When I read that they were looking for a mediator in The Hague between the angry farmers and the government, I heard myself mumbling that they would pull Johan Remkes out of his smoking sheltered home again. Two seconds later it turned out to be true. Am I clairvoyant? On the contrary. This is about the cringe-inducing predictability of the new governance culture. So it is that transparent.
Well, you can’t blame Rutte & Co too much, because they were very busy with the VAT on fruit and vegetables. It may be abolished. But that is of course not easy. The first thing to do is to find out what vegetables and what fruits are.
So they called a greengrocer in The Hague? No, they have commissioned an official investigative agency to issue a report on this complicated case. And that report will be ready in January 2023. Is this serious? Yes, this is dead serious.
I hope Deloitte won’t get the job done, because then there will be a few more years. Deloitte is that savvy office that investigates the dirty business of our national mouth cap criminals Bernd Damme, Camille van Gestel and their unconditional leader Sywert van Lienden. And who keeps telling Minister Helder that there is not only an extra six months, but also a million. The investigation into these three Daltons has now cost 4.7 million.
Interesting that our farmers have to talk to a government that itself needs to understand the difference between apples and pears. Even through a thick report. Will they know what a pinkie is? So the farmer tells the minister that he is a cowardly jerk and he goes to see if the acorn falls under the fruit or vegetable.
In a wonderful piece by Jan Mulder about his friend Remco Campert, I read that more than twenty years ago it was officially decided at a high European level that the carrot was now part of the fruit. Remco had dusted a carrot with his handkerchief in a wonderful column at the greengrocer’s and had placed the raspberries and strawberries with his real brothers. The carrot thanked him. Remco still wrote greengrocer at the time. Shouldn’t that be ‘vegetable person’?
Back to politics. It is a pity for everyone that the tragic British clown Boris is going to leave the arena. Despite everything he’d done wrong, Johnson definitely didn’t want to leave himself. In London he already had the nickname ‘Dick Benschop’. Indeed our Schiphol boss, who has to deal with miraculous cures within his company. Biblical situations. At the security there are dozens of empty wheelchairs of the crippled, who, after their hand luggage had passed the check, jumped cheering from their wheelchair and skipped euphorically to the gate.
Schiphol is already being called the new Lourdes and hundreds of thousands of international pilgrims are expected soon. Desperate souls yearning for that last straw and eager to queue for a miracle. They want to walk again. But they don’t have to queue at Schiphol with their wheelchair, do they? And then we are right at the heart of this miracle. But should you tell that to those poor disabled people? That those healed patients are just Dutch and that the Dutch, by definition, like to push ahead. And that they shamelessly sit in a wheelchair for that.
Those empty wheelchairs are taken to the airport’s stroller graveyard, where a few thousand abandoned prams now lie in a gigantic, inextricable heap. Near the 16,000 lost suitcases. You can hope for those counterfeit invalids that they have at least lost their suitcase and that that bitch filled with expensive designer clothes will never surface again. Just a nice healthy damage that doesn’t cover insurance.
Sixteen thousand lost suitcases! I think it has something. Something symbolic. End of an era. Just like that Italian glacier that fell with it. And of course a nice resignation text for our Dickie Benschop. You can pack your bags!
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 9 July 2022