Diversity.

So the Dutch parliamentary elections took place and the result is horrible (in total there are 150 seats):

Party Peter's summary Seats Change

VVD The liberals 31 +9

PVDA The labor party 30 -3

PVV The right 24 +15

CDA The christen-democrats 21 -20

SP The socialists 15 -10

GL The greens 10 +3

D66 The social-democrats 10 +7

CU The religious ones 5 -1

SGP The more strict religious ones 2 +0

PVD Yes, a party for animals 2 +0

The result is bad for two reasons:

1. It will be difficult to create a stable government that survives to the next elections because the voters either went for very left or very right. Our queen now has to appoint an 'informateur' who will meet party leaders and try to come up with a solid government: i.e. a combination of parties that are like-minded, has a majority, and consists out of as few parties as possible.
2. The biggest winner is the PVV. While they have some good points, they have many (many) bad ones: they want to stop (Islamic) immigration into the Netherlands all together, no money should be spend on development aid, and the role of the European Union should be diminished substantially. Why are so many Dutch people - almost 1.5 million of them - afraid of the rest of the world?

I like the following poster from Loesje: