Category Archives: The Netherlands

Dutch Oddness

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In the comments at Mr Worstall’s we’re making fun of the Dutch, particularly their reputation for stinginess which makes the Scottish look positively profligate by comparison. My input is as follows.

When I briefly lived in Thailand in 2010 I met a Dutch lady with a son of around five or six. She’d been widowed, her husband having a sudden heart attack in his mid-thirties while she was pregnant with their son. Her late husband was also Dutch and worked for a bank in a senior position, but I don’t know if stress played any role in his demise. It was a tragic story, with the only bright point being he’d been wealthy (or well-insured) enough to provide for his wife and son. She found it very hard to stay in the Netherlands afterwards, surrounded by memories, and decided to spend some time in Thailand, renting an apartment in my condo block where I met her. She was a nice woman, and doing remarkably well under the circumstances. I don’t know what became of her but if anyone deserved a spell of good fortune, it was her. Her kid was nice, too. I hope they’re doing okay, wherever they are.

Anyway, she told me her husband’s parents arranged the funeral in his home town, and she stayed with them a few days for the occasion. She said she got on with them okay, and was rather surprised a few weeks later to receive an invoice in the post: they’d charged her for parking in their driveway.

There’s nowt so queer as folk, as the saying goes, but the Dutch run them close.

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A warning from Air France-KLM

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Sometimes blog posts just write themselves:

A clash of national cultures and an inability to understand each other’s languages threatens to make the merged Air France-KLM group of airlines unmanageable, according to a leaked internal company report.

Surely not!

“The French have the impression that the Dutch think only of money and are always ready to fight for profit. They are not afraid of anything,” the researchers reported.

“The Dutch think that the French are attached to a hierarchy and political interests which are not necessarily the same as the interests of the company … The extent to which employees are disillusioned is shocking. People are pessimistic, frustrated and burnt out because they feel that this is not listened to.”

But this is consistent with crude national stereotypes! How can it be true?

Okay, a little more serious now:

Air France managers are also said to feel that they look more at what is best for the whole company, while KLM managers only worry about what is good for KLM.

Hmmm.

KLM managers, on the other hand, think that their French colleagues only worry about keeping jobs at Air France.

So each party thinks the other is looking out for themselves? It being a near-certainty that this is the case, my only questions are how many top managers are surprised by this and when are they being fired?

Among the petty grievances, there is irritation that a KLM employee working in Paris is charged €10 for lunch in the canteen, while an Air France colleague pays only €4.

The reason for this is French companies are obliged to provide their employees with a subsidised canteen (or lunch vouchers), but secondees and visitors don’t get the subsidy and have to pay full price. We have the same issue in my office when people are seconded from outside, and it’s actually more serious than it sounds.

Some years ago I had an Australian boss who was a very smart chap, particularly so considering he was a Queenslander (I think he might read this blog occasionally). He was also a very good boss, partly because having come up through the ranks himself, he knew that small niggles can have a detrimental effect on an employee’s happiness way out of proportion to the actual problem. If left unchecked, seemingly minor issues cause all sorts of discontent in a department which results in a bad atmosphere and reduced productivity. If your staff are spending half the day bitching about free coffee being stopped, you’re better off just reinstating it.

A decent manager like this Aussie would have spotted immediately that the unequal canteen charges would create a rift in the organisation which would cost the company a lot more than €30 per person per week. He would have been on the phone sharpish to get approval to reimburse the Dutch, and if that were refused he’d run a little wheeze to do so anyway. Managers like this are like hen’s teeth in a modern corporation, and seemingly absent altogether from Air France-KLM.

The Dutch managers don’t trust the French economy, and see Air France as a “time bomb”.

…

“One questions whether the alliance can survive given the long-standing mutual incomprehension between the Dutch and French camps within the group,” one researcher was quoted as writing.

If two airlines cannot merge without divisions opening up along national lines amid a clash of cultures and widespread mistrust, one wonders how much truth there is in the EU’s claim that all 27 members unanimously agreed on the Brexit negotiation strategy in under 15 minutes. I think the whole Brexit negotiation process will put the unity between the member states under considerable strain, and I’m expecting to see plenty of leaked memos full of similar sentiments to those in the Air France-KLM report.

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Nanny State Fled

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Adam Piggott has left his native Australia for the Netherlands, and found it a liberating experience:

Compared to Australians the Dutch have personal freedom. All those kids zooming around on bikes that I mentioned? No helmets. Not a single one. On several occasions I have witnessed a teenage boy giving his girl a ride on his bike. The girl is usually facing the boy, her legs dangling over the bike in a relaxed manner, as she casually smokes a cigarette. It is the epitome of freedom.

Kids don’t play in the street in Australia. Kids don’t get themselves to school anymore. The roads are clogged with parents driving their children here, and driving their children there. It is a sterile society.

Funny, sterile is the word I used when describing Melbourne:

Rather than being a hotch-potch of genuinely avant-garde establishments, they are regulated into places far more sterile than the author is making out.  Walk into any bar and you’ll see enormous signs warning people about drinking too much, detailing hefty fines for various alcohol related offences.  At some point in the evening a squad of police in high-viz vests may well come walking through the joint, and you can be sure none stays open beyond the permitted time (or opens if there are no office workers around).

…

From my point of view, I’d take a bit of groaning infrastructure over sterility any day.

At street level, it feels as though one has a lot more personal freedom in France than in Australia. Judging by what Adam is saying, the same is true for the Netherlands.

Welcome to Europe, Adam!

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Populism not as rejected as previously thought

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Anyone remember the election in The Netherlands last March, after which we were told the Dutch people rejected “the wrong kind of populism”? Here’s what I said afterwards:

For sure, Geert Wilders didn’t win outright, and nor did his Freedom Party even come close to doing so, but they came second with a seat count of 20 up from 15, which is an increase of a third. The mistake I think people like Hollande and Merkel, and possibly even Rutte, are making is believing the policies of the Freedom Party have been overwhelmingly rejected and can safely be ignored from hereon.

Well, whaddya know?

Negotiations to form the next Dutch government have collapsed as the four parties involved were unable to decide what to do about migration.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right VVD party had sought to strike a deal with the liberal D66, the Christian Democrats and the Green-Left.

The talks had been ongoing for 61 days since an election in March.

The Green-Left support open borders, while the other three want stricter controls.

That would be the Green-Left who came 5th in the election and who secured some percentage of their votes because their leader, Jesse Klaver, is good looking. Therein lies the problem of coalition governments, the lunatics on the fringe get to play kingmaker.

The minister who had been tasked with forming the new government will submit a report to parliament before the members discuss how to proceed.

Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-EU, anti-Islam Freedom Party, welcomed the news, saying he was ready to talk.

His party came second in the polls.

Angela Merkel was unavailable for comment, possibly because Macron won’t let her out of his sight.

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Homophobic assault, but by whom?

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This is another BBC story where what they leave out is more interesting than what they put in:

Dutch men are uploading pictures of themselves holding hands on to social media to stand against homophobia.

The trend was sparked by an alleged attack on two gay men on a street in the Netherlands on Sunday.

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Jasper Vernes-Sewratan, 35, and Ronnie Sewratan-Vernes, 31, say they were attacked by a group of men in the early hours of Sunday morning in Arnhem, in the country’s east.

Yeah? Any description of the attackers? Not from the BBC, no. What about here:

All four arrested are from Arnhem, including a 14-year-old and three 16-year-olds. They join two who were held by police right after the attack, another 14-year-old boy and a man, aged 20.

Note the lack of names: possibly because they are underage, but what about the 20 year old? Finally after some digging around I find this:

Jasper wrote on Facebook that the attackers were Moroccan, but he did not say how he knew.

So even LGBQT publications are casting doubt on the victim’s account of who the attackers were, while the mainstream media are simply refusing to report it.

I’ve been saying for a while that gay men are going to get thrown under the bus by the progressive crowd before too long, and it appears that this is already happening. There’s a problem here, and it isn’t one that is going to be solved by Dutch men walking around holding hands with one another. I wonder which way they voted in the last election? And I wonder to whom they will run in future?

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The Dutch Decide

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I feel some people may be getting a bit ahead of themselves regarding the election results in The Netherlands:

Dutch people rejected “the wrong kind of populism”, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said, as he celebrated victory in Wednesday’s election.

“The Netherlands said ‘Whoa!'” he declared after his centre-right VVD party’s lead positioned him for a third successive term as prime minister.

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French President Francois Hollande said he had won a “clear victory against extremism”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed a “very pro-European result, a clear signal… and a good day for democracy” and her chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, tweeted: “The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!”

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy praised Dutch voters for their “responsibility”

For sure, Geert Wilders didn’t win outright, and nor did his Freedom Party even come close to doing so, but they came second with a seat count of 20 up from 15, which is an increase of a third. The mistake I think people like Hollande and Merkel, and possibly even Rutte, are making is believing the policies of the Freedom Party have been overwhelmingly rejected and can safely be ignored from hereon.

They would do well to remember that the referendum on Brexit was brought about by a centre-right Conservative government which found itself under considerable pressure on the single issue of Europe by UKIP. In the previous UK general election, which took place in 2015, UKIP won a single seat on 12.7% of the vote (the third highest). The Tories trounced them on every measure, but were still concerned enough to promise a referendum on Europe. And we know how things went from there: despite nobody really voting for UKIP in massive numbers, plenty turned out to vote to leave the EU. And now it’s the Conservative’s job to pull Britain out, and nothing to do with UKIP or their erstwhile leader Nigel Farage.

Wilders’ Freedom Party has pulled in 13.1% of the vote, but that doesn’t tell the whole story: in order to limit the damage posed by Wilders, Rutte’s VVD party has had to lurch to the right in a similar way that the Tories in the UK had to agree to a referendum on the EU. True, Rutte could now backtrack on all his campaign rhetoric but – again as the Tories found out to their dismay – these are issues which don’t simply disappear because the head of a mainstream political party bullshitted his way through an election. There is a good chance that Wilders and his party could wither away, but that depends largely on how Rutte governs from hereon. And this is going to be interesting:

As parliamentary seats are allocated in exact proportion to a party’s vote share, the VVD will need to go into coalition with three other parties.

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Mr Rutte has spoken of a “zero chance” of working with Mr Wilders’ PVV, and will look instead to the Christian Democrats and D66, which are both pro-EU.

So the Dutch political establishment is going to ignore a rather large and inconvenient chunk of the population who are het up about one or two rather key issues, and instead will attempt to continue with business as usual? Yeah, that’ll work out well.

We’ve seen this before, twice: the EU referendum was never supposed to happen, with all right-thinking political parties fully subscribed to the notion that membership of the EU was such an obvious benefit that it wasn’t even worth discussing. And then we had the referendum itself in which the entire political establishment voted one way while the population voted the other. Whoops.

Then there was the US Presidential Election which was supposed to be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush arguing only over “approved” issues and utterly ignoring things like immigration, blue collar jobs, and abuse of government powers. Only things didn’t quite go according to plan, did they?

Just because the Netherlands avoided such an upset yesterday, that does not necessarily mean that the political establishment is not in its arrogance going to lay the very foundations for a populist revolt at some point in the future. Rutte and his pals may well ignore Wilders and his party, but they would do well to start listening to those who voted for him. I suspect I might be saying similar things about Marine Le Pen later on this year, too.

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