Dutch PM QUITS

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba4733cc-8d1a-11e1-8b49-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sw69CErZ
WTF is going on over there?

[hirley0]

IF YOU CAN:  make it to Argentina next week OR so?
getting ready to dominate the world stage \ photos will rotate CCW

 
          Michele_Bachelet Chili           Chinchilla_Adelante Costa Rica

                                    Kirchner Argentina

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba4733cc-8d1a-11e1-8b49-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sw69CErZ
WTF is going on over there?

there may be a bit of financial uncertainty over hanging their financial future

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Yes...they're talking about raising the retirement age.

On the upside, maybe they'll quit pushing for the weed passes. 

[Cain]

Be interesting to see how the left in the UK deal with this one.  Austerity = bad, therefore people who fight against austerity = good.  But Geert Wilders = bad.

Basically, Germany made everyone in the EU sign onto an insanely prohibitive round of spending cuts.  Geert Wilders, whose support was necessary for the coalition government, said NO U, and took his ball home.  Government now does not have the votes to pass its agenda.  The PM has no choice but to call for elections and then resign.

If Wilders gets away with this, ie; gets more votes as a result of it, we could see this becoming a far more common tactic among Eurosceptic parties - especially if the Germans are stupid enough to pull a Greece and enforce austerity measures on a country against the wishes of the public and government. That will give Eurosceptic parties a shot in the arm like nothing else on this planet.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Yes...they're talking about raising the retirement age.

On the upside, maybe they'll quit pushing for the weed passes. 

From a drug tourism perspective, a PvdA(social democrats)-GroenLinks(greens)-SP(socialists)-D66(progressive liberal)coalition would be preferable. Maybe a real legalization of soft drugs could happen, even. In recent polls they have 74 out of 150 seats, so they would have to rely on the support of the Party for the Animals*.

/ me pretending to know anything about Dutch politics

*Yeah, apparently animals have voting rights there. 

[Triple Zero]

Basically, Germany made everyone in the EU sign onto an insanely prohibitive round of spending cuts.  Geert Wilders, whose support was necessary for the coalition government, said NO U, and took his ball home.  Government now does not have the votes to pass its agenda.  The PM has no choice but to call for elections and then resign.

WTF is going on over there?

Basically, what Cain said. The CDA (Christian Democrats), VVD (right wing conservative liberals) and the PVV (Geert Wilders & gang) locked themselves up and have been discussing austerity cuts for the past 7 weeks. Just as they almost had an agreement on the budget, the next day Wilders changed his mind (apparently his backers could not agree to the pension cuts in the budget).

Because now CDA and VVD won't play with PVV anymore, the coalition (CDA+VVD) doesn't have enough seats for a majority (vs the many opposition parties) anymore, and as Cain said, can't pass its agenda. The PM (VVD) calls for elections and resigns.

If Wilders gets away with this, ie; gets more votes as a result of it, we could see this becoming a far more common tactic among Eurosceptic parties - especially if the Germans are stupid enough to pull a Greece and enforce austerity measures on a country against the wishes of the public and government. That will give Eurosceptic parties a shot in the arm like nothing else on this planet.

How it seems now is, that while the people seem to be mixed/positive about not going through with the austerity cuts, *Wilders* still took a big popularity hit.

This is because he lost a lot of trust over this stunt. Because of the way it played out, conflict between Wilders and the rest of his party. So there is turmoil, people are already comparing it to the LPF after Pim Fortuyn was shot (infighting + falling apart + general fail). Also if there's conflict, does that mean that Wilders would have wanted these cuts or not? Most PVV voters would have been hit by those cuts. And of course the CDA and VVD are spinning this like crazy, "Wilders disappointed 16 million voters" (referring to the entire population of NL, which is actually 17M, but details).

Interestingly, opinion polls (done by the famous agency of Maurice de Hond, who is a rather shady character), show that the Socialist Party is gaining a lot of votes from this stunt Probably because they are 1) against cuts 2) against the EU and 3) less crazy than Wilders and 4) socialism has associations with those decades when NL was doing pretty awesome

There was a bit of scandal last week about an SP politician drunk-posting some rather nasty death threats to the PM on his facebook page. He was made to quit politics entirely (immediately made "non active" by the party, and then made to promise "maybe it's better if we'd never see your face in politics again, okay?" "Ja" by a GeenStijl reporter ). On the one hand, this is a pretty big scandal (I mean, death threats) and definitely calls into question what sort of people the SP lets in to represent them (and I really do hope they're going to intensify their background checks because this guy had a bit of a history), but on the other hand it doesn't seem to be generating much media buzz at all (probably because of all the other big news, including a rather severe train accident in Amsterdam), and personally I wouldn't mind seeing the SP win some ground next elections. Even though they tend to make bureaucracy worse.

Usually I'd be voting for the Green Party, but their chairwoman, my favourite Dutch politician Femke Halsema (Green, Left, Liberal and Intelligent) (also, good-looking) quit last year and the replacement isn't nearly as good. And their plans for the euro-crisis are kind of stupid: Something about putting more money in a EU fund to back trust, and creating a more powerful trustworthy monetary EU oversight body to keep the playing field level (these two things already exist, I forget what they're called). It's the "trustworthy" part that I think is particularly naive.

That said, I might just end up voting for the Pirate Party, because while all this is going on, the BREIN foundation just won a case against the PP that not only are they not allowed to set up a proxy for the Pirate Bay (since two major Dutch ISPs were summoned to IP-block it, and other ISPs are probably soon to follow), nor are they allowed to link to existing proxies, and they're not allowed to set up generic proxies, they aren't even allowed to explain people how to circumvent the block OR EVEN MENTION ITS POSSIBILITY, please to note:

A US media industry backed private organisation just gagged a Dutch political party

I dunno that just fucking makes my blood boil. It's probably of lesser importance in the grand scheme of things than this whole financial crisis but DAMNIT IF IT DOESNT MAKE ME MAD AS HELL

[Doktor Howl]

A US media industry backed private organisation just gagged a Dutch political party

Well, yes.  You guys have to listen to us.  Wasn't this all explained in the memo?

You DID get the memo?

[Triple Zero]

A US media industry backed private organisation just gagged a Dutch political party

Well, yes.  You guys have to listen to us.  Wasn't this all explained in the memo?

You DID get the memo?

Must have missed it. Was it in one of those mythical "FBI Copyright Warning DVD splash screens" or perhaps a "Commercial Break"? Because those darn pirates always cut them out.

Sorry. Yes, I see, if there was a memo. I'll be sure to let everybody know, okay?

[Doktor Howl]

A US media industry backed private organisation just gagged a Dutch political party

Well, yes.  You guys have to listen to us.  Wasn't this all explained in the memo?

You DID get the memo?

Must have missed it. Was it in one of those mythical "FBI Copyright Warning DVD splash screens" or perhaps a "Commercial Break"? Because those darn pirates always cut them out.

Sorry. Yes, I see, if there was a memo. I'll be sure to let everybody know, okay?

You have to remember a couple of things:

1.  If you believe outrageous things, and advance them as if they were true, you can get away with bloody murder.

2.  America has no shortage of the above.

[Cain]

In Germany, they can't yet ban the Pirate Party, so they're just comparing them to Nazis.

[Doktor Howl]

In Germany, they can't yet ban the Pirate Party, so they're just comparing them to Nazis.

"Come on over, Ernst!  I just ripped a copy of Triumph of the Will!
- Adolf Hitler

[Cain]

In Germany, they can't yet ban the Pirate Party, so they're just comparing them to Nazis.

"Come on over, Ernst!  I just ripped a copy of Triumph of the Will!
- Adolf Hitler

Oh whoops, I misread the story - a member of the German Pirate Party compared his own party to the Nazis.

"The ascent of the Pirate Party is proceeding as swiftly as the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazis) between 1928 and 1933".

This is why I should not read the news before my second coffee of the day.

[EK WAFFLR]

Since I'm incredibly stupid at times;

Eurosceptic is scepticism towards the Euro, right?

[Cain]

Or the European Union as a whole, yes.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

In Germany, they can't yet ban the Pirate Party, so they're just comparing them to Nazis.

"Come on over, Ernst!  I just ripped a copy of Triumph of the Will!
- Adolf Hitler

:

I've seen Geert Wilders called a neo-nazi. So he's the guy everybody's pissed at? Maybe this is a good thing.