Volt in the Volkskrant

Volt is ready to conquer Europe

(Ariejan Korteweg – de Volkskrant – 19 December 2018)

Laurens, Jasper and Reinier want to enter Europe.

Volt is a new party that takes the European ideal literally. It wants to participate in the European elections under the same name and with the same programme in all countries of the EU - and it even has members in the non-EU countries Switzerland, Albania and Norway. “Bringing politics to a European level” is the ideal. Only the lists of candidates are national because the rules make that necessary – one of the flaws in the system that the party wants to tackle.

Last weekend, the party leader was elected and Jasper Munnichs, publicity manager of Volt, asked if the Volkskrant would like an exclusive interview. Not really, to be honest, was the response: let Volt first prove that it is more than a group of European citizens who want to expand their international network. Yet it continued to nag. Volt wants to take a logical step: to conquer Brussels from the outside with a pan-European party.

There are gadgets in abundance, yet there isn’t a purple Volt flag or sweater to be seen in the party office. The office is actually the living room of the freelancers who live here and Volt can use it for a small contribution. Hence the drying racks with washing in the corner. Above the desk is a horizontal Christmas tree, like a battering ram aimed at Brussels. In the beginning, insects fell out of it, says Jasper (25), but that has fortunately stopped.

Volt chooses European Parliament leadership candidate

Reinier van Lanschot (29) was selected as the party leader on Saturday, Laurens Dassen (33) is number 3. They have left their jobs at Ahold and the ABNAmro Bank respectively, Jasper has put his computer-science study on hold. Everything for Volt.

Since the establishment of the Dutch branch, six months ago, a lot has happened. There are local divisions as far apart as Barendrecht and Deventer, a group of 1,200 “supporters” has been formed, every Monday evening the Volt Academy gives an online lecture on the EU. There are “cross-border events” between Kleve and Nijmegen, or Maastricht and Aachen. And there are days when Volters look at the same subject in all European cities: “Fix the EU” or “Make Europe an economic powerhouse”.

We are swamped with ideas, they say. In all capitals, there’s a large clock indicating the number of days that peace has reigned in Europe: 26,889. Or you can fly across European borders in a purple hot-air balloon.

The aim: 25 MEPs, spread over at least seven countries - then you have your own political group. The conditions are favourable. Because you can Skype free with Bulgarians or Romanians and hold virtual meetings via Google Meet. And because everyone in their generation speaks reasonable English. “You can contribute from your computer at home.”

Party office with horizontal Christmas tree.

I’m curious about how we will be regarded in fifty years time, Reinier muses. A bit like Esperanto, fun but never applied on a large scale? “I think we are the beginning of much more. Just think: According to the Euro barometer, 79% of the Dutch think the EU is a good thing. While only 37% voted. That is where our options are.”

But what do you think of us, they enquire at a certain moment. Things like that. They never ask that in The Hague, they have the answers themselves. You are a “pioneering party”, I say. New political parties – Denk, PVV, FvD, 50Plus, Party for the Animals – are usually triggered by an outrage. For you everything is positive.

They nod. Volt is positive and progressive, wants to include shipping and aviation in the climate goals, finds camps for refugees in the snow morally reprehensible and wants to tackle the democratic deficit of Europe. “All together that’s enough to wind people up.”

Reinier returns to the topic of identity at the end. "The snack known as a hair salon," he says. (It’s a hotchpotch of chips, kebab, salad, cheese and lots of sauce – in the oven.) “I remember when I ate one for the first time: 1 January 2009. Delicious. Such a thing only exists here. That is also identity.”

Looking for a European snack? They nod.

Cycle helmets don't help

Lots of people seem to believe that wearing a helmet on a bicycle makes cycling safer. There's plenty of evidence that it doesn't. 

In fact, wearing a helmet does a lot more harm than good. It makes cycling look dangerous when it isn't and there is even evidence that cars tend to drive close to bikes with a helmeted rider.

Of course, if you're going out mountain biking or take part in a race, you'd be pretty stupid to do it without a helmet. But if you want to cycle to work or go down the shops, then it's really not necessary or desirable.

And if you're unfortunate enough to find yourself under the wheels of the truck, a helmet wouldn't have helped anyway.


Helmets and the Law in the British Medical Journal

Bike helmets can't prevent brain injury

The Bike Helmet Paradox

How bike helmet laws do more harm than good

The unintended consequences of bike helmets

This was also pointed out in 2006 study.

Ditching bike helmet laws better for health

People should wear helmets when cycling - a fallacy

To encourage cycling, lose the helmets

Sarah Wilson on helmets

Guilty Until Proven Helmeted

And a few figures...

An example for the helmet fallacy:

"Our response when someone supports Mandatory Helmet Laws just because they say a helmet saved their life one time:

Image shows/represents damaged ww2 aircraft that made it back from bombing raids. It's used to signify a fallacy... Military first thought they should protect the damaged parts of the plane. But in reality, the planes that didn't make it home were damaged in the white parts."

Thanks to @BicycleLobby and @Schmucklevision.

Euro trains

Could trains be the future?

We are going to have to change our lifestyle and that means adapting to changing sources of energy and different ways of getting around.

Electric cars should become more environmentally friendly. They run on electricity, but at present production is polluting, as are the tyres. It will be a long time before airplanes stop being a threat to the environment. In the meantime, the most durable form of transport is the train.
Brave experiments like the new service to London by Eurostar are showing the way, but have been prohibitively expensive. As planes and buses get cheaper, trains have done little to catch up. There's a promising development as Eurostar is eager to put on trains from Amsterdam to London much more cheaply than at present. Eurostar from Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam to London is just as fast as the plane (centre to centre).

But in general, trains in some parts of Europe are still prohibitively expensive and can be very difficult to book. The UK is in first place when it comes to the costs of train travel. This graph makes for very uncomfortable reading:

Recently three friends who couldn't fly needed to come from Jersey to Amsterdam at short notice, but the journey both ways was hell. Thanks to transport strikes in France, the family spent two days getting here, with an unplanned night in Paris on the way. On the return trip, the planned train costs for three from Amsterdam to Saint-Malo were €1600 (!), but again fate intervened and they had to take a taxi 200 kilometres from Nantes to Saint-Malo at a cost of another €400!

Please follow the train coalition and let's get more iron horses on the tracks. http://groups.google.com/group/traincoalition

Quicktime Pro alternatives on Windows

If you want a simple - quick and dirty - way to edit a video, there's nothing to surpass Quicktime Pro from Apple. When you just want to chop a bit off a video file or splice a few videos together (assuming they are encoded the same). And I am talking about Windows and specifically with version 7 of QT Pro. It is incredibly easy to use, it's fast and lossless. (That means it doesn't actually convert or re-encode video, so it doesn't lose anything.)

As a video player, it is unnecessary. As Apple says:

However Apple, in its wisdom, decided to retire this gem. It still works now and can be installed. I still have a license and can use it, but there must be some suitable alternatives for when Apple finally closes it down? Or when Windows no longer plays ball.

Suggestions, please?

Lords amendment on the Brexit Bill.

My letter to a couple of members of the House of Lords...

Brexit shall, I fear, be the greatest disaster to overcome the United Kingdom in centuries. 

Having grown up in Croydon and studied in Manchester, I moved from the UK to the Netherlands in 1973. I am a British emigrant with two children who had a Dutch mother. The children are half English but only have Dutch passports. If Brexit goes ahead they will no longer have the freedom of movement that allowed me to settle in the UK. They would have retained that freedom, had I applied for British passports for them before they were eighteen. But when they turned eighteen (my son Ian in 2015), there was no shadow on the horizon and no apparent need to apply for British passports.  Like all of us, they have benefitted from the shared European heritage that gives them the freedom to move and settle anywhere in the EU, including in England where they spent a considerable time in their childhood. 

Indeed, in the last two years, my son has been able to take advantage of the freedom of movement. As a talented young jazz musician and member of the Dutch National Youth Jazz Orchestra, he has visited the UK to perform in a cooperative venture with the British National Youth Jazz Orchestra and the German one, BuJazzO. The apt name Three Nations under One Groove reminds us of our shared cultural heritage and the benefits for all of a cooperation like this. If Brexit were to go ahead, ventures like this would be a lot more difficult. In addition, the plight of all European artists and musicians in the case of Brexit would be awful. Actors, musicians, filmmakers, artists now have the freedom to move freely and work where they like within the EU. Much as Vincent van Gogh did 140 years ago.

The very close result in an advisory referendum - voted for by only 37% of the restricted electorate (which excluded Brits who had moved abroad, Europeans who had settled in the UK and the 16-17-year-olds who were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum) - cannot possibly justify the devastating constitutional changes now imminent. Even less so since, in the two years following the referendum, there has been absolutely no progress towards a deal in any way comparable to the present extremely advantageous one. 

In addition, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the referendum campaign was riddled with dirty tricks. The result itself has been thrown into doubt and, in the meantime, many British people are changing their minds. I am delighted to see that attempts to curb the freedom of MPs in the House of Commons are not effective in the House of Lords. I'm counting on you to protect the interests of all citizens and inhabitants of the UK. 

Please vote in favour of the "Parliamentary motions on a referendum", Lord Newby's amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill.