Old man at the top
Jan Pronk is going for the leadership of the PvdA.
Some time ago the complete management of the political party PvdA resigned. This was as a result of the assessment of the loss at the elections of 2007.
Now some ‘young’ members of the PvdA have asked Jan Pronk to go for the leadership of the party. They even have opened a website where people can support the candidateship.
Question: will this bring the voters back from the SP?
Answer: No, it will scare away a lot of voters. Pronk can be described as being a difficult person, a polititian not a leader of a political party, somebody with it own agenda.
Jankovic – Henin – Toronto
I just watched most of the match between Jelena Jankovic en Justin Henin at Toronto. Jelena lost the match, just (6-7, 5-7). I think she has never been that close of winning against Henin. Henin played well but she needs a lot of assurance during the match from her coach.
I hope they meet again at the US Open.
Bee working
Summer evening
Eindhoven, 20:00 hours
Racist or ….
Kuifje: Racist or Cartoon
Wilders: Racist or Idiot
McLaren bashing in Hungary
Strange things are going on in Formula 1.
First there is the spy case between McLaren en Ferrari and now there is the situation during the qualification in Hungary.
The outcome of the first case was as expected. There is no direct proof that McLaren is using Ferrari technology.
The second case is even more ridicules. The team is screwing up their qualifying by keeping Alonso in the pits so long that Hamilton couldn’t make his last run anymore. Result: The stewards penalize McLaren, they can run in this GP but cannot gain any World Championship points and Alonso is put back five places on the grid.
I get the feeling that somebody thought ‘let’s give them a heavy penalty, McLaren will object, the penalty will be reduced but at least we got the for the spy case with Ferrari’.
House Black Bird
Europe: New Treaty
From the website Open Europe:
“The analysis finds that only 10 out of 250 proposals in the new treaty are different from the proposals in the original EU Constitution. In other words, 96% of the text is the same as the rejected Constitution.” [link]
From the Former President of Germany Roman Herzog about the European Union and the constitution:
“People have an ever increasing feeling that something is going wrong; that an
untransparent, complex, mammoth institution has evolved: divorced from practical
problems and national traditions; grabbing ever greater competences and areas of
power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing – in brief, that it cannot go
on like this.” (Die Welt, March 2007)
The Romans are coming
Growing pain for the SP
From an article in the NRC newspaper, section Hollands Dagboek.
Elma Verhey describes what happened in her week and writes that at the last day of the week she is finally called by one of the top-brass of the SP (probably somebody in the house of commons). They have a conversation and I thought one line was very striking.
“How can you live with the party culture (within the SP). By keeping your head down at the right moment and gamble at the brittle health of Jan Marijnissen“.
Growing pain for the SP
It seams that the political party SP is having problems keeping all members together. A recent conflict about the election of a member to the ‘eerste kamer’ (house of lords) has escalated into the suspension of the editor of the party newspaper. The editor had written a critical piece about the election procedures in the SP. Party officials did not like the piece and asked her to retread it. Main argument was that the article was to one-sided.
For Dutch readers, the article can be found here [link].