I was going to write something on Geert Wilders's announcement that he is making a film about the Qur'an, and the subsequent uproar it caused. But then I read something that made me decide Wilders will have to wait a few days.Consider this: you are the proprietor of a movie theater in the cute northern Dutch town of Groningen. There happens to be a room in the back of your premises, behind the movie screens, which can only be entered from a separate doorway on the other side of the building. (From personal experience, I know this is the case in many theaters.)
Enter squatter "Pino", who happens to be looking for a new place to live. Never mind that pigeons occupy the room, or that you have stored some items there. And never mind there is no heat either; Pino will just bring his own gas heater. It's hardly Buckingham Palace, but he has just found himself a great home.
Isn't that a matter of trespassing? Get yourself a gun, or a baseball bat, and kick the guy out of your building? Or call the police, who will do the same for you? No. Not in the Netherlands, where one is allowed to occupy someone else's real estate once it has been empty for at least a year. You might pay a visit to the room every once and a while to get some things out of it, or to store some, but judging from the pigeons' droppings all over the place, it has been empty all along. Period.
Since the police are of no use to you, you decide to have the fire department declare that the new situation poses a safety risk to your building. After all, the place was never meant to function as living space. But no, the fire department argues there is no problem here whatsoever. And so you have little choice but to allow Pino to live in your building, having him pay zero rent and perhaps steal your electricity as well.
Then, of course, the inevitable happens. Pino's little heater turns out not to be as safe as the fire department claimed, or he falls asleep leaving the candles burn. Either way, he sets the room on fire (NL). Pino himself is able to escape the flames, but you can be sure at least one of three matinee shows of the next day will be canceled. The brand-new movie screen is ruined, and there is water all over the place. Repairing the damage done to your property might cost you tens of thousands of euros, if not hundreds of thousands.
And the best is yet to come. Your insurance company had researched the situation as well, and had concluded all along that it would not be safe for Pino to live in the room. As a result, you might not receive one single dime for the damage done to your property. So while you have no legal means to protect it from being taken by squatters, you have no means to insure it against their destructive way of life either.
Your only options are to file a lawsuit against the insurance company, the fire department, and/or Pino. You can be fairly sure the latter is unemployed and lives off of an 800-euro government allowance, so don't expect to get compensated by the person who started the dramatic event in the first place...
Welcome to the Netherlands.
11 comments:
As Homer Simpson would say..."D'OH!"
I believe you, but I just can't believe this is actually allowed to take place.
/unbelievable
Well, it's a hundred percent true story! Pretty shameful indeed, but let's just see what happens in the near future...
It's legal because working for your home and foot is considered as bad. Free market is called fascism and so on. Forget the tolerance and liberty of the Netherlands. Tolerant towards people who break the law and misbehave. They are victims of a capitalistic system and therefore the system has to pay. If you have read Orwell's 1984, you know enough. But, we are not giving up. We are patient and we keep ourselves under control. Their system is doomed to fail and it's already happening. Of course, capitalism is to blaim for the collapse. If you explain that there is no free-market in Europe and that the EU is like the former Warschau-Pact, Netherlands behaves like a North-Korea, you're labelled as a dangerous thinker who should be detained or worse. No mate, a lot more people are fed up with cultural-marxism and I presume that if Belgium collapse and get divide, Netherlands will follow. Friedrich Nietzsche had a point when he wrote that Europa started to die when women were given equal rights. Other minorities will follow and that's the end.
Last weekend a former workers union frontman started a resistant movement to stop Geert Wilders, the politician who dares to speak against further islamic influence. Only a bloody 6 percent of the population is moslim and everything is done to make them happy. If they are burning cars, money is given to them to stop it. You can guess what happens then. More cars burning is receiving more money. If Dutchmen try to protest they get detained. 'It's our fault that they are poor, so we need to help them.' is the message. Useless to say that it is their responsibility or to say that tehy would die without us, because this 'dangerous' thinking. In the nineties my professor warned that Europe is begging for help from China if we continue like this. Amsterdam is becoming a Beiroet and Europe is turning into a Lebanon. Enough for now.
At some point, this type of system has to hit bottom, and when it does, there will be Hell to pay. Paying people, indefinitely, not to work? Here in the U.S., that is not allowed, even though the Democrats would do it, if the poor dears would just vote for them, and keep them in power. I think that is what is at the bottom of your social ills, power hungry politicians that will buy votes, with money they confiscate from the most productive members of society. We have some social welfare, but it is designed for temporary assistance, until the person can get back on their feet, not intended as a career move.
With the rich tradition of the Dutch in business, trading, and entrepreneurship, I have to believe the genetic code for success is still there. If it takes a Geert Wilders to help bring that out, then God Help Him in his efforts. Someone has to speak out, and be a leader.
In the U.S., if someone tried to illegally occupy our personal property, the police would remove him if called, so he wouldn't get shot for trespassing.
I certainly hope the theater owner can be made whole from this travesty of justice.
John, get off your soap box. The real travesty here is that people are homeless when other people have rooms they don't even use. That's why squatting is legal and it should remain so.
Don't cry about most productive members of society, money does not equate to production. Look at someone like Warren Buffet, he does absolutely nothing except fiddle with money (which isn't a real product) and he is one of the richest men in the world. He produces nothing. What do all those telemarketers for pointless products, or fraudsters produce? Nothing, but both have money.
The only travesty here is that the insurance company isn't forced to pay out. The theatre owner could do nothing about the squatter, the insurance company must be forced to pay out, simple as that.
Now that waffle about welfare you spouted would be true if this was a free world, but it isn't. You should be able to go and make a farm somewhere and work the land, but you can't. You are not able to legally support yourself in today's world without being someone's SLAVE.
You can cry about it all you like but without welfare then righteous pompous twits like yourself would be in serious trouble as those who refuse to be someone else's slave would just take what is yours and there is so many of us in Europe the passive majority could do nothing to stop us.
Welfare is a rational thing to provide here. Without it, there'd be chaos and ultimately it would descend into rioting and from there it may even extend to civil war, no matter if you like it or not.
Anonymous,
Welfare in this country has done nothing but creating a permanent underclass of people, who - perhaps not entirely coincidental - have turned out to be way more radical and furious than any of their counterparts in the United States.
Judging from the rest of your analysis, I can see where you're coming from. But success in this country, as in any other liberal democracy on this planet, is within reach of all those who desire to take their chances. And surely squatting is not setting straight whatever "injustice" is left in our societies; the right to private property is a corner stone of our legal order, and squatting is nothing but outright theft.
I can understand why the commenter wishes to remain anonymous.
No one that thoroughly indoctrinated in Marxist-Leninist theory should have a name, but comrade.
In the U.S., when someone calls the police for an illegal squatter it is simply a courtesy call, so the police can remove a live person instead of a dead one. The squatter with the bullet holes in them require much more paper work, and the police hate paper work.
There was an excellent book published back in the early 90's by Dr. Marvin Olaskey called "The Tragedy of American Compassion." Click on the hyperlink for a review, or even better, find a copy, it is an excellent source on how America dealt with those in our society that needed help, and there was no welfare assistance of any type available.
The strongest caution for the unemployed/homeless people from the period beginning in the 1700's was...do not give them money!
A snip:
"An 1834 definition of compassion demonstrates faithfulness to the Latin roots of the word: "a suffering with another, painful sympathy". But after America's state-led war on poverty and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reforms, Olasky quotes a 1971 dictionary definition: "the feeling, or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it". It is much weaker and more sentimental. Olasky: "There is a world of policy differences between those two definitions: One demands personal action, the other a 'feeling' that requires a willingness to send a cheque."
Ain't it the truth!
We tested how capitalism works in absense of marxism(the state of world today) but never seen marxism in the absense of capitalism!i wonder how it will work!
I'm currently squatting in Leeds/England. The same house for the last 5 years. I do not have a destructive lifestyle - in fact when I moved into the property (it had been empty for 8 years) I fixed the water/heating/doors/stairs etc etc. It's a great wee house now. I simply didn't have anywhere else to go - so why leave a house to go to ruin? Should I have slept in cardboard boxes so that you could have kicked me on the way past? You might want to look into both sides of the argument properly. I pay bills, do repairs, pay tax and work for a living. I'm just lucky enough to have no rent.
Jealous?
A Leeds squatting punk rock type....
Just linked this article on my facebook account. it’s a very interesting article for all.
Gas Heater Repairs
Either one of your heat exchangers are stopped up, your flue vent stopped up, or depending on what type furnace you have your pilot runner is stopped up. I would call the repair company back out and check these things. This is dangerous as for melting the wiring and blowing the front cover off the furnace. They have safety's called rollouts, if it gets to bad it will trip it and your furnace will not work at all. Please have them check all of these as long with checking for a crack heat exchanger. This should be a call back and no charge to you. Ducted heating service melbourne
Post a Comment