Stinking rich, but what good is Michel Perridon to the world?

What a nonsensical piece in the Magazine about that rich man Perridon (5/11). Why we had to be saddled with this pauper’s very limited views and worldview is a complete mystery to me.

These kinds of people have the money to contribute to a better world, but no, they buy 300 houses in Dubai and say they’re ‘putting their balls on the chopping block’. And meanwhile pay a minimum of tax in the country of origin. Stay in Dubai and cancel your Dutch citizenship. The world is of no use to rich people who are moaning with the Telegraaf from the deck of a barge in Dubai. If you stay in the Netherlands, really put your balls on the block and go into social housing. Not 300 homes for the elite, but 30 thousand for people who need it. Do something real.

Dear Volkskrant, if I want to read this emptiness, I would have subscribed to De Telegraaf, but unfortunately, I’m really too left for that.

Meindert de VriesDen Bosch

Train

According to Sander Schimmelpeninck, the train and everything around it is a barometer for how a country is doing (First, 7/11): the worse a country is doing, the worse it is with the track. Yet that is not entirely true. In the late 1930s under Mussolini, Italian trains ran right on time, despite the country being in crisis. The lesson then was: if you want to become popular as a politician, you have to make sure that the trains run on time. (Politicians, are you paying attention?)

Len KoetsierGroningen

Schiphol

What crocodile tears are our government officials, Minister Jetten and Mayor Schuurmans, after the action of several hundred climate activists at Schiphol, which had little or no negative consequences for the economy and nature. Jetten called on the demonstrators to demonstrate in places where that is allowed, while Schuurmans said he would recover all costs from the activists.

I am curious what their reaction, or rather action will be if the farmers find it necessary to flatten part of the land again with their violent and intimidating actions with corresponding negative consequences.

Tejo van GeffenUtrecht

Churchill

In 1939, the then English Prime Minister Chamberlain tried to keep the peace by negotiating with Hitler. Fortunately, they listened to Churchill, who said that you should not negotiate with a lion if your head is already in its mouth.

We are now again with our heads in the mouth of a lion (nitrogen/global warming) and D66 lacks the courage to

cause a cabinet crisis just because they are doing badly in the polls. So once again ‘papping and keeping wet’.

No wonder people have less and less faith in politicians. If only there was another Churchill among us who does what needs to be done and says ‘the pot with political consequences’.

Terence MillerHeesch

Evangelists

Thomas Rueb’s chilling report on the far-right evangelists in the US last Saturday was not about the charity normally preached in Christian churches. This megachurch calls for hatred and the beheading of someone who speaks out against racism within the police. The same method of killing that IS used to silence their unbelieving opponents and against which the professing civilized Christians protested indignantly, and eventually acted. But who will stop these extremist Christians who are no better than the Islamic counterpart against which the Americans in particular acted?

Arie den Dulkmr

ecologists

I always enjoy reading Elma Drayer’s columns, but not this time (O&D, 4/11). She thinks that the wolf no longer fits in our densely populated country, but ‘ecologists thought differently’ and ‘apparently the return was a good thing, because it was a good thing, without them (ecologists) saying why’. Further down it says: ‘A logic you often encounter when it comes to Mother Nature.’

I am an ecologist, even a professor of the subject. Yet I, and many other ecologists and conservationists, are against the arrival of the wolf. Elma Drayer’s statement fits into the category ‘the Frisians are stiff and the Limburgers hospitable’. Both are not true, often it is even the other way around.

Kees BlokRosmalen