LIVEBLOG: Dutch Elections 2012

 Politics
Sep 122012
 

Today is election day in Holland. The first results are turning up, and I’ll be liveblogging the whole event. The big question is Europe, yes or no. Do we send more money to Greece and other failing economies within the European Union, or do we withdraw? Socialists and Populists both want to exit the EU, while Labour (PvdA) and LibDem (D66) want to further tie our economy with the Union.

A little intro on the Dutch Parliament. It has 150 seats. Last election (2010) was won by the ‘VVD’, with 31 seats. Because you need to have 50% of the seats +1 (76), they formed a coalition with CDA (Christian Democrats) and the PVV (right-wing Populists). In two years, they got nothing done, and when things HAD to be done, it fell apart. And now, we have new elections. It’s been a race between the Labour Party (PvdA), and the VVD (Liberals).

Final Prognosis (as of 21:30):

  • VVD – 41 (+10)
  • PvdA – 40 (+10)
  • SP – 15 (+-0)
  • CDA – 13 (-8)
  • PVV – 13 (-11)
  • D66 – 12 (+2)
  • GroenLinks – 4 (-6)
  • ChristenUnie – 4 (-1)
  • 50Plus – 3 (+3)
  • SGP – 3 (+1)
  • PvdD – 2 (+-0)

Current Standings (at ~80%)

  • VVD – 41
  • PvdA – 39
  • PVV – 15
  • CDA – 13
  • SP – 15
  • D66 – 12
  • GroenLinks – 3
  • ChristenUnie – 5
  • SGP – 3
  • PvdD – 2
  • 50Plus – 2

(turnout: 73%, -2%)
Below are the updates, whenever something big happens, I’ll blog about it. (Update: after 6 hours of blogging, the final entry has been written. There will be no more updates. Good night.) Continue reading »

Welcome Back, Did You Miss Me?

 General
Sep 102012
 

Hey there peoples. I’ve been away for a while. Part of me wanted to keep writing, part of me didn’t. I wanted to do a redesign, but everything I tried looked absolutely rubbish. Today, I finally had some inspiration, and in about 30 minutes I made this. You don’t have to take a long time to make something good when you have inspiration, so I say 30 minutes suffices.

I’m planning to restart regular writing and or making other forms of content (video’s, artwork, pictures, etc.), even Wednesday’s Weeklies will return.  If you forgot how the website looked like before the redesign, I made a screenshot for you to compare it with, and as always, you can click the picture for a larger version. Tell me what you think!

 

Diversity

 Funny
May 032012
 

Can you spot the differences? Even for me, as their brother, it’s hard to separate the two. My older sister, Annemerel, on the left right, has been blogging for ages. My little sister, on the opposing side, thought it was a good idea to follow her example. Because they’re now in the beautiful country of Italy, I decided to check on what they are doing over there. They both did a photoshoot. In front of the same wall. Wearing the same sunglasses.

Continue reading »

Wednesday’s Weekly [2] (Week 6, 2012)

 General
Feb 082012
 

Well hello there, reader! I can’t believe it’s wednesday again, which means it’s time for the second episode of Wednesday’s Weekly, the more diary-like weekly column dedicated to everyday things and general planning for this website.

First off, yesterday I wrote a piece about the superbowl trailers. After doing four trailers, I got tremendously bored of copy pasting html codes over and over again. I decided to cut it into two parts, and promised to post the second part today. I haven’t really started on it yet, and I have good reason for that.

Yesterday was my grandma’s 80th birthday, so the whole family was invited to a restaurant in honour of her birthday. My dad picked me up as he would drive me to my parents’ house. We drove past a sports’ store, and I asked him to stop by and look if they had hockeyskates. If you’ve seen my previous post, you’d know I’ve been looking for some new ones for a while now. I was in luck, they had just gotten a new shipment. And, they had my size (43) too!

I has some money left from my birthday, so I bought them.

I might need to do some dust cleaning

I tried them on while at my parents’ place, and miraculously; I could skate. It went pretty well. After an hour of dragging my little sister around the ice (I decided for her she should be skating too, but had to hold my hand in order to keep standing) I packed them up because it was time for the dinner party.

Today I had to wake up at 6:30, because I had to be in Amsterdam early for the first college of the semester. Now I’m back in Leiden, and all I really want to do is skate. I know I have to keep my readers happy, even though there’s probably only a handful, so I decided to at least write another weekly, so you know what is up.

I’ll write the second part tonight. Or not. For now I’m going to skate.

PS: concerning the quality of the picture above, if you compare it with my previous pictures, it has risen exceptionally. Why, is another story I’ll tell tomorrow. If I don’t die of hypothermia.