I have decided to follow Dutch politics a bit more openly and to blog about it. Still, I
don’t want to force this content on people that are just interested in web development.
According to my own calculations the number of non-Dutch readers that are interested in
Dutch politics is about twelve, so for those twelve, as well as the more sizable group of
Dutch followers interested in politics, I’ve now created a politics
homepage and blog.
Swept away by the literally two requests from non-Dutch readers, I’ve also decided to
publish my political primer, which will ideally consist of eleven long background articles, of
which only the first eight are written. I will publish one article every Wednesday until I
run out of material.
Here on the main QuirksBlog I may write some stuff about the JavaScript graph functions I
created for the primer
(parliament graphs,
tables). Unfortunately, right now any JavaScript-focused article would mainly
consist of a long list of features I haven’t implemented yet. Most of the graphs aren’t
really keyboard-accessible, for instance, because I’m not happy with the idea of adding
dozens of useless <a> elements just to make parts of the graphs keyboard-focusable.
All in all I’m hurrying to catch up with events. I hadn’t planned to publish any
of this, but the government crisis has forced my hands. Please excuse the occasional wart or bug.
As long-time visitors know I occasionally talk about Dutch politics here for the benefit
of my Dutch readers as well as those twelve foreign readers that are interested in these matters.
Since Dutch government fell late yesterday night, it’s time for another such post.
The Balkenende IV government (i.e. the fourth government that Balkenende (CDA) was prime
minister of) was formed three years ago and consists of centre-right
CDA (christian-democrats), centre-left PvdA (Labour), and orthodox-protestant left-leaning
CU (Union of Christians). Yesterday evening the PvdA ministers resigned over a conflict
about the continuing Dutch military presence in the Afghan province of Uruzgan.
In a week and a half local elections will be held,
and the PvdA was slated to lose a lot of seats everywhere. PvdA party leader and finance
minister Bos clearly hopes to stem the electoral tide by his resignation, and he might well
be right.
Update: This will be the last political entry on the main QuirksBlog. I now have a separate politics section with a blog as well as an article series about Dutch political history.
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In my continuing series on Dutch politics I present the next background page: The Rules of the Game, in which I discuss government, parliament, elections, and coalitions.
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As promised, I will continue my reporting of Dutch politics. Because right now the situation is confused even for Dutch standards, and foreigners won't easily get the finer points of our ten-party system, I'm also preparing a load of background articles. Today the first installment: The Ins and Outs, in which the three large parties and their dance around the centre of power are introduced.
Meanwhile the situation remains confused. After Wednesday's elections (results) nobody has the faintest idea what kind of government we're going to get.
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I've decided to write a few more entries about Dutch politics, and I hope to explain it so clearly that even foreigners who're used to boring two-party systems will learn to appreciate our ten-party system. If you don't like politics, you should avoid QuirksBlog for a while. Nonetheless I invite all JavaScripters to take a quick look at my politics appreciation app.
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For once a non-technical post about the elections in Holland that are taking place today. I'm not sure how many of my readers are interested in this subject, but since I myself am fascinated by the weird turn the elections are taking, and I'm sure that at least some people will share this fascination once I explained it, I'm going to post about it anyway.
Rather lengthy. If you're not interested, ignore.
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