For those of you wondering what exactly has been going on with the collapse of the government in The Netherlands, I rather like and recommend this post by fellow Dutch blogger Snouck. This is a beautifully written, concise, and rather humorous account of the matter:

"Okay. All you watchers of the news in The Netherlands must have noticed that the government has fallen.

So what happened?

1. Leftist Nova television program broadcast a special on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the religion basher from Somalia. Ayaan had been lying in order to obtain asylum status. Just as an estimated 95 percent of the asylum seekers.
2. Iron Rita Verdonk revoked the citizenship of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In 24 hours. This implied that Dutch parliament had a non-dutch national in its midst, which made void all its deliberations in the past 3 years. Totally radical, dude!
3. The political class went ape. The "Left" demanded the resignation of Iron Rita and the "Right", the government, frantically tried to find a way to get out of crossfire.

4. The government consists of 3 parties. Liberal-Conservatives (VVD), Christian Democrats (CDA) and the Democrats '66 (D66). This last party is both left and right and is in fact the rudiments of a party based on a personality, who has left the national political scene due to age, drink and general fatness.
5. D66 just had seen a leadership battle between someone who won (otherwise unimportant so I won't distract you with his name) and Lousewies van der Laan, daughter of a Dutch career diplomat. Lousewies is a VERY ambitious member of the international political class. She lost the struggle for leadership of her party and was already making plans to go back to Brussels to interfere in peoples lifes from the lofty heights of the European Parliament. She was full of spite and the spirit of revenge. Hell hath no etcetera etcetera etcetera.
6. Verdonk had just lost the leadership battle of the Liberal-Conservative VVD against Mark Rutte. She was breathing fire. As usual, only more so.

7. The economy is picking up in a big way in The Netherlands after a very bad crash in 2000. This is good news for the rightwing coalition. They now would enter the time to harvest. They want to stay in power.

8. In order to cover her behind Verdonk demanded Aayaan to eat humble pie and sign a statement to the effect that Verdonk never did anything wrong when she declared Ayaan not a Dutch citizen. The statement said also that Ayaan had not lied about the name she gave to the Dutch authorities, as had been alleged, because according to Somali Family Code Ayaan was entitled to carry that name. That is so rich."

Read the rest at Snouck Hurgronje