Black and white

It's a long while since I posted my last blog update. I have been incredibly busy rearranging life, studying and preparing my move to Leiden. I have been traveling southern France last month and I haven't even found the time to write an update on that visit, let alone finishing my pictures.

Yesterday was election day here in The Netherlands and the results are in. In short, dogma's have won in all their forms. Dogmatic rightwing politics (anti-immigration, anti-Islam), dogmatic leftwing politics (a return to extreme social welfare, anti-militarism, republicanism) and dogmatic Christian politics (against our liberal Abortion and Euthanasia laws). Dutch society has changed significantly from tolerant and multicultural to fenced in, scared and polarized. This is obviously not a good thing. I am a firm believer in making compromises ('polderen' in Dutch) which is not going to be easy given these results. The current government program has been made impossible. Although the Christian Democrats won the elections their coalition partner, the conservative party (VVD), has been slaughtered; as matters stand Dutch politics will most likely shift from neo-conservative to centre-left or christian-socialism. A grand coalition between Christian Democrats (CDA), Labour (PvdA) and either Socialists (SP) or the more fundamental Christian Union (CU) seems to be most viable. But the differences are so great that I doubt the resulting government will be very effective.

All in all, the coming days are going to be very interesting and I wish the Queen a lot of wisdom in assigning a negotiator.