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2006-04-21 12:47
It is the Dutch immigration service, which has a wizard for persons
wishing to reside. If you tell it you're British and want to work as
an employee and reside for more than three (3) months, it spits out:
Who can work in the Netherlands as an employee?
For most foreign nationals who want to work in the Netherlands, the
employer must apply to the CWI for a work permit. Check the frequently
asked questions to find out when an employer doesn't have to apply for
a work permit.
The FAQ, needless to say, doesn't say.
In addition to the work permit, there are also other conditions.
Not only are these unspecified here, it gives no hint where (or if)
they are specified. Thanks wizard, that's magic!
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2006-04-21 10:39
Powercut babyboom! It is so very predictable and so much fun to say!
Powercut
babyboom!
De stroomstoring die in november Haaksbergen trof, leidt half augustus
tot een heus geboortegolfje in het Twentse dorp. De plaatselijke
verloskundigenpraktijk Het Uilennest heeft reeds acht zwangere vrouwen
over de vloer gehad die tussen 18 en 20 augustus zijn
uitgerekend. Normaal bevallen in Haaksbergen gemiddeld twee vrouwen
per weekend.
Stroomstoring geboortegolfje? Powercut babyboom! But is a
spike of eight (8) babies compared to a usual two (2) in a weekend
statistically significant, our enquiring mind, for one, needs to
know.
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2006-04-20 17:10
�1. Inconvenience me harder!
It
is Cananananada!
The best new convenience food items ask consumers to take part,
industry experts say, whether it be stirring, assembling or preparing
a simple vegetable or starch to accompany a roast purchased fully
cooked.
They explain this as motivated by "guilt" (experienced by
"housewives"), which doesn't strike us as remotely adequate. It seems
to us that busy persons, not limited to guilt-tripping mothers, might
want to feel involved in preparing their (non-restaurant) meals for
less negative reasons than that.
�2. Controverse me harder!
It is
Finland!
Finland's controversial entry for this year's Eurovision Song Contest
- a heavy metal band called Lordi (The Lord) - has upset many Finns.
Hailing from Arctic Lapland, Lordi became a phenomenon in Finland with
a platinum-selling debut album, Get Heavy, in 2002.
According to the Beeboid, Yurovizhn is folky rather than rocktastic,
which will be news to anyone who saw the Norwegish rockers the other
year. We're all expecting a Spectroslavian turbo-folk block-vote
anyway, so why worry?
�3. Misscarry me harder
Is is
EnglandandWales, and yet another planned judicial "reform":
THE "not proven" verdict unique to Scots law could be introduced into
the English legal system, the government signalled yesterday.
Gosh! But:
On the face of it, the suggested addition to English law is not a
natural one. The not proven verdict is available to juries sitting in
criminal cases, but Mr Clarke is proposing to make it available to the
English Court of Appeal, where judges alone weigh the merits of
existing convictions. But Mr Clarke's move is part of a government
attempt to make it harder for people who have convictions lifted
subsequently to claim financial compensation.
The Home Secretary said he is increasingly concerned at the number of
convictions that are successfully appealed on technical legal grounds,
rather than the substantial case against the defendant.
Poor widdle Cwown! It can't be expected to match the legal resources
of random private individuals or observe all those expensive legal
niceties that prissy old judges keep insisting on so it's only fair it
should be granted a "Just because you're not guilty doesn't mean
you're innocent, sunshine, so you can wipe that smirk right off" card
to use whenever it has only perverted the course of justice a
little bit.
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2006-04-20 11:26
It is
the Ministry of Foreign Things! And it wishes foopballfollowing
Englishes to learn Cherman!
Het Britse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken moedigt Engelse fans aan
hun voetballiederen in het Duitse te leren. In het pakket met reistips
voor het wereldkampioenschap bevindt zich een verwijzing naar de
website www.britishembassyworldcup.com waar de vertaling van de
liedjes op staat.
The British Ministry of Foreign Things is encouraging English fans to
learn Cherman foopball songs. [Are they sure that's what they
want?] In the package of travel advice for the world cup find they a
reference to the website containing the translations
of the ditties.
If you can find any evidence of this on the site itself (or indeed
anywhere else) you're a better chournaliste than we are. (Although we
don't claim to have scrutinised the 24-page pdf glossary in close
detail, we're pretty sure there weren't whole songs in it.)
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2006-04-20 10:04
It
is the many hilarities of Yurovizhn in the Balkans, where
selection can inflame passions, precipitate riots, and possibly incite
civil wars.
(The prevailing Beeboid appears not to have taken into account that in
the Balkans so can almost anything else, but we never said you could
get the staff.)
So for the last few years, Kosovo Albanian groups such as energetic
girl-band Flakareshat have gone to Tirana, the capital of Albania, to
compete. If they had ever won, they would have competed under the
flag of Albania. But no band from Kosovo has been chosen. Yet another
reason, say Kosovo Albanians, why it needs independence.
For bonus points, rewrite this section from the perspective of a Welsh
(or Basque or Catalan or Frisian, according to taste) nationaliste.
But there is an interesting bit at the end:
Bosnia and Serbia may be slugging it out these days at the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Bosnia is pursuing
its claim that Serbia tried to commit genocide in Bosnia, but none of
that is going to stop former Yugoslavs voting for one another in
Athens on 20 May.
"The state still exists, it seems," says head of Serbian TV Aleksandar
Tijanic, referring to the Yugoslav ghost. "You can't erase 70 years
of a joint state despite all the wars."
"A spectre is stalking the Balkans", anyone?
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2006-04-19 17:56
Teh Piraats of the Caribbean was on Dutch telly over Easter, and
we are thus in a position to observe that it really is as good as we
thought it was last time. Of course, last time we saw it was in Riga
with Russian and Latvian subtitles, so apparently it is our fate to
see it with subtitles that do more harm than good. (The Dutch
subtitler dispensed with a good deal of class-related nuance, too, but
then so do the Dutch. Lovely chaps, but nuances in general and
class-related nuances in particular aren't really their strong suit.)
And if you are our zweetie or otherwise inclined to doubt the
facticity of our pronouncements about the imminence of a sequel, we
commend to your attention the IMDB page for
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Yo ho ho!
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2006-04-19 13:11
Our favourite part of Neue Blatt - ahead of the actual
prinsessgossip, since that wasn't actually very well done - was always
the R�tsel ("solve-it-yourself", which we always successfully did)
Krimi. The Blatt seems to 've dropped them, and we in turn have
dropped it, but we have in any case found a better source: the mighty
Bastei, home of G-Man Jerry Cotton:
[Sorry, we can't snarf a quote from the hilarious Denglish of the
Wikipedia entry, since the 'Pedia is down again. Silly 'Pedia!
Still, at least they haven't been eaten by a Groogle.]
But the whole Jerry Cotton adventure (47 pages!) that we actually read
all by ourself was technically in Dutch, and when we've finally
finished the triple-feature omnibus it was in, we're going to be so used
to him being in Dutch that we won't want to go back to the Cherman.
And we're going with Dutch for our many Westerns, too, since for EUR
3,50 you can get a big fat book of mindless but raunchy adventures,
complete with more-than-suggestive but otherwise old-fashioned painted
pulp covers.
But what, then, to read in Cherman, given that our course-books are
lacking a certain something? (They are all about the dreary everyday
lives of dreary everyday persons and the covers, my dear! The covers
are simply frightful!) We're not really so very much of a fan of
fantasy, sci-fi or horror, and we're not doing romanz and we're
certainly not ready for the frankly disturbing "Heimat" genre.
So we're exceptionally pleased to note that Bastei!, home of
G-Man Jezza and His Friends, has launched Chicago,
a Krimiseries set in Prohibition-era Chicago (hence the name!). And
you will be very glad, too, if you follow the links to see the
(work-safe) covers.
"Im Zweifel eine Tommy-Gun" ("In doubt a tommy-gun"), anyone?
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2006-04-19 10:01
Did you know, Varied Reader, that Dutch civil servants - such as the
many Cogwheel Technicians at the Konninklijk Windmill Institute -
enjoy a princely 82 42 days holiday, which comes to more than eight (8)
weeks?
That almost makes up for missing the celebrations in the Grote
Markt of FC Groningen - the Pride of the North - 's securing of a
berth in Yoorpean competition next year. (We simply didn't know it
was happening, is why we didn't go. Although we're not saying we
would have if we had.)
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