Election time in Amsterdam

SP woman
Originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

They all want our vote, all 25 parties or so. They all tell us about the good things they want to do, never the bad things that happen in order for them to do what they want to do, like cutting down trees, building on sports fields and building underground car parks.

We vote on March 7th. Here is a young woman from the SP (Socialistische Partij), who have now turned their red tomatoes into psychadelic pink, a colour recently adopted by D '66 ... a sign that they are for pink policies? I wonder...

There are so many problems in Amsterdam, many of them, if not caused by te politicinas, then certainly they can be alleviated by them. We have extreme poverty (it seems), we have a world city fading out of contention in relation to its rivals as it becomes 'safe' and over-controlled, bars which close at 1 am, overt racism and homophobia, ever more restrictions on open-air festivals, all the green parts of the city being ear-marked for development, roads and cycle paths being dug up constantly, trees being cut down and so on.... and yet one has the feeling that whichever way one votes, nothing will change. There are other forces out there, which maybe the well-meaning politicians cannot do much about.