With the boat to school, Evert ten Napel across ter Apel and the expression ‘with the buttocks exposed’. Our readers have an opinion about everything. Below is a selection of the best readers’ letters from the past week.
jetty
A jetty at a school (‘ To school by boat ‘, DvhN 02-09), so that the children can also go to school by boat: is this not a waste of public money, this school is not in the Biesbosch?
I thought that the government wants children to exercise more, then this does not seem like a good plan to me and I can assume that our policymakers know that you can only drive a motorboat at the age of 12, so a jetty was built for thousands of euros that can be used for the mentioned target group (primary school pupils) cannot be used.
It’s true, H. Eerkens
Addressing the citizen
This week I heard it again: ‘big chicken farmers afraid of bird flu’. One poo from an overflying migratory bird and a whole barn of chickens can get the bird flu. With regard to this and the entire farmers’ discussion, it should be clear that large-scale animal breeding is no longer of this time.
After all, we will all have to consume half less (preferably more…) meat and animal products. We can’t make farmers turn their lives around and we just keep going. We will all have to change our lifestyle. There are already many organic farmers who work in a very natural and animal-friendly manner. It is up to the government to focus on this instead of buying out farms. Ordinary citizens should also be held accountable for this, which I miss a lot these days.
Assen, Lammy Alkema
Drenthe traffic safer
And yet another driver who knows (even mentions) the solution to a problem but does not implement it. Deputy Vedelaar (‘ Traffic in Drenthe is still not safe enough ‘, DvhN , 01-09) wants to make traffic in Drenthe safer. To this end, it will invest 37 million in seventeen unsafe provincial roads. Although she knows from research that there is simply too much speeding and too little enforcement, she prefers to facilitate speeding by cutting down trees that are too close to the road and creating warning ripples in the last centimeters of the asphalt before the verge . The road must become more ‘forgiving’.
More forgiving for whom? As a cyclist and runner on the roads in the top of Drenthe, I experience weekly how Drenthe motorists speed past you at very high speed, sometimes less than half a meter. This does not require more but much less forgiveness, namely enforcement. Invest that 27 million in agents with a laser gun and mobile flash units. It is the only measure that, unlike the Commissioner’s proposals, can be used flexibly on all roads in the province, which directly affects speeders and, oh holy grail of modern administration, is cost-neutral. In fact, it is the only measure that pays for itself: in fines and in fewer casualties among cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.
Vries, Edmond Varwijk
Political system crisis
The analysis that Albert Jan van Soelen ( Let’s solve our systemic crisis first ‘, DvhN , 09-09) has made of the systemic crisis in Dutch politics is beyond my heart. The helm of our stalled government must drastically change. In the current parliamentary inquiry into natural gas extraction, we can hear and see on a daily basis that responsible ministers, administrators and top officials prefer to hide behind others. Time for a breath of fresh air!
Zuidlaren, Herman de Muinck
Evert ter Apel
Just a letter to the editor in response to the first column of your new columnist Evert ten Napel about Ter Apel.
It has been years since Ter Apel was given a NATO depot full of war equipment in the context of the distribution of government services to combat the threat from the east. At a certain point, the threat apparently no longer existed, and to compensate for the lost jobs, Ter Apel was given a center on the site of the depot where refugees had to report, later also a prison.
I agree with Ten Napel that it is not an ideal place for a registration center. But it had a completely different reason for establishing it there, and not at Schiphol or Arnhem. Whether that solution was the right one with today’s knowledge, I’ll leave to the experts, and there are plenty of them.
City Canal, Jan Mooibroek
The right string
The opinion piece ‘ Politics is dead, long live the citizen !’ by Klaas-Jan Noorman and Marc Jager ( DvhN , 07-09) strikes the right chord that it is all about in the Netherlands. Lack of vision and decisiveness! A committee or investigation must be set up for each issue, which often takes months and entails the necessary costs. The above article mentioned the climate issue, energy poverty et cetera, but I can add a few more, including the abolition of the health insurance fund, the shortage of general practitioners, dentists, judiciary, police, teachers, infrastructure, lack of maintenance roads and bridges and so on. I could list many more abuses. Therefore, I would be in favor of a citizens’ council.
Eelde, Harry van Oploo
The hottest place in Haren
Haren is a green oasis with beautiful large trees. But in the summer you can fry fried eggs in the sun on the bare Raadhuisplein. Is this the ideal of the Harenaren? Concrete pots and buckets with almost dried-up shrubs? Climate change has not yet reached the minds of the Groningen municipal authorities. Their ideal still remains the clearcutting, sawn-off tree trunks on which you can sit and bake yourself in the summer. The administrators have a green plan (‘Vitamin G’!?), but put up big trees, oh no. Large trees provide shade, cooling and oxygen. Can we, Harenaren, get the Groningen administrators to realize this and plant large trees in the ground of the Raadhuisplein?
Haren, Lidwien Schuitemaker and Gabor Lodi
With the buttocks exposed
In the section moment by Herman Sandman of September 7, he tells that he went to a mill in a neighboring village, prior to the neighborhood barbecue. There a miller explained, among other things, the millstones. He also said that the cry ‘with the buttocks exposed’ comes from the miller’s world. That is really a misunderstanding. A miller has to sharpen the stones every now and then, because otherwise you can no longer grind with them. He does this with a small type of pickaxe, which is called ‘sharp hammer’, ‘bilhammer’ or in some parts of the Netherlands ‘bil’. In England such a hammer is called ‘mill-bill’.
The act of carving out the grooves is called ‘sharpening’ or ‘buttocks’. By the way, millers call the deep part of the stone the ‘result’ and the high part of the stone (crazy enough) the ‘kerf’. The results and the notches together form the ‘buttock’.
The word ‘buttocks’ (so the act of sharpening) comes from French, formerly a world language like now English. French millers call the re-grooving ‘rhabiller’. ‘Habiller’ means ‘to dress’ or ‘to clothe’ in French. So rehabiller is the recoating of the stone by making grooves in it with a mallet. Dutch millers used to take the last part of this French verb and make it ‘buttocks’. Would you like to know more about this? Look it up in the book: From saddle stone to seat porter , a three-volume bible about windmills. On a windmill there is therefore absolutely no question of buttocks as a noun, but of buttocks as a verb. The miller in question will probably have to ‘bare his buttocks’ about this now…
Winsum, Derk Jan Tinga
Postscript by Herman Sandman:
That’s why I ended the column with the sentence: ‘At least, if I’ve listened carefully.’ There’s a good chance the miller got it right and I misunderstood.