The world's easiest tax-raise defence. We got 'em!

I've been relatively on the politic front. I spit out an occasional frustrating discontent but that's it, at least as far as I know. Dutch Politics is making me ill and I can't allow a bunch of idiots who somehow have to run the country ruin my health. What I have followed though is the tax raise on theatre and concert tickets, going up from 6 to 19%. That's quite a lot. This happens mid-season. No one had really the time to prepare themselves for it. The consumer will have to pay more which the theatres won't see. If a consumer has to pay more they might not spend their money on tickets. Well, it's a long list of arguments why this tax raise is the stupidest things since electing Bush jr. and I won't bore you with that. The reason why I'm writing about this in another anyway.

This raise is one of the most talked about issues in The Hague at the moment and today the government confirmed once more that they won't turn this back, the tax raise on tickets is definite. They're still confident it will make them 90 mln euros. Which is probably the calculation with current sales. But even that isn't what stirred me this time. No. Not even the fact that it's mainly the PVV of Geert Wilders who keeps hammering at this tax raise isn't it. Oh no. It's that one small little thing our minister of Finance has said to justify their moves.

"These plans were part of our election campaign all along."

The theatre and concert goers are for the larger part NOT THE ONES WHO HAVE VOTED FOR YOU! That's by far the easiest defence of 2010. Congratulations.

Here's the best edit of 2010: the tax raise on concert, festival and theatre tickets will be postponed until July 2011. Alright!

And we party like it's 1983 (this is an Orwell reference indeed)

The gap between left and right hasn't been so big since the nazis invaded the former republic of Russia. It's a worrying climate the Netherlands are in and it is getting worse by the hour. Here's a recap in short about our government: largest party is VVD with Mark Rutte as our MP, together with CDA (4th largest party and biggest loser of our last elections). They are two mid-right parties. By no means they have the majority so after a four months (!!) coalition formation they decided to reign together with support of the PVV, the party of Geert Wilders who is notoriously known for his hatred against immigrants (I say it politically correct, he however does not) and the 3d largest party, 100% right-winged with no democracy whatsoever in the party structure. These three parties together have 76 seats, the opposition has 75.

You might wonder what happened to the second largest party, which is the workers party (left indeed) PvdA. They gained 32 seats during the last elections, against 33 of VVD. If this makes you scratch the back of your head right now, join the club.

Ever since the elections something happened, I didn't call it an attack at the time but I will call it that way now. Literally everything that is associated with left wing politics or even considered something only left wingers are interested in (culture (!!) being the top target) has been put into bad lighting. I had no idea where this suddenly came from, left is blamed for everything, the bad economy, the traffic jams, the immigrants, the lazy students, safety in trains, playing children, the weather, you name it, left did it. Question though: when did left reign this country? The former largest party was CDA, right, and they have been for 8 years with 4 different formations. Yes, you may scratch the back of your head again.

Left is blamed for helping the ill and the old and fragile, taking care for the asylum seekers, drinking tea with immigrants (this was one of the leading phrases during our last elections), wanting better care at elederly homes and hospitals, supporting useless goods such as music, theatre, performing arts and art. To compare, PVV is blamed for rasicm, spreading hate and having violent people in there party. Seems black and white and you might think this is left-propaganda. I wish it was. I would like to say something positive about the PVV because they do have some good points but so far all these points have been put aside and ignored. So much for sticking to their programm, it's all about power isn't it?

Let's get back to culture, which is suddenly called an unecessary good. Something you don't really need. People do not need to unwind. So, let's stop the allowance to the cultural section. We need to save right? Look, we all have to save up, and that you're cutting allowances, no big deal. But not as radically as they're planning to. As if culture relies on this allowance. As if we pay for the violist on the street corner. We don't. We do however pay collectively for the security of Wilders. But at least it saves a lot of money right? Well, it's enough to pave about 3 km of new highway... It comes down to an average cut of allowance of 8%, except for the cultural section, that depeartment will be cut with 20%. That's without taking the tax-raise on tickets in consideration.

This tax raise on concert, theatre tickets will be the end of a lot of venues as they won't get more money as the only thing that's raised is the taxes. It will lead to less income because less people will be able to even pay for this tickets. Which will lead to venues contracting less artists will lead to less culture in this country.

Success for those who want to kill culture. Success for the right winged barbarians. Who exactly is responsible for this tax raise anyway? Our PM? No, PM Rutte has given up STOPPING the tax raise for one reason: Geert Wilders wants the tax raise. And to stop the tax raise on tickets, reasons Wilders, you'll need an agreement of all three parties.

Wilders is the supporting party. Rutte is the PM. But Rutte is bowing down to Wilders. Wilders is having the power. Wilders is able to control and direct everything our government is supposed to to. Wilders is NOT part of the cabinet. But he CONTROLS the cabinet. What the fuck man, just, what the fuck.

Wilders and the PVV, which contains members who have been charged for violence (knocking down someone at a news conference for instance) and sexual offences are not just creating hatred against immigrants in this country, they are effectively tearing this country apart in left and right and putting all the blame on left. Say what you want, that guy is highly effective in what he's doing.

Isn't left doing anything? I doubt what PvdA will do, but the smaller ones, GroenLinks and D66 are barking loud. Which the media often doesn't portrait too nicely. The only left-winged party that seems to address this big dangerous issue with intelligence is the SP. Ooooh, the SP, scary! SP stands for Socialist Party. But right now it just seems that the entire future of this country is in the hands of the SP and their new and capable leader Emile Roemer. He speaks clearly and is determined. Also, it may not seem important but it is, this man has wit. For instance, this party fights for the socially disadvantaged such as the disabled, the elderly but also for the mailmen and this for years, because they'll lose their jobs due to ridiculous restructuring of the company caused by the government allowing other mail-companies in this country. But all these things are 'linkse hobbies' now, left-winged hobbies.

I'm a concert go-er. I'm a photographer. A blogger. A woman. I'm a member of the SP. I'm an immigrant. Though, my parents are German and as MP Rutte will reason, Germany is not Turkey. So maybe I have the right to lead a normal, carefree and not-hunted life after all, protected by Rutte. But I doubt it. If everything develops the way it does now, I'm pretty much screwed and might have to, eventually, fear for my safety.

Vinegar pissing all the way to my grave

All my colleagues, both of them, had a bit of a conversation today about how it's not such a good idea to become a first class 'azijnpisser' (azijn = vinegar, pisser = well, a guy who pisses) as it only makes you bitter and not a pleasant person to be around with. I didn't take part in that conversation partly because I was actually doing some work but also because I don't own a badge saying 'voted most likely to piss and moan all the way to the grave' for no reason at all. With the work done, reading some news headlines and reading some tweets from respected musicians I got to say, today I'm really in top form when it comes down to be an edgy moaning bitter depressed human being. Marvin, eat your heart out!

For once it's not the grim politic climate the Netherlands is in, though it is a constant factor. For instance, yesterday I read that not just 60% of all Dutch venues are running the high risk of having to close if the ticket prices will really rise with at least 13%, it was something I was already aware of, but what I wasn't aware of or maybe didn't want to see (I'm a first class music doom-thinker, sadly I'm often right too) was that it would also result in less bands coming to the Netherlands. Even less! And whenever there is an article in the papers you can respond to, no matter what the subject is, there will always be people attacking left-wingers. Everything is the left-side fault. Whatever did we do? Have we been in charge lately? I feel like there's some propaganda going on. I feel extremely paranoid but if the (right sided) government wants to shut off the public broadcasting from the internet, because they have no business there, what else is going on? Since when do we FORBID people being online? Have they committed crimes? Are they offering illegal contents on their websites? When will the readers be fined? Come on! Has anyone read George Orwell's 1984?? In there the news and all history is systematically changed in favour of The Great Leader. Just saying.

Today's headlines yelled about a plane crashed in Cuba. They probably wouldn't have yelled so much if there hadn't been 3 Dutch people onboard and all 68 passengers had died. To be honest, I haven't really read the article, it was depressing enough in itself (lifting out the three Dutch people is one thing, like they matter more than the other 65 people who have lost their lives in this tragedy) plus the picture of a huge ball of fire, I think it was what is left of the plane, spoke for itself. Also, 20 people died in a plane crash in Pakistan. And a bomb has been found in a plane that departed from Schiphol. Slightly depressed I went to twitter, the number one resource for news. If there's a place news spreads like the plague it's Twitter. Every time I see a famous person trending I think that person died (which is the case half of the time). Surely the plane crashes are trending.

The world is coming to a dramatic end but fear not: the MacRib is back! Yes it's true, MacDonald's brings back the MacRib in all its top-trending glory. Of course people don't talk about planes and bombs! And people still wonder how one can be such a cynical bitch. If you got a mind of your own it's really not that difficult.