Interference

What exactly is social affairs minister Piet Hein Donner trying to tell us? In a lecture last night he said that the government has no business interfering with top salaries in the private sector.


He then tells us that the government must go ahead with reforming redundancy laws. Perhaps even more breathtaking was his reported comment that the Netherlands no longer has a national government, but is part of the EU.
According to Donner, the Dutch must now accept they are in the EU or they will miss the boat. Has he forgotten that 60% of the population rejected the proposed EU constitution in the referendum of 2005? Possibly.
But the attitude of Donner and his ilk is that now the constitution has been ‘revised’ and renamed as the EU ‘treaty’, we should all just accept the situation.
It is highly unlikely that the government will risk another referendum – far too embarrassing if the Dutch voted ‘no’ again.
So we now have a situation where MPs can pick and choose where to interfere in matters that affect us all. If they don’t have the appetite to do something, they quote ‘personal freedom’. If they do want to interfere, they quote ‘national security’.
In effect, Donner is telling us the government is useless. So on balance the EU is probably a good thing. Can we now make them all redundant?

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