Dear readers, bringing you the Daily Dutch News today is Anna Lambregts.
A number of things stood out today in news from the Low Lands – not least the revelation that people receiving an ‘Uitkering’ (unemployment benefit) are more likely to commit suicide. It must have come as a shock to some that not having a job, no reason to get dressed and showered in the morning and living off € 661,77 (as a single person without children), probably in debt and without any future prospect of change will make you kind of depressed. Single males on unemployment benefit are four and a half times more likely to commit suicide than their working counterparts, females are six times more likely. Like the chicken and the egg it remains unclear what leads to what. In a time where the amount of people receiving unemployment benefit is rising quickly due to the financial crisis more and more people might slip into social isolation and end up alone and suicidal.
Something else caught my eye today; an interesting comparison was made between the Bitcoin and the Dutch Tulip Mania of the seventeenth century – with Bitcoin being branded as ‘even worse’. Now this might not be ringing any bells to our international audience so allow me to give you a short history. During the Dutch Golden Age tulip bulbs were practically worth their weight in gold. Reaching its peak in 1637, some bulbs were worth almost ten times the average annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is considered to be the very first economic bubble in history and the ensuing and inevitable collapse left many merchants ruined with the bulb’s value continuing to decrease for decades after.
The person who made this comparison was Nout Wellink, former president of De Nederlandsche Bank, who quite rightly stated that back then at least you got a tulip. So watch out for Bitcoin people, you might be left standing with not your tulip, but just your dick in your hand.
As for the weather, it is equally dismal:
“Suicide is no yolk…”
I’ll admit, I chuckled at that one.