Marten

I'm glad we didn't get Scotland. I could see us lose that one and I wouldn't hear the end of it.

Well, we'll get hammered by France, but should be able to beat Austria and PO A.

Not the worst draw for Scotland, good luck guys!

Join the queue...

This! The rule is there, just bloody enforce it. You keep hearing once in a while that a league/FA says they will enforce it more but rarely anything changes. Moaning at the referee, waving the imaginary card, being in the referee's face before he can even show what his decision is, etc? Instant booking, no exception, also not for players who were already on a yellow, they shouldn't have been so f*cking stupid then. Do you keep going on after being booked? Off you go! Still mouthing off the referee after being shown red? Increase the suspension. If this gets properly and consistently enforced, you'd get a whole load of yellow/red cards for the first few months, but after that players will get used to it.

Spot on, especially because the clock doesn't get stopped in football it will just encourage more timewasting. A friend of mine is referee in Dutch youth football and our equivalent of lower Sunday league where they do have that rule and he at times struggles dealing with it. It also makes him think twice to book the goalkeeper for dissent for example as it results in messy situations like an outfield player having to go in goal for 10 minutes and then the goalie coming back on, or the reserve goalie being subbed on and when the 10 minutes are up another sub happening.

I'll take this as a compliment.

Meanwhile in The Netherlands, as usual an experienced politician from the largest party who isn't an MP has been appointed to research coalition options. His/her task is to speak to every party leader about the result to get a picture of what could be workable. The person from Wilders' party who got appointed resigned on (what was meant to be) his first full day in the job as it turns out he has been caught with fraud in a company he used to run. Good start there!

That lunatic is the cause why others won't negotiate with him. He is so extreme and unwilling to compromise that there is no point. There is nothing good about his victory.

The chance of it happening even if there is a referendum is very remote. Even a large number of PVV voters don't want Nexit and no other parties other than some very small fringe ones entertain the idea.

He legally has the right to first try to form a government. Unlike other countries, there isn't a time limit here. But if he doesn't manage to form a government, next up will be Frans Timmermans, leader of the second placed Labour/Green coalition (and former EU commissioner who only stepped down to fight this election). Parliament can intervene if Wilders has no success but doesn't want to pass the initiative on and they can hand the baton to Timmermans themselves. At a guess I'd say others will let Wilders form a minority government, assuming he will fail so they can hope voters abandon him as you say. It's a risky gamble to just form a coalition without him as he could actually increase his popularity.

I think both systems are flawed. In principle, I'm in favour of PR as it gives a more accurate representation of how people vote. I also don't have an issue with coalitions. Different flavours working together isn't necessarily a bad thing. And effectively, it also happens in the UK. To say the Tories are currently split on various issues is a massive understatement, in The Netherlands they'd be 2 parties. Of Labour you can say the same. And moderate Tories have plenty in common with moderate Labour so they could also work with each other (and there are plenty of examples over time of bills being passed by both, leaving the further left/right on either party behind). Also, in FPTP you see it often that people are trying to pander to the more extremes to get votes. Cameron promised an EU referendum to stop UKIP and in the hope that a remain vote would bury that issue once and for all. We all know how that worked out! In The Netherlands, the chance of an EU-referendum happening is exactly 0, Wilders might want it but he knows very well that he won't get other parties to agree to that. He pretty much conceded already that an EU referendum isn't going to happen. The big downsides of the Dutch system are the fragmentation & the lack of regional representation as all MPs are chosen on country-wide lists. The fragmentation is due to the fact that there are 150 MPs and you simply need 1/150th of the vote to get your party elected. The lack of local representation results in several more rural areas feeling completely ignored with nobody actually representing them. Wilders winning in many of those areas doesn't necessarily mean people in these areas are all big fans of his extreme points, but for many it's been a protest vote as the mainstream parties tend to forget these areas and Wilders has been very smart in trying to please those areas. But the UK & Dutch systems are really 2 extremes when talking about different voting systems. There are other systems that are at least to some extend proportional, do give local representation & are less fragmented. There are plenty of examples of such systems working well in other countries. This is why the new centrist party NSC has done so well as they want such a reform to make the country better governable. And I agree with that reform which is why I voted for them even though I don't agree on everything they stand for.

Yeah, the problem is also how fragmented the political landscape has become. There is nothing new about having to form coalitions as a majority government has never happened since The Netherlands became a constitutional monarchy nearly 200 years ago. However, as in the past there usually were at least 2 parties with over 30 (and often over 40) seats, while 76 are needed for a majority, and few extremes it was rarely an issue to form a coalition in the past. In 1998 for example, there were 9 parties represented in Parliament and the 5 largest ones together had over 90% of the seats. Of those 9, only the left-wing Socialist party was seen as a party not really willing to compromise, but they had only 5 seats so that left 145 MPs to find a majority from. There were 2 mergers of the 9 parties from 1998, so it's become 7 but all 7 are still around. But now a total of 16 parties have been elected, actually down from 18 last time around. The 5 largest parties only have 3/4th of the seats together and there are 6 parties who are seen as difficult to find any compromises with, including PVV. That leaves only 98 MPs to form a workable majority from.

I kinda expect him to form a minority government now, with the mainstream right thinking it won't last (which will likely be correct) so once it collapses and new elections are held, they can claim: "look, he got the chance and messed up, you're better off voting for us". These kind of tactics worked before with more extreme parties in The Netherlands who tend to mess up once they are given any kind of responsibility.

She said this morning that she won't go into a coalition with him, so I assume something happened, like maybe Wilders setting red lines out and her thinking "nah, no point even trying".

Talks have hardly started and it already seems impossible for him to form a majority coalition. The left obviously won't work with him, so he needs all main parties in the centre & right to join him, otherwise a minority government is his only option. Just this morning, the leader of the "mainstream right" party VVD, Dilan Yesilgöz, has stated she will not go into coalition with Geert Wilders. As she is an immigrant from Turkey herself, it's not exactly a surprise that she doesn't like the idea of working with the far-right. The current government will stay on as caretaker government until a new government has been formed. Due to the nature of Dutch politics and how fractured it is, we're kinda used to having caretaker governments.

The leader of the "mainstream right" party VVD, Dilan Yesilgöz, has stated she will not go into coalition with Geert Wilders. As she is an immigrant from Turkey herself, it's not exactly a surprise that she doesn't like the idea of working with the far-right. It seems Wilders' only option is a minority cabinet because even if he gets the centrists and the smaller parties on the right on board, he won't get a majority. Nobody on the left will work with him.

And an even worse idea.

Thankfully, the chance that he can actually implement those more extreme points is pretty slim. Other parties won't work with him unless he drops these points. And if they go to votes in parliament, let's remember that he "only" has about a quarter of the seats, nowhere near a majority, making it unlikely to get enough votes for those plans.

I think in reality, The Netherlands has always been a country of extremes. On the one hand, a decent percentage of the population is very liberal, but for example there is also a region that is extremely religiously conservative, making Lewis and Harris look like a very liberal place. It's also not as straightforward in The Netherlands that liberal is generally to the left and conservative generally to the right. There is a social conservative Christian party (ChristianUnion) that is economically firmly on the left. The "mainstream right" party is on many issues (like LGBT+ rights, abortion, euthanasia etc.) pretty liberal. And as much as I hate Geert Wilders, he is actually relatively liberal on some of those issues too, at least compared to his counterparts in other countries. The country being a country of extremes is nothing new either. In WW2 for example, of all countries occupied by the nazis we had both the 2nd most resistance fighters per head of the population (after France) and the 2nd most collaborators actively working with the nazis (after Austria).

I believe the North Region clubs aren't keen on the idea of a joint superleague. As that's not happen, Midlands League clubs want to stay at 1 division for now. More clubs joining would make a split more likely.

Posted about it in the other thread already, but it's depressing...

The play-off draw has just been made. Finland were drawn out to go to path A. The play-offs are now: Path A: Poland v Estonia Wales v Finland (winner at home in the final) Path B: Israel v Iceland Bosnia and Herzegovina v Ukraine (winner at home in the final) Path C Georgia v Luxembourg (winner at home in the final) Greece v Kazakhstan

And even if he does manage to form a coalition, the question is whether or not it will last. Often which such parties, once you give them actual responsibility they will mess up. I could easily see another election in less than 2 years and if he is seen as the main reason for the coalition collapsing, he could easily nosedive in the next election.

Dutch result so far with nearly all votes counted, change compared to the previous election in 2021 (turnout 77.8%): PVV (far-right): 37 seats (+20) GL-PvdA (Labour/Green coalition): 25 (+8) VVD (Conservative): 24 (-10) NSC (Centrist): 20 (+20) D'66 (LibDem): 9 (-15) BBB (Farmers party): 7 (+6) CDA (Christian Democrats, right of centre): 5 (-10) Socialist Party: 5 (-4) FvD (far-right, pro-Putin, conspiracist): 3 (-5) Party for the Animals (environmentalists, animal rights): 3 (-3) ChristianUnion (left of centre, social conservatives): 3 (-2) SGP (Christian conservatives): 3 (-) Denk (pro-immigration, largely from Muslim community): 3 (-) Volt (pan-European centrists): 2 (-1) JA21 (right wing): 1 (-2) 50+ (pensioners' party) & Bij1 (far-left) both lost their only seat