It looks as though the Dutch ‘Danish’ cabinet, the minority cabinet of VVD and CDA with Wilders’ PVV supporting, has entered choppy waters. From DutchNews.nl: Budget cut talks ‘in a difficult phase’, NOS says Wilders wants out.
Talks between the minority cabinet and anti-immigration PVV on how to cut government spending by €9bn were halted early on Wednesday and are ‘going through a difficult phase’, the state information service said.
‘The talks ended earlier today. The negotiations are going through a difficult phase. They will be resumed at 10.00 hours tomorrow morning,’ the RVD statement said. (…)
Sources have told the paper the PVV has been reluctant to make any concessions on economic reform and that the negotiators are now to discuss the stalemate with other party strategists. (…)
NOS television says sources have told it Wilders wants to pull out of the negotiations and has been asked by the others to sleep on it overnight. In particular, Wilders is unhappy at the pressure on him to cut unemployment benefit and increase healthcare fees, NOS said.
The three parties have to come up with a package of measures to reduce the budget deficit below the EU monetary union limit of 3%.
I am not even going to comment on the fact that the direct cause of this trouble is *gasp and surprise* the EUnion and the euro. The 3% deficit demand is, as you may remember, straight from Merkels infernal ‘Fiskal kompakt’, the one that takes away parliaments right to set the budget.
The bone of contention between PVV and the coalition seems to be that the cuts proposed aren’t really cuts. They’re just the government keeping more tax money to itself and raising fees and taxes to extract even more money from us. In fact, these cuts aren’t cuts at all. In The Hague speak ‘budget cuts’ evidently means demanding more money from taxpayers, while providing less services. We pay more, but we get less.
It has always been that way. Do any of my Dutch readers remember a year, when our local government did NOT promise to reign in costs and cut the budget? Well, the Telegraaf shines a surprising light (NL, via) on the governments budget (see picture above right).
Expressing the total outlays of our government in percentage of GDP, we find that the government budget has increased in size from 38% GDP in 1988 to a whopping 55% in 2010. It scares me to think what that percentage is going to be for 2011 and 2012, what with the Greek ‘rescue’, the ESM and all other burdens that form the privilege of being in the EUnion.
There has been but one year, 1997, when the governments budget actually shrank somewhat against GDP. But other then that the government systematically gobbled up more and more of our economic output for its own non-productive ends. And at 55% GDP I think it is safe to say that, yes, our government and its agencies are now collectively a parasite that is threatening to kill the host.
Is this then not an exquisite argument for Referism and against ‘representative democracy’? The power to set the budget should be with us, those that pay for it, and not with those that want to spend it.
Klein Verzet 
Whenever I hear that people for a referendum on the EU, or pleading by way of a petition, it fills me with despair. The very idea that we have to ask our Great Leader, “Please Sir, please can we have an opportunity to have our say”, is in effect transferring far greater powers to him then any powers being transferred to the EU. We are in effect saying, that not only are we serfs, but we acknowledge that fact. Muslims will say we are dhimmis – that is, we acknowledge our slave status, while we continue to offer our money as tribute.
PS
Power is never given up voluntarily by the elite. It is only we the WE the people, who by way of negligence, laziness, and falling for BBC type propaganda, that have relinguished powers that are naturally ours.
To get them, we will have to tale the powers by force. And the riling elite will do everything in its power to resist, including force.
Would like an edit button. Any chance?
Looking good so far.
Thanks DP.
I’ve an edit-button next to my screen-name. But that could also be an admin function. Other then that I don’t think an edit function is available at this new venue. Haven’t found it yet, at any rate. I’ll do a little digging.
How about a “delete” button.
That would be just as useful.
I think if you log in (which means having to make an account) you get those.
No chance of switching to Disqus as on the old blog?
Afraid not. WP doesn’t support Disqus, unless you have it installed on your own domain. Actually there’s some other stuff that I can’t do or use, like the LinkWithin gadget, which I quite liked.