Geert Wilders denied UK entry

A huge round of applause to the British Government: Dutch hate-monger MP Geert Wilders was denied entry to the UK. Finally he is officially seen as a shameless self-promoter that he is. The shoddily bleached Catholic chauvinist attempted to come for peddling his failed act Fitna at the House of Lords.

The Driving Dutchman

It’s a mysterious law of nature. Wherever there’s a road link from Holland, no matter how far, unlikely, or inconvenient the place may be, like the Flying Dutchman's latter-day incarnation the Driving Dutchman will haunt you there. From an abandoned driveway in Liechtenstein’s alpine heights to the steaming hot tarmac in the midst of an arid Moroccan desert valley you can be sure to see six letters and numbers on the field of yellow and the proud NL on the field of blue whizzing towards the horizon.

Fly over the oceans and mountain ranges, Mr. and Mrs. de Vries will be there in the remotest Andean village or a God-forsaken station in Western China to discuss the recent price drops in Albert Heijn or the cleanliness of local toilets over a cup of coffee. Run to an island on the lake inside a volcano crater on Sumatra, the husky-voiced beer-guzzling Dutchman will be there cracking Fleming jokes exalting the virtues of Hemaworst.

Perhaps, it is in the blood of this sea-faring people that for centuries were sacrificing life, limb and family fortunes to bring back with a profit porcelain, spices and slaves from Japan, Sri Lanka and Brazil. These days it may also be the urge to escape from a rain-soaked flat country with world’s second highest population density, away from the rigours of living in a micro-managed ginger-house paradise.

Unlike the Flying Dutchman doomed to keep sailing around until the Judgement Day, the Driving Dutchman always makes it home in the end. Perhaps Baudrillard was not so far away from truth saying that “the bourgeois travel to get bored so that coming home wouldn’t seem so boring”.

Ultimately Nefarious and UN-accountable

A former Dutch Cabinet Minister, Ms. Herfkens refuses to repay the USD 250,000 rental subsidy for her apartment that she "mistakenly" received when employed at the UN In New York. Well, we all have heard of UN officials' extravagant lifestyle, but here is a nice twist to this case. Ms. Herfkens was employed as a special advisor to Kofi Annan for, you guessed it, fighting poverty on a USD 160,000-per-annum payroll on top of notoriously fat UN fringe benefits! To make this even more ironic, the hedonistic poverty fighter is a staunch Socialist, a PvdA member.

Through a University friend of mine who works in a UN commission I have met quite a number of former employees of various UN commissions and international organizations like the ILO, the IFO and so on. All of them, with no exception, had quit after a few years, all universally stating a "complete disillusionment in the content of the job" as a reason. Everybody says that the pay was incredibly good but to go on with the job would mean selling out your conscience wholesale.

Another friend of mine worked for the UN-AIDS in Switzerland for a few years. In the beginning I remember him very upbeat about his intention to get the system working. Years of uphill struggle later, he returned to his original occupation as a practising medical doctor. His comments about the UN cannot be published here as Blogspot.com objects to strong language.

Graft and corruption permeate all the levels of this obscenely expensive mastodon, just remember how Kofi Annan's shady dealings with the UN's 65-bilion Food For Oil programme in Iraq were exposed. He managed to get away with it scot-free and there is no doubt that the big time bonanza will continue for years to come.

It is truly sad that the very organization supposed to bring peace, justice and prosperity to the world is busy pigging out on public funds, offering precious little performance in return. They monitor world affairs, but who will monitor the monitors?

World's Ugliest Cars In Amsterdam!

I have spotted both official world's ugliest cars in Amsterdam. As far as I know they are not even sold in the Netherlands, so their owners must have gone to some lengths to procure them. Both times I didn't have my camera, so I'll post pics gleaned from the net.

The obviously LSD-inspired Pontiac Aztec was designed by a committee of design gurus at GM. In 2007, two years after the Pontiac Aztek went out of production, the 25 vehicles that were sold were brand new from the dealership. Little wonder, innit?















Described by Top Gear Magazine as a car "that looks like it got bottled in a pub brawl and stitched back together by a blind man", the Ssangyong Rodius was designed by the former director of the London School of Design. I figure they must have fired him as unfit for the position and the Rodius was his revenge on the world.

Why We Have To Sponsor The Realty Bonanza

I remember reading in Het Amsterdamse Dagblad (no link can be provided as they have no online edition) a few years ago that it costs about 25,000 Euros to build a new apartment in Amsterdam. Then they go on to be sold at a whopping 200 thousand plus. Without that shameless profit margin any family would be able to effortlessly afford their own place in just a few years. But then all the construction contractors, realtors and housing corporations bosses would have to suffer without their custom-made German cars, third homes on the Mediterranean and diamond trinketry for their bitches so, in all probability, we are going to have to keep financing their expensive habits for all the years to come.