On politics

Tomorrow we have local elections across the Netherlands. One of the joys of living here is that the country has a system of representative democracy . That means you can vote FOR the party whose policies you support - rather than spending time trying to calculate how to vote AGAINST the party whose views and values you find most abhorrent. I have lost count of the times that I voted negatively in the UK to prevent one particular party gaining a seat. I resented that.

Here the main local issues are likely to be Sunday shopping and the proportion of social housing to be incorporated in new housing developments (the balance has been swinging towards the private sector in recent years). But with the recent collapse of the coalition government - more eyes are likely to be on what the local elections portend for the national election in June. Geert Wilders' anti-islamic party is drawing a lot of attention and public support at the moment - which is hugely worrying - even if that support might be more a protest against the main parties than anything else. They intend to keep their powder dry by only standing in two municipalities in these elections. So it will be hard to gauge the level of support they actually do have.