My main professional background is in the earth & life sciences, but I now also explore topics in the broad area of bioethics. That's about equality, fairness, justice, diversity and inclusivity. It's also about people's biases, the associated otherization and everything that this can result in. That includes poverty, homelessness and poor health, shabby looks and shrinking personal bubbles, exposure to chemical and noise pollution and lots more. It's also about law, philosophy, neuroscience, technology, forensic psychology, politics and public policy (governance). Diversity and inclusivity are much bigger challenges than I used to believe. I for example now think that society's lack of genuine acceptance and support for people whose brains work very differently can among other things result in destructive behaviours for which the forensic psychology terminology is sadistic stalking or resentful stalking. My own experiences on the receiving end of something like this caused me to start looking into personality disorders and neurodiversity. That is how I stumbled upon bioethics. Seeing the massive inequality in England had something to do with it too. No, I don't have all the answers. Do you?
“Your total request size is 427.36 GB. This request has been divided into 107 files.”
You can’t see what the downloads are for (which data they contain) and what the size of each file is, but apparently they are up to 4GB large. You can choose 1, 2 or 4GB as file size.
There are 69 types of data, most of which do not pertain to my activities. So, let’s try again.
Now I have one for 17 “products”, excluding Gmail.
Jailed climate activist wins appeal against deportation from UK Marcus Decker was served with deportation order while in prison for unveiling Just Stop Oil banner over Dartford Crossing
Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent Mon 10 Nov 2025 18.48 CET
A climate activist who served one of the longest prison sentences in modern British history for a peaceful protest has won his appeal against deportation. Marcus Decker was jailed for two years and seven months for a protest in which he climbed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Dartford Crossing and unveiled a Just Stop Oil banner in October 2022. He was served with an automatic deportation order while in prison.
If he had been unsuccessful in his appeal, the 36-year-old German national would have been the first person to have been deported from the UK for peaceful protest.
When I called them in August, the menu required you to choose between young birds and “meldkamer” (desk). That is done from within their own perspective and does not keep the public in mind. Members of the public often can’t see the difference between a duck, a Canada goose and an Egyptian goose. I suggested the division “birds” and “anything else” to them in August, among a few other things, such as having people all over town who can very quickly walk to a bird and check out the situation.
They should give talks at schools etc. It’s true that many people do not know that for example a gull can have a drooping wing without there being anything wrong with it whatsoever. Pigeons even often use one wing to rest on, as if it is a bed.
A major problem at the location where I found the gull (which, by the way, I think I had already spotted a few days before), is dog owners who allow their dogs to chase birds and give neither a toss nor a rat’s ass. Those dogs can easily surprise a juvenile bird and grab such a drooping wing, for example, causing a dislocation or worse.
In 2018, Dierenambulance wrote the following to me after I saw a duck with a damaged bill. I think it was using a small and shallow pond near an apartment building to feed itself. (Mind you, someone else had already asked me if I had managed to catch it.)
This is what they should also educate the public about.
If you do that at schools, the kids will tell their parents and aunts and uncles.
“Wanneer de eend zichzelf nog weet te redden, dan is het misschien beter hem/haar te laten en de stress niet aan te doen van het vangen en brengen naar dierenarts en/of opvang. De vogel weet niet beter meer, dat zien wij wel vaker. Zo is er een groep eenden bij ons om de hoek waarvan 1 eend een gebroken vleugel heeft. Maar ze laat zich niet vangen, kan in en uit water en wordt niet verstoten door de groep. Ze leeft gewoon zo verder en vind dat prima. En dus wij ook. Een goede graatmeter om te zien of de vogel het gaat redden is of hij/zij zich laat vangen. Wanneer niet, dan redden ze zichzelf vaak (nog) wel. Laat een vogel zich vangen, dan is het helaas goed mis.”
“Dank je wel voor al je hulp Angelina!”
“Wanneer de eend zichzelf nog weet te redden, dan is het misschien beter hem/haar te laten en de stress niet aan te doen van het vangen en brengen naar dierenarts en/of opvang. De vogel weet niet beter meer, dat zien wij wel vaker. Zo is er een groep eenden bij ons om de hoek waarvan 1 eend een gebroken vleugel heeft. Maar ze laat zich niet vangen, kan in en uit water en wordt niet verstoten door de groep. Ze leeft gewoon zo verder en vind dat prima. En dus wij ook. Een goede graatmeter om te zien of de vogel het gaat redden is of hij/zij zich laat vangen. Wanneer niet, dan redden ze zichzelf vaak (nog) wel. Laat een vogel zich vangen, dan is het helaas goed mis.”
Grotendeels helemaal mee eens!
I agree with Dierenambulance that wildlife often adapts, just like humans do. Certainly in an urban environment where there is plenty of food, birds with disabilities can survive. In my previous post, I mentioned that John Chitty told me that birds with a dislocated wing often still manage to fly.
Below a geese story, from the same location as where the gull was left behind in a laundry basket. The poor things was PARCHED, btw. That happened on 5 November 2025, so just a few days earlier.
What exactly occurred here?
(written to someone in the US on 7 November 2025)
For the record, I have brought these geese escarole (andijvie) a few times, mostly in the summer when there was almost no grass etc. I’ve known them for about 8 months and I mostly talk with them. On this occasion, I thought that giving them a bite to eat might be good. I brought them escarole the next day.
Google has flurries in which it unpublishes my reviews. Initially, this was mostly for local government and the like. At around the same time or a little later, other online activities were being reported as fraudulent and I figured that the latter might be done by someone who has covert NPD.
Slowly, a pattern started to emerge that seemed to reveal that it’s Dutch civil servants (and friends and family) who are doing this.
Google increasingly often claimed that I was lying and/or extorting people, such as at VU University Amsterdam. When I started adding evidence that I really had been to or at these places, Google would then refuse the review on the basis of the “low quality of the media” or because it “contained personal information”.
Now this has happened. Google just removed another review. Why? 🤔
Keep reading. 🤪😤😠🤬
Google unpublished this review a few days after posting because Google claims that it contains people’s medical information, credit card details or govt-issued ID. This concerns a gull and a pigeon who are unidentifiable and are also both likely or possibly dead by now. Humans don’t have wings and humans don’t have a crop, Google. (I know that you don’t know that because your AI search comes up with similar rubbish as, say, “crop wing gull pigeon legal” not being a common legal phrase.)
Niet bellen voor vogels. Leidt alleen tot een enorme, walgelijke dierenkwelling. Schokkend. Ik ga er intussen echt van over mijn nek. Dat dit überhaupt MAG!
Ik kom nu voor de tweede keer een dier tegen dat hier angstig vele uuuuuuren deels of geheel in het donker en in de kou staat.Het idee schijnt te zijn dat ze dan wel vanzelf dood gaan.
Nú maak ik eerst foto’s.
De vorige keer betrof het een zogenaamde squeaker (jonge duif, nog niet vliegend) met een compleet kapotte krop. Het was nota bene de politie die erover had gebeld. Om een uur of 5, 6. Om 11 uur kreeg ik nog steeds smoezen te horen.
Die duif zat in een doos met briefje erop dat de dierenambulance het dier kwam halen, op een bankje op een plek met veel verkeer en veel luide mensen. (De spoorbrug bij de Pontanusstraat/Eerste van Swindenstraat. Midden augustus was dat. Het dier zou door iemand steeds in de lucht zijn gegooid en kwakte dan steeds op de stoep volgens de mensen in de bar Botanique.)(Uit nest gevallen?)
Overigens kan een kapotte krop worden gehecht en zo’n vogel worden gerehabiliteerd (gecheckt met iemand aan Cornell die zowel vet tech als onderzoeker is), maar dat vergt behalve geld voor de behandeling geduld en toewijding. Dat er dan soms voor euthanasie wordt gekozen kan ik begrijpen, maar dan moet je dat prooidiertje niet eerst urenlang in herrie, donker en kou in de angst laten zitten.
Walgelijk.
Want de mensen van de dierenambulance liegen, liegen en liegen en o wee als je belt als er na 5 uur wachten dus na 11 ‘s avonds nóg niemand is geweest, want dan word je letterlijk weggedrukt, en als je dan weer belt en stampvoet, zijn ze er opeens binnen 5 minuten. En dan blijkt er van enige drukte of tijdsnood geen enkele sprake te zijn. (Ook voor socials hebben ze alle tijd, trouwens.)
Ze gaan er gewoon van uit dat het dier op deze manier wel gewoon dood zal gaan. Het is maar een stomme vogel, tenslotte.
Echt WALGELIJK.
Ik heb ervaring met animal rehab. Vogels. Ook zelf privé ervaring mee. (Overigens óók ervaring met honden, paarden, vee, katten etc. Voor iedereen die denkt dat mensen met vogels mentaal een soort breekbare vlindertjes zijn.)
Dit is geen animal rehab, dit is dierenfoltering.
PS Ik ga zo even proberen te kijken en hoop dat deze meeuw “gewoon” even een vleugel had laten hangen. Dat gebeurt wel vaker. Maar in deze wasmand heeft ie wellicht intussen wél een verwonding overgehoudenIk word hier echt ziedend door en voel me enorm machteloos. Ik kan niet even naar mijn avian vet in Andover gaan oid (John Chitty). Ik kan niet even naar Lee Fox in Wimauma gaan. Ik kan niet even in mijn auto springen. Ik kan hem nu indien nodig niet in mijn eigen bird icu thuis zetten. Ik heb niet eens een handdoek bij me.
PPS Bespaar me jullie reactie. Ik heb het echt gehád met jullie. Ik had de vorige keer ook een review geplaatst. Later weggehaald. Ik wilde niet al te gewichtig doen en niet zeuren. Ik heb het nu echt gehad met jullie.
Vogels zijn PROOIDIEREN! Triage, people! (Who am I still kidding? 😓)(Overigens was ik er óók niet van gediend dat jullie me eerder zo raar gingen stalken op Mastodon.)(Maar misschien was dat 4chan oid weer. Kan heel goed.)(Of, eigenlijk logischer, 764 of zo.)
Tipje voor anderen: De Toevlucht in de Bijlmer is mogelijk een betere optie voor vogels. Zelf geen ervaring mee. Geen idee of ze goed zijn. Ik weet dat ze bestaan omdat ik iemand ken die er vrijwilliger is geweest. (Dierenambulances hebben vaak ook weinig kennis van vogels. Heb ik althans elders in Nederland gezien.)
For the record, this was a juvenile gull and one of its wing joints was off. It might have been a dislocation; I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t do a damn thing and am still seething with anger re Dierenambulance Amsterdam. They’re despicable. My experience with everyone who I interacted with at Dierenambulance Amsterdam this year have been really negative. They’re simply bullshitting you.
That said, this gull was in an urban environment where people often drop food and some even feed birds. Gulls don’t only fly, they also spend time in the water (and here’s where they can be safer). Adult gulls tend to look after youngsters in trouble too, I’ve noticed. Its musculature was not off. There was no wound. It was hungry and thirsty and tough. Smart, too.
I think I had seen this gull before, btw. Juvenile gulls sometimes let a wing droop without there anything being wrong with it. Pigeons too do stuff that makes it easy to assume that they are ill. Birds – prey animals – tend to hide illnesses really well. They can be about to keel over dead while still looking fine.
The main danger in that gull’s location comes from dog owners who allow their dogs to chase birds. The owners laugh about it when anyone – not just me – says anything about it. Most birds know exactly which dogs do this and recognise them from a distance, however.
From John Chitty, I’ve learned that birds with a dislocated wing often still teach themselves to fly again (if the wing angle isn’t too bad, I assume). I had a formerly feral quaker parrot (Myiopsitta monachus) with a dislocated wing for over two decades.
I called De Toevlucht later, hoping that I could take it there, but they weren’t accepting birds because of this mostly human-induced spread of bird flu. Smart decision.
Two years ago or so, I noticed that a different Dierenambulance had very little knowledge of birds and bird flu, btw.
Many vets may recognise John Chitty’s name because he was the president or chair or whatever of the European organisation for vets or whatever.
Having the luxury of being able to focus on the blood work on one bird only and compare it with the blood work of other birds that were diagnosed with what John assumed was one of my two bird’s problems, I did not agree with him on that. However, I really respect John (and his wife who’s also a vet) and when he later did the necropsy, which he let me witness, we discovered that none of us could have known what was going on without having opened up this bird, which would have killed it.
The bird had a crisis during the x-ray and went into the ICU, on oxygen.
A few days later, they tried again, with barium. I still have the images.
That what later happened to me in Portsmouth and after ruined my entire network is a different matter. John couldn’t figure it out either, what on earth was happening in my life, and he started distancing himself, understandably.
I checked in advance and saw that this month’s outgoing payment was scheduled properly. Except… It’s NOT listed as having gone out. It’s completely disappeared? It’s not listed under failed payments either.
I’ve been having SO MANY PROBLEMS with my Dutch direct debits, for two years now. They disappear into thin air (and companies usually don’t allow you to pay from your end, so you incur fines). It’s affected three or four other accounts too.
I do think that the amount actually went out. (On the basis of the balance. I also remember that I checked that day and I think I saw it listed as having gone out, too.)
It was scheduled for the 24th, I think.
🤬😠😤🙄
My bank just merged with (or was bought by) a bigger bank and I hoped that this would put an end to these hiccups. Nope.
Amazon including kdp etc hiccups may be because of that outage they had? (Amazon login hiccups happen often.)!It won’t accept the password reset codes either this time, however. Turns out that it says it will send the code to your email but it simultaneously sends a different code to your phone…. Next it sends one to the alternative number that it has for you.
Update 20 Oct: This was followed by several emails about my “friend Steve”. That is a very common English first name. John and Dave are other examples.
Here is part of one:
(This strikes me as largely nonsense, btw. This particular person isn’t really a friend and not someone who would worry about me. He doesn’t care. It’s someone I last saw in 1996.)
Here’s another one:
Someone in the US just wrote to me: “I receive several emails regarding you from a friend of yours with access to your email — which is how he found me. That correspondence was brief and has been over for months, but wierd to say the least.”
I’ve asked for this person’s name and to forward me a few of those emails.
I have three names for these hackers now, and two of them are women. One of them is Portsmouth-based and among other things paid for my website for a year.
The other one of the women who contacted me said she was a hacker but I don’t believe her because when she popped up on Telegram, she quickly hid herself but she still popped up on Signal as well and when I sent her angry texts as I have her phone number, one of her responses was really stupid and contradicted what she wrote earlier, basically admitting that she had a reason to be among the “contacts” on my phone. So if she really IS a hacker, she is not a smart one. She speaks Dutch and American English, once arranged to meet with me at a Dutch public library but I found her sitting next to me at a very different public library branch (and drawing attention to herself) months later.
“I’m still processing all the impressions and experiences from this valuable trip,” says Annemarie van Gils, management adviser at De Alliantie. “What echoes most strongly are the words of a woman in the women’s shelter: ‘For the first time in my life, I have a home.’ That is so essential, so fundamentally important. But also striking was the tremendous passion of so many staff members — such as a young woman at the Salvation Army, for example, who beams with joy when she talks about her work for the residents.”
(Translated by ChatGPT, edited by me.)
‘Ik ben alle indrukken en ervaringen van deze waardevolle reis nog aan het verwerken,’ zegt Annemarie van Gils, directie-adviseur bij De Alliantie. ‘Wat het meest naklinkt zijn de woorden van een dame in de vrouwenopvang: “Voor het eerst in mijn leven heb ik een thuis.” Dat is zo van wezenlijk, fundamenteel belang. Maar ook de enorme passie van veel medewerkers. Zo’n jongedame bij het Leger des Heils bijvoorbeeld, die helemaal straalt als ze vertelt over haar werk voor de bewoners.
29 October 2025: I followed it up with a message explaining that I understand that they probably see me as a pain in the behind. Ms Engelhard didn’t reply to that either.
Let’s face it. A) The city permanently shut its doors to me in December 2024 and B) the fact that the city doesn’t even provide something as utterly basic as toilets probably says it all. They are not interested in remedying issues. They are just into cosmetics.
See also this research done at the University of Amsterdam. It’s a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Global Perspectives on Homelessness, Law & Policy (pp. 175-187). Published in 2024. People went undercover, pretending to be homeless, as part of this research.
Note that Ms Engelhard did not deny that the City’s behind the intimidation. (This may be why: Homeless people in Amsterdam are no longer fined, as of 13 June 2025. That is in theory. Have the regulations been updated or was this more empty waffling? https://www.dedaklozenvakbond.nl/2025/06/13/geen-boetes-meer/)
No, I am – clearly – no longer in negotiating mode or trying to keep anyone at the City of Amsterdam particularly happy. I am being cantankerous, from their point of view. I get that. Personally, I have very little to no faith left in these municipal circuses and the money-making industry that surrounds it. That’s now irrepairable.
I do understand why the municipality sees me as a pain in the behind but I’ve also contacted a different Dutch municipality about its homelessness challenges and took part in a discussion on the topic for London as well.
If I can help push through some improvements, with or without my cousin* pushing from the other side, then I might be quite happy.
(This cousin runs a large real estate undertaking in the mid-market housing segment – and in investing – so he might need to set up an extra company, which in itself is no big deal but entering a very different market segment would be. However, he could still push without doing that and he could also implement changes to existing practices because his existing tenants can easily be impacted too. I’d like to see him use empty office buildings that are too expensive to turn into “proper” apartments, such as the one in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost that I read about – possibly the former ING building? – for capsule housing. You could have two forms: Pods for currently homeless people – because you don’t sleep much at all in a hall with lots of mattresses on the floor and similar places – and larger capsules for young people who can’t afford a bloody fortune in rent but would like to be able to save. The real estate sector has a crappy reputation. My cousin could do break-even projects as a show of corporate responsibility. I know he would have to convince others too. He’s not Donald Trump. I know that. But where there is a will, there is a way. Maybe he can start a consortium with other real estate firms that would like to change the sector.)
No, I had not asked Ms Engelhard for help in March, but I was hungry and had called one of those centers where people in my situation are supposed to be able to get a meal, shower and do laundry (at a small fee). Their opening hours are limited and the need is FAR BIGGER than what these centers are still able to offer in terms of capacity. So far, Mayor Femke Halsema has been adamant that she won’t offer more support.
When I called this center, I was told that it was only available for people who were already registered there.
At the end of the call, I asked Ms Engelhard where I might be able to get a meal and I told her about this. Somehow, Ms Engelhard knew which center (inloophuis) I was talking about. I don’t know how she knew.
She informed me that I would be able to get a meal at a location that turned out to be west of Sloterplas, at about 7 kilometers (from where I was at the time, I think, which was east of Central Station). She mentioned a specific time.
I told her that I would not be able to make it.
I googled it later and it was a center for men, it said online, but I’ve found that the online information as to where and when you can find resources is often non-existent or contradictory.
Anyway, this wasn’t doable for me. I was dragging two suitcases and a heavy underseat cabin bag along with me. I already was exhausted.
One thing that the city definitely has to do if it continues on its course of sending people to the fringes of town all the time is give them (storage facilities, anyway, and) a public transport pass. If the City gives you a registered address, for example, then you’re obliged to go to the far Nieuw West once a week at a specific time, off the top of my head. Otherwise you will lose the address.
There are conditions tied to the benefits too that I can no longer meet. Ms Engelhard said that it would not take me that long to find new living quarters, but I reckon it would take 15 to 20 years.
Below are the two texts I had sent to the mayor. I think that these are the exact same versions, but there might be minor differences.
I was still in the middle of learning how to do homelessness. Sleep deprivation is such a huge factor initially that you quickly realize that it is vital to get enough sleep. (That is not an issue at all for me any longer.) After that, you discover that rain is actually the biggest problem. The worries about people freezing to death mostly concern the image of city councils etc. You can learn how to deal with cold, but rain makes you miserable, wet and muddy and powerless. There is very little you can do about it. Toilets are an issue too. There are almost no public toilets in Amsterdam. Most are for men only and even the ones for men are only for, eh, number 1?
I just also emailed the town of Beverwijk about its homelessness problem, btw. I sent them this link: https://www.lekkertehuur.nl/
Sleep deprivation, hunger and utter physical exhaustion – along with anger about getting treated like trash or like terrorists – are behind the symptoms that get homeless people vilified.
Anyway, with regard to what happened in December 2024: I tend to think of what happened as the result of me having emigrated to England in 2004, but I was in fact informed that the issue was that I hadn’t been staying in a tent or car but on someone’s couch.
Unfortunately, there’s nobody who can sign off as to whether or not you’ve been on the street (and there’s probably no form for it either). It was my understanding that I had to be on someone’s couch, perhaps so that someone could sign off. They said that there was an arrangement with the Amsterdam suburb that I was in at the time. Amsterdam runs over into it; there is no unbuilt environment in between.
I have a feeling that if I’d stayed in a tent, I’d have been told yet some other reason as to why I didn’t qualify.
At the start of this year, I wrote a post for an online forum about what it is like to be living in Mokum, as Amsterdam is sometimes called, just like Portsmouth in England is alternatively called Pompey.
In March 2025, I sent mayor Femke Halsema two texts on the basis of that. One was in Dutch and talked mainly about human rights and housing. Next I sent an English text with suggestions for solutions. (SEE LATER POST.) I offered my support. My input. It’s easy to complain without actually contributing anything, after all. I do my best to avoid the latter.
I happened to be homeless myself but that is not why I contacted the mayor, that is, I was not asking for help for myself. I merely wanted to share some insights and I also wanted to hear more about what was happening at Amsterdam’s Central Station. (I wanted to leave the Netherlands again asap. The municipality of Amsterdam had its chance in December 2024 and blew it. I was done then.)
I then received an email from Nynke Engelhard who is a project manager for the City. We talked for half an hour on the phone. I was baffled by her complete lack of understanding of what it is like to be homeless and what homeless people actually need. As an example, she too – along with her colleagues – believes that homeless people can easily walk 10, 20 kilometers per day with their luggage. After all, they have no place to leave their stuff.
I heard lots of excuses as to why almost nothing is done to prevent, resolve homelessness / support homeless people and about how much money gets spent in the circus surrounding homelessness.
I am not alone in this. Dutch media regularly report on the bonkers nonsense surrounding homelessness as well.
I’ve earlier also taken part in a discussion surrounding homelessness in London, even though I do not live in London. I’ve simply learned a heck of a lot in the past 1, 2 years and I am trying to put that to some good use.
Een half uur lang heb ik uitvluchten gehoord over waarom er niets daadwerkelijks gebeurt. Er wordt gepraat eIn vergaderd en gestudeerd en gelezen en geschreven en uitbesteed en gereisd maar voor de mensen om wie het draait, die vreselijk lastige mensen die allemaal intensieve begeleiding nodig hebben en die wegens de krapte op de arbeidsmarkt dus aan hun lot moeten worden overgelaten en wat dies meer zij, daarvoor gebeurt bijna niets.
Van tijd tot tijd berichten diverse media hier ook over. Ik sta niet alleen in die mening.
Nu, als dakloze vrouw ben ik recent toenemende intimidatie gaan ondervinden en op grond van wat een bewoner in een straat om de hoek me eerder spontaan meedeelde over wat er een jaar of twee geleden gebeurde op de locatie waar ik nu verblijf, moest ik concluderen dat deze intimidatie van de gemeente Amsterdam kwam.
Ik heb Mevrouw Engelhard daarom een harde mail gestuurd (15 oktober: en die heb ik heel snel en slordig geschreven want het was net gebeurd en dat was best bedreigend en ik moest op tijd klaar zijn voordat de bieb sloot):
Beste Nynke,
Allereerst wil ik je waarschuwen dat ik in de BCC diverse media alsmede twee advocatenkantoren, een in het buitenland wonend familielid, en Amnesty International heb meegenomen in deze mail. Ik ben niet de enige die het niet eens is met jullie aanpak. Zie bijvoorbeeld: https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/daklozen-mogen-blijkbaar-meedoen-maatschappij Maar zelf sta ik compleet machteloos.
We hebben op 26 maart 2025 telefonisch met elkaar gesproken over het beleid van de gemeente Amsterdam met betrekking tot het voorkomen van dakloosheid en de manier van omgaan met daklozen die ik walgelijk blijf vinden. Met name de situatie op het CS en de situatie op de Jan van Galenstraat baarde me grote zorgen. Zo ga je niet met mensen om; dit is mensonterend. Dergelijk gemeentebeleid afwimpelen op individuele ambtenaren vind ik evenmin juist.
Je herinnert je vast nog wel dat ik zelf een inmiddels 65-jarige, hoog opgeleide Nederlandse dakloze vrouw ben. Zoals je vast toen al in detail wist, was ik in december 2024 bij jullie door de molen geweest. Ik ben onder meer drie keer op de locatie Jan van Galenstraat geweest. Het tweede gesprek was met iemand waarvan ik de naam niet meer weet (en die papieren liggen momenteel elders en heb ik dus niet bij me), maar die afgestudeerd was in de filosofie. Ik zou op 24 december 2024 de opvang in gaan (die zeer beperkt is en er hoe dan ook alleen in de winter is), een officieel adres van jullie kunnen krijgen en ook bijstand. Op die dag kreeg ik echter van Fatima Ata te horen dat ik helemaal nergens voor in aanmerking kwam. (Een paar dagen daarvoor was ik al in een plotselinge woede-uitbarsting van een ander tegen de grond gekwakt; Fatima Ata wist daarvan. Iets verder in deze mail zul je min of meer ontdekken waarom.)
Ik heb weliswaar lang in Amsterdam gewoond en gewerkt, onder meer bij de VVV, ben hier gaan studeren en met een MSc with distinction en nog een paar papiertjes afgestudeerd. Ik ben hier later ook mijn bedrijf begonnen dat ik in 2004 mee heb genomen naar het Verenigd Koninkrijk, en dat laatste was het probleem, schijnt. Weg is weg.
Ik zal je een lang zeurverhaal besparen over hoe dat komt, maar je weet dat ik geen spaargeld en zo goed als geen inkomen heb. Dat komt wel vaker voor. Toch nam je op 26 maart 2025 aan dat ik makkelijk met mijn bagage dagelijks 10, 20 kilometer door Amsterdam kon lopen en ik sluit dus niet uit dat je dacht dat ik de boel aan het bedotten was. Ik meen me te herinneren dat je vroeg of ik wel in Amsterdam was toen je voorstelde dat ik aan het eind van de middag naar een locatie in Amsterdam West zou gaan waar ik gratis een maaltijd zou kunnen krijgen en ik zei dat ik dat echt niet redde (fysiek niet; ik was compleet op en qua tijd had ik het waarschijnlijk ook niet gered).
Ik ben sinds 24 december 2024 dus nog steeds aangewezen op mijn eigen inzet waaronder de GoFundMe die ik op 29 december 2024 opzette en ik ben inmiddels dagelijks – en soms als een bezetene blikjes en flesjes – aan het verzamelen want de donaties droogden op. Gelukkig wordt er ook vaak prima eten gewoon op straat gemieterd; daarbij kan ik mijn gezond verstand en microbiologiekennis toepassen en ben ik echter niet zo kieskeurig als de gemiddelde burger. Zojuist vond ik weer een hele zak vol waarvan ik een deel – allemaal 100% verpakt en niet over datum – in de voedselkast aan de Javastraat heb gezet.
Ik slaap namelijk al sinds maart/april tussen de brandnetels op een locatie in Amsterdam Oost. Het constant dag in dag uit met me meesjouwen van mijn koffers trok ik gewoon fysiek niet meer. Dan kun je trouwens ook geen blikjes verzamelen. Ik heb een minieme aangeboren vergroeiing in mijn ruggengraat die nu nog vooral ‘s nachts vaak opspeelt al had ik er voor ik dakloos werd zelden last van. Het sjouwen met mijn bagage werd me echt teveel. Mijn handen trokken dat ook niet meer. Laat staan de koffers…
(Overigens, hier is een tip voor iets dat jullie kunnen aanpakken. Ik ben een tijd vaak in toeristenhostels geweest toen de donaties dat mogelijk maakten, maar ook als je gewoon betaalt en braaf de oudere, rustige toerist speelt, mag je van de meeste hostels daar maar beperkt blijven. Ze houden niet erg van zichtbare armoede. Ik nam aanvankelijk aan dat dat wordt opgelegd door de gemeente Amsterdam, maar dat blijkt niet zo te zijn. Dit kwam aan het licht nadat ik met jou had gesproken. Hier valt voor jullie iets te doen.)
Nu kom het. Ik ervaar op mijn slaapplek toenemende intimidatie en die komt zeer waarschijnlijk van de gemeente Amsterdam. Ik heb namelijk van een buurtbewoner al maanden geleden gehoord wat jullie met daklozen doen die daar slapen. Dat gebeurt nu met mij ook in toenemende mate en vanmiddag al weer.
Opnieuw een aanvraag doen lijkt me zinloos, want ik voldoe inmiddels voor zover ik kan zien nog veel minder aan de voorwaarden om voor hulp van jullie in aanmerking te komen. Bovendien zouden jullie door dat nu wel te accepteren daarmee dan toegeven dat jullie in december 2024 fout zaten. Daar komt nog bij dat we allemaal in de krant kunnen lezen dat gemeenteambtenaren de wet haast als vast onderdeel van hun werk breken (net nog in Trouw aan de orde geweest) en er vaak op vrij grove wijze wordt afgestraft voor het feit dat je voor jezelf durfde opkomen (zeker voor mensen van mijn leeftijd).
Kortom, ik wil helemaal geen bijstand via de rechter af gaan dwingen oid, maar er is sprake van toenemende intimidatie en het duurt nog twee jaar voordat ik mijn AOW kan krijgen. Ik wil dan een klein pensioen afkopen bij het ABP zodat ik even wat armslag heb om mezelf weer goed op poten te zetten omdat dat nu dus niet lukt. Ik heb ernaar gevraagd, maar bij het ABP kan dat niet eerder. (Kort daarvoor is dan ook mijn Britse AOW al actief geworden. Dat is lager dan mijn Nederlandse AOW omdat ik daar minder lang rechten heb opgebouwd.)
Ik kan NU echter nergens heen.
Ik zou haast zeggen: “Knuppel me dan gewoon in mijn slaap dood, want dat is sneller en goedkoper dan wat jullie nu aan het doen zijn”.
Alternatief: sluit een compromis en doe me een in één keer een som toekomen die min of meer goedmaakt dat ik het al die tijd zonder inkomen heb moeten rooien zodat ik weg kan en verder kan met mijn leven. Dat lost jullie probleem op en ook dat van mij.
Ik doe een voorstel van EUR 7500. Ik hoor graag je reactie.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Angelina Souren
PS Ik ken in Nederland zo goed als niemand meer. Veel mensen zijn overleden of weg verhuisd of anderszins verdwenen en de verrechtsing van het klimaat hier in de 20 jaar dat ik weg was helpt al helemaal niet. Ik heb net iemand gevraagd maar die wilde niet eens de post van het ABP voor me ontvangen zodat die niet kwijtraakt. (Het ABP moet me namelijk tzt per post een formulier sturen dat ik weliswaar digitaal in kan dienen maar dat kan en mag ik niet missen. Ik regel dat liever nu dan dat ik dan moet denken “had ik maar”.) Ik sliep kort op de bank bij een oudere autistische ex-collega in diens overvolle huishouding met drie andere volwassen en twee kleine kinderen maar die ex-collega had zodanige geheugenproblemen dat hij steeds enorm in de war raakte als hij post voor me ontving (wat ik dus slechts een paar weken heb gedaan).
Ja, natuurlijk is het soms moeilijk voor mij om the bigger picture en mijn eigen sores te scheiden. Mijn focus is momenteel vaak zeer nauw, op puur overleven gericht. Poverty shrinks your world.
Dit was haar reactie:
Geachte Angelina Souren,
U verwijst in uw mail van 7 oktober jl. naar een telefonisch gesprek van 26 maart dit jaar. U gaf in maart onder andere aan dat u geen behoefte had dat ik uw bezwaren over de balie aan de Jan van Galenstraat met de manager aldaar zou bespreken. Dit zou ik alsnog willen doen als u daar prijs op stelt. Als u geholpen zou kunnen worden met een briefadres, een gesprek met de GGD, met eventueel een aanvraag van een uitkering dan kunt u daarna reageren op woningen. Mensen die 55+ zijn komen toch nog redelijk snel in aanmerking voor huisvesting. Ook kunnen we u dan verwijzen naar een opvang locatie. U voelde zich de vorige keer niet geholpen door mij. Toch zou ik met uw toestemming navraag kunnen wanneer u terecht kunt op de Jan van Galenstraat of bij het Daklozenkantoor
Ik heb in maart met u gesproken omdat ik van mening was dat ik aan gemeentebeleid zou kunnen bijdragen. U kwam alleen met massa’s uitvluchten en met verhalen over het verdienmodel rond dakloosheid (en andere uitdrukkingen van armoede).
Ik wil nog steeds niet met personeel aan de Jan van Galenstraat gaan praten want ik vond het toen en vind het nog steeds onterecht om individuele balieambtenaren de schuld van gemeentebeleid te geven.
Ik vind het ook onzinnig om onzinnige “oplossingen” aan te blijven dragen. Dat is pure cosmetica, in mijn ogen.
Mag ik uit deze mail van u afleiden dat de intimidatie nu ophoudt? Dat wil ik graag van u bevestigd krijgen. U moet mij óf in mijn slaap laten doodknuppelen óf mij met rust laten. Een andere realistische keuze hebt u kennelijk niet.
U bent overigens op en top een politicus. Petje af.
Veel plezier op uw verdere reizen naar Finland en zo.
Met vriendelijke groet/best regards,
Angelina Souren
Toevoeging:
“U kwam alleen met massa’s uitvluchten” betreft niet waarom ik niet zou kunnen bijdragen aan beleid maar waarom er zo goed als niets schijnt te gebeuren met betrekking tot het voorkomen van dakloosheid en het oplossen van dakloosheid. Cosmetische acties zoals het ludiek neerleggen van matrassen rond de receptie of waar dan ook lossen niets op. U doet naar mijn mening vooral aan image building voor de gemeente en aan het laten rollen van zoveel mogelijk geld in deze poppenkast rondom dakloosheid.
ENGLISH, CONTINUED (Sorry, I used ChatGPT to save time and have not edited the clunkiness out.)
Now, as a homeless woman, I have recently begun to experience increasing intimidation, and based on what a resident of a nearby street spontaneously told me some time ago about what happened a year or two ago at the location where I am currently staying, I had to conclude that this intimidation was coming from the City of Amsterdam.
I therefore sent Ms. Engelhard a firm email:
Dear Nynke,
First of all, I want to warn you that I’ve BCC’d various media outlets, two law firms, a relative living abroad, and Amnesty International on this email. I’m not the only one who disagrees with your approach. For example, see: https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/daklozen-mogen-blijkbaar-meedoen-maatschappij But personally, I am completely powerless.
We spoke by phone on 26 March 2025 about the municipality of Amsterdam’s policy regarding the prevention of homelessness and the way homeless people are treated — which I continue to find revolting. I was particularly concerned about the situation at Central Station and at the Jan van Galenstraat. This is not how you treat people; it’s degrading. Shifting the blame for such municipal policy onto individual civil servants is equally wrong in my view.
You’ll probably remember that I am myself a now 65-year-old, highly educated Dutch homeless woman. As you probably already knew in detail at that time, I went through the whole process with your department in December 2024. Among other things, I visited the Jan van Galenstraat location three times. The second meeting was with someone whose name I no longer remember (those papers are elsewhere at the moment, so I don’t have them with me), but he had a degree in philosophy. I was supposed to enter the shelter on 24 December 2024 (which is very limited and only available during winter anyway), receive an official address from your office, and also receive social assistance. However, that same day, Fatima Ata told me I wasn’t eligible for anything at all. (Just a few days earlier, I had been suddenly thrown to the ground by someone in a fit of rage; Fatima Ata knew about that. You’ll more or less discover why a bit later in this email.)
I lived and worked in Amsterdam for a long time — among other things, at the VVV (tourist information office) — started my studies here, and graduated with an MSc with distinction and a few other qualifications. I later started my own company here, which I took with me to the United Kingdom in 2004 — and apparently that was the problem. Once gone, gone forever.
I’ll spare you a long sob story about how that came to be, but you know I have no savings and virtually no income. That’s not unusual. Still, on 26 March 2025, you seemed to assume that I could easily walk 10–20 kilometres a day through Amsterdam with all my luggage — and so I can’t rule out that you thought I was trying to cheat the system. I seem to recall you asking whether I was actually in Amsterdam when you suggested I go to a location in Amsterdam West at the end of the afternoon to get a free meal, and I said I really couldn’t manage that — physically not, as I was completely exhausted, and probably not in terms of time either.
Since 24 December 2024, I’ve therefore still been completely dependent on my own efforts — including the GoFundMe I set up on 29 December 2024 — and I now spend my days, sometimes frantically, collecting cans and bottles, because donations have dried up. Fortunately, perfectly good food is often simply dumped on the street; I can apply my common sense and my microbiology background, and I’m not as picky as the average citizen. Just now I found another full bag, part of which — all 100% packaged and not expired — I placed in the food cupboard on Javastraat.
I’ve been sleeping since around March/April among the nettles at a location in Amsterdam East. I just couldn’t physically keep dragging my suitcases around all day anymore. And besides, you can’t collect cans that way either. I have a minor congenital spinal curvature that now flares up mainly at night, although I rarely had trouble with it before becoming homeless. Carrying my luggage simply became too much. My hands couldn’t handle it anymore either — let alone the suitcases…
(By the way, here’s a tip for something you could actually tackle. I stayed in tourist hostels for a while when donations made that possible, but even when you pay and behave as the quiet, older tourist, most hostels only let you stay for a limited time. They don’t like visible poverty. I initially assumed that this was a requirement imposed by the City of Amsterdam, but it turns out not to be. I found that out after speaking with you. There’s something for you to work on.)
Now to the point: I am experiencing increasing intimidation at my sleeping place, and it is very likely coming from the City of Amsterdam. A resident already told me months ago what happens to homeless people who sleep there — and exactly that is now happening to me, increasingly, and again this afternoon.
Submitting another application seems pointless, because as far as I can tell, I now meet the requirements for help from you even less than before. Moreover, if you were to accept my application now, you’d essentially be admitting that you were wrong back in December 2024. On top of that, we can all read in the papers that municipal officials almost routinely break the law as part of their work (as recently reported in Trouw) and that people — especially of my age — are often harshly punished for standing up for themselves.
In short, I don’t intend to try to force welfare payments through the courts or anything like that — but I am facing increasing intimidation, and it will still be two years before I can receive my state pension (AOW). I plan to cash out a small pension with the ABP so that I’ll have a bit of breathing room to get back on my feet, because right now I just can’t. I asked, but the ABP won’t allow an early payout. (By then my British state pension will also have started, but it’s lower than the Dutch one since I built up fewer rights there.)
However, right now I have nowhere to go.
I’m almost tempted to say:
“Then just beat me to death in my sleep — it would be faster and cheaper than what you’re doing now.”
Alternatively: reach a compromise and give me a lump sum that more or less compensates for having had to survive all this time without income, so that I can leave and move on with my life. That would solve both your problem and mine.
I propose EUR 7,500. I look forward to your response.
Kind regards, Angelina Souren
PS I know virtually no one in the Netherlands anymore. Many people have died, moved away, or otherwise disappeared, and the political shift to the right over the past 20 years since I left certainly doesn’t help. I just asked someone, but they didn’t even want to receive mail from the ABP for me so that it wouldn’t get lost. (The ABP will at some point have to send me a form by post that I can submit digitally — but I must not lose it. I’d rather arrange that now than later think, “if only I had.”) I briefly slept on the couch of an older, autistic ex-colleague in his overcrowded household with three other adults and two small children, but that ex-colleague had such memory problems that he became terribly confused whenever he received mail for me (which I only did for a few weeks).
Yes, of course, it’s sometimes hard for me to separate the bigger picture from my own troubles. My focus is often very narrow right now — purely on survival. Poverty shrinks your world.
This was her response:
Dear Angelina Souren, You refer in your email of 7 October to a phone conversation on 26 March of this year. In March you indicated that you did not want me to discuss your objections regarding the desk at Jan van Galenstraat with the manager there. I would still like to do so if you wish. If you could be helped with a correspondence address, a meeting with the GGD, and possibly an application for social assistance, you could then respond to available housing. People aged 55+ tend to qualify for housing fairly quickly. We could also refer you to a shelter. You felt you were not helped by me last time. Still, with your permission, I can check when you could visit the Jan van Galenstraat or the Homeless Office.
Kind regards, Nynke Engelhard Program for Housing Vulnerable Groups Project Leader for Preventive Approach / Economically Homeless People wonenbuiten@amsterdam.nl
This was my reply:
Dear Ms. Engelhard,
Thank you for your response.
I spoke with you in March because I believed I could contribute to municipal policy. You came only with heaps of excuses and stories about the “business model” surrounding homelessness (and other expressions of poverty).
I still do not wish to speak with staff at the Jan van Galenstraat, because I found it then and still find it unjust to blame individual desk employees for municipal policy.
I also think it’s pointless to keep suggesting meaningless “solutions.” In my view, that’s pure cosmetics.
May I infer from your email that the intimidation will now stop? I would like confirmation of that. You must either let me be beaten to death in my sleep or leave me alone. You apparently have no other realistic choice.
You are, by the way, a true politician. Hats off. Enjoy your further travels to Finland and elsewhere.
Kind regards / Best regards, Angelina Souren
Addition:
“You came only with heaps of excuses” refers not to why I could not contribute to policy, but to why virtually nothing seems to be happening regarding the prevention and resolution of homelessness. Cosmetic actions such as whimsically laying out mattresses around the reception area or wherever solve nothing. In my opinion, you mainly engage in image-building for the municipality and in keeping as much money circulating as possible in this charade surrounding homelessness.
I confess that I am thinking “trut” to myself. Because the following is such complete bullshit: “U voelde zich de vorige keer niet geholpen door mij.” (You felt that I was not helping you, before.) I never asked her for help. I wanted to contribute. I add my current background so that she can see where I am coming from, where my insights come from.
It just so happens that one of my cousins runs what appears to be one of the Netherlands’ biggest real estate firms. I say that because the Dutch magazine Quote has written about him and because at the time the company’s holdings were valued at about 1 billion euro. I am not in real estate but I assume that is substantial enough for my cousin to have real influence. He can push for change too.
‘Wij willen een warme huisvader zijn voor onze huurders’. (*see below for English) (Interview, 2021)
I used to get along with him very well so I assume that he and I still have a few things in common. I have not spoken with him in three decades, however; this was in Bingelrade, at our grandmother’s (then aunt’s and uncle’s) farm, just after I returned from the States. We are not a close-knit family, as you can tell.
The real estate sector has a rotten reputation. My cousin has the power to help start changing that in the Netherlands.
I can push from the bottom.
I’m standing next to said cousin in this photo – in my tweed jacket, silk scarf and probably penny loafers and a checkered lined plaited skirt – but I am smiling at my youngest sister who’s just said something jokingly cheeky to me. I can tell from her mischievous face.
*ChatGPT says: That Dutch phrase — “Wij willen een warme huisvader zijn voor onze huurders” — literally means:
“We want to be a warm father of the house for our tenants.”
But in natural English, the expression “warme huisvader” doesn’t really translate word-for-word. The phrase combines warm (kind, caring) and huisvader (literally “father of the household,” but figuratively “someone who looks after others responsibly”).
So the intended meaning is something like:
“We want to be a warm, caring presence for our tenants.” or “We want to take care of our tenants like a good, caring host.” or more loosely: “We aim to be a supportive, home-like figure for our tenants.”
If it’s from a housing association or landlord’s statement, a natural, idiomatic translation might be:
“We want to be a warm and caring landlord for our tenants.” or “We want to create a home-like, caring environment for our tenants.”
I just read about your plans for benefits in the Guardian.
I suspect that you don’t realise that foreigners who left their native country a long time ago are considered to be living and at home in the UK by their native countries and often no longer qualify for support there. I have read news items from which I concluded that it works similarly for British nationals who left the UK a long time ago.
I went a little creative with this one. Or is it “rogue”?
START OF MY MESSAGE TO KEIR STARMER
Hi there,
I took part in an online meeting with you and one interviewer once, before you became PM. It was interesting… I was elated when Labour won because it then seemed that at least the British were coming to their senses even if people in many other countries have not yet. I’m so disappointed and also really concerned that you’re making the British feel betrayed because you started emulating the Tories from day 1. That is not what the public had voted for.
And now, instead of looking after the country, you may be focusing too much on doing what Farage et al want.
That said, fair is fair, you do have a knack for handling Donald Trump.
That’s not, however, how British people want and deserve to be treated. They need honesty and transparency and someone who genuinely cares. Some Conservatives seem to care a lot more about the British people than you do. That’s not a good look.
Where are your own LABOUR views? Have you shred them while nobody was watching?
As various forms of digital-only checks are already attached to migrant status and right-to-work checks, it seems to me that this is just another way for the government to spend a lot of money.
This tactic is typical for the Conservatives, not for Labour. The Conservatives spouted a lot of lies about foreign people living in the UK not needing to pay NIC and so on; they were able to because nobody stood up and said “wait a minute, that’s nonsense”.
I don’t think that mandatory DIGITAL ID would help Brits either as FAR too many are living in poverty or in deep poverty. They might not have the required equipment and internet access. Mandatory physical ID with a chip carrying fingerprints is a different matter.
I understand that your plans also undermine certain other groups’ rights; as you are a human rights lawyer, you’re probably well aware of that and don’t need me to spell it out.
In addition, the speed at which you want to introduce this means that you are asking for trouble. You’d risk repeating what MS Windows used to be infamous for. Haste makes waste.
I don’t know if your plans would create something like the Dutch DigiD, but that introduction was riddled with problems. Many people couldn’t get it to work no matter what they tried (even still just a few years ago) and the majority of phones were not suitable for some weird reason.
As it happens, the phone I got for my EUSS application (with NFC so that it could read the chip in my passport) was also the only one on which the Dutch DigiD app functioned. None of my other phones could get it to work; I have no idea why not.
There also was an issue with Dutch people abroad not being able to acquire DigiD. I happened to be able to stop by at Schiphol Airport at the right time so I was lucky enough to be able to go to some desk there and get it sorted.
You will have similar issues for Brits abroad. Those living in places like Amsterdam and Berlin can hop over, just like I hopped over to Amsterdam. It is a different story for those in Australia, Canada or other more distant places.
As another example, the new GOV.UK ID that you’ve recently introduced for us foreigners will require the purchase of yet another new phone because it won’t accept anything under Android 11 at the moment. (Ehm… wait a minute, so you already have that too!)
What ARE you DOING, Keir? Where is your good common sense?
Please reconsider. Thanks.
Angelina
END OF MY MESSAGE TO KEIR STARMER
PS After reading the gov.uk information about this new ID, I freaked. Drop your phone and you no longer can prove who you are! All of my phones malfunction often. All of my equipment suffers from persistent hacking interference. Some apps malfunction often. Some apps I can’t even get on some phones because the app thinks I am in the wrong country even when I am not, on the basis of some coding in the phone.
This new ID scheme sounds like a bonkers waste of money because with your government gateway ID you can also already access more and more services. I had not even mentioned that in the message that I sent.
Argh. What a load of crock. (There is no paperwork related to EUSS, for example. It’s been 100% digital from the start.) (EUSS is the EU settlement scheme, which kicked in after Brexit.)
Okay, so here is the crux (possibly). Who’d be getting the contracts?
A few days ago, someone seemed to suggest that my situation is more or less the result of illegal migrants in the Netherlands putting pressure on the system. (And that the Dutch givernment cares greatly.)
Bollocks.
If you’re illegal, you don’t have access to anything. If you don’t have an official registered address in the Netherlands, you don’t exist.
I don’t exist any longer either. If I needed medical assistance, I would have to go to the United Kingdom. (Yes, I have the Dutch nationality. I was born and raised here and so were my parents.)
I knew nothing about the plight of migrants until I moved from Amsterdam to England.
I’d previously emigrated to the United States and although the restrictions of my visa hampered me and I ran into misunderstandings such as that foreign employees of a State don’t have to file income taxes – plus very occasionally some nonsense about sex and drugs or wooden shoes, tulips and windmills and Denmark – I never felt discriminated against.
When I emigrated to England, however, government politicians and others were spouting so many vicious lies about “my kind” that it forced me to start pondering the situation of migrants in the Netherlands too.
I supposedly was from a poor country called the Netherlands and I supposedly had come to the UK because there were more opportunities there than in the Netherlands or to get its supposedly much more generous social security benefits (which you could not even get in the UK for the first five years and in order to start qualifying, you had to make an appointment and show evidence of your income) and I supposedly was a thieving drug addict and lying about my affiliation with the University of Southampton. It got stale. (Initially, I thought that some people simply behaved in really odd ways.)
And yet, in 2020, Home Secretary Priti Patel called us all “low-skill” and “low-wage” and vowed to reduce our numbers as if we were vermin to be exterminated… I’ve included her in the video below that I put together to call out the utter hypocrisy and nazi-rhetoric of these lying politicians.
Priti Patel is the daughter of Ugandan/Indian migrants. Geert Wilders is the son of a woman from the Asian country that has the world’s largest muslim population (Indonesia) and is, just like his pal Trump, married to a foreigner (Hungary). Some interesting psychology at work there… Do they have a deep-seated wish to get get back at their parents and their spouses for some reason?
Three years later, English newspapers revealed that PM Boris Johnson had planned a military raid on a vaccine plant in Leiden, the Netherlands, to steal vaccines for a disease of which he had previously said that it was just something that those weak foreigners could not handle but that would never affect the British.
(Shortly after this, Johnson stiffed Jenny and Luis and their colleagues. Jenny quit, disgusted.)
And that is how I know that most of the utter nonsense being spouted in the Netherlands about illegals, and refugees and foreigners and people such as myself who have lived abroad for a long time and can no longer be trusted is just that. It is utter nonsense aimed at sowing fear and gaining fearful people’s votes.
Right-wing statements of supposedly left-wing Dutch politicians don’t help.
Globally, I dearly miss the powerful moderating influence of “Mutti” Angela Merkel and also that of Jacinda Ardern.
So when someone said “As-salamu alaykum” to me the other day (peace, shalom, namaste), I replied “Salaam”. (I’d previously asked someone whether it was okay for me to say this, and he smiled and said “yes”. It’s not said in England, you see, at least not as openly, but likely often enough when no semi-indigenous people are around.)
Part of the problem with the Netherlands is that it has made a whopping shift to the right in the past two decades – hence to “not caring” – and that it wants to regulate every sneeze and cough and requires you to have to apply for a license for sneezing and a license for coughing and that if somehow, all license applications are automatically rejected, it comes up with a third and fourth and fifth regulation to regulate the failing regulations instead of simply fixing what’s wrong.
The horrific childcare tax credits disaster STILL has not been resolved. A repeat is around the corner and many victims of this travesty are still stuck, waiting, waiting, waiting for the Dutch state to step up and do what it should do.
(The Netherlands now seems to be pervaded by thought policing, too. How dare you call out the emperor for not wearing any clothes?)
Btw, does anyone know why WordPress.com does not recognize ENGLISH?
STAT: “President Trump announced on Monday that his administration has concluded that some cases of autism may be linked to pregnant women’s use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and said the medication should be used sparingly and only if absolutely needed during pregnancy.
Flanked by the nation’s top health officials at the White House, Trump outlined a dramatic overhaul to health agencies’ approach to autism.”
Tylenol has nothing to do with autism as far as scientists know at this point. Anti-epileptic drugs taken during pregnancy may play a role, however.
Robert Klitzman: “Environmental factors also play roles, including a mother’s obesity, older age, diabetes caused by pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome, and exposures to various pesticides and infections. Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (or “ICSI”), used as part of in-vitro fertilization, injects sperm directly into eggs to increase the odds of fertilization. It was developed and intended for use with men with low sperm counts, but it is now used in most IVF. It turns out to double the rate of intellectual disabilities and autism in the offspring.”Nicolas Joncour: https://i-asc.org/our-team/nicolas-joncour/ (who he is and what he does)Continue reading →
Are you getting really stinky smelly feet, yuck, gross, and are you for example blaming it on your new shoes?
Because you can’t figure out what’s going on?
Perhaps in despair you’ve ordered one of those UV disinfecting wands for your shoes.
Well, if it happens to be the case that you recently moved, ask yourself if you used to have the habit of treating your feet to a nice warm salt footbath every once in a while. Have you lost that habit?
If so, reinstate it. Problem solved, I bet.
(You may need to replace your socks, too. Washing at 60 degrees may make the problem worse. Washing at 90 or 95 degrees is better, but most socks can’t handle that. See links below.)
Look after your feet. They’ll thank you in so many ways.
AI-generated image
How you can tell that this image is AI-generated? Nobody ever places a footbath at height. You place it on the floor. This AI clearly doesn’t know that. It thinks it’s like doing the dishes.
Let me know if you disagree.
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Most people wash at 30 or 40 degrees Celsius these days,but that’s rarely enough to get rid of bacteria.
Some bacteria really thrive at 60 degrees C. Stinky feet bacteria are examples of those, if memory serves me right. So you have to get close to boiling to get rid of that “Cheetos to the power of 100” smell or find a different way to disinfect your socks.
Below are some related research papers. I remember that the Guardian or a different major newspaper had an article referring to this type of research too, a few years back, telling us readers that our clothes tend to have remained dirty after a washing cycle.
A quick tip: Using a tumble dryer also helps get rid of bacteria.
Displaced aggression is when a person displays – redirects – hostility toward a different person because he or she feels intimidated by or weaker than the person he or she is annoyed with.
One of my neighbors in Portsmouth did it. He sometimes made angry remarks at me that had nothing to do with me. I found it puzzling until it dawned on me that the remarks applied to his partner. They used to quarrel, in what sounded like a very healthy respectful albeit angry manner, but they had stopped quarreling.
Well, birds do this too.
There is a group of six white geese where I am right now and I connected with them months ago, just by talking with them. They often greet me with softer or louder honks. Hi! Hi hi! Hi hi hi! Hi!
The lead goose is pretty bossy and his eyes speak volumes.
I’d brought them escarole twice over the months (in hot dry weather). The second time, they already knew that I had something for them when I walked up, just from my movements, the way I walked.
One day, he looked at me with undisguised anger. “I thought you had food but all you did was grab a handkerchief to blow your nose!” So I got some spinach, on sale, to make up for it, but while walking back I started wondering about the oxalic acid content. (It can interfere with the calcium metabolism of birds.)
Mr Lead Goose was furious. “Spinach? You brought us spinach!?!”
He was so furious that, yes, I went back to get some escarole.
“I wanted bread!” Yeah, well, the others were happy with the escarole. One of them did eat spinach too, but admittedly, somewhat reluctantly.
Last week, he was in one of his moods again. He sees me as challenging him or eroding his power a little at times. He then picked on one of the other geese, clearly because he didn’t risk pecking me. I interfered. That’s a goose who had a leg injury and was limping but the leg has gradually improved over the months.
So then he diverted his attention to (smaller) Nile geese, a couple and their two kids. He picked on one of the parents.
I stepped between them.
I’ve also previously stepped between a great blue heron and the Nile goose youngsters.
All you need to do is stand between them. (The heron I walked off. He needed to move away just a little. He flew off by a mere meter or so. Message received. Goal accomplished.)
The white geese were all very intrigued by all this.
This morning, the six white geese honked at me and swam with me, to a spot on the shore where the Nile geese already happened to be, to the left of a pedestrian bridge.
I then saw one of the Nile goose youngsters pick on a pigeon. I had to laugh. That one had clearly been watching Mr White Lead Goose.
There’s also sometimes a swan and right now (that is, yesterday), a swan couple with a kid. The geese keep a respectful distance. You don’t mess with a swan.
(The geese also warn each other about dogs, btw.)
If they can redirect anger, then they can also empathize.
Sure enough, I’ve seen quaker parrots look out – step up – for cats. Cats!
I’ve also seen a pigeon understand that mice too need to eat and that you should drop some food somewhere on purpose if you don’t want them to go somewhere else and that you shouldn’t be sloppy with your food there.
If pigeons know how to deter rodents humanely, then so can humans.
And we all know the racket that magpies make to warn everyone else if they see a cat on the prowl (or a bird of prey in the air). They warn everyone, usually perched pretty high up so that they can monitor the cat. They don’t just warn their own kind.
PS Non-human animals sometimes do things, play games, to test a human, to assess how much of a danger you might represent. Humans sometimes do something similar. They can become a real pest just to test another person’s loyalty. “Can I drive you away or will I always be able to count on you?” My youngest sister once told me that she’d done that with a boyfriend. She’s very smart, yes. People with insight in themselves are pretty precious.
For some unfathomable reason, the economic calendar sometimes gives me the wrong times. I sometimes get the wrong number of hours versus UTC.
As I also need to keep the difference with the US in mind and not every release happens at the same time, and daylight savings time doesn’t run synchronously either and I am in two different timezone countries, certainly in my head, I don’t always notice it when this happens.
Today, it happened again, apparently, or maybe this time it was me who got the time wrong. (Probably! Mea culpa.) (Update: Nope, a day or so later I once again noticed that the time of the calendar was off again. After I left Portsmouth, I would still often remain on UK time. When I contacted someone about this, the time started changing 1 hour in the other direction (for Letland).
Today’s data releases (Jolts etc) tripped me up.
It cost me about 7 bucks. Could be worse.
(Ehm, did it? Not necessarily. I closed a short at a loss of 7, but had intended to. It was a trade that I was unable to close yesterday when I wanted to, a pending trade that I should have deleted before it kicked in. I have a long running that I would have closed today, if I had been appropriately alert, but that’s actually all right for now. The day ain’t over yet, anyway.)
I found myself thinking “what’s that rate waiting for, why’s it hovering, stalling? The data aren’t coming in yet, after all.”
Focus…
What can I say? I’m human. My back is troubling me. It’s distracting. I’m focusing on ibuprofen. My circumstances are crappy, too. I do what I can. I’m still ahead. Mistakes are part of it.
Mine was identified by a friend who was in nursing school and wanted to practice her massage skills on me. I was around 20, working at the Amsterdam Tourist Office at the time. “Weet je dat je scheef bent?” she asked. “Whatever,” I thought.
A chiropractor diagnosed it in my middle sister and our uncle Harrie had it too. I don’t know who else had it, but there must have been others. I don’t know whether my youngest sister has it. Probably.
I’d never looked into it before, but did so last night.
“There are strong arguments that human health and life have fundamental value and that incremental gains in health and in years of life will benefit us.”
I agree! For this to be realized, two things need to happen.
Logic says that if lots of people expect something to go up, then they will start buying, with the plan to cash out later when the something goes up. That then drives up its price in advance.
Sometimes that is clearly the case.
However, you can also see this happening when something is expected to go down. Then the price gets jacked up so that the shorts when the thing that is expected to go down goes down – in this case, the US dollar – are able to make a lot more money.
We’ll see which is which. Will I have the patience?
Complication: Trump has ended traditional bullish/bearish predictions for the dollar, but old habits die hard and this is not global but US. (His tariff circus kicked the dollar off its throne as a safe currency, but there’s been some rebound.) The yields story isn’t what it used to be either, relative to the dollar.
(I understand that yields v inflation is what’s currently driving the gold price. Feels like bad news for the dollar to me, but I don’t know much at all about this stuff and that is an understatement.)
People think that these are goofy little dorks, the people who do this. Wrong.
On the basis of my blood test results, people like that tried to make me believe that I had blood cancer. That was in Portsmouth. Someone else might have fallen for it. I didn’t. I didn’t bother telling my GP practice about it.
On the basis of my eye test results here in the Netherlands, people tried to make me believe that something was seriously wrong with my left eye.
This Clinical Diagnostics hack involved Amphia patients. I have known for over a year that Amphia’s systems are not secure. That does not mean that this hack took place via Amphia but it is possible.
I am aware of several other Dutch systems that aren’t secure. I am not going to mention them here as it would signal to other hackers that these systems are vulnerable.
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