September 15, 2012

Saturday shorts: phone book dies, Dobben croquette disappears, other free market failures

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:51 pm

De Telefoongids to fire hundreds of employees

The phone book company that is trying to silence Alexander Klöpping is planning to fire 30% of its 800 employees, Z24 reports.

According to European Directories, the ‘restructuring’ is necessary for a print-to-online transition. The company has also declared that it plans to continue distribution of its paper phone book, despite opposition of Dutch parliament, amongst others.

Klöpping had registered the domain sterftelefoongidssterf.nl (‘die, phone book, die’), which he redirected to the presumed cancellation page of the phone book.

Famous croquette to disappear from supermarket shelves because of anti-monopoly rules

Snack producer Royaan can no longer use its famous brand Van Dobben in supermarkets if it wants to continue its merger with Ad van Geloven (of amongst other the Mora brand).

The Dutch anti-monopoly agency NMa has determined that Royaan must license the brand for supermarket use to another manufacturer during a period of six years according to NOS. After that the brand must be discontinued. The brand may still be used in snack bars; according to NMa there are still enough players in that market to keep it healthy. The intended merger of the snack giants was announced in November 2011.

Krokets or croquettes are a Dutch snack that consists of ragout deep-fried in a breadcrumb jacket.

Experiment with dental free market must be stopped

A recent, nationwide experiment in which dentists could determine their own rates must be stopped the court in The Hague said last Wednesday.

According to Z24, dentists’ rates had risen 6% since the start of the experiment. When Dutch parliament indicated in July it wanted to have the experiment stopped, the association for dentists sued the caretaker minister for public health, but lost. The experiment started in January of this year and was to run for three years.

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June 17, 2012

Canta, the little can-do car

Filed under: Art,Automobiles,Health by Branko Collin @ 2:35 pm

On June 28 Dutch National Ballet will perform a dance that includes a group of disabled people in their Canta cars.

The ballet is part of a larger project that includes a documentary series by Maartje Nevejan and a book by Karin Spaink about the Canta microcar, the only car that can legally drive on bike paths and pavements in the Netherlands, exclusively sold to the disabled.

Spaink herself has Multiple sclerosis. In the book, De Benenwagen, she writes about the moment when it was time to face the hard truth, the moment she had to get an invalid car:

Everything changed. Using my crutches, my speed was 3 km/h and my range 500 metres. With the wheelchair I reached speeds of 8 to 10 km/h for up to five minutes. […]

[When I took my first test drive], the speed scared me. “Oh no”, I panicked, “I cannot do this! I am so sorry… Please take it back to the factory! I made a terrible mistake.”

The mechanic made me stop to catch my breath. “Don’t worry, really, you’ll get used to it.” […] He was right. I got used to it in no time. […] The Arola [the Canta’s predecessor] gave me a large part of the freedom back that I had had to give up due to my disability.

The book talks about the history of the Canta, how it was designed by former Ferrari F40 racing driver Dick Waaijenberg, how it is the one car in the Netherlands that may drive on bike paths and pavements (other microcars are treated like mopeds before the law), and how Waaijenberg only sells them to the disabled. There are companies and organisations that own them, but they have to find theirs on the second hand market.

Karin Spaink does a good job of explaining the various aspects of the Canta and its predecessor Arola. The chapter where she joins the mechanic for his daily round is both insightful and moving. It provides a glimpse into the sort of people that need a Canta, and through Spaink we witness a man who gets sentenced to a life of decreased mobility, as his handicap has advanced too much for him to safely drive a microcar any more.

Benenwagen literally means ‘leg car’, and is used in an expression. If whiny kids ask their parents “but how will I get there?” when a distance is trivial, the answer will be “use the leg car”.

De benenwagen, Het succesverhaal van de Canta, Karin Spaink, ISBN 9789038894928.

Disclaimer: I have known Karin Spaink for almost two decades, and have supplied one of the photos for the book. The photo shown here though is by the prolific Facemepls, and is ‘some rights reserved‘.

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June 14, 2012

Dutch women enjoy sex less than men do

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 8:56 pm

According to a study by Rutgers WTF, only 60% of all Dutch women enjoy sex, as opposed to 78% of the men.

The study was held among 8,000 people. Rutgers claims it is the largest study on sexuality ever done in the Netherlands.

The number of women using birth control has dropped from 70% in 2009 to 69% in 2012. Of the fertile women that have sex but do not want to get pregnant, 9% don’t use birth control.

Acceptance of transgender people is low. One in five Dutch people prefer not to be around people who are gender ambivalent, and a similar number thinks there is something wrong with those who do not consider themselves clearly male or female.

(Photo by Flickr user Spec-ta-cles, some rights reserved)

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June 10, 2012

Three kids from Utrecht under supervision for being too fat

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Branko Collin @ 11:42 am

Child protection services has placed three children from the same family in Utrecht, ranging from 6 to 13 years old, under the supervision of a guardian for being dangerously overweight, De Telegraaf writes.

The children weighed 15, 18 and 51 kilograms too much in November 2011. The parents fought the services’ decision in court, but in a decision published in May, an judge in Arnhem found against the parents. The court felt that although it was obvious that the parents cared about their children, they lacked both the drive and the skills to deal with their children’s bad health.

According to Dutchnews.nl, “this is the thought to be the first time children in the Netherlands have been subject to a court order because of their weight”. NRC writes that in the UK, dozens of children have been placed under supervision since 2006 for being obese. Child protection services told the newspaper that they will only place children under supervision “if the parents refuse voluntary help and the problems are such that the development of the child is halted or endangered.”

Supervision means that although the children will generally get to stay with their parents, the supervisor must be consulted for all major decisions regarding the children, and orders given by the supervisor must be followed.

A high profile supervision was the 2009 case of then 13-year-old Laura Dekker who wanted to sail around the world by herself. The intent then was to determine whether Dekker was fit to sail the world by herself, although in hindsight the effect mainly seems to have been to instill a severe dislike for Dutch bureaucracy in the teen sailor.

(Photo by Quinn Dombrowski, some rights reserved)

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May 27, 2012

Schorem, a man’s man hair dresser in Rotterdam

Filed under: Fashion,General,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:06 pm

In its Bright Spot series, tech mag Bright reviews Rotterdam barbershop Schorem (‘scum’) which caters exclusively to men.

If you want, you can get a haircut and a shave there (55 euro all included) with old fashioned tools such as straight razors, and you can apparently have a beer while you wait. Only for men, because “every man has the right to a place where he can be a man”.

Last year Noël Schoolderman created a series of short documentaries about ‘old crafts’, and the first episode was about Schorem:

One of the barbers says in the video: “A man should only be touched by three other men in his lifetime: his doctor, his tailor and his barber. […] These days you can see a proliferation of Albert Heijns, Blokkers, Xenoses, all the big retail chains. I think people these days have a need for something unique, something with that special touch.”

(Video and screen capture: MrSchorem)

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April 29, 2012

A ‘Truman show’ village for dementia sufferers

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

elderly_manThe international press have been giving a lot of attention lately to a nursing home for dementia sufferers near Amsterdam that tries to give its inhabitants a sense of living their ordinary lives.

The 152 patients living in De Hogewey, Weesp still go to the supermarket, the hairdresser and to a café, even though they generally have no idea what is going on.

Writes the Daily Mail in an extensive report:

A brainstorming process began and by early 1993 they had the answer. Yvonne says: ‘In life, we want to live with people like ourselves. We want to be surrounded by people we would choose to be friends with those with similar values, similar jobs and with similar interests.’

The result was a ‘village’ with several lifestyle options. The job of doctors and carers is to make those seven worlds as real as possible: through the way the home is decorated, the food, the music, even how the table is laid.

The lifestyles reflect the world outside the gates. The ‘Gooise’, or aristocratic Dutch; the ‘ambachtelijke’, or working class; the ‘Indische’, or those of Indonesian origin who migrated to Holland from the former colony; the ‘huiselijke’ or homemakers; the ‘culturele’ who enjoy art, music and theatre; the urban sophisticates who relish city life, and the ‘Christelijke’, for whom religion is paramount – whether Christianity or another faith.

[…]

The posher ‘residents’ dine off lace tablecloths on a table laid with fine glass and porcelain; meals are brought to the table by ‘servants’ who remain on standby in the kitchen. Their relationship with the residents is deliberately formal and submissive. Conversely, the working-class residents prefer meals to be casual, taken with their helpers or ‘family’, maybe in front of the TV.

See also this German video by 3Sat:

Although it costs approximately 5,000 euro per month to stay at De Hogewey, most of that is paid for by the insurer, dementia being covered under Dutch universal healthcare (there is a small copay of 100 euro per month, according to the video report).

Note: stays at nursing homes are generally covered by a nationwide policy (PDF, Dutch) that lets homes charge for extras such as cable television, laundry services and so on. I imagine the same goes for De Hogewey. In other words, there may be extra costs, but these are typically and easily covered by the state pension that everybody over 65 gets (AOW).

See also:

(Photo by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved)

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April 23, 2012

Popular youths drinking soda inspire peers

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:56 pm

It seems that when young people see their popular friends drink soda instead of alcohol, they are likely to follow suit.

Hanneke Teunissen of the Radboud University in Nijmegen found that “adolescents were more influenced by popular than unpopular peers. Interestingly, the anti-alcohol norms of popular peers seemed most influential in that adolescents were less willing to drink when they were confronted with the anti-alcohol norms of popular peers. Additionally, the adolescents internalized these anti-alcohol norms, which means that they were still less willing to drink when the anti-alcohol norms of these peers were no longer presented to them.”

Earlier studies had already shown the reverse, namely that seeing friends drink alcohol inspires adolescents to also drink alcohol.

Teunissen’s findings will be published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

(Link: Eureka Alert. Photo by Jos Faber, some rights reserved.)

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March 19, 2012

Man cannot stop laughing after an operation

Filed under: Health,Shows,Weird by Branko Collin @ 9:59 am

Writes the Daily Mail:

A Dutch man who underwent hip surgery two years ago has appeared in a TV interview claiming he has not been able to stop laughing ever since.

According to Huug Bosse’s wife, her husband now spends his days laughing at everyone and everything and it all started when he had a hip replaced under anaesthesia in 2010.

Bosse (70) used to be a greengrocer in Krommenie, halfway between Amsterdam and Alkmaar. He was known for his cheerful disposition, but according to his wife Nolda, it has gotten too much: “If you are trying to have a conversation, and all you get in return is laughter, it starts to get annoying.”

Hearing the national anthem will make him cry though.

The interview was shown in Man Bijt Hond, originally a Flemish programme of which this is the Dutch version. Dutch television, or rather Christian broadcaster NCRV, likes its eccentrics—Showroom (1977-1982) and De Stoel (1990-2004) focused exclusively on them.

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March 6, 2012

Hospital in Arnhem has separate ER for children

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am

The Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem, Gelderland now has a separate ER (Emergency Room) for children, following demands from paediatricians that children would be better served by not coming into contact with wounded adults.

Only in children’s hospitals do they have ERs for children obviously, and paediatricians probably felt the pressure of finding a better way to reassure their small patients admidst big world chaos.

A quick Google search in English leads me to believe that this seems like a good idea and quite common in other countries. There is also a growing number of ERs for the elderly as well, something I can imagine this country either should have or could really use.

Why is this news in the Netherlands? I’m sure budgets play a role, but again it seems this country is lagging behind world trends. I say ‘seems’ — someone enlighten us: have doctors been pleading for years to get this set up and finally someone listened?

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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March 2, 2012

Mobile euthanasia units to perform home deaths

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

As of yesterday, euthanasia in The Netherlands can also be performed by mobile euthanasia units. The ‘Life End’ clinic will be working with six mobile teams of doctors and nurses to perform euthanasia throughout the country, starting in The Hague.

Contrary to factless nonsense spewed by certain American politicians who would rather divert attention to a small country 6,000 km away than look at the mess in their own back yard, doctors as well as the rest of The Netherlands are definitely worried about these mobile teams carrying out the proper evaluation of patients. Some 1,000 patients have submitted a request to receive the services of the travelling clinic, having been refused euthanasia from their general practitioners. More often than not, the motivations are religious or ethical, and sometimes doctors are not well enough informed about the law, and are scared to perform euthanasia.

The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation, the biggest of its kind in the world. Euthanasia has been legal since 2002, and physician-assisted suicide is not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care.

(Links: www.nrc.nlwww.guardian.co.uk, Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved)

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