Obviously my remarks should be seen as a stereotype, I'm not going to vouch for 100% of dutch people. The point I was trying to make is that dutch people speak directly in general, so what they say is close to what they think. The lack of an additional agenda.
I would hope that you agree that as it comes to politicians, the above is the least likely to be true. Dutch politicians operate in a massively complex consensus culture where it's inevitable that they have quite a lot of hidden agendas.
In this case, it was a cover up. Few would care, but I can give some background as to what happened. The Netherlands has a relatively generous welfare system, which invites abuse. There have been incidents, such as immigrants claiming all kinds of benefits without even living in the country.
The response was a more firm approach in checking eligibility. Yet this new firm approach got out of hand and incorrectly flagged a group of people as fraudulent, whilst they were not, at huge individual cost. Many got into huge debts, lost their house, and so on.
Shit happens. It's an error, or plain incompetence. The true scandal is the response. Instead of admitting the error and compensating the victims, most effort went into denial and covering it up.
So, you have a point. But we're comparing apples to oranges. The typical dutch person in the streets is not the same thing as a sleazy politician.
Obviously my remarks should be seen as a stereotype, I'm not going to vouch for 100% of dutch people. The point I was trying to make is that dutch people speak directly in general, so what they say is close to what they think. The lack of an additional agenda.
I would hope that you agree that as it comes to politicians, the above is the least likely to be true. Dutch politicians operate in a massively complex consensus culture where it's inevitable that they have quite a lot of hidden agendas.
In this case, it was a cover up. Few would care, but I can give some background as to what happened. The Netherlands has a relatively generous welfare system, which invites abuse. There have been incidents, such as immigrants claiming all kinds of benefits without even living in the country.
The response was a more firm approach in checking eligibility. Yet this new firm approach got out of hand and incorrectly flagged a group of people as fraudulent, whilst they were not, at huge individual cost. Many got into huge debts, lost their house, and so on.
Shit happens. It's an error, or plain incompetence. The true scandal is the response. Instead of admitting the error and compensating the victims, most effort went into denial and covering it up.
So, you have a point. But we're comparing apples to oranges. The typical dutch person in the streets is not the same thing as a sleazy politician.