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![]() https://www.trybooking.com/CLFYT Heineken The public prosecution department has started a criminal investigation into brewing group Heineken for continuing to use cans that did not qualify for the deposit system after the deadline date. The department has confirmed the probe but declined to give any more details, website Nu.nl reported. Fifteen cent deposits on cans were introduced on April 1 and drinks companies were not allowed to send any cans to shops without a deposit bar code from then on. But Heineken continued to do so, saying it was taking advantage of a three-month changeover period. In addition, the brewing giant said it did not want to waste any cans or cardboard. Government inspectors, however, told the company there was no transition period and ordered it to stop or face a €1 million fine, at which point the brewing group complied. In the meantime, however, recycling campaign group Recycling Netwerk Benelux had made a formal complaint against the brewer, accusing it of “very calculating behaviour” and putting its own interests above that of society at large. Heineken told the AD it was confident about the results of the inquiry which is said could be considered “an opportunity to clarify the confusion”. Mortgage The average mortgage taken out by clients of the Hypotheker advisory group was up 4% in July when compared to last year which is another indication that the market may be turning, the company said on Friday. The July figure of €321,818 is the highest since April 2022 when the downturn started, the Hypotheker said. The group has around 180 offices nationwide. Despite higher interest rates, the supply of properties rose by 29% in the third quarter as more rental properties were sold off and higher transfer tax for investors reduced competition. The company also reported a 12% increase in mortgage requests in the first quarter compared with the last three months of 2022 and a 17% rise in the second quarter. First-time buyers now have a better chance of a home, commercial director Menno Luiten said. “They are benefiting from more supply and they can borrow more because of wage rises… but there is still reason for caution because of the major shortage of properties.” The increase in mortgage loans among Hypotheker customers was highest in Flevoland, at 17% Chemicals dumped into the Maas in Venlo Venlo city council has partly closed down a tank cleaning firm in the wake of an NRC report which said the firm had dumped dangerous chemicals into the Maas river and exposed staff to cancer-causing benzene. The public prosecution department is also looking into operations at Claessen Tankcleaning, the NRC said on Thursday afternoon. Council officials made an unannounced visit to the company following the publication of the NRC’s report and found that lorries were not being cleaned in accordance with the terms of the licence. Measures to stop the benzene entering the environment had also not been implemented properly.. Jail time for online abuse for famous Dutch actor Actor Thijs Römer has been sentenced to three months in jail, two suspended and 240 hours community service for the online abuse of three girls between 2015 and 2017. The public prosecution department had not called for jail time for the actor, who has appeared in over 20 films. The court in Assen ruled, however, that Römer had encouraged his victims to perform sexual acts via private chats on social media and to send him nude photos. Because the girls were 16 and under at the time, he was also found guilty of possessing child pornography. NS Dutch state-owned railway company NS will lose its sole rights to operate international services but will be given the green light to introduce higher rush hour ticket prices, sources close to the negotiations have told the Volkskrant. Ministers and NS officials have been in talks for months about the next concession to run the country’s railway network, most of which is still in state hands. The current main concession ends in 2024, with the next operating from 2025 to 2033. The most controversial aspect of the new contract is permission to raise ticket prices for rush hour travellers, something which chief executive Wouter Koolmees has been urging for some time. Recreation of the potato eaters’ room in Van Gogh Village Museum A museum in the village where Van Gogh painted his archetypal Potato Eaters has managed to tell the story of his Dutch life and work – without a single one of his paintings. Van Gogh Village Museum in Brabant, which re-opened last month after a major extension and renovation, aims to take visitors on a journey through the misunderstood painter’s times and techniques living as a Protestant in a largely traditional, Catholic Dutch village. The building, formerly the Museum Vincentre and before that the local city hall, a school and even a Chinese restaurant, has been transformed thanks to a €2.5 million loan from the province and private fundraising. One part now tells the story of the Dutch artist’s life and early times in the Netherlands, with artefacts and copies of works, one room has a recreation of The Potato Eaters, and a temporary exhibition space will show contemporary art exhibitions such as photography inspired by Van Gogh. Visitors begin their tour of the museum with a film on Van Gogh in the Netherlands, drawing from his many letters, leading to a series of rooms recounting his life and study of painting. Upstairs, several rooms explore Van Gogh’s influence and relationship with fellow painters of the era such as his friend Anthon van Rappard and his student Anton Kerssemakers. Meanwhile in another wing, an interactive display created with chip maker ASML demonstrates how the Dutch painter experimented with colour, light and contrast. The light lab on colour and contrast Photo: S Boztas Life ‘We have a collaboration with the Noordbrabants Museum, where the real paintings are, and here we focus on his life,’ said Frank van den Eijnden, director of the Van Gogh Brabant foundation. ‘There are no original Van Goghs because it’s too expensive, although there are original paintings from his friends.The real paintings are across on the other side of the street, in L the Noordbrabants Museum!’ Lightlab ‘It took him months and months to discover the connection between light and colour, but in the light lab, you too will see the connection,’ he said. ‘With our eyes, we do not see light, but the reflections of light – from the walls, from clothes, from a staircase.’ It was the artists’ journey, he said, to discover this. The Van Gogh Village Museum will be opened officially on May 16 by queen Máxima, and is part of the Museumkaart entry scheme. Amsterdam’s cable car plan poised to win council backing: officials are poised to give the green light to a controversial cable car crossing over the IJ waterway, the Parool reported on Monday. The paper said various sources indicated the city’s three-party coalition – D66, GroenLinks and the PvdA – discussed the project during their ongoing budget talks and that they will give the project the go ahead. The crossing would stretch from the westen port area where up to 70,000 new homes are due to be built to Noord. Stichting IJbaan says the crossing would not be a tourist attraction, but a serious alternative to the ferry network, capable of carrying 5,500 people per hour. -Advertentie- The project, first launched in 2014, is the brainchild of civil engineers Bas Dekker and Willem Wessels who have set up a foundation Stichting IJbaan to promote their plan. The initiative will have to be entirely privately funded because the city is not making any money available, the Parool said. Earlier this month, the Parool reported that the city is poised to put €100 million into building a cycle bridge over the IJ in the east of the city. Amsterdam’s budget will be presented to city councillors on Thursday refugees Record numbers of unaccompanied child refugees arrived in the Netherlands last year, according to figures released by the immigration service IND. The total number of children arriving alone almost doubled from 2,191 in 2021 to 4,207 last year, partly as a result of the abolition of coronavirus restrictions on travel. The IND said it believed some families were sending children ahead because they have stronger rights as refugees than adults, so their parents can join them later under family reunion rules. Asylum minister Eric van der Burg tried last autumn to suspend family reunions in order to relieve the strain on the refugee accommodation system, but was forced to abandon the measure when the Council of State ruled that it breached domestic and European law. Unnecessary price rices Rabobank economists have calculated that Dutch businesses profited last year from a period of high inflation by increasing prices more than necessary, reports the Telegraaf. It says that, as a whole, Dutch companies increased prices by more than 2% more than they needed to do in 2022, effectively ratcheting up their profit margin. ‘If companies had not increased their selling prices beyond what would have been minimally necessary to maintain their profit, the increase in selling prices in 2022 could theoretically have been 2.2% lower,’ the report said. This profiteering – or ‘grab’ margin in Dutch – is responsible for a fifth of total inflation last year, the Rabobank calculates. In 2022, average prices for consumers rose by 11.6%. Some of this was due to increased energy and raw material costs but some of it, the economists concludes, was profiteering. ‘The bill for inflation has fallen into the consumer’s lap: that is a fact,’ economists Hugo Erken and Stefan Groot told the Telegraaf. ‘We see that profits are quite substantial and the profit ratio has increased, especially in the fourth quarter of 2022. Initially, the idea was that companies should partly reduce their profit margins.’ The Rabobank calculations are based on CBS statistics. In 2022, companies made a record €238 billion, while buying in less energy and raw materials. Gas use, for instance, dropped by some 25% year-on-year in the last three months of the year. Rabo calculates that even including the cost of higher wages, annual company profits rose by €10 billion at the end of 2022. A spokesman for Ahold Delhaize, owner of the biggest Dutch supermarket group Albert Heijn, told Dutch News that almost two-thirds of its 2022 profit was down to its activities in the US. The company’s operating profit in Europe fell almost 14% last year, the spokesman said. |
Born in Sydney, played for Oranje
‘I was always interested in the Australian players who came to Europe when I was playing,’ Graeme Rutjes, former Netherlands International, tells me. We’re chatting via What’s App, Graeme at the golf course he manages near Utrecht, me at home in Hobart.[1] What makes Graeme unique amongst Oranje players is that he was born in Australia, the son of Dutch emigrants. ‘When you’re Dutch and playing football professionally but born in Australia, that’s something special. It was written about when I started, and when I made the Dutch team. Born in Sydney but Dutch.’ Graeme’s parents arrived in Australia in 1956, newly married and looking to start a new life. Graeme was born in 1960. The Rutjes were settled near Centennial Park, his mum raising two boys, his dad working for Hunter Douglas, the Dutch window and blinds manufacturer, when Graeme’s Opa in Holland died suddenly. In the winter of 1963, the family returned to Holland to support his widowed Oma. ‘I was born there but I can’t remember anything of my first three years.’ Graeme grew up in Rotterdam and followed Feyenoord, one of Holland’s biggest clubs. He started playing when he was ten and a couple of years later, he and team-mates went to Feyenoord to try out with their youth team. They were turned away. The Dutch system didn’t allow for kids to simply roll up, wanting a game - they had to be invited to trial by a club. ‘Most players are selected by the clubs when they are eleven or twelve or thirteen, and then by the time they are eighteen or nineteen, they’re in the First team. I started when I was nineteen, going to Excelsior - I did it by myself.’ Excelsior is the minnow of Rotterdam’s three senior football clubs.[2] Graeme had begun studying economics at Erasmus University; Excelsior’s grounds were next door, so he approached the club to trial with them. The trainer of the Seconds, Rob Jacobs, let him train with his team, liked what he saw and invited him back. Graeme spent a year with the Seconds before debuting with the senior side in 1980; he stayed five years, amassing 149 games, and settling into the role of defender. He also continued with his studies, lugging textbooks to training camps and onto the buses carrying the team to and from matches. ‘In those days players liked to play cards and games on the buses. I had my study books with me.’ Graeme transferred to KV Mechelen in the Belgium League in 1985, staying with the club five years - and 153 games - through its greatest era, including a European trophy and a domestic cup and title. Six years - and another 152 games - at RSC Anderlecht, one of Belgium’s most successful clubs, followed. Australian players first appeared in Continental Europe around this time, catching Graeme’s attention, especially those playing in Holland and Belgium. Striker Eddie Krncevic, starring with Anderlecht while Graeme was at KV Mechelen, made a particular impression. ‘I really liked playing against him. Always a hard fight, clear duels. He was a tall, slim guy and he could jump very high. Like an Aussie rules player. He knew how to jump and stay in the air; he was always hard to fight against. And when it was over, all the elbows, and we’d kicked each other, it was done and over with,’ Graeme laughs. ‘He was fun to play against.’ ‘Graeme’s one of the best defenders I ever played against,’ Eddie tells me later. ‘I couldn’t score on him. I finally broke my duck in a Belgian Cup match at home. The return game at Mechelen I didn’t touch the ball, he had me in his back pocket.’ [3] Graeme also played against Graham Arnold. ‘Another tough player - wasn’t mean, hard to fight against. Same as Eddie, the duels were tough, but afterwards, always fine.’ Frank Farina was a star in Belgium in this period. ‘He was a good striker, smart, quick for the first few metres, hard to play against…and a nice guy.’ Paul Okon was a teammate of Farina’s though his defensive role meant he and Graeme rarely clashed. Aurelio Vidmar topped Belgium’s goalscoring while at Standard Liege in 1994-95. ‘He was smart, not sneaky, he had a nose for the goal.’ Such a nose that Graeme recalls hitting him hard early in an important end-of-season match when he was at Anderlecht. Anderlecht went on to win the game.[4] Eddie knew of Graeme’s Australian background, at one stage urging Socceroo coach, Frank Arok, to cap him. But no one ever approached Graeme to play for Australia. ‘I might have switched if I hadn’t made it into the Dutch National Team. But it never went that far.’ While at Excelsior Graeme had played for the Dutch ‘B’ team; in top form at KV Mechelen, he was named in the initial squad for the 1988 Netherlands European Championship campaign though missed selection in the final squad that went on to win the country’s first major football competition. He finally made his senior Oranje debut in March 1989, a 2-0 victory over the Soviet Union. That same year Graeme graduated from University with a Doctoraal, the Dutch equivalent of a Master’s Degree; avoiding the card games on the team bus had paid off. In a unique ceremony, he received his award from Thijs Libreghts, the Manager of the Netherlands team at the time. ‘It was special because normally professional football players in Holland don’t study.’ He played another twelve games for Oranje over the next two years, including in the disastrous Dutch Italia 90 World Cup campaign. With the core of the successful Euros side still playing, including such talents as Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten, the Koeman brothers, Gerald Vanenburg and Hans van Breukelen, Oranje was one of the favourites for the tournament, but the team, riven by big egos, dissention, and politics, fell apart. Scrapping through to the Round of 16 through three draws in the Group stage, the Dutch were then eliminated by eventual winners, West Germany. ‘We were never a team. In 1988 everybody wanted to fight for it, but in 1990 there was no cohesion, no glue. It was strange. The players were like little islands instead of a team,’ recalls Graeme.[5] Graeme made it to the Eredivisie the ‘long way’ and juggled studies with football for much of his career. He played his role in successful teams, played hundreds of senior club games, played for the Netherlands several times. He must have highlights? ‘Actually, making it as a professional footballer was the highlight.’ He expands. ‘I saw so many young players, eighteen or nineteen, when I started at Excelsior who I thought were better than me at the time. But they never made it. You need something special in your attitude to get to your goal of being a professional player. Yes, playing for my country was a highlight, winning a European title with Mechelen was a highlight, but if you look at it, the life of a professional footballer and getting paid to do what you love, then my whole career was a highlight.’ His answer makes perfect sense to me. After finishing at Anderlecht, Graeme returned to the Netherlands, taking up a role owning and managing a golf course in Zeeland. Soccer has still drawn his interest at times - he joined Feyenoord in a business advisory role in 2011 and later became Technical Director at NAC Breda but gave it away to return to golf management and development. With Graeme’s drive, I presume he must have a low golf handicap. He chuckles. ‘It’s terrible. I got stuck on nineteen. I still think I can play a single handicap. But when golf is your work, not even on your own course but any course, you look at the grass, the hospitality, the clubhouse, how the greenkeepers work, is it a two-tone mow or full mow, how the tees look, the feel of the course. It’s more work than relaxing.’ Ah, okay, so his focus is on the other aspects of golf rather than chasing that little white, dimpled ball around. These days his involvement in soccer is limited to being on the KNVB disciplinary committee, a role that’s been simplified in recent years with the introduction of VAR and disciplinary issues largely being sorted out during matches. Graeme’s interest in Australian soccer was piqued once more when Guus Hiddink arrived as coach of the Socceroos in 2005, and again when his former teammate in the Dutch National team, John van ‘t Schip was at the helm of Melbourne Heart and Melbourne City. But his interest in the country extends beyond soccer - he has a genuine affection for the country of his birth. He’s been back twice with family on extended trips travelling across the country. ‘I really like Australia. I like the way of living - not laid back, but there’s a certain relaxed attitude around. I like the people, they’re normally optimistic and happy. Sydney would be a great place to live - I could have lived there.’ And if he had, who knows, perhaps he’d have taken his place alongside Krncevic, Arnold, Farina, Okon, Vidmar and co., playing for the Socceroos… RSC Anderlecht has a short highlights video of Graeme Rutjes, available here: https://www.rsca.be/en/media/video/best-graeme-rutjes [1] Interviews with Graeme Rutjes, 21 October, 10 November 2021. [2] Feyenoord play in the south of Rotterdam and are one of the Netherlands ‘Big Three’ clubs, along with Ajax and PSV Eindhoven. Excelsior play to the east of the city. The third club is Sparta Rotterdam, based in the west of the city. [3] Interview with Eddie Krncevic, 6 Dec. 2021. Born in Geelong, Eddie was an Australian soccer pioneer, one of the first Australian players to make their way to, and succeed in, Europe. His Belgium career spanned more than ten seasons and included titles with Cercle Brugge and Anderlecht; in 1988-89 he took out the leading goal scorer award while at Anderlecht. He’d played Australian Rules at high school in Melbourne, at one point even being offered a trial at Essendon after kicking seven goals in a schoolboy’s match. He told me he credits Aussie Rules with helping his aerial game, as he knew how to use other players for gaining leverage and height. [4] Graham Arnold had stints in Holland (with Roda JC and NAC Breda) and Belgium (Standard Liege and Charleroi) over eight seasons from 1989. Frank Farina won a Belgium Championship with Club Brugge, the same year he was awarded the League’s Best Foreign Player (1989-90). Paul Okon had an outstanding five years in Belgium also playing for Club Brugge, winning two Belgium titles, and taking out the League’s Best Player award in 1995-96. Aurelio Vidmar won the top goal scorers award while at Standard Liege in 1994-95. John Aloisi was also at Standard Liege, and later Antwerp in this period. [5] For an account of the Dutch Italia 90 debacle, see Ch.18 of David Winner’s Brilliant Orange – the neurotic genius of Dutch football (2010). :
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