Dutch news in summary

Waiting lists for social housing continue to grow in The Netherlands Landsmeer hits 22 years wait ....

Waiting lists for social housing have stretched to more than seven years in a quarter of the Netherlands’ 355 local authority areas, according to research by public broadcaster NOS. The longest waiting list – 22 years – is in Landsmeer, a village just north of Amsterdam, but the waits are similar in other towns and villages surrounding the capital. In Amsterdam itself, the average waiting time for a rent-controlled home is 13 years. The long waits are down to the shortage of social housing – which has a rent of below €750 and has strict income requirements attached. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of housing corporation rent controlled properties rose by 1% while the population grew 3%.

‘I am not surprised by the unacceptable long waiting lists,’ said Martin van Rijn, chairman of the housing corporation umbrella group Aedes. ‘Only building more homes and better regional coordination can reduce this frustration.’ To do this, social housing providers need both direction and financial support from national government, he said. Earlier this year, housing corporations, real estate investors and local authorities said the Netherlands needs to build one million new homes to meet demand. According to government figures, some 60% of the 7.5 million homes in the Netherlands are owner occupied. Private landlords, including investment companies own 8% and the rest are in the hands of the country’s housing associations.

3 -month curfew generates 9 million euros in fines for the Dutch treasury

Meanwhile, the public health institute RIVM has said the impact of the curfew on public health is still being calculated and it is too early to say if it was ineffective. The agency’s statement follows comments by acute hospital care chief

Dutch police handed out a total of 95,000 fines to people for breaking the curfew during the three months it was in operation. The fines have generated over €9m for the treasury since the curfew was introduced on January 23 and scrapped at 4.30am on April 28. People caught breaking the curfew without a valid reason could be fined €95. The curfew was the first in the Netherlands since World War II and the measure, plus the civic unrest that it caused, placed a ‘considerable burden’ on already overstretched police officers, according to a police update. ‘The police registered more than 1,500 demonstrations in the period between January and April,’ the update said. ‘That is double the protests in the first four months of 2020, and 20% more than the more than in the same period in 2019.’ Ernst Kuipers, who told a television show on Wednesday the curfew had not had an effect on hospital admissions. The calculation was that the curfew would reduce hospital admissions by 10%,’ he said. ‘But if you look at how hospital admissions have progressed during the period, you can see no effect through the introduction or the change in the time [from 9pm to 10pm].’ Nevertheless, Kuipers said, the curfew had to be introduced to head off the risks presented by the more infectious form of the virus first identified in Britain.

The announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC that the general election will hold on Saturday, 18th February 2023 no doubt has been received by Nigerians with mixed feelings. Especially, when the electoral umpire, Prof Mahmood Yakubu lamented the delay in the prosecution of electoral offenders as one of the most challenging tasks for INEC since its establishment. In his words, “ the commission would like to see more successful prosecution of offenders, not just of ballot box snatchers and falsifiers of election results but most importantly their sponsors. We look forward to the day when highly placed sponsors of thuggery , including party chieftains and candidates that seek to benefit from violations of the law are apprehended.” This no doubt directs our minds to the fact that the challenge is with the heart of man that is desperately wicked. There are some politicians whose stock in trade is full of evil machinations to get to power by any means including terminating the life of anyone on their way. They deploy thugs to perform their enterprise instead of canvassing for patronage from the people on Election Day. They believe in the mantra the strong takes all and making promises upon promises they do not intend to keep. At this stage they are like jelly fish, obedient, submissive and ready to do any bidding. They come down so low to the level of reasoning and if possible they practically make the voters see that without them they cannot exist. They use their sweet tongue and fake humility to the extent that you begin to reckon with them and believe their every word that comes out from their mouth. From obscurity, they work their way into your sub consciousness and before you know it you become their fan and you begin to see what was not there. But when they get what they want you can hardly see them, they build fences around themselves, their hangers on prevent you from seeing them. They abound all over the place and today you cannot tell who among them is worthy of being the servant of the people which they have sworn to be on oath. But on the other hand, when a true and God fearing individual decides to serve the people from the bottom of their heart, such people are hounded down and discouraged with all manner of antagonistic tendencies. The sad aspect that is still difficult to understand is that when it is time for another election, just as INEC has announced, the thugs and gullible masses, especially those who have been jobless are waiting eagerly for that day to stake out their necks again, ready to die for the politician and some actually die in the process only to be forgotten as the days goes by. Some voters are eagerly waiting for that day of election when they will troop come out again in their numbers irrespective

of the scorching sun or heavy down pour to cast their votes for their preferred candidate. They are ready to brave any odds and take unnecessary risks to come out on Election Day when the thugs of the different political parties flex muscles as a show of superiority and opportunity to use their latest weapons of destruction in their possessions. Just because they have been brain washed and starved by these politicians all these while, what they get for all their labour are peanuts to entice them to cast their votes for them with another promise to do more when elected. It is when they have been eventually elected into office that the eyes of thugs and voters are open to the fact that they have only been used and to be dumped again. However, the irony still remains that when next this same politicians who have held political office to enrich themselves come back with the same lies and tactics, they get away with their maneuver to power and they are given the mandate to represent them again. The same sets of politicians are recycled in the system from one juicy position to another all in the guise of being a system person. Some have arrogated to themselves the birth right to political patronage and they are ready to die if they are told to relinquish positions for another person. No wonder it has become a do or die affair. It is obvious that some are more concerned about their selfish interest and they do not intend to keep to their promises thereby leaving the electorates to regret coming out to cast their votes for them. But because they have no conscience, they careless about the plight of the people.

Their main aim in politics is to enrich themselves to the detriment of the masses that elected them. The profligacy of our political office holders is beyond comprehension as we have seen that the money meant for the development of our towns and communities, provision of infrastructures, employment opportunities and security infrastructure have been diverted to their pockets. Therefore, what do we really expect as the future of the nation becomes bleak by the day due to the political rascality of some of our politicians who have bled the nation dry? As Nigerians who want the best for the nation, we should as a matter of seriousness tell those phony politicians who do not have the interest of the people at heart to hide their head in shame and give those with a good heart the space to seek the mandate of the people in 2023

Claressa Shields fed up with sexism in boxing: ‘We’re not going to keep waiting on men to give women the opportunity’

Despite winning two Olympic gold medals, nine championships and becoming the fastest person to ever claim titles across three divisions in boxing, Claressa Shields just couldn’t seem to book a big fight. After building her professional record to a perfect 10-0 while becoming the WBC and WBO light middleweight champion in January 2020, Shields was looking forward to staying busy for the remainder of the year but the coronavirus pandemic kept her from competing for several months. Unfortunately, even after boxing got restarted later in the year with several notable events, Shields was still stuck on the outside looking in when it came to finding a spot on a highprofile card. “We had worked very, very close with Showtime, had a good working relationship with them,” Shields explained when speaking to MMA Fighting. “Then all of a sudden dates kept being pushed back and dates were being cancelled. Promises kept being made. Then before we knew it, they made a huge announcement where they basically announced their whole 2020 and Claressa Shields was nowhere on there. “After that they said ‘don’t worry about that, Errol Spence wasn’t on there either’ and all of a sudden Errol Spence’s fight gets announced. Are we going to fight? And they just kept stringing us along and finally we just decided we couldn’t keep waiting on them so we started exploring our options.” Shields and her team began looking at possible landing spots

for her next fight but they eventually settled on an idea that has been kicking around her head for quite some time. Rather than hoping that Showtime or another outlet would put Shields under the spotlight on pay-per-view where boxers routinely make a much larger share of the profits, she decided to take ownership of her career by building something from scratch instead. “I always thought I should be pay-perview,” Shields said. “I always thought that. Women’s boxing would flourish a lot more if we start now, and even if the numbers aren’t great, at least we’re starting to build our payper-view base. “I always wanted to fight on pay-per-view or fight on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao or Errol Spence when they fought on payper-view. That was something I had said to Showtime and was just never given those opportunities.” At just 25 years old, Shields has already accomplished a lot but she’s also constantly

butted up against a glass ceiling when it comes to the perception that women’s fighters in the sport of boxing just aren’t as much of a draw as the men. Shields has called out promoters as well as television broadcast partners for refusing to showcase women’s boxing at the same level as her male counterparts.

That’s a huge part of the reason why she’s headed an allwomen’s pay-per-view on FITE TV against Marie-Eve Dicaire on March 5 which was atgged “Superwomen” because she was tired of waiting for the powers-that-be in boxing to finally come around to her way of thinking. “We’re not going to keep waiting on men to give women the opportunity,” Shields said. “We have to go out and make it ourselves. My team went out and did what they do best, Mark Taffet and Dmitriy [Salita] and now we’re here.” Shields has often spoke out for equality in boxing, especially after the attention she received when recently inking a multi-year deal to sign with the PFL to begin her mixed martial arts career. As soon as that news broke, Shields saw her social media channels explode with new followers and supporters from around the globe not to mention a huge number of media outlets reaching out to speak to her. Once upon a time, UFC president Dana White famously said that women would never fight in his promotion but just a few years later he was touting Ronda Rousey as the biggest superstar across all of sports — regardless of gender. Seeing MMA stars like Rousey or upcoming UFC 259 co-headliner Amanda Nunes competing on the biggest cards and drawing millions of pay-per-views is proof to Shields that boxing has just woefully under appreciated the women’s fighters. She’s hoping to change that narrative starting with her pay-per-view fight this weekend. “This is what women’s boxing needs,” Shields said. “Men need to know that we’re not going to wait on them. I’m going to a place where no man has had to go. Like no man has had to go and fight his own pay-perview card without any backing from the boxing networks. No man has had to do that. But the fact that I have to do it is showing that boxing is sexist. “It’s also showing that I’m not afraid to go out here and make something for myself. I think that this will set a whole new wave for women’s boxing and other women are going to be fighting against the other best women and you’re going to have some super fights and there’s going to be women’s pay-per-views after this fight. This is just a great start.” This will also hopefully be the beginning of a huge year for Shields after she was only able to compete once in 2020. Shields plans on making the most out of the year ahead and she’ll be damned if anybody is going to stop her. “This is great. I have a busy year,” Shields said. “I have the fought in March, my boxing match and then I have my MMA debut in June. Then I want to have another boxing match. I would love to get Savannah Marshall in the boxing ring this year. She’s been doing a whole lot of mouthing off and talking, saying I went to MMA to run away from her and all this stuff she’s been saying. Like girl, you only got one belt and I’ve got nine. Hush up. I want to shut her up. “So hopefully we make that fight happen, maybe August or September and then have my last MMA fight to close out the year.”

Danielle Perkins: Heavyweight champ? After life-changing accident she is becoming Tyson Fury of women’s boxing

“It’s important for equality across the board,” Danielle Perkins says in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports. “We need to have a female heavyweight division for the Tyson Furys, the Anthony Joshuas, the Deontay Wilders.” James Dielhenn The unexplored final frontier of women’s boxing is its heavyweight division, a barren and unrecognised landscape that stands meekly in contrast to the marquee fights of Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and co. But there is a big-punching and even bigger talking heavyweight from the United States who takes inspiration from her mum, who has overcome the mental trauma of a catastrophe that took away the life she once knew, and who wants to smash a hole through the glass ceiling of acceptance. Danielle Perkins is on the road to becoming a female heavyweight champion - alongside Joshua and Fury as peers, she would become a high-value commodity who could “catapult women’s boxing” and whose voice demanding equality would only grow louder. Savannah Marshall, the unbeaten world champion, joked that she would rather fight for a middleweight title because “what woman wants heavyweight mentioned after her name?” The resurgence of women’s boxing that includes Marshall, Katie Taylor, Terri Harper, Claressa Shields and Jessica McCaskill is restricted beneath the biggest divisions. The weight limit is more accommodating (heavyweight is above 175lbs for females, above 200lbs for males) but there is no women’s champion of the division that is the showbiz centre for the men. Step forward Danielle Perkins. “I want to put my mark on the sport as a female boxer, and to sit on the throne as a female heavyweight,” she tells Sky Sports. “I want to invite anyone, everyone, who is athletic and strong to step into the ring and battle for the crown.” Her advisor Mark Taffet adds: “I believe a true female heavyweight champion, both in and out of the ring, would catapult women’s boxing and create intrigue and interest among a whole new generation of fans. “Danielle Perkins is six feet tall, 200 pounds, is in tremendous shape, has outstanding boxing skills, and carries herself like a champion. She is the perfect woman to lead and fulfil the promise of a revitalised, prominent female heavyweight division.” The talk is bold for a contender who has had only two professional fights but there is genuine reason to be excited. Perkins became the first amateur world champion from the US, male or female, in three years when she beat defending champion Yang Xiaoli of China in 2019. It is already a stunning turnaround from when Perkins lay immobilised, severely traumatised and with her sports career in ruins.

Perkins was an outstanding college basketball player before a professional career took her to teams in Italy, the Czech Republic, Puerto Rico, Austria and Spain. But she was struck by a vehicle, leaving her paralysed and eventually needing to learn to walk again.

“At my darkest point, if I couldn’t have athletics again, I didn’t want to be alive,” she says. “Certain things in life give you an opportunity to remain stagnant or turn a corner by making difficult choices. “I refused to quit. I wanted to have the basics back - to walk again, to be functional, and playing basketball again was my ultimate goal.” Perkins began exercising again and fell into a sport synonymous with where she’s from. “I grew up in Brooklyn in a household of Mike Tyson fans but boxing wasn’t an option for me,” she says. “My father would not allow his daughter to box so I played basketball.” After accepting her basketball career was finished, Perkins “wanted to be competitive but didn’t know how” when a friend noted that her physical dimensions would be ominous inside a ring. “But I thought: ‘I don’t want to get hit in the face!’” Now Perkins, who remembers the frenzy in New York during Tyson’s heyday, wants to have a similar impact on the women’s heavyweight division. “My goal is for people to say: ‘You’re 200lbs? Train hard enough and maybe you can fight Danielle’.” She fights for the third time in a rematch with Monika Harrison on March 5, on Claressa Shields’ all-female undercard. The prospect of a physically dominant women’s heavyweight champion with a backstory of adversity who advocates change is powerful. Perkins says about revitalising the glamour division: “It’s important for equality across the board. “We need to have a female division for the Tyson Furys, the Anthony Joshuas, the Deontay Wilders. “If we had that athleticism and skill in a female heavyweight division, there would be so many people interested. “It is as important as the male division to have a solid, talented female heavyweight division.”

The resolve and the strength behind Perkins, 38, is in her blood. “My mother has always overcame things,” she says. “She always worked so hard. “There were drugs, crack, robberies, murder but we were untouched by that because my mother was such a strong centrepiece of the community. “She made a bubble for us and we did not see these things. “When my mother battled cancer, she had the same mentality. “I now understand that it’s not about your surroundings, it’s about your mentality.” Perkin’s insistence that she will drag the sleeping female heavyweight division onto the same thriving platform as the men’s makes it remiss not to ask her one final question. Joshua or Fury? She laughs and interrupts: “I’m pretty slick and I hit hard. “I’m more similar to Fury - he’s slick, he hits hard, he has strategy, from round to round he makes solid adjustments, he looks like a middleweight fighting as a heavyweight, he’s strong and tall, he can fight going backwards or forwards.” If a female heavyweight can emerge with similar skill and charisma, the boxing landscape would be revolutionised.

Joshua: I Know I’m the Man at Heavyweight and I’ll be for a long time!

IBF, IBO, WBA, WBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is hanging back and waiting for an official announcement for the biggest fight is career. A high stakes unification with WBC champion Tyson Fury is being targeted to take place in the summer. The boxers and their respective teams have agreed on the bulk of the terms. At the moment, they are reviewing the contracts for the site free agreement, with the bout likely to land in Saudi Arabia. While waiting for a potential announcement, both champions are currently training and staying in shape. Joshua is ready to do whatever is necessary to get himself in top form to overcome Fury. One thing Joshua is ultra confident about, is his belief in being the number one fighter in the weight class. “Am I excited? I ain’t excited, it is what it is,” Joshua told the skipper of his hometown club, Watford’s Troy Deeney, on the striker’s podcast. “I’m getting ready to walk through a brick wall and nothing is getting in my way. I’m ready to go through whatever pain, torture, adversity I have to go through in order to win, that’s why I’m really looking forward to it. “I know I’m the man of this division and I will be for a long time. I came through this game quick and the way I had to learn was through mistakes, on the public stage as well. I came into this game not to take part but to take over, I feel I’m on a different wavelength and frequency. “I do it with a smile on my face but I’m dedicated to these things. Recapping over COVID I thought, man, I’ve put a lot into this and now I need to back myself.”