July 16, 2013

Dutch tourist tax is the top moneymaker for municipalities

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

This year Dutch municipalities expect to rake in 162 million euro in tourist tax, 62 million more than in 2010. In 2011, 174 of the 418 municipalities hiked up its tax and in some places, the tax at hotels simply doubled.

Of all the municipal taxes, it is the tourist tax that goes up the most each year. And this year 76 percent of municipalities are collecting this cash cow of a tax, as compared to 72 percent last year. Tourist tax on the Wadden Sea islands is quite high with Texel at 26 percent and Vlieland at 42 percent.

The winner is Amsterdam, cashing in on 37 million euro in 2013, and the year isn’t over. A dubious honourable mention goes out to Rotterdam, which got rid of the tourist tax in 2005, but brought it back in 2010.

Paying tourist tax in your own country as a Dutch person does not seem to make much sense, but you could easily argue it. However, it is unclear when and where you pay tourist tax, as every municipality has either a fixed rate or a percentage, looking like a typical Dutch bureaucratic free-for-all that nobody can keep straight.

(Link: www.nieuws.nl, www.etoa.org)

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July 14, 2013

Companies rank Dutch banks as barely sufficient

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:16 pm

One in three Dutch companies wants to break up with its bank, but only one in six thinks this is possible, Z24 reports.

The business news site commissioned a study by DVJ Insights to find out how over 500 entrepreneurs feel about their banks. Most Dutch businesses manage their finances through either Rabobank, ABN Amro or ING, which control about 88% of the market. Of the other banks, German Deutsche Bank is the biggest, or rather, the least small. The big three received grades of around 5.7 out of 10 from their clients—the lowest passing grade. Deutsche Bank, which according to Z24 wants to get rid of its Dutch customers, received a 4.

The article doesn’t mention if any of the smaller banks got high grades.

A third of entrepreneurs is considering switching banks, but about half of them think it would be difficult. A reason given is that they also have a private account with the same bank.

One of the reasons businesses are unhappy with their bank is that banks are reluctant to provide loans. In the past two years a third of businesses requested a loan from a bank, but in 64% of the cases these loans were denied.

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June 21, 2013

The Dutch PhD ceremony: pomp and linguistic circumstances

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

I attended my first-ever PhD defense in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam this week. One of the candidates presented in English and the other in Dutch. In a ceremony open to the public attended by friends, family, colleagues and the curious, a master of ceremony (‘pedel’, a woman this time) with a ‘pedelstok’ (big staff with rattling bits on it) led a procession to bring the defense committee (‘opponents’) to their box seats wearing traditional black robes and caps. After an hour of Q&A chaired by the University’s rector with some tough questions the master of ceremony called ‘Hora est!’ (‘Time’s up!’ in Latin) and then the gang retreated for private consultation. It reminded me of church or court (we had to get up often), but it felt like being in an old Dutch painting.

Basically it’s a ceremony where the candidates have to defend some valid points that could surely be addressed in postdoctoral research, but then research is something that is never finished at any academic level.

The one thing that struck me as odd was that the English-speaking candidate was mostly asked if not only asked (if I remember correctly) questions in English to which they answered in English, while the Dutch candidate had to answer many questions in Dutch asked to her in English. In other words, the native Dutch speaker was technically at a disadvantage in their own country. As well, the native English speakers asked questions in English to which they could not really understand the Dutch answer. I find this proof positive of how much the Dutch have to continuously adapt to the use of English at the most important moments of their lives. The Dutch candidate was visibly more nervous as well.

We once wrote about the ceremony from an Australian blogger’s perspective.

Another post by a Chilean claiming that being exposed to public criticism shouldn’t be done at a purely ceremonial event.

And another post says the reception afterwards felt like a wedding reception (I agree), but it did feel like being ‘fired at’:

“Several months before you expect to get your degree you must finish your thesis and send it off for approval of your committee. When you get the “OK,” you are officially done with the analysis and writing! Now you can look forward to becoming your own personal party planner. ”

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Effeietsanders, some rights reserved)

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June 19, 2013

Armin van Buuren featured with vinyl records at Madurodam

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:02 am
800px-Armin_Van_Buuren_2

Recently someone asked me if I had ever been to Madurodam in The Hague, an attraction many tourists and Dutch people visit, especially with kids, and my answer was ‘no’. Someone also recently asked me why Dutch DJs (music producers, really) Tiësto, Afrojack and Armin van Buuren were world-famous to which I pertly answered that Afrojack didn’t count in my books and that the other two make dance/trance music that the Dutch seem to make best.

Now that Armin van Buuren is just that much more popular than Tiësto and considered an export product like some sort of cheese, he’s now also featured in Madurodam.

As a DJ myself I am a bit miffed that Madurodam has set up turntables (you know, for vinyl records) as an attraction when in fact Van Buuren plays off CD players. I don’t care what he uses, but the art of using turntables is and will always be totally different than using CDs.

Madurodam, you’re willfully misleading children. It would be like giving them a chance to play with acrylic paints trying to mimic their favourite street graffiti artist.

(Link: www.omroepwest.nl, Photo of Armin van Buuren by Peter Drier, some rights reserved)

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June 16, 2013

Dutch working mothers are paid less than working fathers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:34 pm

OK, this is somewhat old news (in fact, Dutch Daily News covered it two months ago), but I still want to write about it because this follows up on earlier stories. Basically what I am trying to find out is how we, the Dutch, define Enlightenment ideals such as freedom, equality and happiness. It is clear that they are important to us, but we have been pursuing aspects of these ideals hundreds of years before other Western nations did and as a result, when looking through a global lens, we seem to do everything exactly different.

As they say, Dutch women don’t get depressed.

Here is the deal. In many ways the Dutch are some of the least gender equal people in the world. Our ratio of men and women in management roles is similar to that of the United Arab Emirates—and the Arabs at least are working to improve theirs. Furthermore, 60% of all Dutch women do not make enough money to pay their way through life—but they like it that way! In fact, men want some of that part-time action too!

So now a new study has come out that adds another piece to the puzzle. It appears that gender inequality is especially strong among working parents in the Netherlands. On the other hand the income of single men and women without children who work full-time jobs are exactly the same. I thought that was interesting. You’d expect at least some old-fashioned sexism to depress even those incomes by a couple of points. Perhaps that in the parts of our population where sexism is still rife (the Bible belt, anyone?) single, childless women with full-time jobs are rare.

If everybody is happy about this arrangement, then who I am to disagree? There is a difference between women being forced into inequality and women choosing inequality. Where things get weird is in relationships. The default Dutch marriage setting is that of community property (for now). The state sees a marriage as a contract between the state and two people. When the partners dissolve the wedding, the state typically demands that the high earner keeps supporting the low earner through alimony. What kind of incentives does an arrangement like that produce?

See also:

(Link: Statistics Netherlands. Photo by ValentinaST, some rights reserved)

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June 13, 2013

Unemployed street cleaner sweeps to keep benefits

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

Harry, 53, lost his job as a street cleaner in The Hague due to budget cuts. Harry now gets benefits while he looks for another job. To keep his benefits, Harry has to work as a street cleaner (he has the experience, right?), but for 400 euro less a month. Keeping Harry on the streets sweeping means the government gets the exact same work done, but pays Harry less, so Harry went to the media with this one.

Usually a re-integration into the labour market job is to help people find a new job, so how does this work then? If Harry was learning some new skills in order to get a new job, it wouldn’t have made the papers.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of Broom on wet floor by Shyb, some rights reserved)

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June 12, 2013

Government must pay damages to marijuna sellers caused by ‘weed pass’

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:06 pm

Last Wednesday a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch government to pay owners of marijuana bars (called coffeeshops in the Netherlands) the damages caused by the introduction of the so-called ‘weed pass’, NRC writes.

Last year the government introduced the requirement for coffeeshop patrons to register in order to make it impossible for foreign customers to purchase marijuana. The requirement was dropped later that year, but by that time coffeeshops in the provinces of Limburg, Noord-Brabant and Zeeland had already seen a decline in income as local customers also stayed away.

Coffeeshop customers are still required to prove residency. The court felt the extra requirement of obtaining a weed pass was a “disproportionately large infringement of the interest of coffeeshop patrons.”

Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten has announced that he will appeal the verdict.

(Photo by Torben Bjørn Hansen, some rights reserved. Link: The Amsterdam Herald.)

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June 11, 2013

Cliff on Mercury gets a Dutch name

Filed under: General,History,Science by Orangemaster @ 1:20 pm

An enormous cliff wall on the planet Mercury has been given a Dutch name. NASA named the cliff after the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Duyfken, the first European ship to reach Australia in 1606. The Duyfken cliff is 500 kilometres long and lies in the southern hemisphere of Mercury.

For the big fans, you can look at hundreds of pictures of Mercury and I bet you one of them could contain the Duyfken.

(Links: www.dutchnews.nl, www.nasa.gov)

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June 8, 2013

Planned bomb detonation interrupts trains to and from Venlo

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:08 pm

Tomorrow the Dutch army will detonate two World War II bombs on the site of the former army base in Blerick, just across the Meuse from Venlo.

Both bombs are English 500-pounders that were found last May at depths of 1.5 and 1.75 metres respectively. After the failure of Operation Market Garden in 1944, the Meuse became the front line for several months. Although Blerick had been liberated in December 1944, Venlo had to wait until March 1945.

The mayor of Venlo called the destruction of two bombs in his municipality “nothing special”, but he stressed that he had nothing but respect for the bomb disposal unit, Dichtbij writes.

The army base was built in 1910 on top of the old Fort Sint Michiel. Even in literature the area saw action. Twin brothers Beekman tried to help stop the Nazi invasion in 1940 from casemates in front of the base in the book Beekman en Beekman, which according to its publisher is the best selling novel ever in the Netherlands, Wikipedia writes.

(Photo of a 1000-pounder in Bunnik by the Ministry of Defense, some rights reserved)

June 7, 2013

Marijuana scratch and sniff cards for Heerlen

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:38 am

The city of Heerlen, Limburg plans to hand out scratch and sniff cards smelling of marijuana to residents so that they can help report illegal marijuana nurseries. It’s not a new idea. Back in 2010 we told you about cannabis scratch and sniff cards to sniff out illegal plantations.

Basically the police need help and what better help than people who think it smells funny over at the neighbour’s place.

In Heerlen’s case, embarrassement played a good part in bringing up the scratch and sniff card. A marijuana nursery was discovered in a building with a daycare centre, something you don’t read about every day and not good publicity for a city that has been fighting its drug-induced image for so many years. [Insert bad joke about children learning what pot smells like at a young age ].

I can still picture the German woman in this story saying it smells like Amsterdam.

Our info from 2010 stated that about 6,000 plantations are found out every year, 300 of which back then were uncovered in Rotterdam alone.

(Link: www.limburger.nl)

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