June 12, 2019

Educated Dutch men drink the most

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Orangemaster @ 9:06 pm

Every country seems to have different guidelines as to what people should and should not drink. In the Netherlands last year, 4 out of 10 Dutch people heeded the advice of the Dutch Health Council to not have more than one glass (no idea of the quantity or the unit) of alcohol a day.

Last year some 80.4% of all Dutch adults drank alcohol, with highly educated men drinking the most. Out of the highly educated, 7 out of 10 Dutch people didn’t follow the Health Council advice, while for folks with a lower level of education, it was 5 out of 10. The older Dutch people are, the more they follow the council’s advice.

Dutch men drink more excessively on a regular basis than women: 14 glasses a week for women and 21 for men. Again, no clue how much alcohol is in a glass. Heavy drinking is seen as at least 4 glasses a day for women and 6 glasses a day for men. Four or even six glasses is a night down the pub for me, but then not every day or even every week or month.

According to this illustration, the excessive drinkers are aged 20-24 and 65-74, while the heavy drinkers are 20-24 followed by 18-19. I’m guessing the older ones are retired – good on them.

I drink less than I used to, but I have to say the cheap price of alcohol in general lets me drink more than I did in Canada. You can buy half a litre of beer for € 0,50 and a litre of wine for € 1,50. Granted, it’s not the good stuff.

(Link: foodlog.nl)

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March 19, 2019

University student bequeaths record amount

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 4:05 pm

An alumna of Utrecht University from Rotterdam has left 1.2 million euro to the university, making it the biggest amount ever bequeathed to it in Dutch history.

Annie van Leerzem studied medicine in the 1950s in Utrecht, as Rotterdam did not have a faculty of medicine back then. Although she graduated, she never practiced medicine, as the care of both her parents fell on her shoulders.

A fund has been set up in her name, the Familie van Leerzemfonds. The money will be used for young clinical researchers in general medicine.

(Link: rijnmond.nl, Photo by Tom Varco, published under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license)

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February 6, 2019

Dutch finally allow the registration of stillborn children

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:19 am

Baby-booties

As of February 10, parents of stillborn children in the Netherlands will have one of their dearest wishes come true: they will finally be able to register their babies in the Personal Records Database.

Although it is compulsory in the Netherlands to register the birth of a stillborn child, which applies if the child was born after 24 weeks of pregnancy, for many grieving parents, their baby was still considered ‘non existent’.

“A stillborn child does not exist in the registration of birth, but only in the registration of death”, according to Dutch law. The explanation is that the Personal Records Database is used to provide general data about people necessary for the government to execute its tasks, which means that it ‘doesn’t make sense’ to include data about a stillborn child in this system. However, back when this issue was up for discussion in Parliament, the Minister of Internal Affairs was unable to explain why this leads to the conclusion that registering the birth of this child was unnecessary as was issuing a birth certificate for them.

Losing a child is surely very traumatic, and being left with only a death certificate cannot possibly help alleviate parents’ grief in any way whatsoever. And since by law every child, born live or dead, must be registered after birth within three days according to Dutch law and international law, this practice runs counter to Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As well, making a distinction between liveborn and stillborn children is a violation of the right of the child to non-discrimination according to Article 2 of the CRC.

Anybody in the Netherlands who has had a stillborn baby can now register them retroactively, following a proper change in the law. The Dutch government estimated about 550 people a year who will register stillborns, while knowledge centre Stille Levens specialised in stillborns puts the number at around 800, based on figures from 2016.

(Links: nu.nl, leidenlawblog.nl, Photo of baby booties by Winam, some rights reserved)

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January 31, 2019

Dutch company to let a woman give birth in space

Filed under: Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:09 pm

Feel free to look up having sex in space regardless of who is involved, which I filed under ‘complicated/pass’ in my mind palace. However, if you want to move on to giving birth in space, there’s a Dutch company that wants to tell you about its plans.

Dutch company SpaceLife Origin, a collaboration between business people (dudes, right?) and organisational expert Egbert Edelbroek (a man) from Eindhoven. In 2024, the company’s goal would be to have a Dutch woman give birth in space.

“If we don’t learn how we can procreate in space, then as humans we’re bound to Earth, while life on Earth is increasingly under threat”, explains Edelbroek. It’s under threat because we’re billions of morons using the planet as our own personal rubbish bin, but sure. If we want to go to Mars, we’re theoretically going to have to find out what it’s like to procreate in space. I’m secretly hoping women just won’t want to, but that’s me talking science-fiction.

SpaceLife Origin wants to start with fertilisation in space using an embryo incubator called Mission Lotus. Experts warn against problems such as a baby being exposed to ionising radiation that causes cancer and the g-force that occurs with space flight. Oh, and weightlessness, and I’m sure a whole bunch of other things.

I hope the woman (women?) who sign up and anyone else really know what they are getting into, but that also goes for anybody who thinks getting to Mars is easy at this point.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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January 17, 2019

Seventies Dutch Marines recruitment film should sell lingerie

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 5:51 pm

Spokesman for the Netherlands Ministry of Defence Klaas Meijer tweeted about this groovy, James Bond-esque recruiting film for the Dutch Marines, which for 1972 was possibly seen as quite ordinary. However, on Twitter, it made a lot of people twitch because of the way it portrays women.

Sexism and good looking women in lingerie is as late 1960s-early 1970s as it gets, and this would never ever be made today except as a joke. I like the music, though. I can laugh about it today because it’s generally accepted that you have to see something like this in context: women were still housewives back then in this country.

Instead of getting outraged, let’s all have a good laugh at how ignorant it is, but yet still very funny. All the men in white underwear look completely ridiculous as well.

Photo: www.lc.nl

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January 2, 2019

Dutch record malpractice claim sees patient die

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 12:39 pm

Happy New Year! Now let’s get to it.

Irish woman Adrienne Cullen had been campaigning for transparency in hospital care after she was left with terminal cervical cancer due to a grave medical error at a Dutch hospital, the mostly costly in Dutch medical history, to the tune of €545,000.

Sadly, Cullen passed away right before the new year, aged 58.

She had undergone tests in the Netherlands in 2011, but only two years later did doctors notice she had cancer. By 2015 her cancer had spread, and it was terminal. UMCU teaching hospital in Utrecht offered her €500,000 as long as she signed a gagging order to shut her up. Not taking this lying down, Cullen starting campaigning for more transparency about medical errors, and I bet told them to stuff it.

As well as giving lecture in her final days, Cullen was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Cork in Ireland. Her book ‘Deny, Dismiss, Dehumanize: What Happened When I went to Hospital’ will be published soon. Her entire story didn’t go unnoticed by the Dutch-language media either.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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November 26, 2018

Serious lack of birth control pills still unresolved

Filed under: Health by Orangemaster @ 2:55 pm

A problem that affects the population’s sexual health and continues to appear in the media in much too lukewarm of a fashion, is the fact that four of the seven major brands of birth control pills have not been available for months in the Netherlands, including the most popular non-name brand.

Most companies didn’t exactly shout from the rooftops that they could no longer supply their products. Even though the government is acutely aware of the situation, calls it ‘a scandal’ and promised to sort it out in September, we’re approaching December and the problem persists. Production upgrades that went awry and attempts to fix the problems have caused a pile of problems that genuinely qualify as a clusterfuck.

According to Rutgers, a sexual and reproductive health organisation, 63% of Dutch women between 18 and 24 use the pill as their main contraception, and in this case, it is the no-name, major brand pill that’s been entirely unavailable. In this country, it is policy to prescribe no-name cheaper brands before anything else, and I’m sure price and having taken the Pill out of the free healthcare package not helping in any way, shape or form.

Options? Buying pills off Dutch auction sites for ‘usurious prices’, including buying pills from dubious sources as if it were illegal drugs. Why a problem that affects more than half of the population – it’s an issue for women and their partners! – can’t be solved is not just a scandal, it’s a general health hazard and embarrassing for such a rich country.

(Links: vice.com, nos.nl)

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October 1, 2018

Dutch woman asks exes to pay for birth control

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:16 pm

In the Netherlands and surely elsewhere there are phone apps you can use to ask people to pay for their share of things, like dinner or something else that needs to be split up. One twentysomething Dutch woman decided to send her exes a payment request for her birth control pills, with the idea that it remains very odd for women to bear the entire burden for it including paying for it, while men don’t have to do anything.

Until age 21, the Dutch basic insurance covers the pill, but after age 21, you have to pay for it yourself. The price also depends on which pill someone takes. Microgynon 30 is one of the most used pill and costs less than 30 euro a year. An IUD costs between 70 and 150 euro, and the price for having it inserted is between the 250 and 500 euro. If I remember correctly, until recently it was way cheaper to have it inserted.

If a Dutch woman takes the pill for 30 years, that’s still 900 euro she has to pay on her own. That’s not a ridiculous amount, but again why do women have to pay for it themselves? It’s just as much men’s responsibility to make sure that pregnancy does not occur when that’s the plan, and still men have no side effects whatsoever.

The trend in the Netherlands (at least from what I can see as of late) is that women don’t want to be solely responsible for contraception and unwanted pregnancies.

The woman doesn’t send her ex partners a huge bill, but asks for a 1,50 euro contribution. She got reasonable responses and payments from three ex partners. Then again, splitting the cost of condoms is surely also a reasonable request.

Maybe the Dutch are onto something.

(Link: vice.com, Photo by Flickr user Spec-ta-cles, some rights reserved)

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September 24, 2018

First Dutch woman marine trainee quits due to injury

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am
f16.gif

It was only since 1 January 2017 that women were allowed in the Dutch Marine Corps, and after finally having one woman approved for the programme, she has had to stop due to two consecutive injuries.

The woman, who started her training in January of this year, was also shielded from the media until she finished her training, after which the media could interview her.

Much like an athlete, she obviously knew that it was better to stop than to risk any more injuries, which all parties involved understand.

Although there are many differences throughout Europe, The Netherlands was never a leader when it came to having women join all branches of Defence, especially when it came to allowing women on submarines, which is still only scheduled for 2025.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo: www.lc.nl, www.defensie.nl)

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September 14, 2018

‘Dutch women stalled on job market cost the country’

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

We end up mentioning similar news about once a year, so here’s this year’s ‘Dutch women are being held back/are holding themselves back’ article:

Women in the Netherlands are at a disadvantage on the job market and if they were more equal, like some of the better neighbouring countries, it would bring in the state some 114 billion euro, according to a report published in newspaper Het Financiële Dagblad. If men and women were completely equal, this figure would jump up to 221 billion.

With a few exceptions around me, even many progressive women (often with rich partners husbands) don’t realise that this part-time work makes them vulnerable in the long run. And on the flip side, no woman regardless on what side of the argument they fall is going to care one iota whether the gross domestic profit (GDP) is affected by them working part-time or not, so that’s not a great motivation. Decent childcare, less guilt trips and accepting that the status quo doesn’t work for many women would probably help.

Women are said to still do a lot of unpaid labour as carers, which surely could be said about most, if not all women in Western countries. As well, Dutch women still choose a lot of healthcare and teaching jobs that are traditionally women’s job, and overall pay less.

According to the 2017 report OECD report on gender equality, “almost 60% of the employed women in the Netherlands are in paid employment for fewer than 30 hours per week […] At the median, the gender pay gap for full-time workers in the Netherlands is 14%, just below the OECD average. As they are often better educated than young men, young women (age 25-29) in full-time employment often earn more than men of the same age. However, gender gaps reverse in favour of men when children enter the household – when Dutch women often start to work part-time.”

Paid father’s leave and not guilt-tripping fathers/partners for taking care of their own children, which is often still seen as baby sitting, should definitely be addressed.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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