(b)logophile

Municipal elections are coming up. I’m not paying much attention, but an amusing piece of self-assured advertising pushed itself under my nose this evening. There’s a smart initiative here, issuing stickers for on your mailbox that say “No unaddressed advertising, no house-to-house newsletters” (or no to one but yes to the other). They’re nationwide and [...]

“Wij spreken niet het Nederlands, maar onze taal is universeel: het is de muziek!” (“We don’t speak Dutch, but our language is universal: it is music!”) Babylon Circus played the Melkweg last night, and it was great. They’re a huge (ten-piece?) French ska/reggae group with truly astonishing energy on-stage.

The IND (the Dutch immigration folk) have a spiffy website. They have an 0900 number with friendly and cheerful staff. They have all the documents you need as pdf downloads, usually in both Dutch and English. And so I am regularly, consistently, and enormously surprised at the regular, consistent, and enormous gap between what I [...]