And the AI that generates images for this hoster is shockingly sexist.

Someone just walked by, paused and said to me “You’re here.” “Good night.”

Confused? Mistaking me for someone else?

Spot the sign for Van Houten Cacao or, rather, Van Houten’s Cocoa. Hint: It’s in the first three minutes.

Client confidentiality is often quoted as a reason for ducking responsibility. At the same time, client confidentiality rarely matters when prejudice takes over within the same kind of contexts. Deplorable.

Today, The Guardian has the story of Rosy, a former University of Portsmouth librarian with motor neurone disease.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/28/terminal-illness-care-england-motor-neurone-disease

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At the same time, Dutch national news agency NOS reports on the rise of homelessness in the Netherlands. Most homeless people in the Netherlands stay out of view of the system.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand why so many unhoused people in the Netherlands want to stay out of the claws of the system or why they go unnoticed or, rather, aren’t able to receive any kind of useful, practical support anyway.

The Dutch system only exists to keep itself alive these days. It doesn’t serve the country’s citizens. Most or far too many civil servants are busy carrying out civil servant tasks that have no real meaning outside of that system. Other than that, it seems to operate purely on the basis of prejudice. That is so unbelievably off-putting and unhelpful. It forces people to focus on battling that instead of on getting back on their feet.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2553539-aantal-daklozen-stijgt-voor-tweede-jaar-op-rij-tot-33-000

NOS should be ashamed of itself for using the stereotype as illustration. This is one of the reasons why homeless people in the Netherlands want to avoid the system. Because getting ostracized isn’t helpful in any way. It makes things far worse than they need to be.

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Correction: Automatic exemptions for the Dutch equivalent of British council tax (lower amounts than council tax) were the issue that the city of Utrecht got admonished for. (The Dutch heading of the article had two possible interpretations.)

I had wondered why this was not done automatically, particularly within the context of the so-called poverty alleviation legislation (“vroegsignalering”). The same goes for waterboard bills. Why isn’t it simply done automatically instead of spending huge amounts of taxpayer money on trying to teach people who can count and are already counting their pennies how to count their pennies?

The crowdfunding in Utrecht is also intended to create a buffer for people if their benefits get cut because of some work they do or other income. This can cause their finances to collapse completely.

I’ve warned before that people on benefits who crowdfund some of their unaffordable expenses such as dentistry bills should let others do that crowdfunding for them and let them pay. Otherwise they will get cut and get into trouble.

Poverty is remedied by increasing people’s income and lowering their bills. It’s that simple.

Povertyism is horrible. Povertyism has become rife in the Netherlands.

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Each time the central city of Utrecht awards these basic benefits, the state admonishes the city. (Corrected above.)

Fed up, Utrecht decided to start crowdfunding this basic financial support for people with no or very little income.

That explains a lot!

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At the same time, a different government department tries to fight the results of the state’s attitude by assuming that people in poverty are basically just too stupid to apply for exemptions, tax credits or these basic benefits.

It is hard to believe.

It can hardly get any crazier.

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Low-level civil servants are probably being blamed for this mess. (I apologise to anyone who I have partly blamed for this mess while they were not to blame at all.)

I haven’t seen any top politicians in the Netherlands recently – except Timmermans – who seem to be capable and have their heads screwed on properly.

But anyone who tries to address the current mess in the Netherlands, even if it’s someone from the Dutch royal family, gets admonished and kicked to the kerb too, as far as I can tell.

When I moved back from the States a long time ago, unexpectedly, because of funding hiccups, getting these basic benefits was no big deal at all. It helped me get back on my feet (in spite of affordable housing also being a big problem back then). I’m not saying it was easy but without that basic financial support I’d have been lost.

Source Utrecht news: Trouw, 14 January 2025

https://www.trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-economie/utrecht-wil-kabinet-te-slim-af-zijn-en-start-crowdfunding-voor-mensen-in-de-bijstand~b2c3a99d/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/13/uk-low-middle-income-families-poorer-oecd-counterparts-study-western-europe

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One might forget…

It is hard to keep dry eyes while watching this 2020 documentary on 60 MINUTES. It’s the first part of this video, 14 minutes long.

In December 2023, Amal Clooney filed a civil case on behalf of over 800 Yazidi-American plaintiffs – with Nadia Murad as lead plaintiff – against French cement manufacturer Lafarge – according to Clooney’s Wikipedia page – for its material support to Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

In 2024, ten years after the Yazidi genocide, the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry called for justice, including accountability and effective remedies, for ISIL crimes (UN position paper).

Portsmouth is sometimes called a northern city in the south. I don’t think that that’s accurate, because it’s not the full picture, but no-nonsense thinking sure seems to be a northern thing.

The Netherlands has an epidemic of attacks with explosives, possibly the Dutch counterpart to gun violence in the US.

Ordinary people whose home is attacked, damaged and declared unsafe to live in end up on the streets without support.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2550478-recordaantal-explosies-bij-woningen-slachtoffers-belanden-vaak-op-straat

Victims are being punished for other people’s crimes.

Continue reading →

Previous two related posts:

• https://angelinasouren.com/2024/12/21/analysis-of-what-is-going-on-here/

• https://angelinasouren.com/2024/12/20/emergency-situation/

Yes, the scientist in me observes and wants to analyse this. This whole thing was supposed to be about support for me but quickly became all about him.

By the way, when I refer to him “muttering” I don’t mean that I think he’s hearing voices. He’s muttering under his breath. Talking to himself.

Update 10 January 2025: Yes, pathological demand avoidance caused by feelings of extreme overwhelm and lack of control seems to have been the main problem. Any cognitive decline symptoms may be just another way of expressing this. His hearing is bad, but he also uses not being able to hear – or see – you along with forgetting things as a way of staying in control. Pathological demand avoidance is also where the fantasy world concoctions come from. He was often being rebellious and controlling, certainly increasingly toward me. I found it hard to see him this way and use these words because this is not really how I used to know him, as far as I remember (though there have been a few odd moments that made me wonder; my first interaction that I remember took place in October 1984 and it was strange and disappointing). He loves hanging out with the toddlers because he feels in control relative to them. He feels superior, not challenged by them intellectually or otherwise. I now am starting to wonder if this all began to spiral out of control after his first wife divorced him… The iMac thing was also purely because his wife moved the thing on the table😣. He seems to have stopped using it years ago but the idea that she turned it by 90 degrees and moved it by maybe 20 centimetres was completely unacceptable to him. I now think that pathological demand avoidance was also the reason for what happened in 2017. I’d noticed before, in the past two years, that he has a tendency to come up with “realities” that are more palatable to him than the actual reality. I’m stunned by how well he still tends to present, how convincing and balanced he can come across as. (This is also why I was worried about any stories that he might be telling others about me.) But I think that not even the neighbour who he trusts with his key is still convinced that everything is okay.

Thinking back to another mildly autistic person who I had known since 1982, I realise that I have also seen some pathological demand avoidance in her. Twisting the truth is a way of asserting themselves and regaining a sense of control. Her daughter (now a psychologist) told me that her mother had said that I worked at a supermarket. This was years after I had graduated with my master’s. (I stacked shelves on Thursdays for three years, until 1989.) Another thing that puzzled me was that she sometimes “accused” me of being a scientist when I had not graduated yet, but also rejected me as not being a researcher after I had graduated. I couldn’t make it add up. She was looking for reasons to reject me, it seemed. But why? (Because I am intelligent and because that alone can make some people feel inferior, I suppose. I already noticed that in primary school. She has said of me that I had a very clear sense of who I was.) I helped her clean out a closet once. Such things really help. What I did, forcing him to own up and seek assistance and for example have himself tested for a brain infection, made things unbearable for him. It all reminds me of the woman with Alzheimer’s in Florida, who I supported for a few days.

There’s something else that I have now started to wonder about. He’s convinced that he’s not divorced from his second wife yet. They first lost the paperwork, he said, because the matter needed to be transferred to a different court and now hasn’t heard from the court for a long time. He’s said that there needs to be a hearing that determines who is going to be living where. Is any of this accurate? (He also recently said that he was going to charge the others rent as of 1 January.)

7 January 2025, 18:40: This is actually pretty hilarious, as well as educational. They are totally lovey-dovey all of a sudden… The only thing that has changed is that she was “the devil” in his eyes, before, and now I am. ✌🏻🕊️😎

I’m witnessing scenes from the 1960s, almost. 😆

(Okay, that was me being childish.) I hadn’t realised how vulnerable this guy was feeling. He needed reassurance. He didn’t want me to confront him with what he’s going through. I looked after a woman with Alzheimer’s for a little while, decades ago, but that was a stranger. It taught me a lot, such as that it really helped her if I simply unobtrusively helped keep her track of what day it was, but it’s very different when there’s a serious cognitive decline in someone you know, I’ve now learned.

Him insisting on referring me to a place that doesn’t exist, that too is pathological demand avoidance, I Iater realised. I have mentioned pathological demand avoidance in an earlier post. It’s hard to know what to make of such things at first. It’s also hard for me to figure out what is age-related and what is autism-related in this case. (Besides, it wasn’t as if I was in the best state of mind for dealing with something like this. Understatement.)

In any case, I am pleased that he and the second ex or soon-to-be-second-ex are much closer again. I’ve also gotten some answers through this series of experiences, about questions I’ve had for years. Chapter closed. Old stuff. Things are as I thought they were. I cut people too much slack sometimes. That is on me.

6 Jan 2025, 20:20: The kids are allowed out again… They are all acting pretty normal again. Sure, they pretend I am air but erything is normal at least… This tension around just him was very hard to be around, with everyone else secluded in their own little section of the flat. He gets so tense! (I’m always trying not to trigger anyone into anger here. Trying to make myself invisible.) That said, in hindsight, I think I became really concerned (nervous) after I realised that he genuinely believed that his wife had taken his iMac and shipped it to Africa as a donation without asking his permission, and that the iMac on the table wasn’t his.

That was so unhinged that I became really uncomfortable around him. It scared me. I shouldn’t have brought it up later, because that is when he flipped out and threw me to the floor, but it really worried me.

(Also, hilariously, they want me gone, but do eat food that I buy.)(Not him. He always eats the same things.)There seem to be financial pressures here and they are surely part of the tension that gets redirected at me. He did say he would be behind in rent by 2 months by early December – he was confident he would catch up soon as he had money coming in, but I warned him about the “vroegsignalering” abomination – and had tax debts among other things. Is it true or just another thing that he says that has no connection to reality? I have no idea how he might have ended up with tax arrears. (I did ask him.) He’s paying alimony to his first wife. He’ll soon be paying alimony to his second wife. He’s now just sold his car, which has surely helped. He shops at the most expensive supermarket; I got him to try bonus box, but he will associate that with me from now now and likely stop using it for that reason even though it offers interesting discounts. But maybe he will present it to others as something brilliant that he’s discovered. I hope so.

6 Jan 2025, 19:42: The dynamics have changed big time. See below. They are suddenly best buddies again. Good. 👍🏻

I’ve overlooked something. He’s an only child. (He told me to keep my mouth shut, this evening, as if I am a toddler, not a colleague. I told him the same. Of course I did!)

(Oh. 💡 This is about feeling needed. Yep, I do that to men. I’m fiercely independent – and I kept telling him to stop sending me links for things that I don’t qualify for. But this was not supposed to be about him. This was supposed to be about me.)

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6 Jan 2025, 18:06: Something really bizarre going on here. She has been walking in and out a few times to switch off the kitchen light. I wondered what on earth she was doing. Then he emailed”kitchen lights on/off”. I happened to have just switched one on. My first thought: “What the hell? How does he know that I just switched on the kitchen light?” Briefly wondered if he was outside on his way home and saw the light go on.

She spent a lot of time in the kitchen today, then went to sleep at about 4pm or so. I’ve just realised that they are all asleep… This is what she did in 2023 too, when I still assumed that there is a large time difference with Liberia. (Nope) She would come out of her section of the flat as soon as he was fast asleep, and without hearing aids, in his room. Just to pester me, I later realised. To keep me from sleeping. I should have said something, then. The silly thing is that this kind of thing actually delays my departure now. No, they left! I had no idea. Good. They returned at 19:30. She and him are suddenly best buddies again, apparently. Good. Maybe I helped clear the air here. 😎

(She did not do any of that in the weeks before Christmas so there is no need for it. That said, the kids were up so late at least once, that they missed school. Well, the one that goes to school.)

Her adult son is okay. He sometimes comes home at odd hours and sometimes leaves at 5am for his shifts at AH (supermarket). That is a different story. He is not doing anything to pester me. He’s okay. (I feel sorry for him, actually, because this can’t be easy for him either.) He seems to leave the country often. Once every two months or so? He gives part of his salary to her. She doesn’t work.

She had a cleaning job briefly, a few doors away, at a dental practice, but quit soon after she started it. That is what her husband told me, however. It may not be accurate, in view of all the nonsense that he tells me about me.

My impression is that the couple are taking their relationship issues out on me. Displaced aggression because they see me as inferior. They’re behaving like a bunch of small children.

Initially, in early December, he tried to bond with me by painting a “them” against “us” picture. Used “we” in this context.

That was not at all what this is about. I don’t want to fake this kind of thing just to keep someone “siding with me”. Said that I could sleep in his wife’s bed and during the day in his if I wanted to. No, thank you.

This is a really dysfunctional household. Complete with lots of mouldy food, I should say. I’ve thrown some of it out. I felt I had to. There was also a moldy filter in the coffee maker in early December. I threw that out too.

Am I the only adult here?

I do my best to stay above the silly pettiness. I’m succeeding.

(I’m sorry that I allowed myself to get dragged along for a while.. I’m not doing that again.)

6 Jan 2025, 11:27: Nothing from GoFundMe yet. Time to go check emails, okay an outgoing payment and do other stuff. I’m still not getting many of my bank’s emails, about outgoing payments. (I’m a nervous wreck. I’ll get over it because I can’t afford to be a nervous wreck. She came back while I was in the shower, I don’t know from where. She has been shouting angrily again, on the phone, for a long time, as usual. He left a few times and is still gone.)

6 Jan 2025, 09:52 Still waiting for them to be finished so that I can start the day. Still in my PJs. Utterly exhausted.

09:40 As of this morning, she is switching off the light in the kitchen, playing silly little games, as if I am forbidding her to use any lights while I wait for everyone to do their morning things before I can start the day myself.

I need to stay above this. It’s all so childish.

More muttering.

Telling her that I refuse this and that. Bullshit. I’m not eligible! And in one case, what he insisted exists, doesn’t even exist.

(This is actually pretty despicable. Why does he keep doing this? Is it wishful thinking? It was frustrating enough to have to deal with that myself, but why does he also tell others this bs?) (But to me, he complains about them. Only yesterday, he moaned about the mess around the table after my tablet disappeared, had slid into the mass of soft toys. The toys don’t bother me one bit, but they really annoy him.)

(My dad was like that too when we were little, my mother told me. Hated having toys in the house. Got really angry over it, so much that my mother discussed it with the GP. My dad shared traits with this guy, I realised a few days ago, when I realised that I am often very nervous around this guy because he has so much tension in him, so much pent-up anger. Not always. It depends on his moods. I’ve started to wonder if my dad may have been autistic in combination with relatively low IQ. I’m looking for differences now. I always thought that my dad had undiagnosed borderline. Did he really?)(Scientific curiosity)(doesn’t matter; I said goodbye to my dad over 40 years ago, no longer willing – and able – to deal with his antics, plus the guy is deceased, and I’d rather leave him rest in peace now)

(That said, I don’t want to have to be everyone’s mommy. I’m not his mother.)

Btw, before Christmas, he handed me a paper about concealed gun carrying in the US. When I was puzzled, he was annoyed so I just thanked him and said nothing further.

6 January 2025, 9:00 : He’s just told me that I need to be out of here by the evening. (I had just checked my bank account, nothing new has come in yet.) He also said, however, that I could leave some of my things here. (What the hell? Knock on the door every day to ask for clean underwear and socks or whatever, pretty please?)

Yesterday, he said the opposite.

Only three days before Christmas, he still wanted me gone by Christmas Eve. Then he changed his mind again, without even actually telling me. (He turned out to have sent me an email.)

When the crazy Werk & Inkomen staff in Purmerend went into a neighbour’s apartment to access my balcony via his (intimidation/retaliation, no explanation, no apology), and suddenly stood in front of my open balcony door, really scaring me, and I sent him an email about it, his baffling response was “H’s mother’s name is Doris”. (He often dismisses or twists unpleasant truths, I think.)

He’s also the guy who offered me a way out in 2017, told me that I was welcome to stay at his apartment in the Bijlmer until about Christmas when she would be visiting from Liberia. I would have my own room. He absolutely reassured me that I would be able to register there, no problem, no, no problem, thus be able to get back into the Dutch system, get back on my feet, pay a little out of my pay or social security benefits to compensate him for the effect on his pension payments. (He would be at the university during workdays.) When I took him up on the offer, stood there with my luggage, he had either changed his mind or forgotten about it. I had to borrow money from two other people to be able to return to my crazy coercive-control-type situation in Portsmouth.

I felt so let down.

I later ascribed it to his memory issues and forgave him, but I am not sure that I am still buying that explanation. Like his hearing problems, they seem a little too selective at times. (Pathological demand avoidance?)

I should not have let him pick me up in December. Because of the virus I caught here, I couldn’t even make calls for a while because I lost my voice. And I looked awful. (He can pretend all he wants about me “having gotten ill on the streets”. It’s bs. It was here where I got ill and the sleep deprivation here didn’t help one bit.)

On the 20th – no, I think it was the 19th; the 20th is when I talked with Fatima Ata for the first time – he smashed me into the floor because of his pent-up anger over his wife. Unleashed it at me. Bloody hell. Talk about displaced aggression. “It’s because she moved my iMac on the table.” The iMac that he never uses. The iMac was a symbol for something. I’m not sure what. He said that she had taken his iMac one day and shipped it off as a donation to Africa. (I think he actually wrote that to me a few months ago.) The iMac on the table was one that she had found in the streets. Could I help him set it up? “Oh, look, there is all sorts of stuff on it.” Yes, his own files. What on earth was I supposed to make of that? I found it pretty unsettling. I guess that’s the autism. I decided to forgive him. But after he threw me to the floor in a sudden fit of rage, I could no longer afford to trust him.

He pretended that this was a perfectly normal thing to do to me. I think that that shocked me even more.

(What was I thinking when I allowed myself to rely on this person? That may be the main question. I think the answer is very simple. When you have no money and your life stops looking glamorous and you can no longer be at people’s beck and call many abandon you.

Yesterday evening, he joked about me putting on weight. I should put on more weight. Hell no. It affects my spine issues. I have at least three bad discs and currently the tailbone issue. Carrying more weight isn’t good for me and tends to affect the nerves too. He’s been doing this, this devaluation thing, quite often. (Is part of the Asperger’s, as far as I know, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable. This “what you want and feel is wrong or incorrect or disapproved” gets a little stale.)

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His soon-to-be-ex wife keeps declaring war on me. On 5 January, she started ramping it up. Just like she waged her hostile little wars in 2023.

I wonder if this time, she’s actually just terrified that what’s happening to me will happen to her after the divorce, that the Netherlands is not the wonderful paradise she thought it was (just like I too remembered it, I suppose). I wonder if I am a constant reminder of her own vulnerability this time.

Scores of regular people like me are now homeless in the Netherlands without support. Many are the victims of these horrific attacks with explosives. They are in fact punished for being victims, treated as the cause of the attacks, even if they have no clue what the attacks are for or who’s behind them. It’s awful. (It’s also incomprehensible that the Dutch police are as powerless and clueless as the victims of these attacks.)

She’s more timid than she was last time. A little more human. (But I also think she’s manipulative.)

Last time, she was probably worried that her scheming might become exposed, I guess. She was hostile from the get-go.

She doesn’t realise that her antagony has returned to her like a boomerang. If it weren’t for all her antics last time, I wouldn’t actually be here now. I’ve only just realised that.

(I should not have done that. I should not have taken the first place I could get just to be out of here. That is fully on me.)

I was supposed to have been out of here on Christmas eve, when everything was supposed to get resolved. (Until then, all I could do was wait for the next appointment with the civil servants… Ugh. Almost nothing else. Besides, things were going to be resolved, were being resolved. Everything was going to be okay. Then on Christmas Eve, they told me the opposite.)

The holiday season is over as of today, apparently.

Things are slowly coming together but I can’t break iron with my bare hands as the Dutch say. Each time, I have to wait for GoFundMe donations to arrive in my bank account before I can take the next little step. Nothing happening on weekends either.

My tailbone still hurts and is a constant reminder of how precarious my situation is.

I mustn’t let this get to me. I can’t afford to.

• Sigh. I need to be out of here asap. I can’t even work any kind of job from here, unlike what he thinks. Unlike last time, I can’t even go sit in a shopping mall or library all day just to get away from her and her silly stuff. If it weren’t for the GoFundMe donations, I’d be so screwed. But the donations aren’t enough yet to get me back on my feet. They do give me a little hope.

I need to stay above this. Rise. Not get dragged down again by her antics. Thankfully, I’m a lot stronger than I was last time after all those years of coercive control. I’ll be out of here and back on my feet again soon, goddammit.

She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to do a damn thing. I don’t quite buy her orphanage stuff. Hard to tell, though. Certainly hard to reconcile with this.

6 January, 8:06: Loud whispering a few feet away from me. She is talking to the 5-year-old. (Sounds like he is not allowed to go near me to get his toys?) Yes, she is up to her silly antics. She sent one of the kids in before one evening to declare loudly that I had to leave. She is 2 years old!

Not my problem!

This woman is not my problem. My problem is wanting my life back. My problem is not her life, not her silly antics.

She said she was going to call the police. (About what? About she being a schemer and a scammer?)

I so want out of here.

I feel sorry for him. He’s in the middle of this. So are the kids. Yesterday, she barged into his room in the middle of the night to complain about me just after I had thanked her for having turned off the light. I told her that making me increasingly sleep-deprived is not going to get me out of here faster. (Last time, it mattered less as all I was doing was waiting. This time, I need to be able to connect, come up with ideas and solutions and present well.

(How the hell does she think she can run an orphanage if she doesn’t understand empowerment?)

I also feel sorry for her adult son. He too is in the middle of this, but his girlfriend is pregnant and they will likely soon have a place of their own and get some peace. I hope so for their sake.

She often sleeps during the day.

In the morning, each time, I have to wait until they are all done just like I can’t start preparing for sleep until I am sure that they have gone to sleep. They don’t let me know. Ever.

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This, it was supposed to be about helping me, but it’s become all about other people and what is on their minds. Their silly fantasies. This was supposed to be about me resolving my situation and me moving forward.

It should never have become about needing to defend myself against all kinds of nonsense accusations and silly little wars.

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I hate posting this kind of thing but when you are entirely on your own, you can be in a position in which you sometimes have to defend yourself.

Initially, I was worried that if he is going around telling other people that I registered at this address against his wishes, he may unwittingly be painting me as a scammer. (I’m not registered here.)

He did something similar in 2023, without realising it. I get it. Also, I blame myself for that. I should have given him clear information that was accurate and much more palatable. I overheard him tell someone, literally, things about me that were neither accurate nor helpful. I get it. Yes, I do get it. But it’s why H was going through my garbage every day, with a stick. Among other things. (When I didn’t turn out to be the weak waif H expected, ouch.)

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The country has always had the sayings “Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg” en “wie met zijn kop boven het maaiveld uitsteekt, wordt genadeloos afgehakt”.

In the Netherlands wanting to excel was not done. There’s so much joy in excelling in something. In order to fit in in the Netherlands, you had to be average and strive to be only average, however. You had to do exactly what everyone else did and at the same age/time.

• You weren’t supposed to go to university later in life, for example.
• You weren’t supposed to want to be in the lab on a Saturday or Sunday.
• You are not supposed to have a flexible convenient source of income like doing deliveries for Uber Eats when it suits you – for example working around the schedule of your children – or any of the other chains that wanted to offer this. No, you must be in the 9-to-5 treadmill that puts money into a company’s pockets or put up with the abuse and human rights erosion that come with basic social security benefits nowadays (if you can access them, that is).
• If you are over 45, you are not welcome in jobs and areas that are for people of all ages in other countries but only for younger people (preferably aged 18 to 21 because they are cheaper) in the Netherlands. You’re still required to enter your DOB in most job applications in the Netherlands, even though it’s against the law. (Did you know that a Dutch leftwing party that I once liked recently came up with the horrifying idea of voluntary euthanasia for the over-75s?)

Just like many others, I never fitted in here. I and many others, we found America to be the country where we were allowed to thrive and lead joyful lives.

So the Dutch police have a communication system that sucks. But you’re not allowed to say that, are you? You’re supposed to put up with the mediocrity that is now definitely sliding into the abyss. It’s endangering lives.

(Confusingly, the system bears the name of a supermarket chain, but I don’t think that these supermarkets still exist: C2000.)

https://nos.nl/l/2550403

Is it a symptom or an isolated occurrence? I fear that it’s the former.

I wasn’t supposed to say out loud that many of the country’s civil servants currently communicate as follows “I want to suck my thumb. Because I like sucking my thumb.” Citizens who receive these communications are not surprisingly often baffled. I later read a Dutch newspaper article from which I gather that this how Gen Z communicates. But why does this only appear to be the case in the Netherlands? Because it’s cool to be mediocre here and because wanting to excel and wanting to make things better are increasingly frowned upon, apparently.

“Shut up, or else.” I’m not putting up with it.

The Dutch civil servant apparatus is huge. And very expensive because it’s so dysfunctional. Something similar goes for the medical/care apparatus in the Netherlands.

If medical care in the UK is free (albeit in a bit of a pickle because of the Tories’ underfunding) and taxes are much lower, then how come medical care in the Netherlands requires a system of obligatory health insurance premiums that are as high as premiums for private insurance in the UK and the medical and care systems in the Netherlands reportedly are on the verge of collapse? In addition, the Dutch care system is reportedly riddled with crime. According to the Dutch police, this includes organised crime, not just petty theft.

I too am now caught up in the Dutch bonkers tax credits system. I now owe the Dutch state and it hasn’t explained to me how it came up with the amount. Toeslagen. Just like many others in this country, I want nothing further to do with them. This is not because I don’t know how to go online and apply for them. It’s because these toeslagen have a habit of turning around and biting your behind. It appears to be much better to be able to support yourself and not rely on any of the state’s tax credits no matter what. You can really get mangled in this system because you tend to become so dependent on those tax credits once you apply for them and start receiving them. If you get them, put them in a savings account. Do not touch them. Do not use them. But can you afford to do that? (Yes, I am exaggerating a little now. Because I am really angry with the kind of crap that I have been getting. It’s a long story.)

My passport and driving licence were missing…

But…

When you visit the city of Amsterdam’s department for the homeless, you are not allowed to take anything with you other than paperwork. Everything goes into a locker and if you lucky, you’re also asked to go through the metal detector. I was during my second visit.

My passport and driving licence were with my paperwork for the City of Amsterdam, of course. I was pretty devastated when I left and didn’t return my 🆔 to its usual spot. Besides, they want you to leave the office asap. Previously, I went into a KFC to do the things that I needed to do, but this time I was even more deflated – or, powerless, rather – than after the second visit.

Phew. All’s well that ends well. 😊

I find it pretty despicable that only the homeless are treated like criminals in Amsterdam, but none of the other citizens. That is an expression of povertyism.

How ridiculous this is? You CAN get free hot drinks on the other side, so it’s not actually security-related at all. 🙄

The government is the toughest creditor in the Netherlands. It’s also the biggest.

Today, as I was leaving the building where I am currently staying, I found myself walking down the stairs behind another resident who came from a different floor.

A little bit later, she turns around and asks “Do you live in this building?”

I’m unwell and have lost my voice.

So I voice “I have lost voice”.

“Oh, you are deaf”.

I whisper “No, I have lost my voice”.

I’ve become increasingly unwell in the course of the past three weeks and am currently having what are probably very bad asthma attacks. I’ve totally reached the end of my tether, in all possible manners.

I wish that I had never moved into that utterly dreadful and disastrous penal colony in Purmerend. That horrid place should come with a health warning. It’s a really nasty horrible place that requires an active death wish to make it tolerable because you’re expected to shut up and die there and don’t you forget it. (Actually, it should be closed down. It should be demolished.)

Thinking back to that horrible place tends to bring on anxiety

• “Oh, poor you. You have a burn on your arm because your house is on fire. Let’s find you a bandaid and some ointment.”
• “What? No, it’s not free, you’ll have to pay for it.”
• “What? You want someone to put out the fire and save your home? Don’t worry about that. Please don’t interrupt me. That’s not polite. Let’s go get you a bandaid now.”
• “What? No, you don’t qualify for an exemption. We don’t waive the costs of bandaids.”
• “What? You urgently need dental treatment? That is not important.”
• “What? You don’t want the bandaid? You can’t afford it? That’s not possible. Everyone has money for this bandaid. Something’s wrong with you. Let’s admit you to a closed ward for observation. You look a little unkempt, too. When did you last have a haircut? We may have a serious little personal hygiene problem going on here. Let’s go fix you. Let’s go diagnose your learning disability. Might you also be dyslexic, perhaps?” “Why are you running away now? I’m only trying to help you! You’re so ungrateful!”

house on fire = lack of cash

burn on arm = homelessness

Step 6 is optional and has several variations but is not unheard of. Sometimes, people are not even eligible for purchasing a bandaid, even if they have the money.

Need advice? Education? Guidance?

Ask one of the following:

• Rutger Bregman
• Olivier de Schutter
• Caroline Buffery
• John Tasioulas
• Michelle van Tongerloo
• Rory Stewart
• Philip Alston
• Me

I strongly urge you to talk with each of us because we all contribute our own specific experiences and professional expertise.

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If anyone has a pre-2008 Opel Agila or Vauxhall Agila in good condition, with valid MOT or APK that isn’t due to expire soon, and is willing to donate it, or lend it to me for a year, then please get in touch. A small actual van might be great too. Below is why.

1. The older Agila’s are really boxy and spacious and cute. 🥰
2. They are actually as tall as I am when I stand next to them, so are (almost) a minivan.
3. They run on petrol/gas, so not on diesel.
4. They are low in road tax and insurance.
5. They are easy to park.

Having something like this would enable me to stop renting storage space and would make me much more flexible than I currently am. (The only other thing that I would still need/like is a small power station.)

I had found one Opel Agila, but it needed work. Not necessarily a lot of work. Just a cleaning and fluid change and new brake components might have done the trick. I wasn’t in a position to accomplish that myself, unfortunately. It might have served me fine. It was old and very obviously used but that’s fine.

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I obviously won’t and can’t stay in the Netherlands.

• It’s one thing to be considered a “vieze vuile migrant” – cheap low-skill, low-wage labour, with at best diploma mill degrees – in other countries, but it’s quite another to be seen as such in what is supposed to be your home country. 😂
• Besides, I’m not eligible for any kind of support here any longer, of any kind, while the crazy legislation also stops me from supporting myself in ways that are considered fine elsewhere, the records that the Dutch have for me are a mess (and they prefer to believe what their computer systems say about me), and so far, each civil servant I’ve spoken with has given me different, contrasting information about just about anything. I no longer know anyone here, the weather is awful and depressing, I’m often not entirely well here and there is very little nature here (bricks, concrete, tarmac, asphalt and cultivated soil, mostly, with water surfaces the biggest natural areas), and my experiences and cultural background don’t fit in here any longer. 🥴
• What’s more, because I have been away from the country for so long, I can’t work just anywhere. I’m considered a potential security risk now. This is not about me personally. It’s some kind of rule that you have to have been registered here for 6 or 8 years.
• What is worse, the country is developing a culture of aggression and intimidation that I find extremely worrisome and unpleasant. There’s for example an epidemic of people targeting each other with explosives, but there is also a lot of paranoia (for example anti foreigners which now includes me) and aggression in other contexts.
• The seized-up mess that the overload of contradictory pieces of policy and legislation constitutes is making the country unliveable.

Life’s simply too short, folks. I don’t believe in fatalism or masochism. I believe in freedom. I believe in living. 😁😀 ☺️

My big problem is that I don’t have any money. I have not been able to support myself from the year I moved to Portsmouth. It’s a long story that no longer matters as I can’t change a thing about it, but it taught me a lot.

I’m going to teach myself a new programming language to get around that. That seems to be the easiest and quickest way to break out of this awful impasse. I’ve enough experience to know that I can do this. Big plus: It won’t matter what I look like as long as I can do the job well. (What I do not know yet is the degree to which I would like it, but I can compensate, for example by playing a musical instrument and going to woods and beaches and long walks in my spare time.) Before I enrolled in earth sciences at university, I actively explored enrolling in computer science and I have some experience with several languages.

… Earth doesn’t even shrug once and continues to be not flat.

Yet scores of people call the earth flat…

Be like the earth. It doesn’t really matter what people call you.