Be at Politics

And there I was as a cosmopolitan woman, not being able to vote in my own country last Wednesday. At the time of registering I lived between three cities London, Prague and a bit of Amsterdam. Somewhere between those cities my registration got lost. I am absolutely devastated.

As on election day I had to stand and watch while The Netherlands got hijacked by a bigoted twat, without being able to cast my Liberal vote.

After the election results became clear my love and I looked at each other in desperation; ‘shall we stay abroad, or do we have to go back to show some opposition?’ We couldn’t decide.

Geert Wilders likes to address his voters with ‘Henk & Ingrid’, the Jack and Jill of the lowlands. And 1.5 million of them voted for his policies.

‘The voters chose optimism’, Wilders said on election night.

All I can see is fear. Fear for change, fear for the foreigner, fear for their pensions, fear for having to share, fear for tightening their belts.

Geert Wilders’ voters don’t view the world as their playground; they rather seek refuge in their backyard behind their garden fence, with the gate firmly locked.

But unfortunately Wilders did not tell them that while they hide in their backyard, the unpredictable wind of globalization will still blow, the dark clouds of ‘global warming’ will not fade, and the icy frost of the economic crisis will not melt by itself.

And what are Wilders’ solutions? Throw out the Muslims, lower the taxes, and oh, you don’t have to work harder and longer, and while we are at it let’s close all the borders.

Congratulations Henk and Ingrid! Enjoy your garden party while it lasts. On the other site of your fence the world will move on. And whenever you decide to open your gates stepping over the rotten ideas of Geert Wilders, you will see that the prosperity you longed for is founded on progress, tolerance, open borders and freedom, not on fear.

But you will be too late. Countries that did choose progress and tolerance will have beaten us on the global stage.

Good luck to you. In the meantime my love and I will remain living as citizens of the world.

And next elections I’ll make absolutely sure I’ll deliver my vote in person!

‘Why does a Dutch girl, born and raised in Europe’s bicycle heaven, take cycling lessons in London? A question Iain Clark, my instructor from cycle2job asks me when he picks me up for my lesson.

Well, each time I get on my bike in London I see an image of myself with my face crushed between the wheels of a bendy bus and the pavement. And a fear inside me makes me want to scream ‘I don’t want to die on the streets of London!’ and I put my bike away and just give up.

When I was four years old I got my first real bike, a red one. Cycling on it felt cool, grown-up and amazingly free. Even though my older brother supported me with his hand on my back. One day he let me go and there I went into the big world of Dutch suburbia all by myself. And I kept on cycling ever since.

As a grown up I cycled in many cities but nowhere I have enjoyed cycling so much as in Amsterdam, bike-capital of the world. Just cycle once along the canals and you’ll get hooked yourself! So when I moved from Amsterdam to London three years ago, cycling was the one thing I missed most from home. Because while bikes rule the city in Amsterdam in London cars do.

In Amsterdam there are bike lanes everywhere. And everybody cycles, old and young, immigrants and locals, the Mayor and the garbage man. We use bikes as an accessory or as an extension of ourselves. I have moved houses on my bike, transported Christmas trees, cupboards, drunken friends, you name it. And all this is possible because of the safety on the streets. Of course accidents happen but not that often. Not something you can say of London. In the busy streets of the city there is hardly any space for cyclists. Most bike lanes are a joke. They are so narrow or so short that you can’t really use them. Cyclists’ risk there lives in London everyday and I am just not willing to do that.

But last week I bumped into Iain from cycle2job. An optimistic and dedicated cyclist who convinced me that he could get me on my bike and show me ‘safe routes’ through London. I told him that I would like to cycle from Notting Hill to the city centre. A real challenge regarding safe cycling routes. Paddington, Edgware Road and Marble Arch are just not places you want to be with a bike.

Iain showed me a route through back streets and quiet roads and we managed to get behind the John Lewis in less then 30 minutes. And guess what, I really enjoyed it and never felt unsafe. So as long as Boris Johnson has not finished building all the bike lines we need in the city, count on Iain. He will deal with your cycling fears and phobias.

And you will feel free, just like me!

Boris Johnson always seems a bit daft, but in fact he isn’t really. He makes a right point today about children living in overcrowded homes who deserve the same attention concerning their welfare as battery chickens get. This is a response to a parliamentary motion calling for better living conditions for chickens.

“I applaud the concern of MPs for the welfare of the mighty chicken but I say it’s about time we did the same for the thousands of children in London who are currently living in unfit, cramped conditions and give the legislation a 21st Century makeover.”

Good for you Boris children deserve a better home, just like chickens do!

I am currently mostly blogging on my blog for the LibDem website D66blog.nl run by the Dutch political party Democraten 66.

That blog is in Dutch, my apologies for my loyal English speaking readers

Good story in LA times about the Mayor of Rotterdam, The Netherlands Ahmed Aboutaleb. I like him. I have seen him at work in Amsterdam. And Rotterdam has a special place in my heart because my family lives in Rotterdam.
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I have just been to the movie Julie & Julia. A film based on two true stories. One is about the life of Julia Child, an American icon of cooking. And the other is about the life of Julie Powell, who writes a blog about cooking Julia Child’s recipes for 365 days. The subject is not very exciting. The film is too long and you wonder what the point of the film is. But Meryl Streep is wonderful in her role as Julia Child.

Julia Child’s story shows she had a remarkably loving relationship, a great personality, an interesting life as an expat in the 1950’s in China, France, Sweden and the US. She remained childless, which caused her much pain. And she struggled for years before she got her cookbook published and found fame.

The other part of the film follows thirty-year-old Julie (played by Amy Adams). She moves to Queens with her husband and is unhappy throughout the whole film with no clear reason. Just that she is thirty and has not ‘made’ it yet as a writer. To make her life less miserable she decides to start blogging about cooking a recipe from Julia Child’s cookbook every day for 365 days. After the 365 days of cooking the blogging Julie signs a book deal with a publisher and gets her story turned into a Hollywood movie.

This proves exactly the problem of what Julie and others of her generation have. They achieve things too easily and when fame and fortune doesn’t happen fast enough they get depressed and moan.

This films makes you feel that women in the 1950’s fought for what they wanted and had a jolly good time. However women in the noughties seem to be weak and moan about everything and have not much joy at all. And what do we do to make life better? We creep behind our laptop and blog instead of leading a real life. Are we really that sad?

What director Nora Ephron should have done was just filming the life of Julia Child. It would have made a wonderful film on its own. Surely someone could have turned her life in to great feel-good-movie without making us, the thirty-somethings, look so miserable?

I have just been to the official opening of a wonderful fundraising event Pandamonium organised by the WWF and Selfridges.

WWF : “Pandamonium is a visually stunning collection of unique works by some of the UK’s leading artists – including Sir Peter Blake, Tracey Emin, Jim Lambie, Rachel Whiteread and Paul Smith – all based on WWF’s old panda collection boxes.”

And they truly are unique and stunning! The panda bears are made by famous artists and will be sold in an auction at Selfridges on the 12th of October. One of the organisers admitted that the bad economic times have made it hard to organise this event.

But  I hope there are still some people (even bankers) left in London with enough money to buy a Panda and save our planet a little bit more.

Because you can’t hate nature, can you.

I went to see District 9 this weekend in The Electric cinema. It is the new sci-fi film everybody is raving about. It is a South African movie about an alien space ship that gets stranded above Johannesburg. The South Africans put the aliens in a camp / slum in district 9 outside Johannesburg. The aliens get out of control and the government sets up a plan to deport all the aliens to a concentration camp in the desert. A civil servant is given the task to lead the deportation. And as most civil servants do, he does the job thoroughly and according to the bureaucratic rules (immediately you think of Eichmann, who started a similar job some 60 years ago). Of course everything goes massively wrong and there the movie turns into a proper sci-fi / action movie. The action is brilliantly done, very grim and dark but not too bloody.

The first 15 minutes of the movie give you the feeling that the intention of the director is to address the concepts of apartheid and immigration. But I think most reviewers want the film to be more then it is. Probably because it isn’t a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster but a South-African film with a South-African hero, who isn’t a real hero to begin with. It is a good movie though and the theme is very relevant in many countries at the moment: are we willing to take in strangers and how much can we take.

Go and see it!

Shopping is a great exercise and dead simple. You browse, you pick, you pick more and then you buy. Easy peasy if you have learned how to do it.

Sixteen years ago I went shopping with two girls, one from Estonia and the other from Slovakia. Both countries had just left communism behind and Slovakia was about to split from the Chech Republic. The girls had never before set a foot inside a western department store. As I walked in the store and started browsing I soon realised that I had left my new friends behind in complete despair at the entrance. They did not know where to look and where to start. The Slovakian girl was a devout Catholic. She kept on shaking her head. ‘All this choice was just immoral!’ My Estonian friend kept clapping her hands about the diverse range of shoes she could choose from (under Soviet rule you were lucky to find any shoe after waiting in a line for weeks, days or hours).

Last year I saw my Estonian friend again. She works in Brussels as a diplomat and her husband is a journalist. She had a fancy laptop and a blackberry, her baby boy sat in the latest model of the Bugaboo. She was happy. I could not help but think back about that day in 1993 in the Debenhams in Liverpool and smile.

How sweet is the taste of freedom. How fortunate that Estonia was able to join the EU.

Estonia celebrates its 18^th year of independence today.

The Conservatives want us to join a campaign to force Gordon Brown to call for a general election. The ’sign for change’ campaign is clever but has a slight practical problem: anyone can sign the petition. You just need to write down an address in the UK. I just signed the petition myself and I do  live in London but I am not eligible to vote in a general election in the UK.  This means the whole world can manipulate the outcome of the petition.

If they don’t change this quickly the Conservatives can’t claim that a majority of the British public / voters signed for change. 

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion about the politics in this country, I certainly do want Gordon Brown and his friends to pack their bags.  

I guess because I pay tax here my vote for change does count a little…     

If you want to sign the petition click here