Here she made her mark, too. She hammered away at the socialist minister for mobility, Kathleen Van Brempt, constantly complaining about the empty buses she spotted. A waste of taxpayers' money, noisy and polluting, she called them, gaining her considerable public approval.

And now De Ridder is calling for a boycott of mussels from Zeeland. Yes, that's correct, a Zeeland mussel boycott. Now that's drastic. Has she gone out of her mind?

Well, no.

De Ridder hopes to change the minds of the Dutch on the dredging of the river Scheldt on their territory. This is necessary for the Port of Antwerp to be accessible to larger ocean ships. The Netherlands and Flanders agreed on the dredging in 2005, when they signed a series of treaties.

The Netherlands has never been keen on keeping its part of the bargain, though, and in Flanders there is some suspicion that this might have something to do with lobbying by the Port of Rotterdam, Antwerp's main competitor. Now the Dutch Council of State has suspended the treaties for environmental reasons.

This is costing us money. Big money. Not only will the port of Antwerp miss out on business; it also makes for thousands of trucks using our roads on their way from Rotterdam to wherever their goods are needed. So Annick De Ridder hits back. With the Zeeland mussel boycott.

There are some adverse effects to this. For one, it brings into the open what everyone in this country knows, but which we never tell tourists: Belgian mussels aren't really Belgian, they're Dutch. Next, it shows a difference in attitude. Belgians tend to have a more flexible attitude towards the judiciary. Surely there must be some way around the Council of State's ruling, right? There are also some questions as to the effectiveness of a mussel boycott.

In the meantime, Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters remains hopeful that the matter can be resolved peacefully, through diplomacy, rather than by mussel wars. Thank God, for He knows we love our mussels!