Monarchy: For or Against?

Last week a Niniane asked me whether I was in favour of the monarchy. Now, when I think of our royal family, the first thing that springs to mind is them wrecking our economy and being mindless autocrats from about 1640-1900, so obviously I answered no. We've had no good male Oranges since Frederik Hendrik (although admittedly Willem III is debatable; but I personally tend to dislike him for undermining the navy and thus the economic motor behind the Republic). It's only been since Wilhelmina that we've had good rulers, but these had relatively little power so I find it hard to judge whether they would not have lapsed into the same errors as their ancestors had they been full-fledged rulers.

It turned out that Niniane is slightly more up-to-date than I am, and thought that the behaviour of kings in the 19th century has little to do with how we should value the monarchical institution today. This made me realise how important history is to my perception of reality. Not to say that I am always thinking of history, or how things would compare, but the historical "inheritance" does concern me.

The monarchy has to principal defensive arguments: firstly, it binds the nation together through a single monarchical figure, and secondly, more formally, the monarch has the right to appoint the person who forms the cabinet. The first part obviously has the most importance, because the second part can more easily be replaced, for example by letting parliament appoint this so-called informateur.
The role of the monarch as figurehead is, however, in my opinion debatable. The monarch is generally far removed from the ordinary citizen, as her accent and expensive hats quickly make clear, and can actually become object of popular scorn, herself, as happened with Elizabeth II after the death of Diana.

I am personally opposed to the idea of a president based on the model of the US. I do not want power struggles between parliament and head of state, with either sides trying to grab as much power as possible and treating politics as a playground.
What I do not oppose, however, is a president such as they have in Germany or France: here, the president, usually a retired politician, is purely head of state, not head of government as well, and has simply a ceremonial function, apart from being a central point for the country in case of emergency. This would save a lot of money annually.

I was going to write a paragraph here about the great historical value of keeping the monarchy, as a counter-argument to the previous sentences, but I discovered I can't do that without causing my brain to implode. After all, the Orange family was never monarchical in origin, nor were they granted this position by the people; they were thrust upon the country by foreign powers during the Congress of Vienna (1815) and not by popular support. To maintain that they should still be Kings and Queens because this was historically the case is therefore a fairly weak reason, and also a bit pointless; when time passes, things change.

Ah, if only Louis the Good was still our king!

The World is Flat

Finally, after perhaps an entire week filled with a sweltering sun, yesterday we had rain. Although the air is humid now, the temperature is slightly lower, which makes it all a bit more bearable.

Today, while walking the dogs (photo coming soon), I came across a flattened frog on the road. Flat animals gave me massive trauma when I was little, and this poor frog brought them all back up again. The bastard!

When I was a child I was very curious concerning nature, and would often study the ground to see interesting rocks or twigs or animals. Once, I came across what appeared to me to be wood or a similarly hard material. It had a curious shape and I picked it up to show it to my parents, proudly proclaiming that I had found something which looked funnily similar to a frog! Shock, horror, and tears followed soon after when I was explained it was a frog, just... flat.

This story is nothing compared to the time I discovered a very realistic cardboard rat on the street... Suffice it to say I washed my hands at least ten times within an hour after that encounter.

Holidays

Because my parents are currently on holiday, I am now in possession of a house. Two houses, actually, as friends of us are also away and I'm watching over their house, dog and plants as well. This is fairly uneventful, so I've been spending my time reading, watching TV or films and of course walking dogs. I took a picture of Arwen and Boris (the two dogs I'm looking after at the moment, the first one my own) and will scan and upload it fairly soon. While they're very different dogs, they fit together quite well as they're both black and white.
Thanks to the heat, none of the walks have been very long or memorable, although there's no problem with Boris, who is usually fairly aggressive towards other dogs, because there's simply not that many dogs being walked at any time. People make shorter walks, so the slightly off-beat paths I'm taking are nearly always deserted.

Last Saturday I went to Friesland for a family reunion, which was very good. Friesland is a nice province, sort of like North Holland but with more lakes and ships and a funny language. We went to Sneek/Snits (the city's Frisian name), a very nice place with an old feel to it. Seeing as basically none of us were real Frisians, there was much touristy behaviour, which included acquiring the top two local products, Oranjekoeken and sugarloaves. They tasted excellent, which, together with the company, made up for spending 8 hours of the day in a train.

Message from the Void

Nothing much has happened at all in the past couple of days; at least, nothing much worth recounting. I did some digging and discovered what species the firefly I recently saw belongs to, namely the “grote glimworm” (the common glow-worm), the single most common firefly in the Netherlands and Belgium (there are two other species of firefly here). You can see a picture HERE. That is exactly what I saw.

I also got a flat tyre in the middle of town on Monday and then walked a few kilometres through the scorching sun to my parents, who have a reserve bike. On the way I dropped my bike off in front of a closed bicycle repair store, where I brought it for repair the following day. I intended to pick it up again on Wednesday but apparently the store is closed Wednesday afternoons, so it wasn't until Thursday that I finally go my bike back.
In retrospect it would have been a much better plan to have walked the bike to the train station’s bicycle repair shop, which is open pretty much all the time, and from there taken the bus to my parents. Not only would it have meant I’d get my bike back much sooner, I also would have saved myself the long walk because I was closer to the station than to my parents when I got a flat tyre (it would have saved me a kilometre). Ah well.

Also, on the BBC they have a wonderful slide show with photos of some rare frogs. Very nice pictures.