I have read very, very little about Dutch politics in recent years. Today I read that Rutte is even more unpopular among you than the misanthrope Macron.
Whose mother-in-law did this guy kill? What’s going on in your country?
Greetings from next door
I couldn’t even make a proper summary of everything he has done to fuck people over but the most important things he has done:
Dit laatste is eigenlijk niet compleet de schuld van Rutte. Ja, hij is verdergegaan met het boren van gas in Groningen, maar zijn voorgangers ook. Toen ze intensief begonnen te boren en (veel) geld verdienden aan het gas in de jaren '70, werd dat geld snel ook weer uitgegeven. De uitgaven van de overheid stegen aanzienlijk en een spaarpot werd niet opgebouwd. Dit wordt ook wel the Dutch disease genoemd.
Als men in de jaren '70 / '80 een spaarpot had opgebouwd (zoals Noorwegen dat heeft gedaan met hun olie-inkomsten), zou de overheid van 2000 - nu een groot budget kunnen toewijzen (van wellicht honderden miljoenen) om de huizen in Groningen te verstevigen en te repareren. Als de overheid hier het geld voor had vrijgemaakt, had de overheid verder kunnen boren (oftewel meer geld verdienen) en tegelijkertijd de inwoners van Groningen blij houden.
P.S: ik ben geen VVD’er en je hebt goeie punten met de toeslagenaffaire en de afschaffing van de basisbeurs.
I know you’re just summarising, but I don’t think your first point gets across how deep the childcare benefits scandal goes. Thousands of parents had to pay tens of thousands of euros, often for no clear reason. The debt made them lose their posessions, jobs, relationships, and their own wellbeing. Their kids were taken out of their homes because parents in debt can’t take care of their children. These people literally lost years of their lives because of one single action by some unknown employee of the tax authority with no justification needed.
The government is supposed to protect its citizens from itself, and the Dutch government failed at its most important task. The protections against arbitrary punishment that you have on paper were actively being bypassed. Requests for information resulted in completely blacked out documents. When it was brought to court (if you could somehow afford a lawyer), even the highest judges blindly trusted the information they got from the tax authority (even though vital information was illegally left out), rather than assuming innocence. The ombudsman seemed to care very little. The government also lied to parliament, and most MPs did not question it too much anyway because staying in the coalition is so much more important. And then the fourth power, the press, took over a decade to bring all of this to light, after ignoring several signs before. All branches of government failed here, and the foundation of rule of law was violated. Rutte, of course, knew about it, but oopsie he has no active memory of it.