It's getting hot here

Now, exciting. The first time that since in NL, I follow the fall of a cabinet. It was about time, one might say. And once more, as Femke said, too bad it was by Hirsi, and not by the 26000 others. But Ok, it's over.

Or it is just the beginning. Now come for us the fixing of a programs, in high speed. Yeah. Summer and the kader of groenlinks on holidays, and a very important program to be settled for elections. Hum... It's going to be a hot summer.

The morning after, my street.

Sittiing in De Balie, in a break in the comference Op zoek naar de allochtoon, I am charmed by this statement of Jan Tillie: 
 
The right wing set in the integration agenda the social cultural
question, and the left answered in this frame, instead of giving
emphasize on its traditional socio economical framework.

This opinion is based in research done on election programs. 

And I am more charmed even by the work out of this statement:

The writer of the program keeps on thinking about which politiek bedrijk must be followed, instead of hear what the allochtoon considers a problem. Not many allos are wondering about their identity and their culture. They are wondering about the hardening of their economical situation, among other reasons due to discrimination in the labor market. But this remains unadressed in election programs. 

Wow. I suppose that this should be a real take home message. 

From an article in The Guardian, a known columnist (Madeleine Bunting) leaves to set up a think tank:


"However, other issues are still floundering on the margins of public debate - or worse. Some I plan to devote more attention to in my new capacity: for example, the regeneration of an intellectual grounding for centre-left politics beyond the tired managerialism and bankrupted concept of choice. For several decades the left has failed to mount a challenge to Thatcher's ambition that "the economy is the means, the goal is to remake the soul". Another example is the vexed and embittered debate around the entangled questions of the representations of Islam in the west, the boundaries of freedom of expression and what the sociologist Richard Sennett calls the "pivotal concept" of respect.

But where I feel the wrench from daily journalism most keenly is in a debate that shows all the signs of being strangled at birth. For the first time in a generation, religion is part of the national conversation; people want to talk and read about it. This is in large part due to Islam, which is prompting in a western audience a combination of fear and bewildered fascination (how can women want to wear veils, and have arranged marriages; how can Muslims still believe in angels and a divinely inspired scripture?). But there is another, albeit less pronounced, driver to this debate, which is that the collapse of communism and decline of socialism has left a vacuum of purpose, value and meaning on both the left and the right."

The full article in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1800709,00.html

Now that I change to Mac, I'm trying this widget. Sorry people, I'm just playing around...

Lets talk about running (given that talk when running is kind of hard)

In the ongoing discussion on the welfare state, running as a sport for the masses is more relevant than what you might possible think. After all, the whole point of the welfare state is that your country takes care of your health, no? I wonder then how comes that our doctors and biologists have allowed those masses to believe that pounding your knees with your full weight, for several hundreds times at a stretch and several times a week, could possibly be good for you.

The whole issue gets worse when prominent politicians in this little and flat country in which I live seems to be involved in a full conspiracy to get the masses to run. Pay attention to the recently launched book from Paul Rosemoller, former Groenlinks leader, in which we will read a (likely) very nicely written account on the political advantages of belonging... to the networks of marathon runners. Paul illuminates this face of contemporaneous politics, recounting anecdotes of all these nice and influent people, running and talking and making decision on our sake. And again I wonder... how can you possible think or networking when you are sweating, wasting calories on no end and going across nice landscapes at best, or along the polluted and crowded streets of your neighbourhood at worst?

I actually spend some years of my life thinking that running was good for me. With friends of my climber's club we used to train couple of times a week, circling again and again the campus of our university. The moment of passing by the cafes of our campus had the allure of a manly show of fitness. We run a bit faster, and taking care of our style, even if for those few instants. Some of us were fully convinced that this was the best way to pick up all these girls sipping their colas (not light) and espressos. Alas, the success of the mating strategy, looking backwards, was not very relevant. Probably all those girls were actually being picked by our fellows sitting at their side (sipping their own colas and espressos) and making fun of the sweaty idiots that pass now and then. Nor was the running itself particularly good for ourselves. I used to secretly think that I might loose my belly, which never happened (as that guy walking across the whole USA just discovered). Instead, I got chronic knee complains, and today I can not run more than fifty meters without feeling two sharp knifes exploring both of my meniscus.

Funnily enough, the CBS launched few weeks ago data showing that dutch people is indeed getting thinner, for first time in decades. The statisticians acknowledge the role that the public campaign for more exercise plays here. People do more sport than ever, and accordingly, they are leaner. Right away I imagine all these people comfortably nested in their couches, looking at the news and hearing the speaker of the CBS (my wife, actually) saying that more sport is good for you. Would they run to a gym? Would they simply run, to somewhere back and forth? I felt like paying an add after the press release and shouting in the tellie: don't run, it's bad for you! Stay in your couch and at most, stop eating chips! But probably the runners of this world would not be looking and again, it is hard to imagine that a couch potato would really get out running under the influence of some nicely presented statistical trends.

Walking back to the welfare state, then. Today most (dutch) political parties discover the problem that it is. I am tempted to say that it is a bit delayed discovery anyway. The discussion in academy is around twenty years old, and in Europe is since around five years a political hot potato. Scarcely two years ago dutch people looked at me condescendingly and explained that here in NL there was no problem whatsoever. I should have insisted and make my fame as political trendsetter, but instead, I believe them. Now it looks otherwise, and from Groenlinks to the PvdA, passing by the CDA, everybody has something to say and to propose about this big problem that the welfare state has become (overnight). Perhaps we get some improvements, actually. But I remain a bit suspicious of the way ideas get to be discussed in NL. Running was a big fad in the rest of the world some decades ago. Books like Rosemuller's were printed by the cartload in the seventies. Now the world seems to have become meniscus-aware, and people have discovered bikes. Friends that never dreamed of trusting their life to a two-wheeled contraption mail me frequently about their last item bought, perhaps a super light carbon based pair of biking shoes. Of course a proper dutch would explain me, condescendingly again, that bikes here have a long tradition, and there is nothing to say about it. But I keep on thinking that as much as the welfare state went into the limelight overnight, when all these meniscus shall begin to hurt (and actually become a national health matter), dutchies will rediscover their most popular transportation mean, and consider to use it as a sport.

Does anybody of you know how to buy shares of a dutch bike maker?

Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam

Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam

Past tuesday I attended the first meeting of what hopes to become the new multicultural werkgroep in Amsterdam. A group of people, after their work in the gemeenteraad elections, want to give continuity to their efforts for a more colourful politics, and have decided to become a party organization. If things go as they should, Groenlinks Amsterdam counts with a motivated group of people willing to tackle the allochtoon issue.

Hard to imagine a better moment for this development. As we know, the previous local elections were a success of sorts. We did increase wonderfully our participation in local governments. There is no doubt that Groenlinks is a force to be reckon with in the local politics, surely for the coming four years. But if we count votes, the message is less clear. We did not increase significantly our share of the vote. As I have argued in a previous column, is not that we won, but it is that our political enemies have lost. Now, we could endlessly discuss this analysis of the results, but one fact remains above discussion. Eighty percent of the allochtoon electorate voted for the PvdA. Not for us, then. And we being the party that better represent allochtonen, as we ourselves think, the question remains hot: what went wrong? Why these people is voting for others?

Along the few years that I have as an active Groenlinks member, many answers have been offered here in my columns and in the discussions of the landelijk Kleurrijk Platform. We are not clear enough, we tailor the approach evolved from other minorities to the migrant minority (such as talk about integration as emancipation), we do not have politicians able to counter argue the right wings bullies like Ali, or Verdonk. But beyond this reasons, there is a more basic one. As a party we do not have allochtoon members. Or we have far too few.

In this context is that the start of the Kleurrijk Platform Amsterdam is a welcome development. The meeting that I attend invest time and effort in think which groups must be reached in Amsterdam. That is a needed line of thinking. And again, not a lonely one. In Utrecht the partijbestuur has decided to appoint a bestuurlid only focused in the attraction of nieuwe doelgroepen. And both in Rotterdam, Amersfoort and Utrecht we have appointed wethouders directly related to the multiculti portfolio.

So lets hope that in the dynamic entity that Groenlinks is, the thinking about allochtonen, and their inclusion in our kader keeps a priority. And beware; we need not to follow the ethnic model here. Both the wethouder and bestuurlid of Utrecht busy with the allochtoon issue are white nederlanders. Also the discussion leader of the meeting that I attend in Amsterdam. There is certainly nothing wrong with this reality. Taking the allochtoon question seriously, and investing party energy in answering it, do not need per se that black skinned people direct the process. What it needs is that the allochtonen themselves take our party seriously and come and join our debate. Groenlinks has increased her presence in the local governments, and that undermines the idea that the PvdA is the only chance that an allochtoon has to participate in politics. Our homework now is to support the initiatives of Utrecht and Amsterdam.