The fire is going out in the Netherlands

Essent is sold to RWE.[Link to article]

The Netherlands only has four major energy companies. Essent is one of the biggest.
Every country in Europe understands the importance of being not to dependant on other countries when it is about energy. The Dutch government is going another path and is selling the fire of it’s economy. Next in line for being sold, within a couple of weeks, is Nuon which is the second biggest energy company.

Ferrari threatening to leave Formula 1

In response to the FAI proposal to standardize the engines used in Formula 1 Ferrari released a statement in which they indicated the they would review their position in Formula 1. More of less threatening to leave the Formula 1.

I’m not a real fan of Ferrari but in this case I agree with them although I come from another angle. For Ferrari participating in a Formula 1 call in which they were forced to use third party engines or in which they could not distinguish themselves from other brands because everybody uses the same hardware is not commercially interesting.
For me the cutting edge technology used in Formula 1 is part of the appeal. Forcing teams to use the engine en gearbox for more than one race is a good idea. Limiting the competitiveness by restricting the technological developments is a bad idea.

 

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How narrow minded can you be?

This week their were two ‘interesting’ items in the Dutch news.

  1. Some top executives warned that they they would move the company headquarter to another country if the upheaval in the Dutch society, the Dutch press and Dutch politics about the level of their salary would continue,
  2. A Dutch cartoonist was picked up by ten men of the Dutch police and was held in custody for almost two days. In 2005 somebody complained about some cartoons which were published on his website. Now, after almost three years, the Dutch police decided to act on the complains. The cartoonist was ‘asked’ to remove eight cartoons from his website. Rather strange when you consider that no judge has ruled on the case up to now.

sigh.

The Olympic flame

Today the Olympic flame was shown in Paris. The flame was extinguished three times before it was rushed to the relay’s endpoint [link to BBC article].
I don’t think it will change the method of economic imperialism used by the Chinese government. Maybe it will make them more careful but it won’t change them.