An OESO study has discovered that the Netherlands bucks the trend of the rich getting richer at the expense of those paying for the crisis.
Good news, then? Not really. Z24 points out that the Dutch poor are also getting poorer. The group of people that live below the poverty line has increased from 6.7% in 2007 to 7.8% in 2011. In this study ‘rich’ is defined as belonging to the top 10% in disposable income and poor as the bottom 10%.
The financial news site points out that the poor have lost less income than the rich, which is an interesting mathematical factoid, but otherwise devoid of meaning in my opinion. If the poor lose 1.5% of their income it means they go without food for another five days in a year, while for the rich it means they have to wait five days longer before they can purchase their next luxury car. Not quite the same difference.
A group of people that has done relatively well for themselves during the crisis is the elderly whose income has stayed the same. The group of 18 to 25-year-olds has seen their income drop since 2007 by well over 2%, although those differences are minimal compared to those of the same age groups in other countries such as New Zealand and Israel where the elderly are getting rich at the cost of everybody else.
(Photo by Meraj Chhaya, some rights reserved)
As promised last week I have posted my photos of the Rietveld graduation exhibition to 
After the Dutch national football team beat Mexico in an exciting last ten minutes of an elimination match at the World Cup last week, in which the Oranje came back from behind with two goals, a fifteen-year-old Mexican girl called Dizzy Miss DC uploaded a song to YouTube 
Some of the works, such as the dog above, were displayed without any explanation of what the student was trying to say—probably not necessary with a Disney-like creature anyway—or even the name of the maker. (There were sticky notes carrying the name Tim Maarse near this sculpture, but it wasn’t quire clear if the sticky notes referred to the sculpture or were a work unto themselves).
Earlier this year Facebook was sued by American patent trolls Rembrandt IP, allegedly representing the deceased Jos van der Meer. 
About a month ago we told you about a pension plan for the self-employed. 
The Totalitarian Art Gallery in Amsterdam lives up to its name and trades in ‘totalitarian memorabilia’.
In a fascinating article by anthropologist Lizzy van Leeuwen in De Groene Amsterdammer last month, she describes how farmers’ association LTO, together with the Dutch government, has set up a system for detecting and dealing with early warning signs of the mistreatment of farm animals.
