What gets me really angry is that their is being fraud with money given to a good charity.
This happens all the time, yet most of the time the money is diapered without any trace.
And so the people who actually need the money do not receive it.
One of these scandals who was quite big but has not been on the news daily is the fraud with the Tsunami money. Millions were given from the society to help the victims of the tsunami of 2004. This natural disaster hit with hugh waves the coast of Asia and Africa and around 300.000 people died that day, and millions became homeless. Immediately hulp organisations started to all over the world to collect money to help those people.
The Netherlands were no exception and they donated over 500 million euro, were from 300 million was donated by the government and 200 million was paid by the society with the help of 67 charity organizations. [1]
Already in 2005 their were being asked questions of were to the money went, and how it was spent. One of the problems was that the money was donated without any restrictions. So the Dutch government had no insight ore control of what happened with the money. Although minister Bert Koeners who is responsible of development and cooperation in the Netherlands has given a statement about it and says that he and his team has done nothing wrong. He also pointed out that there is a lack in transparently of the what happened to the money, but that this is the problem of the SHO ( together working organization for aid).
The chairman of the tsunami organized aid Jan van Doggenaar, promised the minister more clarity of what had happened to the money. When he finally had organized his papers he and his team found out that around 60% of the money given by the Dutch government was spent on traveling costs. [2]
This is ridicules because it would mean that 180 million euro’s were spent on flying costs. And then we still do not know what has happened to the 200 million euro’s that were donated by the Dutch society.
And what makes this all the sadder is that this did not only happen to the donated money from the Netherlands but has happened to a lot of the donated funs. And that nobody in the SHO noticed that at least 180 million euro’s were being stolen.
Now the EU has decided to have a big investigation to see what has happened.
Yet the victims of the tsunami are not being helped by that, because their infrastructure is still not repaired as an example.
Examples like this makes me skeptical to ever donate money to a charity, because why would I make a rich man even richer. And I think that a lot of people think like this, although there are a lot of people who desperately need help they just do not trust the volunteering organizations any more.
Because the saying is true “the sun does not rise for nothing”
[1] http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/2802875/__Bestemming_tsunami-geld_blijft_vaag__.html?cid=rss
[2] http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/926727/nederland-wil-onderzoek-naar-tsunami-geld.html
zaterdag 3 januari 2009
the credit crunch
The credit crunch.
We are in an economic recession, maybe some people will lose their job.
Who can we blame, how did it start. We hear this daily on the news, yet
what do we know about it. Personally I think that the media is only
frightening the consumers with their gloomy news reports.
And before I start I want to point something else the last recession that
we had was on 2000 now it is 2008, this is according to all text books normal.
Because every economic cicle takes around 7 years.
The credit crunch started in America with the banks giving “Ninia moorages”,
to people with no income and no job. Those people were unable to pay their
moorages and thus their houses came on the market. Yet those houses were
not being bought, and the house prices started to decline in general.
Unfortunally a lot of people took an extra loan because their house increased
in price over time and then the banks gave those people a loan,
with the over value of their house.
But then the house prices started to drop so their was no over value any more,
and the borrowing percentage started to rise. A lot of people had a loan with fluctuating borrowing percentage. So if they normally had to pay 500 each month for their moorage,
now with the increase of the percentage it became 700. So more people were unable to pay of their moorage of their over valued house, and so the house bubble busted.
This process started to happen all over the world and so the credit crunch started.
Because banks had a lot of “bad moorages” so the had to deducted these bad loans of their balance sheet, and they came to the conclusion that they were in serious trouble.
Now all the trust was gone between banks and they did not want to trade between each other anymore because of the distrust of the bad loans.
This stopped the money circulate, and this started the fallings of the banks, and the intervention from the governments.
Still even after the intervention of the government, banks were unwilling to borrow out money. This stopped the possibility of companies to invest and this resulted in the recession.
While this was happening everybody was blaming the banks and their CEO and their high salaries. Yet is was not all their fault. Because the governments gave their banks the assignment to make it affordable for all people to buy a house. This resulted in the “Ninia” moorages. I will admit that the banks made some grave mistakes, yet it is us consumers who created the real problem. Because we were buying stuff with money we did not posses, and now we get the bill for it.
We are in an economic recession, maybe some people will lose their job.
Who can we blame, how did it start. We hear this daily on the news, yet
what do we know about it. Personally I think that the media is only
frightening the consumers with their gloomy news reports.
And before I start I want to point something else the last recession that
we had was on 2000 now it is 2008, this is according to all text books normal.
Because every economic cicle takes around 7 years.
The credit crunch started in America with the banks giving “Ninia moorages”,
to people with no income and no job. Those people were unable to pay their
moorages and thus their houses came on the market. Yet those houses were
not being bought, and the house prices started to decline in general.
Unfortunally a lot of people took an extra loan because their house increased
in price over time and then the banks gave those people a loan,
with the over value of their house.
But then the house prices started to drop so their was no over value any more,
and the borrowing percentage started to rise. A lot of people had a loan with fluctuating borrowing percentage. So if they normally had to pay 500 each month for their moorage,
now with the increase of the percentage it became 700. So more people were unable to pay of their moorage of their over valued house, and so the house bubble busted.
This process started to happen all over the world and so the credit crunch started.
Because banks had a lot of “bad moorages” so the had to deducted these bad loans of their balance sheet, and they came to the conclusion that they were in serious trouble.
Now all the trust was gone between banks and they did not want to trade between each other anymore because of the distrust of the bad loans.
This stopped the money circulate, and this started the fallings of the banks, and the intervention from the governments.
Still even after the intervention of the government, banks were unwilling to borrow out money. This stopped the possibility of companies to invest and this resulted in the recession.
While this was happening everybody was blaming the banks and their CEO and their high salaries. Yet is was not all their fault. Because the governments gave their banks the assignment to make it affordable for all people to buy a house. This resulted in the “Ninia” moorages. I will admit that the banks made some grave mistakes, yet it is us consumers who created the real problem. Because we were buying stuff with money we did not posses, and now we get the bill for it.
maandag 29 december 2008
Evaluation
My evaluation of the European Union Policy minor is in general that it was rather good. I quite enjoyed the classes with Mr. Frencken and Mr. Vermanen, the lectures were instructive and well built up. The classes in itself were easy to follow, if you did your homework. This was one of the things I really appreciated, if a person did not read his chapter than this would not become bothersome for the rest class because the teacher did not start explaining what is written in the chapter. If a teacher does start explaining, it motivates students for not reading their books and the classes will become really boring for the students who did read their chapters.
The minor in itself was well built up, because first we looked at the problem from all different angels, then we made questions to answer the original problem. When answered a discussion was made to see what everybody had found as an answer. The only thing that I found annoying was that it was not always clear to me which answer was right. Fore all students had some sort of answer yet none knew if theirs was alright. So debates could start from that point on and from that point on I always lost track, for I did not know which answer I should believe. I have asked Mr. Frencken why the classes are done this way and he told me that he would explain the difficulties that arose during those debates in the next lectures. Often he did, yet I still had difficulties placing his answer with all the previous answers given. Maybe their aught to be some answer forms so that all students know what a right answer is.
What I really liked were those small extra subjects like: debating, negotiating and looking back to it, I also liked the ethics. The reason why I enjoyed all these subjects was because it had nothing to do with the European Union so it gave some diversion to it all. Also because you could practise it right away and see if it had any result for you. While following the classes of negotiating we learned that you should always ask “if I do this than you do that”. I can tell you it really works, I tested on my parents some friends and even my boyfriend and I came to the conclusion that I got al lot more things done the way I wanted it. The same goes for ethics while writing the report I hated everything about the subject, but it got me thinking and talking about it. It resulted in some really interesting conversations with my friends, and maybe even a better sense of what I find you can and can not do. And debating was just fun, it was like putting on a show. The bigger the show the better your arguments started to be, even if your arguments were weak. So it was just fun watching it. The classes reminded me a lot of the movie called Chicago. It’s all about the way you present yourself your case and then your arguments, also in this order.
My conclusion is that if I should mark this minor I would give it an 8. I always enjoyed going to school, I even started watching the news seriously, because I would hear what was happening in Europe. What I really liked was when I heard something and I knew what was going on and what the difficulties would be. Fore example when president Sarkozy set that he wanted to support the car industry, I knew that this was not allowed in the EU.
Points that may be improved is that there could be a bid more help for the report.
Another thing that has to be improved is the exchange information you get, this should be better. The information you get is minimal and to late, we already knew for two years that we had to find an exchange school, we should be informed earlier than one week before we have to hand in our school choice and the subjects that we would like to follow. Maybe students could get a coach who helps them in the process, from the beginning until the end.
The minor in itself was well built up, because first we looked at the problem from all different angels, then we made questions to answer the original problem. When answered a discussion was made to see what everybody had found as an answer. The only thing that I found annoying was that it was not always clear to me which answer was right. Fore all students had some sort of answer yet none knew if theirs was alright. So debates could start from that point on and from that point on I always lost track, for I did not know which answer I should believe. I have asked Mr. Frencken why the classes are done this way and he told me that he would explain the difficulties that arose during those debates in the next lectures. Often he did, yet I still had difficulties placing his answer with all the previous answers given. Maybe their aught to be some answer forms so that all students know what a right answer is.
What I really liked were those small extra subjects like: debating, negotiating and looking back to it, I also liked the ethics. The reason why I enjoyed all these subjects was because it had nothing to do with the European Union so it gave some diversion to it all. Also because you could practise it right away and see if it had any result for you. While following the classes of negotiating we learned that you should always ask “if I do this than you do that”. I can tell you it really works, I tested on my parents some friends and even my boyfriend and I came to the conclusion that I got al lot more things done the way I wanted it. The same goes for ethics while writing the report I hated everything about the subject, but it got me thinking and talking about it. It resulted in some really interesting conversations with my friends, and maybe even a better sense of what I find you can and can not do. And debating was just fun, it was like putting on a show. The bigger the show the better your arguments started to be, even if your arguments were weak. So it was just fun watching it. The classes reminded me a lot of the movie called Chicago. It’s all about the way you present yourself your case and then your arguments, also in this order.
My conclusion is that if I should mark this minor I would give it an 8. I always enjoyed going to school, I even started watching the news seriously, because I would hear what was happening in Europe. What I really liked was when I heard something and I knew what was going on and what the difficulties would be. Fore example when president Sarkozy set that he wanted to support the car industry, I knew that this was not allowed in the EU.
Points that may be improved is that there could be a bid more help for the report.
Another thing that has to be improved is the exchange information you get, this should be better. The information you get is minimal and to late, we already knew for two years that we had to find an exchange school, we should be informed earlier than one week before we have to hand in our school choice and the subjects that we would like to follow. Maybe students could get a coach who helps them in the process, from the beginning until the end.
zondag 28 december 2008
Antwerp
When my friend Amrutza came to visit me from New York, this was the night that she told me she enjoyed the most. On a Friday night there is nothing as good as going to the movies in Antwerp in the movie theatre called Kinopolis. It is the second largest movie theatre in Europe and I only live twenty minutes from Antwerp. So we left the house around six o’clock because before the movie we wanted to eat something. You have a great and relatively cheap restaurant next to the movie theatre, this is a Turkish restaurant. On the outside it does not look much because it is extremely orange and it is all decorated very modern and with big televisions which I personally find irritating while eating. Yet when you are inside you find out that the orange light is not irritating in fact it is kind of relaxing and that the modern interior is nice and comfortable and to my relieve that the music of the television is switched of. And the food is absolutely delicious, if you ever decided to eat there you ought to go for the menu Kabab ore shuarma. You can not miss the place it is next to the Kinopolis.
After we ate we went to the movie and watched the latest Harry Potter, which I found a bid disappointing. The movie ended around half past eleven, we took the city bus number 12 which stops practically before the Kinopolis and went to Antwerp city centre. If you have never been to Antwerp before you should just walk around a bit enjoy the scenery, for Antwerp is beautiful in the night especially the fountains and the old bars. And it is always fun just walking their, because all people just want to have a good time.
We went to a cafe / discotheque which was a sea ship but the rebuilt it in a club. It is great club I only am incapable of remembering its name right now.
Afterwards we both drank to much to be able to even think about driving home by car so we let the car stand by the movie theatre. (By the way you can park there for free, its the only spot in Antwerp were you can still park for free.) And we went to my sister who has an apartment in the centre of Antwerp. We slept there until we were sober and because we were still in Antwerp we went shopping the next day and ate by a Panos and order a sandwich ´ broodje smos`.
Those are the best sandwiches that you can by.
After we ate we went to the movie and watched the latest Harry Potter, which I found a bid disappointing. The movie ended around half past eleven, we took the city bus number 12 which stops practically before the Kinopolis and went to Antwerp city centre. If you have never been to Antwerp before you should just walk around a bit enjoy the scenery, for Antwerp is beautiful in the night especially the fountains and the old bars. And it is always fun just walking their, because all people just want to have a good time.
We went to a cafe / discotheque which was a sea ship but the rebuilt it in a club. It is great club I only am incapable of remembering its name right now.
Afterwards we both drank to much to be able to even think about driving home by car so we let the car stand by the movie theatre. (By the way you can park there for free, its the only spot in Antwerp were you can still park for free.) And we went to my sister who has an apartment in the centre of Antwerp. We slept there until we were sober and because we were still in Antwerp we went shopping the next day and ate by a Panos and order a sandwich ´ broodje smos`.
Those are the best sandwiches that you can by.
My favourite book is “Crusade in jeans” it has been for as long as I can remember.
It is written by Thea Beckman, and it is a childerens book.
It is all about bravery, heroics and loyalty but above all its about using your brain to overcome obstacles.
The story itself is quite simple; Rudolf of Vega is a fifteen year old boy, who was able to persuade two scholars to sent him in a time machine to the twelfth century. But as all good stories this goes wrong, for trhe time machine breaks down and Rudolf can not be brought home. Rudolf ends up in the middle of a children’s crusade led by Nicolas the shepherd boy, who was counselled by two false priests Dom Ansulmus and Dom Thadeus. Nicolas together with the priests start to preach in the big cities of old Germany about his holy mission to help save the holy land of Jerusalem with the help of the innocence of children. God told Nicholas that he had to gather as many children as he could and bring them to Genoa and there god would split the sea for Nicolas just like he did for Moses.
So when Rudolf came in contact with a children’s crusade of eight thousand children he was shocked by the disorder. Because non of the leaders of the crusade took it upon him to take responsibility for all those children, so a lot of children died because of lack of food ore by illness for none helped them. This was the reason that Rudolf decided to help those children, and because he was a child of the twenty-first century he had wisdom that none of them had. He had divided the group of children in smaller groups all with their own tasks, some had to hunt others fish and others take care of the ill. This made the crusade a lot better organised and less children died. And Rudolf became the unofficial leader of the crusade.
Along their travels threw Germany over the Alps and threw the low lands of Italy, all kinds of adventures happened. Yet Rudolf did not believe in the holy mission of Nicolas to save Jerusalem neither did he believe that the sea would split ore did he understand why they were heading to Genoa. He figured this out the day before Nicolas was supposed to split the sea in Guano. Dom Thadues did not want to go own with the original plan, which he then told Rudolf was to sell all those children on the slave market in Africa. He and Dom Ansulmus would get rich, and all the had to do was say that the sea did not fall dry yet God had sent them boats to bring them to Jerusalem. But instead of bringing the children to Jerusalem they would be brought to Africa. When Rudolf heard this he talked to the city council and with the help of his friends and the council he stopped this evil plot. Later in the book Rudolf gets a massage from the future because the time machine is made and the scholars are leaving notes for Rudolf to find. One of these notes gets to Rudolf on this note is written, that he has to be before the church tomorrow at precisely twelve o’clock. This all happens and so Rudolf gets home end all ends well.
It is all about bravery, heroics and loyalty but above all its about using your brain to overcome obstacles.
The story itself is quite simple; Rudolf of Vega is a fifteen year old boy, who was able to persuade two scholars to sent him in a time machine to the twelfth century. But as all good stories this goes wrong, for trhe time machine breaks down and Rudolf can not be brought home. Rudolf ends up in the middle of a children’s crusade led by Nicolas the shepherd boy, who was counselled by two false priests Dom Ansulmus and Dom Thadeus. Nicolas together with the priests start to preach in the big cities of old Germany about his holy mission to help save the holy land of Jerusalem with the help of the innocence of children. God told Nicholas that he had to gather as many children as he could and bring them to Genoa and there god would split the sea for Nicolas just like he did for Moses.
So when Rudolf came in contact with a children’s crusade of eight thousand children he was shocked by the disorder. Because non of the leaders of the crusade took it upon him to take responsibility for all those children, so a lot of children died because of lack of food ore by illness for none helped them. This was the reason that Rudolf decided to help those children, and because he was a child of the twenty-first century he had wisdom that none of them had. He had divided the group of children in smaller groups all with their own tasks, some had to hunt others fish and others take care of the ill. This made the crusade a lot better organised and less children died. And Rudolf became the unofficial leader of the crusade.
Along their travels threw Germany over the Alps and threw the low lands of Italy, all kinds of adventures happened. Yet Rudolf did not believe in the holy mission of Nicolas to save Jerusalem neither did he believe that the sea would split ore did he understand why they were heading to Genoa. He figured this out the day before Nicolas was supposed to split the sea in Guano. Dom Thadues did not want to go own with the original plan, which he then told Rudolf was to sell all those children on the slave market in Africa. He and Dom Ansulmus would get rich, and all the had to do was say that the sea did not fall dry yet God had sent them boats to bring them to Jerusalem. But instead of bringing the children to Jerusalem they would be brought to Africa. When Rudolf heard this he talked to the city council and with the help of his friends and the council he stopped this evil plot. Later in the book Rudolf gets a massage from the future because the time machine is made and the scholars are leaving notes for Rudolf to find. One of these notes gets to Rudolf on this note is written, that he has to be before the church tomorrow at precisely twelve o’clock. This all happens and so Rudolf gets home end all ends well.
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)