and Wales…
…you finally made it. At midnight on Saturday 29 March 2014, same-sex couples in England and Wales will be able to legally tie the knot. It’s been a long, hard battle for them to get equality, but the day has finally come. England and Wales join the other fifteen countries that recognise same-sex marriage.
It’s also refreshing to see that the Church of England has thrown in the towel, and that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has publicly signalled the end of the Church of England’s resistance to same-sex marriage. Mind you, the global Anglican Church still has plenty of spleen and venom to vent on the issue, so now the fight moves elsewhere.
In the meantime, congratulations to those who are preparing to get married. Sandi Toksvig has an excellent article on what it means to her.
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Geert and Gedogen
Gedogen is one of those (many?) Dutch words that is somewhat difficult to translate. On the face of it, it means to tolerate, permit, suffer and allow. However, there is something lurking behind those straightforward definitions; an additional layer of meaning that indicates that the tolerance, the permission and so forth are granted, well, perhaps not grudgingly per se, but perhaps almost in spite of the thing that is being tolerated. There’s a sense of turning a blind eye to behaviour that, strictly speaking, is illegal, or should not be condoned, but which one tolerates out of a sense of liberalism and of a sense of “live and let live”.
Someone who has been the beneficiary of much gedogen is the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders. He, on the other hand, exhibits near zero gedogen for his targets: immigrants, Muslims and Moroccans.
We’ve just had elections here in the Netherlands for the town councils (the Gemeenten), and Wilders’ party fielded candidates in just two places: The Hague and Almere. During the campaign, Wilders went on record as saying that voters in The Hague should vote for a city with lower taxes and, if possible, fewer Moroccans. As a result, one Labour candidate (Fouad Sidhali) tweeted a comparison of Wilders to Hitler, a statement he later withdrew after criticism from senior Labour officials, saying the comparison had been unjustified.
I found it fascinating to observe the media and politicians exhibiting gedogen towards Wilders by focusing on Sidhali’s tweet, rather than the initial remark by Wilders. It was as though Wilders was the injured party, rather than Sidhali, who had probably responded with understandable exasperation over yet more of Wilders’ xenophobic rhetoric.
Wilders then (oh so predictably) responded by saying Fouad Sidali’s rethink was sensible but that ‘it would have been more sensible to leave for Morocco’.
And so it goes. Geert grins under the grace of gedogen.
But perhaps a line has now been crossed. During last night’s after-election celebrations in the Hague, Wilder asked his supporters ‘and do you want more or fewer Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?’ To which the crowd chanted ‘fewer, fewer, fewer’. ‘ We’ll arrange that,’ Wilders said with a faint smile (or was it a smirk?) when the chanting died down.
I would like to think that people are beginning to think that enough is enough, and that the emperor has no clothes, other than rags of xenophobia and racism. We will see what happens during the European elections in May.
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Presidential? – I Think Not
Reading President Museveni’s speech at his signing of Uganda’s Anti-homosexuality bill is depressing. Not so much because of his clear bigotry, ignorance, and politicking – that’s only to be expected – but because of my realisation of what this means for gay people – and people who have gay brothers, sisters, parents, relations and friends – in Uganda. They have just been thrown to the wolves. And it hasn’t taken long for the wolves to start howling. A Ugandan newspaper has published a list of what it called “the country’s 200 top homosexuals”, outing some who previously had not identified themselves as gay.
I was heartened, but not surprised, by Desmond Tutu’s condemnation of the new law. I fear, however, that his voice will be drowned by a new wave of witchhunts in Uganda.
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The Streisand Effect in Action
In 2009, Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History was published by Penguin. It seems to have attracted the wrath of Hindu (male) chauvinists; to the extent that a lawsuit from the Hindu group Shiksha Bachao Andolan accusing Doniger (a University of Chicago professor) of “hurt[ing] the religious feelings of millions of Hindus” was instigated in India. As a result, Penguin have withdrawn the book from sale in India and intend to pulp the copies.
Quite rightly, this decision has resulted in a storm of protest, and propelled the book up the bestseller list. I’ve ordered my own copies (paperback and Kindle) out of interest, in support of Doniger, and against the tiresome president of Shiksha Bachao Andolan, Dinanath Batra. As Ophelia says, Batra is an experienced religious bully.
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RIP Stuart
Stuart Hall died today. As the Guardian obituary says:
Hall was always among the first to identify key questions of the age, and routinely sceptical about easy answers. A spellbinding orator and a teacher of enormous influence, he never indulged in academic point-scoring. Hall’s political imagination combined vitality and subtlety; in the field of ideas he was tough, ready to combat positions he believed to be politically dangerous. Yet he was unfailingly courteous, generous towards students, activists, artists and visitors from across the globe, many of whom came to love him. Hall won accolades from universities worldwide, despite never thinking of himself as a scholar. Universities offered him a base from which he could teach – a source of great pleasure for him – and collaborate with others in public debate.
It’s a great loss. It was only a couple of months ago that I was walking through the woods listening to a podcast of a discussion between him and Laurie Taylor and being impressed anew at his insight.
For an overview of his work and thought, this article, also in today’s Guardian, is a good start.
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Nasty, Brutish, and Wrong
The Guardian published an opinion piece by Kevin McKenna last Saturday: Scotland’s assisted suicide bill is an offence to our human dignity. Frankly, if anything was an offence to human dignity, it was this piece of invective. But then again, McKenna is an executive editor of the Daily Mail in Scotland. Says it all, really. The Guardian should be ashamed at publishing such tripe. I see that the comments pretty much call out the piece for the bullshit it is.
I am thankful that I live in a country where I can ask for a peaceful death, should it prove necessary, and where safeguards exist to protect the vulnerable.
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“I Am Officially Illegal”
That was the tweet from Dr. Frank Mugisha today at the news that the Ugandan Parliament has passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The bill apparently:
- bans the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ with a maximum of 7 years imprisonment.
- punishes same-sex marriage with life imprisonment
It’s not clear what the final wording and provisions of the bill are, the original bill contained some wide-ranging powers to drive the LGBT community underground, both literally and figuratively, as well as have consequences for human rights defenders active in the LGBT field.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for LGBT people in Uganda at the moment. One thing is for certain, if Martin and I were living in Uganda instead of here, we would both be looking at life imprisonment.
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Abraham And Sarah
Here in the Netherlands, there’s a tradition that when someone reaches the age of 50, they are said to be an Abraham (if they’re a man) or a Sarah (if they’re a woman).
And in this part of the Netherlands, that is often marked by friends and neighbours installing an appropriately (or inappropriately) dressed mannequin outside the celebrant’s house.
Last Wednesday, one of our neighbours reached his 50th, so late on Tuesday night his garden was invaded by a series of groups each installing their own version of an Abraham and accompanying signs and decorations. This was the scene the following morning…
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The Bankers Do It Again
There’s a small village, Bredevoort, that lies about 7 kilometres distant from us. It’s a pretty little village of about 1,500 inhabitants, and it also has a disproportionate number of antiquarian bookshops in it. That’s because, since 1993, it has become known as a Boekenstad (book-town). Apart from the 20 or so bookshops, there are also regular antiquarian bookmarkets, with market stalls placed in and around the central market square.
I often go along to the bookmarkets, and when I do, one of the things I invariably see is a queue of people waiting to get cash from Bredevoort’s one and only cash machine.
Today, I read in the Volkskrant that the Rabobank, the bank responsible for the cash machine, intends to remove it from the village. According to Nicole Olde Meule, the person responsible for the bank’s consumer clients in this area, the number of transactions has fallen by 9% over the past year to 25,000 per year. And that, she thinks, is justification enough to remove the service.
She clearly needs her head examined. At a time when the Rabobank has had its image severely dented by being fined €774m for its part in the Libor scandal, she thinks its OK to heap further hardship on the village, tourists and booklovers.
She knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
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RIP, Norm
One of the bloggers that I make a habit of reading is Norman Geras. That is, until last Friday, when I found an entry on his blog from Jenny Geras (his daughter) saying that Norm had died that day.
Another voice of reason stilled. Here’s his obituary. It’s worth reading to get a sense of the man, and of course you can still read his writings on his blog.
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Out There
Stephen Fry has collaborated with film-maker Fergus O’Brien to make a two-part documentary Out There. In it, Fry reflects just how much, and how little, things have changed in his lifetime for gay people around the world.
Martin and I watched the first part last night. Yes, we know that we are incredibly lucky to be able to live where we do, but to see the reality of the extent of homophobia elsewhere, much of it State-sponsored, is very depressing. Uganda featured prominently in last-night’s programme. Fry was shown participating in a Ugandan radio phone-in programme with Pastor Solomon Male, who seems obsessed with homosexual sex to a quite unhealthy degree. Fry also had an interview with the Ugandan State Minister for Integrity and Ethics, who amply demonstrated a complete absence of both of these qualities. Fry found the latter interview in particular quite stressful, in part I suspect because the Minister at one point was shouting that he would arrest Fry.
But never underestimate the smugness of TV reviewers. Rupert Hawksley, in the Telegraph, wrote that:
As a homosexual man himself, it was entirely understandable that Fry took the poisonous opinions he encountered in Uganda and Los Angeles as personal attacks. Nonetheless, I was surprised at how quickly he allowed himself to be drawn into a slanging match, his gravitas deserting him minutes into a debate with Ugandan pastor Solomon Male. It was all much too shouty and felt like the opportunity for instructive discussion had been lost. Later, in an invective-filled session with the Ugandan State Minister for Integrity and Ethics, Fry resorted to childish taunts: “Homosexuality is fantastic. You should try it, it’s really good fun.” This, surely, was not the best way to counter deep-rooted prejudice.
Easy for you to say Mr. Hawksley, but then I doubt that you’ve been much at the receiving end of institutionalised homophobia. If I were in Fry’s place, I’d probably have lost my temper much sooner with the odious human being that is the Ugandan Minister. “Instructive discussion” with people such as Male and the minister is an oxymoron, as I know from experience.
The second part of the documentary will be shown tonight, in which Fry visits Russia, and gets to meet Deputy Milanov of St. Petersburg. Somehow, I think Mr. Hawksley will once again have to suffer a sense of disappointment that there is no “instructive discussion”. As Stephen Fry writes:
I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same.
The struggle continues.
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“100,000 dead, seven million displaced and a nation turned to rubble”
Kenan Malik sums up the real consequences of the terrible conflict in Syria. It makes for depressing reading. The posturing of Putin in particular is pure politics. However, as Malik says, none of the players come out of this well. Meanwhile, the slaughter and the flood of refugees continue.
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Strong Convictions
While I often shake my head at some of the religious bollocks that emanates from the US, I would do well to remember that here in the Netherlands we have many examples of our own.
The latest is of a Dutch school having to pulp 3,000 diaries printed for the pupils because some parents are convinced that they contain a sign of Satan. And what’s the sign, you ask? It’s the Peace sign. You know, the one designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958.
School board chairman Johan van Puten is reported to have said:
‘The conviction of the parents that the symbol was unacceptable was so strong that I knew a rigorous approach was the only solution’
Someone should point out to him that strong convictions do not necessarily equate to them being correct. And in this instance, it’s clearly the parents who need education as much as, if not more than, their children.
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18 Arguments Against Gay Marriage
The New Statesman’s Caroline Crampton lists 18 arguments voiced today in the UK’s House of Lords against same-sex marriage.
All the usual suspects are there, including the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I can’t say that I’m surprised by his stance. Religion poisons pretty much everything.
I suspect that very similar arguments were once made against the abolition of slavery.
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IDAHo
Since 2004, May 17 has been marked as the International Day Against Homophobia. The Dutch Government is hosting a three day international conference in The Hague on the subject of homophobia at the moment.
Today, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency published a report on the experience of LGBT people across the EU and in Croatia. It doesn’t make for very comfortable reading. The survey (of 93,000 people) found:
- Some 26% of respondents (and 35% of transgender respondents) said they had been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years
- Most of the hate attacks reported took place in public and were perpetrated by more than one person, with the attackers predominantly being male
- More than half of those who said they had been attacked did not report the incident to the authorities, believing no action would be taken
- Half of respondents said they had felt personally discriminated against in the year before the survey, although 90% did not report the discrimination
- Some 20% of gay or bisexual respondents and 29% of transgender respondents said they had suffered discrimination at work or when looking for a job
- Two-thirds of respondents said they had tried to hide or disguise their sexuality at school.
Full details of the report and its findings are here.
Yesterday, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research published its own report on the situation of LGBT people in the Netherlands. It makes slightly more comfortable reading than the EU report, but we are also likely to be the target of homophobia from the usual suspects within Dutch society.
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“They Were Not A Family”
I see that my birthplace, the Isle of Man, is still home to some old and ugly prejudice. Kira Izzard and Laura Cull have been refused a tenancy application because they are a lesbian couple. Their landlord, Keith Price, who is a Methodist Minister, stated:
“We understood that they were not a family so we said we couldn’t proceed [with the rental agreement].
“We believe that God has a plan for our lives within the context of marriage, the scripture is quite clear in its teaching on this.”
In the UK, such a refusal would be illegal; unfortunately, the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency, and not part of the UK, so it makes its own laws.
Ms Izzard has started a petition to ask the Manx Parliament to support the UK Equality Act 2010 in the Isle of Man. Naturally, I’ve signed it.
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Romanticising Pain And Suffering
Giles Fraser has an article in the Guardian, in which he claims “I want to be a burden on my family as I die, and for them to be a burden on me”.
Well, bully for him. And a bully is what he is proposing to be, with his pernicious nonsense. I reject his argument that the “problem with euthanasia is not that it is a immoral way to die, but that it has its roots in a fearful way to live”.
Eric MacDonald also demolishes Fraser’s argument completely, and I refer you to him for chapter and verse. A couple of key quotes:
But it’s not called “looking after each other” if what the person who is suffering is asking for is help to die. It’s called coercion, then — which has a very different resonance — and if someone is being coerced into being a burden, then Fraser has simply has missed the point about what looking after each other is all about. Moreover — and this, coming from a priest, is inexcusable — it simply papers over the cracks with regard to how people die. Sometimes the burden, if Fraser really wants to know, is borne by those who are dying, and if those who are watching someone die in misery doesn’t notice this, then they are simply not watching closely enough!
And this just shows that Fraser hasn’t the least understanding — but not the slightest understanding! – of what is meant by assisted dying. It’s not the last desperate act of a person who has no inkling of what is happening until the very last moment, when farewells are almost impossible; it is, rather, a conscious act of taking the decision to die upon oneself, instead of leaving it up to the vagaries of the dying process, or to the all but certain stages that the trajectories of some diseases will follow to carry one away either gasping for breath or crying out in pain. Fraser seems to have not the slightest idea of how people die, or, if he does, he deliberately hides it from his readers the less to worry them at the end of life. But it is just as well to know, beforehand, just how terrible death can be, not so that we can be afraid of it — which seems as far as Fraser’s puny imagination will take him — but so that we can be prepared for it, and take our leave before the worst overtakes us.
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It’s NOT a Coronation!
It’s been a momentous day here in the small country of The Netherlands. This morning, at 10:10, Queen Beatrix signed the document that confirmed that she has abdicated in favour of her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, who has now become King. The first Dutch King since the 19th Century.
This signing took place in the Dam Palace, which started out life as the Amsterdam City Hall in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th Century.
Now, I’m no monarchist, but I was moved by the day’s events. Right from the moment that Queen Beatrix announced she welcomed everyone to the ceremony, and the roar of approval from the crowd outside in the Dam Square brought a smile to her face as she realised that the Dutch people were watching and supporting this move.
Not that Beatrix has been a bad Queen. Far from it. She has become beloved by us in a way that could only have been dreamed of when she became Queen in 1980. Then, there were protests and smoke bombs in the Dam.
Following the signing of the Abdication document, this afternoon was the inauguration of the new King. I found it almost astonishing.
I grew up in the United Kingdom, where the British Monarchy is seen as something established by God. There is a Coronation, where the crown is placed on the head of the new monarch by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Religion and Monarchy are completely intertwined.
In stark contrast, here in The Netherlands, the Monarch is not crowned. Instead, King Willem-Alexander was inaugurated in a ceremony that involved the State – not the Church.
The King pledged his allegiance to the democratic process, and affirmed his responsibilities to the citizens. He made a good, and thoughtful speech, honouring the service of his mother, and promising that he would do his best for the Dutch citizens and the State. In return, the State, in the form of the members of the Dutch parliament, signalled their assent to his assumption of the role of king. And they did that individually – each standing when their name was called, and either swearing by God, or a simple “I promise”. It was interesting to see how many members did not invoke God. Another indication of how secular the Netherlands is, and how the United Kingdom still is not.
King Willem-Alexander pledged his allegiance in front of symbols of the State – the books of the Law of the Land – as well as symbols of his own status, the crown, sceptre and orb. He also had five representatives of the Dutch people present to bear witness, and to bear symbols of the importance of the citizen to Dutch society. They were his “Koningwapenen”, or Kings of Arms. One of them was André Kuipers, Dutch physician and astronaut.
As I say, I was moved. The importance of ritual to humans is unmissable, and touches something deep within us.
I wish Willem-Alexander, and his very impressive wife, Máxima, all the best in their new roles as King and Queen of the Netherlands. I think that they will both do well.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 