The Dutch government has resigned en masse. What was the massive scandal that brought them all down? Prepare to be shocked.
Mark Rutte’s government has stepped down after thousands of families were wrongly accused of child welfare fraud and told to pay money back.
Families suffered an “unparalleled wrong”, Dutch MPs decided, with tax officials, politicians, judges and civil servants leaving them powerless.
Many of those affected were from an immigrant background and hundreds were plunged into financial difficulty.
Mr Rutte submitted the cabinet’s resignation to the king.
“Innocent people have been criminalised and their lives ruined,” he then told reporters, adding that responsibility for what had gone wrong lay with the cabinet. “The buck stops here.”
…Parents were branded fraudsters over minor errors such as missing signatures on paperwork, and erroneously forced to pay back tens of thousands of euros given by the government to offset the cost of childcare, with no means of redress. They were, as one junior minister who resigned in connection with the scandal put it, “steamrolled” by the system.
Families were left in a state of ruin, by a state apparatus that became “the enemy of the people”.
Relationships disintegrated under the pressure, homes were lost, mothers have spoken tearfully of the financial and psychological anguish they suffered after being targeted by tax officials.
Get that? The government resigned because poor immigrants were treated badly by the state bureaucracy. Americans who have got used to massive abuses by its government going unpunished would treat that as the natural order of things. Making life difficult for poor people is seen by some here as precisely what the government should do, in order to get them off their lazy backsides and make something of their lives so that they too can become billionaires.
As a further note, the Dutch prime minister went to see the king to submit his resignation ridng on his bicycle.
Don’t these silly Dutch people know that the head of state must always go out in public with a massive entourage, a convoy of large vehicles with a police escort that congests traffic for several blocks, and a massive security detail?
In the same day, it came to light that Canada is buying its PPE from Malaysia. Workers are in near slave labour conditions making masks as COVID-19 spreads among themselves.
How much did Trudeau and liberals know? And if they “didn’t know”, why didn’t they examine conditions from the supplier?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/marketplace-overseas-personal-protective-equipment-manufacturing-working-conditions-1.5873213
Intransitive @1: Bill S-216 (currently awaiting second reading in the Senate, I think) is specifically aimed at this sort of problem.
Time to bring back the guillotine.
Many yonks ago, I interviewed for a job in Eindhoven. As it happens, they didn’t like my pointing out QA (Quality Assurance) is continuous process, not something that ends prior to product release, so I wasn’t offered the position. Despite some silly bean-counting objections about my expenses claim, I suspect I would have accepted the offer, in part because I liked what I found there and in the immediate area. I ultimately wound up in the S.France Mediterranean seaside village where I still am (and perhaps in a much better financial position), but still (semi-)dream of being in the Netherlands.
Intransitive: What are you worried about? Almost the entire world economy is based on similar labor conditions. I am willing to bet the very computer you are typing your complaint on was assembled by people working in grueling, probably toxic, conditions. That is one of the reasons for the boom in Asian economies-plentiful labor willing (or forced) to work in conditions unionized western workers rejected (or wanted more money for). Do you really think the workers sewing Nike shoes (“sneakers with lights in them”) earn middle class, dignified lives? Heck, half our drugs are now sourced in Chinese and Indian factories with limited quality control and poor wages.
Not only that, but the bad treatment was making them pay back money the government gave them.
To Americans, this must seem like some bizarre sci-fi alternate universe like Planet of the Apes. X-D
I live in the Netherlands. Please do not make light of this. It was a 10-15 year horrorshow of a powerful government vs the least powerful citizens.
The resignation itself comes at an opportune time, for the government. And our prime minister will (probably) be return to that job. No real alternatives have presented themselves.
The only cool thing in this story is our bike culture.
I’ll second Roeland and point to the here unquoted parts of the BBC article, where there is at least speculation that this could be a manoeuvre to side-step a no-confidence vote and look good for the next election, until which the government will (largely) remain at their post for the sake of continuity.
US politicians may be brazen and remorseless, but anything politicians say and do anywhere deserves close scrutiny. Doing so also tends to turn people into cynics, but as someone already severely affected I’d regard that as a good thing… when I saw the article yesterday I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and, in the “analysis” bit, it finally did. The suprising bit to me wasn’t that it could be a trick, but how it would work.
Resigning before the investigations / consequences hit is also a sexual harasser’s classic exit strategy, for one thing. It’s also a bit like, say, impeaching (or saying you would) your own party member just days before they’re out anyway so you can later pretend that you didn’t agree with how they did things and tried to to the right thing. (Can’t imagine why that popped into my head, sorry)
Oh, a post scriptum: Years ago when I was working in the Netherlands, my place of work was visited by royalty. They did get a motorcade, or at least the Dutch version of one. I didn’t go to see it but when I left for the day I saw a thin-ish throng of people still milling around the side of one of the roads on our campus. However, had I been promised a royal bike procession I absolutely would have been there…
Roeland:
A matter of cultural perspective, perhaps.
As I see it:
1. It contrasts the USA unfavourably with your country; and so
2. It is a compliment to your country and to your system.
3. The writing might be jocular, but the sentiment expressed is anything but.
Bottom line, Mano (and other commenters hitherto) probably wish they could take this as cynically as you do.
Now multiply that x100, and you get the USA horrorshow.
(Perspective!)
Nitpick time: The prime minister is not the Dutch head of state; the king is.
John:
And I am saying that as a country we do not deserve a compliment in this matter. The USA might be worse of then we are, probably is, but that does mean you must laugh of things like this.
People killed themselves over debt, because the government, knowingly, treated them as frauds, because they came from minority backgrounds.
You are saying I am not allowed to think this is fucking awful and disgusting, because the USA is worse. This does not make sense, we should be continuing to do better, and always keep our governments to high standards, especially since they are powerfull, and citizens are not.
Roeland de Bruijn. From my side of the North Sea, ruled by Trump’s Mini-Me and his ghastly crowd of racists, Brexiteers, con artists, grifters, and dimwits, and inhabited by people (mostly white English, sadly) who aren’t necessarily stupid, but are too lazy to think very hard about things, the Netherlands do look very attractive. Especially to me, as bikes are my everyday transport …
But the Dutch government has behaved disgracefully towards people who have a hard enough life without suffering casual cruelty -- and I note that the majority of Dutch people seem not to have been terribly worried about this.
“The government resigned because poor immigrants were treated badly by the state bureaucracy. ”
Nope. They are not immigrants. Most of them are coloured people, but born in The Netherlands. Some of them are white. They are all poor though and suffer from heavy debts they can’t pay. And almost all have Dutch passports.
That said Dutch Tax Service has employed an active policy to hit minorities.
“Making life difficult for poor people is seen by some here as precisely what the government should do.”
Too many Dutch think the same and PM Mark Rutte is one of them. He’s the leader of the largest political party. Chances are hight that he will lead a fourth government as well.
@10 John Morales: the compliment is undeserved. You Americans seem to underestimate the effects of 10-12 years (RdB) right wing policies in the country. I myself would say 40 years as it began actually around 1980. Me leaving The Netherlands for Suriname in 2000 had a lot to do with this tendency.
Thumbrule: The Netherlands take over everything bad and evil from the USA and nothing good. As a result
“Now multiply that x100, and you get the USA horrorshow”
confirms that you underestimate the Dutch status quo. Replace x100 by x1,5 and you will be much, much closer.
Did you for instance know that The Netherlands are a tax paradise for companies? It’s why the band U2 is registrated in Amsterdam.
@13 Lucifersbike: ” the Dutch government has behaved disgracefully towards people who have a hard enough life …..”
This has become normal, like I wrote, since 1980. The standard procedure is that especially the poor and vulnerable have to prove that they are innocent when accused of fraud.
“Fun” fact: the victims will receive 30 000 Euro. The Dutch Tax Service will be the first to collect that money as payment for their debts -- debts that result from the mistreat in the first place. Relationships remain disintegrated under the pressure, homes remain lost, mothers will keep on speaking tearfully.
“the Netherlands do look very attractive”
So that you can enjoy Dutch ghastly racists, like Geert Wilders, Thierry Baudet and their fandoms? Perhaps you should think twice. But I’ll allow you, after the Brexit soap a Nexit has become very unpopular.
Yet another example of The Netherlands taking over everything bad and evil from the USA:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/netherlands-disgrace-racism-and-police-brutality/
I understand that “the Dutch are so quaint” is meant as a joke, but for Dutchies like RdB and me it’s a sour joke, exactly because we’d wish we were that quaint.
Roeland @12:
What? I assure you, that is not the case.
@ JohnM: We Dutch usually are too straightforward and not nearly subtile enough to combine “this is fucking awful and disgusting” with “It is a compliment to your country and to your system”.
So to us your comment @10 means we aren’t allowed to say that. Only an explicit take-back of the “compliments” will convince us that your reassurance in @16 is completely sincere.
Cultural gap, you know. And when for instance Americans talk about The Netherlands we are going to firmly put our heels in the sand. Until you take those “compliments” back, that is. Then everything is fine again.
mnb0:
I’m a Spanish-born Australian.
I, personally, made no compliment — I just noted others did. I can’t take back what I never gave.
Also, my assurance (not reassurance, which is a different thing) was that I did not say what I was imputed to have said.
(Amusing it is that you imagined I had somehow complimented your mob via the correction of a misperception)