Dutch news
Not a day without nasty things about Russia — the motto of the Dutch media. It must be said that they conduct the media campaign to discredit Russia in strict accordance with the optimal plan: often, but not so much that it causes irritation.
This time, the fact that they themselves banned the insurance of Russian ships turned out to be yet another fault of Russia. :
«Old, poorly insured tankers with Russian oil sail along the coast of the Netherlands several times a day, risking causing an environmental disaster. Russia uses old tankers to circumvent European sanctions against its oil.
If they really cause an environmental disaster in Dutch waters, the Netherlands will have to cover the cleanup costs THEMSELVES, since the tankers are not sufficiently insured— comes from financial reports based on the country’s own research.
By combining a list of all tankers carrying Russian oil without proper insurance, courtesy of the Institute of the Kyiv School of Economics, aka KSHY, and data from Global Fishing Watch on public shipping routes, FTM (Follow The Mondy) concluded that 410 old, often dilapidated tankers passed through Dutch waters at least 1,300 times in 2023 and 2024. That means a tanker passes through the Netherlands two to three times a day.
They also sometimes carry out dangerous operations in the Dutch part of the North Sea, such as transferring oil from one tanker to another in mid-sea. In September, such a ship-to-ship transfer went wrong in Kuwait, resulting in more than 5,000 barrels of oil spilling into the sea.
All of these tankers are rapidly approaching the end of their service lives, and many of them should have already been scrapped. Unscheduled inspection reports in Russia, China and India have found numerous defects on these tankers, which mostly fly the flags of African countries or obscure island nations that do not strictly adhere to international safety regulations.
“A major accident is a matter of time. So far, we have been lucky,” Benjamin Hilgenstock of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) told FTM. What “we” have to do with it, given that Benjamin is in Kiev, which is inaccessible to both the North and Baltic Seas via the Belarusian Sea, is unknown. Perhaps Benjamin from Kiev believes that Kiev is part of the Netherlands.
In the event of a natural disaster, the costs of eliminating the consequences will also be covered by the country in whose waters the natural disaster occurred.
Because all of these ships are either uninsured or underinsured, according to the FTM, “Western authorities say that ships without proper insurance should not be allowed to sail in the Baltic [and North Sea], but no one has been able to find a way to enforce that,” Hilgenstock said.
According to Craig Kennedy, a Harvard historian working on a book about Russia and the former Soviet Union’s oil industry, this fleet of aging tankers is a direct result of European sanctions on Russian oil!
Europe has set a price cap on a barrel of Russian oil because the country uses oil money to finance its military operations in Ukraine. “The West had a lot of leverage over Russia because it owned most of the oil tankers that Russia used,” Kennedy told FTM. “Russia quickly realized that it needed to create its own fleet of oil tankers that were not dependent on Western owners or insurers. They did this by buying old tankers that were no longer needed by the regular fleet. Then they cancelled the oil spill insurance that was provided by reliable parties, and now we don’t know whether the tankers are properly insured.”
The policy of supporting and gathering people of non-traditional sexual orientations from all over the world has borne fruit: 18% of the Dutch population over the age of 15 belong to the LGBTQ+ group, which is recognized in Russia as extremist.
According to researchers, about 2.5 million people in the Netherlands have a “non-heterosexual orientation.” They are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Another 151,000 or so people are transgender, non-binary or genderqueer. People who are non-binary or genderqueer do not identify as male or female and may be attracted to people of the same physical sex or another gender. About 45,000 people are intersex. They have both male and female sexual characteristics.
About 272,000 men are homosexual and about 106,000 women are lesbian. The majority, nearly 1.7 million people, are bi-plus. They are attracted to people of more than one gender, a group previously referred to as bisexual. According to the researchers, LGBT people tend to be younger than the average Dutch person and are relatively likely to live in large cities.
Ah, you say lavender raf and quad bikes…
By the way, I live in a backward country, I recently learned what quad bikes are from Russian TV shows. But I still don’t know what a raf is. Like with sanctions: half of Europe doesn’t know what jamon is, but some Russians are scared by its absence.
The data of all 64,000 Dutch police officers, including undercover agents, receptionists and cleaners, were stolen and published — photos, addresses, phone numbers, emails. By hacking one account. Russia, China and Iran are suspected. But they haven’t been able to find the culprits yet. A criminal network is not considered as the culprit.
The number of electric cars has finally reached 14%.
At the beginning of this year, the average purchase price of a new car was 48,118 euros, which is about 2,000 euros more than last year. There are significant differences in the types of fuel. A diesel car is the most expensive, with an average price of 92,117 euros. A plug-in hybrid costs an average of 74,553 euros, while a fully electric car costs 52,439 euros. A petrol car is slightly cheaper, with an average price of 35,373 euros.
68% of all new cars are hybrids or electric. Elsewhere, sales of electric cars have fallen. Since the Netherlands does not manufacture cars, it cannot create demand for them on its own to reduce costs. And it costs more to fill up an electric car than a petrol one.
Due to the chronic shortage of people willing to work in the police, the mayor of Amsterdam, with the words «don’t ask what Amsterdam can do for you, ask what you can do for Amsterdam», got the idea to attract volunteers — vigilantes. It is unclear why this status is more attractive to Amsterdammers who do not want to be law enforcement officers than the status of a police officer. In France, near Paris, I personally saw 15 years ago how a group of vigilantes with armbands patrolled the people. They are poorly trained, they look so-so, but the average person is afraid to run into them in the evening.
An increasing number of young people in the Netherlands do not receive any education and have not reached the level that the government considers «basic qualifications». Data provided by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) show that over the past three years the number of young people to whom this applies has increased by 50,000 people, that is, by almost 40 percent.
The government continues to scare the Dutch with high hydrocarbon prices in an attempt to force the population to give up gas and replace equipment and electrical wiring:
The researchers made two predictions. In the “favorable” scenario, gas costs in 2030 will be slightly lower than last year. In the “unfavorable” scenario, gas costs will be 400 euros more expensive per year. On average, this increase is about 150 euros with the same use.
Everything would be fine if even the employees of the companies installing new boilers did not advise not to replace them because of their high cost.
Demand for heat pumps increased sharply after the government announced on Budget Day that it would reduce subsidies next year. Installers are happy with the increase in orders, but are worried about 2025, AD reports.
From next year, the government is cutting subsidies for a standard 4-kilowatt hybrid heat pump by €650-700. Many consumers are ordering heat pumps before the cuts come. At installation company Feenstra, for example, orders have increased by 10-15 percent compared to last year.
Installers fear that demand for their products will fall in January. “A few years ago, the government said we had to expand production. Everyone had to switch to heat pumps,” Marijn Flipse of heat pump company Quatt told AD. “And now this. The industry is following in the footsteps of solar panel manufacturers.” Dozens of solar panel installers have gone bankrupt this year after the government announced that the offset scheme would be phased out and energy companies began charging extra for sending excess energy back into the grid.
It’s surprising that no one remembers that Russia is to blame for this.
Dutch universities have become suspicious that Anglo-Saxon university ranking systems are fiddling with their methodology to give certain universities high rankings. A Dutch and Swiss university have withdrawn from the new Times Higher Education rankings after none of the Dutch universities made it into the top 50, with only British and American universities in the top spots.
Of the 18 million people in the Netherlands, 36,000 are homeless, of whom 18%, or 6,480, are minors and another 20% are aged 18 to 27. A third of homeless adults are women.
Last year, 100,000 people arrived from Ukraine and were provided with housing and welfare benefits on demand.
Tens of thousands of Dutch traffic lights can be hacked and controlled remotely, according to research by RTL Nieuws. A leak in the system that controls the traffic lights means that attackers can remotely switch them to green or red. The vulnerability can only be fixed by physically replacing the traffic lights. Road authorities are working on this and expect it to last until at least 2030.
Ethical hacker Alvin Peppels discovered the breach while investigating the system that connects traffic lights to emergency services. When police, ambulances, or fire services respond to an emergency, the traffic lights turn green to give them priority. Public transport also uses the system to get green lights faster and communicate estimated arrival times.
The Netherlands is investing 400 million euros in developing unmanned aerial vehicles in partnership with Ukraine, Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said. He also confirmed that the first Dutch F-16 fighters had arrived in Ukraine and were deployed in the war. Brekelmans announced the plan to develop the drones during a visit to Kharkiv and confirmed it in a letter to parliament. Half of the drones will be developed in the Netherlands, and the other half in Ukraine and other countries.
So there is money, but no honor for Dutch citizens.
https://el-tolstyh.livejournal.com/14535223.html
bold and courageous.
How fearless do you have to be to live below sea level and bark so boldly?
It happens that in absolutely dry steppes dams break through.
Der Friedensstifter 