At AT5, the Amsterdam city broadcaster, they let young people go on a blind date with a politician in the run-up to the provincial elections, after which they have to guess which party they belong to. This week Lisa sat down opposite a man who looked like a Klaas-Jeroen, turned out to be a Klaas-Jeroen in everything and was actually called that – but she was not allowed to know that beforehand, probably because she would have guessed right away that the best man of the VVD.
It became most interesting with the section ‘Unvarnished opinion’, in which someone, yes, gives an opinion that is unvarnished and about which Klaas-Jeroen would dryly conclude that, yes, indeed, this was an unvarnished opinion. This time it came from Nana Asare, a young man who filmed himself in his car and said the housing market is rotten. I braced myself for Klaas-Jeroen’s answer. Don’t say it, don’t say it. “The only solution is to build more.”
I can’t hear it anymore. Build, build, build. Presented so confidently, with that typical just not human emptiness of the VVD, as if you sent ChatGPT into politics. Always that oversimplification of complicated problems. Just build, build, build, then you don’t have to think about how the already built is currently distributed, by whom, for how much money. The VVD sees holes in the wall and then just sticks some nice posters over it.
The VVD sees holes in the wall and then just sticks some nice posters over it
Just before this weekend, the party denounced CDA minister Hugo de Jonge’s draft plan for the housing market. In particular, the intention to oblige municipalities to build 30 percent new social rental homes went wrong. An “absurd idea”, according to VVD MP Peter de Groot, who accused De Jonge of wanting to roll out “the deprived neighborhoods of the future” all over the Netherlands.
The deprived neighborhoods of the future. The income limit for social rent is 44,000 euros per year for a single-person household. An average Dutch annual income is 40,000 euros. I almost got into the car with Nana Asare. The party that always claims to stand up for the average Dutchman, proves to have complete contempt for it. If even Hugo de Jonge calls your reaction “unloving”… As a corona minister, he said that people could do without culture for a while and then watch a DVD. But I agree with him, although ‘loveless’ doesn’t even cover the load. The VVD: if you can’t afford something, you just have to earn more.
Well, what did Lisa think at the end of the date with Klaas-Jeroen: which party? She guessed right. AT5 turned out not to have made it that difficult on the previous date. Then they made a girl guess that the woman opposite her was from the BoerBurger Movement. The date was in a stable.
Frank Huiskamp replaces Marcel van Roosmalen in the coming weeks.