EThere is only one question time per year where, as a Member of Parliament, you can use the wonderful figure of speech ‘when I read this, I thought it was an April Fool’s joke’. That is question time after April 1. The rest of the year you have to make do with ‘chairman, this makes me feel sick.’
The April Fool’s figure is therefore used twice during question time on Tuesday. Twice on exactly the same subject, which makes it slightly less original the second time. It is about the news that the NS is using a 1.5 million euro fine that was waived by the government to develop a ‘connecting app’ for travelers. The idea for this arose from a competition that the traveler association Rover held among train passengers.
Aaf Brandt Corstius reports on a debate in politics in The Hague once a week in his own unique way.
Hidde Heutink (PVV) is appalled; He thought it was an April Fool’s joke when he read that the NS was going to develop this app. He questions climate minister Rob Jetten (D66). Heutink keeps calling the app ‘a dating app’, once alternating with ‘Tinder from the train’. The question is whether that is exactly correct: the NS is talking about an app that will be called Railconnect, which will ‘help travelers make contacts, make travel friends, participate in events or get information about the trip’.
In short, an app that no one will ever use, because there are already apps for dating, travel information and events, and no one wants to make travel friends, you see that on the train, where everyone stares at their phone, avoiding contact. And with all due respect: Railconnect sounds like a long-failed technological innovation from 1999.
One and a half million might be quite a lot. Other MPs join Heutink, with NS bashing as the theme. VVD MP Hester Veltman would prefer that more trains run with this money. ‘Social connection is the ideal way to bring people from A to B.’ Chris Stoffer (SGP) simply does the April Fool’s move again: ‘When I read this, I seriously thought it was an April Fool’s joke.’ It is distressing, he thinks, that one and a half million go to this app ‘while we just heard that people have no food’. By this, Stoffer is referring to the first question of Question Time, asked by Mohammed Mohandis (GroenLinks-PvdA), about the fact that more and more people are having money problems.
In the discussion about money problems, Jimmy Dijk (SP) has come up with something creative: he does a kind of radio play during his interruptions, by knocking hard on the table three times while talking. That’s how it goes. ‘Those bills are piling up. At a certain point, some people also know that this is happening.’ Knock Knock knock! Dijk knocks hard on the table. The audience wakes up with a start; it has an effect. So Dijk does it again a sentence later. ‘Why is the problem of – knock Knock knock! – not smaller in people’s homes, but bigger?’ And, why not, he uses his tapping technique a third time. “People in debt,” he says a moment later, “who – KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! – to belong’.
It is somewhat comical that after all this theatrical knocking, Minister Carola Schouten (CU) says hypocritically: ‘I assume that Mr Dijk is referring to bailiffs.’
After question time, it is time again for House Speaker Martin Bosma to recite a poem, and he does this especially for three MPs who have returned from maternity leave – Queeny Rajkowski (VVD), Ilana Rooderkerk (D66) and Hanneke van der Werf (D66). ). “In your honor,” he says politely. It’s the poem Pregnant woman by Adriaan Morriën, containing lines such as ‘she feels the certainty maturing within her’ and ‘she thanks God for the stabbing pain’. Your reporter would find it cringe if someone read such a poem in her honor. A number of MPs respond with a moved ‘Ahhh.’
During the break between question time and votes, a little boy in the public gallery stands up and waves at politicians in the room, who do not notice. “Hello Rob Jetten,” the little boy says softly. Ahhh.
