June 23, 2010
After axing American Snoop Dogg with the excuse that violence would ensue and after much protest about the homophobic lyrics of Jamaica’s Beenie Man, the bureaucrats who couldn’t make up their minds went with Ivory Coast’s Alpha Blondy as headlining act for The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June.
That probably means festival visitors will get to hear some African French reggae.
Here’s Alpha Blondy perfoming ‘Ça me fait si mal’ (It hurts me so) about Africa and hardship
Tags: Alpha Blondy, Parkpop, reggae, The Hague
June 18, 2010
Ah yes, the pseudo-tolerant cliché of the Netherlands rears its ugly head: all of a sudden, hip hop artist Snoop Dogg, head act for The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June, is not welcome. His show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam the next day is sold out. I’ll bet he’ll say some nice words about the bureaucrats in The Hague at his show.
Parkpop, said to be Europe’s biggest free pop festival, will feature Nena, Nick Lowe and Juliette Lewis. The mayor of The Hague, the attorney general and the cops think that it is a good idea to cancel Snoop Dogg, “in order to preserve the free, open and friendly nature of Parkpop.” Say what?
And not giving an explanation makes us imagine the worst of reasons. Even political parties are wondering why Snoop is being banned. Fear has to be part of the excuse.
Here is a great television appearance by Snoop Dogg on an old episode of ‘Jensen’ (Dutch talk show). It’s mostly in English with Dutch subtitles.
(Link: NOS.nl, abc.net.au)
Tags: bureaucrats, Jensen, Snoop Dogg, The Hague
April 23, 2010
What started way back in 2002 has finally been approved by The Hague’s city council: world-renowned architect Rem Koolhaas plans to build a 93-metre high building in front of the city’s central station as a new city landmark. The plans include three tapered towers, two with a total of 179 apartments and one for offices that meet and merge at the top, encompassing Koningen Julianaplein (big town square) on two sides. And it looks like a big M.
The Dutch press always likes to inform their audiences how much things cost. In this case, NRC tells us the ‘wowie’ building (that gives me a Grande Arche at La Défense in Paris feeling, but then a Dutch version) is estimated to cost 300 million euro and expected to be finished in 2015.
(Links: dutchnews.nl, oma.eu, nrc.nl)
Tags: Rem Koolhaas, The Hague
April 4, 2010
A particularly dumb thief from The Hague was caught twice on the same day last Tuesday for stealing police bait bikes.
When the 35-year-old was released after the first arrest, he walked along the spot in the Wagenaarstraat in The Hague where his first crime had taken place, and, presumably to his great joy, discovered another bicycle just ready for the taking. This bike again turned out to be a bait bicycle.
Telegraaf doesn’t say if they also released the man after his second arrest.
February 18, 2010
A 38-square-metre house for low income families in The Hague was converted into this studio apartment by Robert-Jan de Kort (RDKA) and Teun van den Dries (Eckhart).
It can be rented for 155 euro a night, smoking and shoe-wearing not allowed (Maff provides you with fluffy slippers). The price per night goes down the longer you rent the apartment. Facilities include a car park, wifi, coffee, and a library of 100 films.
(Source photo: Maff.nl. Link: Bright.)
Tags: The Hague
February 1, 2010
We try to stay away from politics, but when candidates come up with cool posters like this, it’s hard to ignore them.
Philip Akkerman made this. He is an artist and a ‘list pusher‘ for the Stadspartij of The Hague. Municipal elections take place every four years, and the next one is on March 3. Several 24 Oranges commenters, by the way, will be running for office this year.
Link: Trendbeheer.
December 11, 2009
Every year around the holidays some of the same complaints rear their ugly heads and every year nothing is ever resolved except for the papers having something to polarize readers about. Although many people do celebrate Christmas in the Netherlands, the real gift-giving was last week, and as one person mentioned on Twitter, it’s time for lists of the best this and that and counting down until 2010.
Back by popular demand, animal activists whining about foie gras in restaurants. Ah yes, the decadent French and their foie gras. They mistreat animals and not serving it in the Netherlands is taking a stand. Why isn’t it banned then? Get on with it. And then list all the other bad things we do to animals and move on and leave Christmas alone!
Not being sure about putting up a Christmas tree in the lobby of a higher vocational school in The Hague because that’s not the best choice for a multicultural society. Excuse me? Nonsense. And it was nonsense, and misinterpretated and the Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk apparently has time for this nonsense, too.
And in regional news, how about the city of Nijmegen digging a big hole to plant Christmas right in front of your store for Christmas as a recession gift? I can imagine that the big store is not amused with the city’s idea of decorating the square in front of it. The store found out in a letter sent on 3 December that was not even addressed properly.
Companies are apparently going to keep their Christmas parties cheap and I bet the traditional Christmas packages employees receive (I get people’s leftovers, I’m self-employed) won’t have anything special in them, never mind some employees having to drive to their office headquarters (!) to pick up the orange-flavoured powdered hot chocolate and the tuna with tomato and veggies in it.
November 13, 2009
Here’s a Web 2.0 plea that says ‘always update your intel’.
Yesterday in The Hague, the immigration police raided a hostel for mothers and children in the wee hours, suspecting it was being used by illegal immigrants (read = mostly men). The big scary screaming men busted down the front door, banged on bedroom doors and apparently freaked out little children.
“Junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak, who was with the police on a fact-finding mission, witnessed events and helped comfort the children.” Why the cockup? Police used old information from the population registry. How stupid can you be? Some 20% of that information in every large Dutch city is false, everybody knows that.
This pic is the corner of my resident’s permit, as I thought the rushing bull was fitting.
(Link: dutchnews.nl)
Tags: immigrants, police, The Hague
August 15, 2009
I just turned away from the lock-picking talk, as the tent was absolutely packed (me being 5 minutes late). I don’t know how many people fit in these convention tents, hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that is the amount of people that after tonight may know how to break every lock you own.
Earlier today I was at the talk with possibly the smallest amount of listeners of this 4-day exercise, you might even say the attendants resembled Cantor Dust. OK, lousy statistical jokes aside, this talk was by statistician Richard Gill of the University of Leiden and dealt with the Lucia de Berk case.
I had heard of the case before. In 2001, a nurse from The Hague was accused of having murdered dozens of patients, and the strange thing was that most of her guilt was determined by statistics: she had been near the victims at the time of their deaths, and although a direct link with the accused in the form of a confession or evidence could not be established, the court found that the statistical likelihood of her being near all these victims at the time of death was so minute, she must have done it.
At the time I thought this reasoning seemed silly, but I have learned early on in life never to argue with statisticians. So imagine my surprise: here was a statician who argued that the court’s reason had indeed been extremely silly, and that an innocent woman had gone to jail.
I won’t bore you with repeating the entire lecture: author Maarten ‘t Hart summarized Gill’s position excellently in this article from NRC (Dutch). Gill’s paper on how likely the chance is that a nurse was on active duty during all deaths concludes that one in nine nurses would have gone to jail (PDF).
Tags: courts, HAR 2009, hospitals, judges, justice, Leiden, murder, nurses, statistics, The Hague
May 12, 2009
Last Wednesday a car thief in The Hague was in the possession of 10,000 euro without even knowing it, reports Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch). The man, a known offender, was addressed on the Broekslootkade by two passing cops who just wanted to have a chat. In response he bolted, leaving behind a purse which he had, as it later turned out, stolen from a car a day earlier together with a navigation system. The purse contained 10,000 euro in cash, unknown to the 36-year old thief.
(Photo of the arrest of a Rotterdam bicycle thief by Flickr user Hellobo, some rights reserved. The police officers are the ones wearing dark trousers.)
Tags: car navigation systems, crime, money, police, The Hague, theft
