9-Volt Assault posted:

Cant wait for them all to die, but that will probably take another 20 years or so.

System Metternich posted:

How affected were the Netherlands by the 2015/16 refugee crisis? How many actually came and settled there, and how did the Rutte government react to this? Back then I heard a lot about the refusal of eastern European states to admit refugees, but I don't remember hearing anything about the Netherlands. How was German policy in that regard seen/discussed?

System Metternich posted:

How affected were the Netherlands by the 2015/16 refugee crisis? How many actually came and settled there, and how did the Rutte government react to this? Back then I heard a lot about the refusal of eastern European states to admit refugees, but I don't remember hearing anything about the Netherlands. How was German policy in that regard seen/discussed?

System Metternich posted:

System Metternich posted:

How affected were the Netherlands by the 2015/16 refugee crisis? How many actually came and settled there, and how did the Rutte government react to this? Back then I heard a lot about the refusal of eastern European states to admit refugees, but I don't remember hearing anything about the Netherlands. How was German policy in that regard seen/discussed?

quote:

The report shows that the Netherlands approved 70% of the refugee applications made in the first nine months of last year, compared with a EU average of 47%. In 2014, the figures were 67% to 45%. But more refugees in the Netherlands come from countries where they are likely to be granted asylum, the WODC said. Last year, 32% of the refugees who came to Holland were from Syria, compared with 19% in the EU as a whole. And 91% of them go on to become official refugees. Corrected for country of origin, just 35% of refugee requests in the Netherlands are honoured. Bulgaria is the most generous, with a 51% acceptance rate and Greece the toughest. Athens recognises just 24% of asylum seekers as refugees.

quote:

Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, who is leading polls ahead of next month's election, said on Wednesday he had canceled all public campaign events after an agent involved in his security team was suspended.

The secret service said on Tuesday an agent of a Moroccan background had been suspended on suspicion of leaking details to a criminal organization.

On Wednesday, newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that the man's brother, also a police officer, had leaked information about murder inquiries and had been accused of rape and been dismissed. Police were not immediately available for comment.

There is no suggestion the cases had anything to do with Wilders or his team.

Secret service chief Erik Akerboom said on Tuesday that neither Wilders nor any of the other people the team protects, including the Dutch royal family, had ever been in danger as a result of the leaks.

Wilders, who promises to close mosques and crack down on "Moroccan scum", said he would await the conclusions of the investigation into the corruption allegations before appearing in public again.

quote:

The Dutch populist revolt and the rise of Wilders are often described as a rebellion of older, less educated, more economically challenged voters -- just the way the Donald Trump movement was described in the U.S. There is some truth to that, but there's also more to it, just like there was with Trump: A feeling of disconnection between the ruling elite and the people, a desire for more participation in how decisions are made.

quote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the English translation of this is: "What do I look for in a party leader? Someone who is like my equal, but in reality is my superior. Someone who blows a vanilla vape cloud in my face as he explains to me economics is so 2015."

Panama Red posted:

Here is the latest seat projection based on a 20 February TNS NIPO poll:

PVV 28
VVD 25
D66 19
CDA 18
GL 16
PvdA 11
SP 11
50+ 9
CU 6
PvdD 3
SGP 3
Other 1

TheIllestVillain posted:

am i reading this right, 12 parties?

R. Mute posted:

Where's the Partij voor de Genocide? Blow the levees and return the Netherlands to the sea i m o

Hambilderberglar posted:

Where's the original Klaver statements on how lovely his neighbourhood was?
I live in a Vogelaarwijk, which by the hilarious standards of this country was "terrible", so I can't wait to see what passes for a bad neighbourhood in Roosendaal.

System Metternich posted:

How affected were the Netherlands by the 2015/16 refugee crisis? How many actually came and settled there, and how did the Rutte government react to this? Back then I heard a lot about the refusal of eastern European states to admit refugees, but I don't remember hearing anything about the Netherlands. How was German policy in that regard seen/discussed?

Junior G-man posted:

Only 12 with projected seats, there are 28 running. We are the king of the splinter party hill.

you feelin fucky posted:

The entire vogelaarwijk program was a wash. There were no objective criteria for appointing them and they were conveniently spread out around the country. It was just politics. I've lived in two. I've also lived in worse neighborhoods that never got any money.

Panama Red posted:

Here is the latest seat projection based on a 20 February TNS NIPO poll:

PVV 28
VVD 25
D66 19
CDA 18
GL 16
PvdA 11
SP 11
50+ 9
CU 6
PvdD 3
SGP 3
Other 1

Panama Red posted:

Here is the latest seat projection based on a 20 February TNS NIPO poll:

PVV 28
VVD 25
D66 19
CDA 18
GL 16
PvdA 11
SP 11
50+ 9
CU 6
PvdD 3
SGP 3
Other 1

quote:

In moves to attract right-leaning voters, the CDA called for the introduction of short-term military service for young people while Labor said Dutch people should be “proud of the Netherlands again.”

The Puppet Master posted:

Yes, this is what is going to get people to vote for them. Compulsory military service and vague nationalism

http://www.politico.eu/article/nexit-raises-its-head-in-first-dutch-election-debate-cda-sybrand-buma-mark-rutte-geert-wilders/

quote:

The party of far-right Dutch candidate Geert Wilders has slipped to second place in the Peilingwijzer poll of polls with two weeks to go until a parliamentary election.

Wilders was on 15.7 per cent, behind the conservative VVD party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte for the first time since November. Rutte's party was on 16.3 per cent, the poll aggregator said in an update published on Wednesday.

The Dutch election is the first of three elections in European Union founder members this year, with anti-EU parties in France and Germany also hoping security and immigration worries will help them to electoral gains that could reshape the continent and its politics.

Hambilderberglar posted:

The last I heard of Henk Krol's idiot plans was that he had a lot of them, but wouldn't share how he was going to pay for them until after the election. This country is a slow motion tire fire sometimes.

you feelin fucky posted:

To be fair I don't get the idea of ramping up pension age during a period of structural unemployment and making it easier to fire people while those over 55 have like a 10% chance to ever get hired again. It seems to me were just making holland a neoliberal wonderland where at age 50 you are either written off as a member of society, or get to buy your 3rd house. It's not stopping people from voting VVD though, so I guess it's what we deserve.

Hambilderberglar posted:

Ah yes the poor elderly, living large on the tax contributions of the young who get hired at a fraction of the wages that they once did in a time where hilariously loose credit requirements got them into a housing market that's now appreciated beyond affordability for anyone who didn't buy back then.

The hardon this country has for old people is myopic when young graduates enter the labour force with a mountain of debt, a plethora of lovely contracts and an inability to actually put down roots in those wonderful cities they had the enjoyment of studying in. (fine print applies, DUO will suck up a chunk of your income for the better part of a decade but enjoy living in a vinexwijk or sacrificing yourself at the altar of the ever-affordable "Vrije Sector" and drop 700 a month on a glorified studio of 25m2. And pray to jebus you make that 3.5/4x monthly rent as income, or 40* the monthly rent, or whatever asinine requirements they have.)

Junior G-man posted:

I do occasionally tell my parents that the best thing in economic terms would be for all of them to be shot in the head and buried in the dunes. They don't know that I'm 50% serious.

Hambilderberglar posted:

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.
Besides, I don't think the dune grasses would much like the infusion of nutrients and then the sand blows away and we all drown.

Junior G-man posted:

I will also accept some sort of Soylent Gouda as an alternative and more eco-friendly solution.

Besides, we might need to kill 200.000 Dutch cows this year because NL is so ridiculously far beyond the EU's phosphate emission standards. So if we already have killing floors set up, may as well re-use.

quote:

Dutch dung overload raises specter of massive cull

A face-off with Brussels will kill half a million Dutch dairy cows unless the Netherlands can this year contain the mountains of manure they produce.

The massive quantity of dung is a problem because it releases too much phosphate, which contaminates groundwater, and the only realistic response is to cull the culprits. A lucky few cows could be sold abroad.

A cull of this scale would wipe out about a third of the 1.5 million cows in the country — a major blow to Dutch farmers, who are the EU’s fourth-largest milk producers. They generated some €12 billion for the Dutch economy in 2014.

The drastic predicament arose because of an exemption that the Netherlands won from EU environmental rules in 2006 and that expires December 31 if Brussels refuses to renew it. The Dutch secured a derogation from the bloc’s nitrate rules allowing them to spread more manure than other European farmers. This was designed to account for Dutch agriculture’s high intensity: The sector can use more nitrates because, proportionally, it produces more per hectare.

But Brussels only allowed these higher nitrate levels on the condition that farmers limit the amount of phosphates they apply on fields.

The Netherlands blew through this cap for several years running after the size of the dairy sector soared when milk production quotas ended in 2015. Koert Verkerk, from the Dutch farmers’ lobby LTO, said that the Netherlands surpassed its phosphate limits between 2008 and 2010, and again between 2014 and 2016. He attributed the recent infraction to a surge in cow numbers.

“When the milk quota disappeared they knew what the consequences would be and they didn’t do a thing,” said Friends of the Earth Netherlands campaigner Bart van Opzeeland, referring to the Dutch government.

Dutch farmers now fear Brussels will refuse to renew the exemption unless they reduce phosphate levels. If this happens they will have to remove some 500,000 cows from the herd to comply with the bloc’s regular nitrate rules.

Yet the proposed solution is almost as traumatic: Kill or sell some 200,000 dairy cows this year so that the national herd emits fewer phosphates.

“There is no winner,” Van Opzeeland said. “It’s a problem for the farmers but also for almost 200,000 cows who will probably die.”

Many are furious at the various politicians and experts who they say failed to foresee that the end of milk quotas would cook up phosphate trouble.

“In 2006 we knew that we had a phosphate ceiling, in 2008 … we knew that milk quotas would end,” Dutch Liberal MEP Jan Huitema said.”In a way, we all in the Netherlands did not act appropriately.”

Verkerk agreed: “Farmers are also angry at us because we let it happen as well — and in a sense they’re right.”

The government was well aware that it had to cut phosphate levels, however, and last year haggled with the European Commission to institute a system of so-called phosphate rights — or tradeable phosphate-production certificates. The Commission rejected the policy in October, citing state-aid rules on illegal government support.

The Dutch government declined to comment.

“He shouldn’t have let it happen. It’s unbelievable that it happened,” Verkerk said of Dutch Agriculture Minister Martijn van Dam, who added that the minister should have done more.

Recognizing that it was facing a calamity, the dairy sector late last year proposed its own solution: Feed companies volunteered to cut phosphate levels in their products, while milk processors suggested penalizing farmers who produced over a certain limit.

The government then stepped in with a €25 million fund to incentivize slaughter or exports, to which the dairy sector added another €25 million.

To work, the scheme must remove some 200,000 thousand cows.

Verkerk and Van Opzeeland insisted the plan would work and that the Commission would extend the derogation, pointing out that everyone in the sector understood the stakes.

But paradoxically — for dairy farmers who have longed for better prices since the dairy market’s collapse in 2014 — a now-rising milk price may well throw a wrench in the works.

“With the milk prices rising again, farmers are not reducing their herd numbers,” Verkerk said. “From an entrepreneurial point of view, very understandable, but from the collective, it’s disastrous.”

http://www.politico.eu/article/cow-cull-looming-as-netherlands-tackles-dung-overload/

Hambilderberglar posted:

Ah yes the poor elderly, living large on the tax contributions of the young who get hired at a fraction of the wages that they once did in a time where hilariously loose credit requirements got them into a housing market that's now appreciated beyond affordability for anyone who didn't buy back then.

The hardon this country has for old people is myopic when young graduates enter the labour force with a mountain of debt, a plethora of lovely contracts and an inability to actually put down roots in those wonderful cities they had the enjoyment of studying in. (fine print applies, DUO will suck up a chunk of your income for the better part of a decade but enjoy living in a vinexwijk or sacrificing yourself at the altar of the ever-affordable "Vrije Sector" and drop 700 a month on a glorified studio of 25m2. And pray to jebus you make that 3.5/4x monthly rent as income, or 40* the monthly rent, or whatever asinine requirements they have.)

Junior G-man posted:

It's because we were (up to now) quite good at getting a massive exemption from the EU on our nitrogen and phosphate emissions, but now that the EU and NL are signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals, the EC is taking a much dimmer view than they used to.

Have some context:


We crashed this car with our eyes wide open, it's amazing.

quote:

“In 2006 we knew that we had a phosphate ceiling, in 2008 … we knew that milk quotas would end,” Dutch Liberal MEP Jan Huitema said.”In a way, we all in the Netherlands did not act appropriately.”

Verkerk agreed: “Farmers are also angry at us because we let it happen as well — and in a sense they’re right.”

quote:

Recognizing that it was facing a calamity, the dairy sector late last year proposed its own solution: Feed companies volunteered to cut phosphate levels in their products, while milk processors suggested penalizing farmers who produced over a certain limit.

Hambilderberglar posted:

Ah yes the poor elderly, living large on the tax contributions of the young who get hired at a fraction of the wages that they once did in a time where hilariously loose credit requirements got them into a housing market that's now appreciated beyond affordability for anyone who didn't buy back then.

The hardon this country has for old people is myopic when young graduates enter the labour force with a mountain of debt, a plethora of lovely contracts and an inability to actually put down roots in those wonderful cities they had the enjoyment of studying in. (fine print applies, DUO will suck up a chunk of your income for the better part of a decade but enjoy living in a vinexwijk or sacrificing yourself at the altar of the ever-affordable "Vrije Sector" and drop 700 a month on a glorified studio of 25m2. And pray to jebus you make that 3.5/4x monthly rent as income, or 40* the monthly rent, or whatever asinine requirements they have.)