With the elections for the European parliament coming up tomorrow, I did the Stemwijzer once again to finally make up my mind, and today I succeeded in getting the advise I wanted, with GroenLinks, the Dutch environmentalist party on the first place, and PvdA and SP, the other Dutch left-wing parties, on the second and fourth place. This is a relief to me, since I was planning to vote GroenLinks anyway, so this rationalizes the decision.
Posted at 16:22 - [/politics] - permanent link
Just heard today that the new Stemwijzer, a tool which helps you make a decision on what to vote for, for the European elections is on-line. And guess what, despite of my anti-right wing ranting of lately, I have made the so-called "run to the right" ("ruk naar rechts") when compared to the Dutch elections. Of course, this survey featured some different questions: many of them are about the future of the European government, and whereas especially the SP disagrees with much of that, I actually found myself agreeing to quite a few of the things mentioned in the test.
Well, enough excuses, now for my results: the image can be found here. In short, the Dutch socialist party, the PvdA, was first, second being Groen Links, the Dutch environmental party, and the far left-wing party SP only scored a very disappointing fifth place, scoring a shared first place previously... For some of the differences, I can sympathize with the SP (even feeling a bit guilty I didn't fill some of these in myself)... Ah well. I'm going to do it again in a few weeks, but probably the SP is out of the way either way.
Posted at 23:45 - [/politics] - permanent link
Wouter Bos, leader of the Dutch labour party, monday payed a visit to my former high school, the Piter Jelles gymnasium in Leeuwarden to reveal a stone tablet containing a poem by Piter Jelles Troelstra, a famous Dutch poet and one of the original founders of the PvdA.
Wouter was wearing his usual grey (and one begins to suspect, only) casual sweater, making his appearance all the less visible. The ceremony largely consisted of people talking about Piter Jelles for some half an hour, with Wouter Bos sitting, listening politely and taking a few obligatory presents. After that, the actual revelation of the stone came, followed by Wouter saying "I really enjoyed your speech" to the person who had just held a quite boring 20-minute speech. After that, Wouter Bos literally ran away over the school yard with two other persons, which was quite a funny sight. I tried to track him down with a friend, but he was gone when we got to the back of the school.
Really wondering how much fun being a politician can be if you have to do this things regularly. Accordig to his schedule, Wouter wisely doesn't seem to do this kind of thing that often outside of election time, though he is in the Spijkers met Koppen television programme next saturday, which should be nice.
Posted at 22:21 - [/politics] - permanent link
Every once in a while, De Volkskrant has an article that nicely fits into my left-wing prejudices. This week, they had an article about top manangers ("Eenzaam at the top", 24 April, page 15). The income of top managers has been the subject of much debate lately, and this article tries to oppose the view that managers deserve high incomes as strongly as possible:
It seems to make sense; all these managers running the Dutch companies wouldn't make that much, and every year that much more for nothing? There is bound to be some connection between their reward and their qualities, successes and intelligence?The article pretty much goes on and on like this, making it a very nice read. Though one person does point to an anonymous investigation that sais top managers do not signifficantly influence the well-being of the company, the rest is mostly anecdotical evidence (pretty much your average rationale for throwing a fine public service into the market economy), which does make you feel more strongly about the subject:Rather the reverse, Ida Sabelis, an organisation-antropologist from Amsterdam and author of the book "Surviving at the top" says. (...) "They're at their positions exactly because they are one-dimensional thinkers."
It's even worse, Aernoud Witteveen, a philosophist, knows: "Those so-called captains of industry, are generally just sergeants. Usually, they're not intelligent people with an own opinion. Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten there. All you need at the top are responsive types who do what the shareholders want. That's all."
One top manager had swapped his expensive lease car for a smaller BMW because his son didn't want to be taken to the hockey field in it. That really pissed his fellow managers off.In the end things get a bit more interesting though:
Witteveen is critical about the 'shareholders capitalism' that, despite the growing number of trade scandals, has become the norm, from the idea that the market, by means of the shareholder, automagically corrects itself. "In practice that's exactly the reverse. Shareholders are only interested in rising stocks. The financial worls asks for quick results, and you can get those with clean-up operations and take-overs. But in practice, these have the strong tension of actually destroying value. But that's not the problem of the shareholde or manager: by the time the company gets into trouble, they have already cashed in and disappeared."
I'm pretty sensitive for this kind of reasoning, which pretty much applies to the recent plans for so-called 'direct democracy' as well: just like shareholders, normal people tend to think about only personal, short-term gains rather than long-term goals. Which makes sense, because just like shareholders, you just cannot expect people to really dive into the complex planning and law-making process, so it's wrong to ask them about policy details. Rather, just like the fact that badly run companies just tend to disappear due to lack of profit, we should have elections as a long-term controlling mechanism only, and prevent people from having actual short-term influence.
For some reason, the politicians in charge nowadays just don't seem to understand all this, judging from the plans I read about today of eliminating rules for nurseries with the underlying idea that people for some reason need to have a choice between good and bad nurseries. Well, tell you what, this kind of thing is exactly what laws exist for, good people of the VVD, CDA and LPF parties. Just come on.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Posted at 21:55 - [/politics] - permanent link
I mentioned the reply I got from Hans Labohm yesterday already, but I also e-mailed him asking for a clarification of the "backdoor-stalinism" argument he used in the interview:
Climate change is a left wing issue, and the major part of the media are left wing as well. (...) If you don't want that, if you're begging for big government, then the doom image of climate change is a good thing. Because the only way to stop the supposed climate change is with a central plan economy. This way, stalinism, which we finally got rid of in 1989, is entering back in through the back door.
The trouble I had with this was that I found it a bit irrelevant to the point he's trying to make about climate change not being a problem: if it were a problem, the fact that it would cause a need for a larger government would not be a showstopper for solving the problem. The reason this caused trouble with me is because a small government doesn't so much fit my ideals as it does his, so this 'doom image' didn't really impress me whereas for him the climate change problem would mean a choice between two evils, as he replied to me:
They (left-wing politicians) have a 'prejuge favourable' for solutions involving a strong, invervening government, so they will be more positive and less critical about ideas ultimately causing this than (classical) liberals like me, who favour a limited government.
Rules generally cost (a lot of) money, thus causing loss of prosperity. (...point about the nonexistence of the climate problem...). Apary from that, rules require a government to enforce them, thuis requiring a (much) stronger government. Ultimately, this means elements of central planning in our free market system, which I think is undesirable because it reduces our prosperity and (personal) freedom.
Well, I agree with the point there that the enforcement of climate rules is likely to turn out quite a mess. If he'd just said this in the inteview without resorting to the stalinism and the "begging for big government" thing (I mean, it's an interview for a left-wing newspaper so you'd expect him to tailor his arguments to that a bit), it'd have been much more convincing, to me at least.
Not that I am principally against strong government control, and I think that if climate change is an issue, a the size increase of the government shouldn't be a major factor in thinking of measures against it, but Labohm actually somewhat agrees with me on that, saying that measures would be "justiced if it could stop a catastrophe", making his point seem a little hollow to me.
Quite nice to see him seriously answering my question on this, for which I want to thank him. Even though one may not agree with him, it's good to see he is meaning to have an open debate on this issue. Of course, there's him wanting to sell his book as well:
For the complete argumentation, I have to refer to our book. You know where to find it from my previous e-mail. I thought, by the way, Scheltema in Amsterdam has the book in stock.
The book should definitely be an interesting read though, so I am considering it.
Posted at 00:22 - [/politics] - permanent link
One of those ":D"-moments: Hans Labohm, the person whose interview (key sentence: climate change, it ain't gonna happen) I discussed last week sent me an e-mail about my comments.
First, this means Google has apparently been crawling my website last week, which is neat.
Secondly, about the e-mail. Very politely written. Basic point: we're used to being criticised, and a newspaper article is too short for all of our arguments. He refers to his book: "Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma" (listed, though not orderable on Amazon):
I challenge you to read it and think about this again. Maybe you'll see arguments you didn't know and shed another light on the case, like for me, because I must confess that two years ago I thought we were on the edge of disaster as well. Then I started to read everything I could find about this topic, resulting in my current opinion.I actually already mentioned the fact that I haven't done any serious reading on this topic before, so it would seem like a good idea to read the book (and some Greenpeace folders just to keep things balanced), even though (and that was actually the main point I was trying to make with my previous discussion) I still find that the impression his argumentation makes on me isn't really a strong one. Might see if I can get hold of the book somewhere in a library or somewhere.
Posted at 22:48 - [/politics] - permanent link
In this Saturday's Volkskrant, an interesting interview was featured with Hans Labohm, who wrote a book about climate change. In his book, he claims that the climate is not actually changing due the human society despte all the claims of environmentalists: he goes so far as to say "Because the climate doesn't change inder the influence of men, all those billions are spoilt. You can do lots of other important things with them".
To support his claims, he sais the IPCC, the Intervovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations organisation, is far from clear in its reports:
The IPCC reports give room for many different conclusions. There's so much uncertainty in them, that the hard measures of the Kyoto treaty absolutely aren't justified. And I'm not the only one saying this. More and more scientists of the IPCC are saying the same.The costs of all these measures account for hundreds of billions of euro's a year, that don't do any good at all. Because suppose that Kyoto is being implemented, and suppose all countries succeed in reducing their CO2. Then, again according to the IPCC, the result is that the temperature increase by 2050 will be 0.02 degrees less. (...)
People who think the IPCC justifies the political measures of the Kyoto treaty scientifically, has never read these reports. We'd rather just follow the one-sided interpretation by environmentalists.
Now, with this last sentence he gets to a painful point, because, obviously, I haven't actually reported the reports, and I am just following the interpretation by environmentalists. Still, his interpretation is obviously one-sided as well, especially because with the same amount of certainty, he showcases his right-wing paranoia by saying things like:
Climate change is a left wing issue, and the major part of the media are left wing as well. (...) Left-wing politicians are known not to fully support the free market. They don't believe that a liberal society, without too much steering by the government, leads to a better world. And if you don't want that, if you're begging for big government, then the doom image of climate change is a good thing. Because the only way to stop the supposed climate change is with a central plan economy. This way, stalinism, which we finally got rid of in 1989, is entering back in through the back door.
Umm... yeah, right. Even though, I have to admit that this guy doos have some valid points along the interview. He points at the various doom scenario's that have been issued in the past, for example in 1972 by the Club of Rome, that never turned into reality either. He thinks the cause for all this is the western Christian tradition which has a tension of doom thinking and feeling guilty and sinful. Though this can indeed be a cause of feeling responsible about things, this doesn't mean that the things we feel responsible about aren't actually true. Similarly, this guy is a product of his right-wing, egocentric environment.
One final point of interest:
Also, in the resistance against the extinction of species, (..) or polluting the water, earth and air, the fact that we're committing sins against God's creatures is an important background factor. In the Netherlands, the environomentalists of course chose the subject of water, the christian archetype of the Flood. Because we´re consuming and enjoying ourselves and thus causing CO2-emission, heaven is now punishing us with large amounts of water.While at first sight he is making a good point, the last sentence establishing the link between the Dutch water problem and the Flood seems rather stupid to me. Which is the general impression this article makes to me: at first sight, this guy seems pretty resonable, but if you look closer, some of the paranoid thoughts he expresses with certainty to cause me to have some doubts on his other ideas.
Posted at 16:27 - [/politics] - permanent link
In the "something everybody knows but which is nice to see confirmed anyway"-section, I read an interview (local copy) in De Volkskrant this morning about environmental and social performance reports. In Dutch, we call this "maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen" or MVO, a term which really has no good English equivalent that I know of.
Anyway, the article basically states that these performance reports are all a bunch of bullshit, according to Chris Hibbit, who graduated from the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam on a paper about these reports. His conclusion:
The reports contain the good news only, and ignore bad news about environmental and social circumstances.
Only one percent of all reports actually contained bad news. Now, MVO has been a big issue over the last few years in Holland (actually, MVO was the topic for my high school exams writing assignment), and I have always though this was just a bunch of crap used to sell stuff. People supporting MVO claim that consumers can improve the environment and social circumstances by looking at the company's environmental and social profile, but obviously the conclusion of this investigation is that this is actually not the case.
Favorite quotes, that just about summarize it:
If you want to stop pollution, you should tackle the causes rather than the symptoms. In that case, you'll need throw away the capitalistic system.
Stop these projects. They're useless. (...) I don't blame managers fo seeking higher profits. It's the consequence of the system.
Quite a clear case for stronger government regulation, which is something I am deaply in favour of as well. Self-regulation? Yeah, right.
Posted at 16:38 - [/politics] - permanent link
After I had a bit of a political discussion with my father today, I said I would
vote for GroenLinks, a green, left-wing party for the next elections. My father
noted he was a bit surprised, because he said he'd heard me utter some right-wing
opinions lately (not that he had any examples)...
So, of course, I had to check, so I did the Stemwijzer. My results are here. My preference list seems to be pretty much a left-wing to right-wing list of the Dutch political parties (with the left wing parties on top obviously). This did surprise me a bit, because I felt I had filled in quite some non-left-wing opinions... Makes you wonder what morons get a right-wing preference out of it...
Posted at 16:55 - [/politics] - permanent link
It seems the way for an European politician to make money nowadays is to become a member of the European parliament... Questions have been raised recently about the fact that politicians can, for example, declare a business class ticket for their travels to Brussels, even if they go by train. It seems these declarations make up a large part of the income of an average policitian.
But, we were assured, the Dutch politicians for the European parliament have, as the only country, a code of conduct in which they promise to send back the money they didn't actually spend, and to release a report yearly describing their expenses.
This morning, the Radio 1 News revealed that, in fact, two-thirds of the Dutch politicians are not actually doing this! The stream can be listened to for one week here.
The only political parties that did release reports, and that did send back money, were the left-wing parties PvdA, GroenLinks and SP. Now, I just hate it when it's so easy to bash those right-wing hypocrits. But if you don't like the rules, *don't sign the f*cking code*! I mean, if the only reason you're a member of parliament is to spend the tax payer's money then allright, I wasn't stupid enough to vote for you. But at least don't pretend you're doing the right thing by signing the code of conduct!
Sigh....
Posted at 20:23 - [/politics] - permanent link