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David Cockayne's avatar

Many moons ago, I lived in the Netherlands and was always mildly bemused by odd pride that people took in what one may call transactional prudence, including the rapid recovery of small loans to family and friends. I could never be sure if the was an element of deliberate self-deprecating exaggeration in all this.

Until one day a Polish young lady came to our department and asked if any one lived near her village and could give her a lift for a week, since her colleague was on holiday. I lived in the next town, so happily offered. As I dropped her off on the first day, she took some Guilders out of her pocket and offered them to me. I was shocked, and words of polite refusal had barely left my lips when she almost burst into tears, declaring that she had not met such a reaction since arriving in the Netherlands from Poland six-months before. Over the next week we had many amusing conversations on the general topic of George Canning's observation that:

"In matters of commerce,

the fault of the Dutch

Is offering too little

and asking too much."

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Brock's avatar

Interesting. I have quite a bit of Dutch ancestry, and I am also a notorious cheapskate. Must be genetic. Now I can tell my wife that it’s out of my hands and she’ll just have to humor me.

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Alan Schmidt's avatar

Living in Grand Rapids Michigan for a while, Dutch central, prove that stereotypes exist for a reason.

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Brock's avatar

LOL. No wonder I felt at home there when I passed through on vacation.

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Neil C's avatar

Nice to read something without a single reference to the top goalscorer at the 1986 World Cup.

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Ed West's avatar

ah great [deletes tomorrow's article]

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Ruairi's avatar

First story on RTE flash briefing. Madness

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Ed West's avatar

I remember reading years ago, during the Troubles, a description of some Sinn Fein event where the speaker was talking about removing England's influence finally, and everyone was very geed up and excited. and then half-way through they all left because next door was showing Man Utd v Liverpool.

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David Cockayne's avatar

In entirely unrelated news, the BBC reports that viewing figures for MOTD were up by 500,000 over last week. Surely some mistake?

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Ruairi's avatar

I did tune in out of curiosity..I normally don't watch MOTD as I am like the incredibly smart Michael Gove a QPR fan,

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English Dogs's avatar

Goodness, what has Nobby Stiles done now?

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Thomas L. Hutcheson's avatar

Re California fixers: Washington DC is also a polyglot place were I somewhat intentionality spent literally months getting the permits needed to repair a wall on my little city house plot. But the problem is not really knowing who to bribe or subtly importune. The bureaucracy is just incredibly difficult with multiple veto points. I actually LIKE the polyglot aspect of the city.

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Ivan, a Patron of Letters's avatar

Good post. Last bit was interesting... I still think Poland will be completely pozzed in about 20 years.

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Ed West's avatar

the omens are not looking good. young women in particular seemed to have caught the Madness as much as they have in our countries.

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Aivlys's avatar

I have little doubt that every Western nation will look like America in about 25 years, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

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Ruairi's avatar

When I lived in Lima, people thought I was Dutch -There are a lot of Dutch people living in Peru. God knows why...

I don't understand the reason why people keep comparing Asians to Jews. There are 3 Billion Asians. India and China are nuclear powers.

There are as many Jews as Bolivians the difference in scale is ridiculous

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Keith's avatar

'I don't understand the reason why people keep comparing Asians to Jews'.

In the context of the Eric Kaufman piece, the comparison is clear: Jews used to be wildly over-represented at America's top universities, now it's the (mainly north-east) Asians. I haven't noticed that the comparison between Jews and Asians keeps being made, other than to point out that both groups have higher than average IQs.

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Ruairi's avatar

I understand that. Surely the comparison is facile. Didn't one of Biden 's staff give the poor immigrant boy speech. Turned out his family owns half of Calcutta

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Mar 12, 2023
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Christian Moon's avatar

Sorry missed this above - please delete

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Ed West's avatar

ok!!

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