Daylight Saving Time has begun on television: Max Holiday Man Monday evening was again ready for a new season full of mangy holiday chalets, group trips that went screeching downhill and of course the key question: who is liable? With a new corona wave and the Schiphol crisis, the program can rub its hands on: ‘We couldn’t have had a better kick-off,’ said Sybrand Niessen. In the studio were four angry consumers with flight delays.
We already see an item on TV about the situation in the departure hall every day, but I would suggest that when the school holidays start, we broadcast a continuous live connection with Schiphol on NPO 1, and that Sybrand Niessen is standing there with a helmet and a bulletproof vest. Perhaps Caroline van der Plas, who recently suggested that the army be helped, would also like to come and hand out slices of gingerbread and packets of Caprisun.
Which brings me to another crisis that is slowly claiming more airtime: the one in shelters. After all, there was a report on Monday from the Justice and Security Inspectorate that stated what we had seen for months: that the situation in asylum centers for children is abominable. On the NOS News said Joudi, who has been in emergency shelter for seven months: ‘I am sad, sometimes I wish I were dead.’ Sleeping in tents, hardly any privacy, psychological problems and loss of concentration, and moving from emergency shelter to emergency shelter so often that it is difficult to find education or friends.
‘We are falling through the humanitarian lower limit,’ said chairman of the migration advisory council Monique Kremer in One today, and that should come as no surprise. After all, the Netherlands had opted for flexible asylum reception. On Monday evening, half of the administrative Netherlands was in a crisis meeting in Utrecht with State Secretary Eric van der Burg and programs were ready for the outcome: what was the crisis plan?
A fitting side dish with this grim news was Children of the Labyrinth, a mini-documentary series by Marieke van der Velden and Philip Brink for which refugee parents wrote letters to their children on Lesbos, among other places. On Monday, the series, which will be broadcast daily on BNNVara this week, started with Latifa’s letter to her daughter Mohzda. Refugees themselves outline their situation in these simple portraits, which hit their target all the harder because of the similarities: the attempt to save her child, the sense of guilt now that decision also harms her.
With the report on the reception crisis at hand, it is impossible to get out of the misery Children of the Labyrinth can still be seen as a far-from-your-bed show. Bee On 1 political reporter Thomas van Groningen was ready to discuss the results of the crisis consultation: and, what was the outcome?
“Yeah, that was a bit crazy, there wasn’t really.”
No one should expect a cup of warm milk and a lullaby from the TV.