The social partners have mulled over all the main issues in the government accord. So now it’s time for the government to take decisive action, says economist Mathijs Boumans. In March 2017 we went to the polls. In October, following the longest formation period in history, we had a cabinet. We are now a year into a new government but we are still not really being governed. Voters have no idea where the country is headed. Of course there is the government accord, boldly ambitious about a climate friendly economy, a dynamic and fair labour market and the introduction of a shiny new pension system. But no sooner had these plans been put to paper than the government decided to let them be mulled over by civil society. Unions and employers’ organisations were asked to chew on pension reform and the cautiously worded labour market plans. A motley crew of representatives of the business world, local authorities, environmental organisations, knowledge institutes and – here they are again – unions and employers’ organisations set to work on the climate plans. Lethargy The government then sank into a state of lethargy reviving only to quarrel a little about the 2019 budget, finding excuses to abolish the tax on dividends, and tinkering with some purchasing power loss here and there. Meanwhile it was taking no real decisions about the future of the country, preferring instead to outsource this to society - a practice known as 'poldering' in reference to the land that the Dutch work together to reclaim from the sea. Prime minister Jan-Pieter Balkenende decided to spend the first hundred days of his fourth cabinet in ‘a dialogue with society’. Rutte’s third cabinet will be chatting with society for at least 365 days by the look of things. Compromise But making compromises is what we do. Every solution to every problem has to be chewed on by every organisation in society. And chewed on again. Only after passing all four stomachs of the polder cow it will once again land on the government’s plate, usually reduced to an unrecognisable pulp. It’s not pretty but that is how the Netherlands has done it for centuries. But reaching a compromise is one thing and exaggerating is another. The polder (the combination of unions, employers and civic organisations) is not the government. Consultation is a fine thing but if it could deliver ready-made policy options we would not need a government. Poldering can lead to consensus but it’s the politicians who have to take decisions and choose direction. Civil society, after poring over pensions, labour market and climate for a year, has achieved all it can achieve. It is now time to tie a nice bow around the package and ceremoniously hand it over to the people we have voted for and who are paid to take tough decisions: ministers and MPs. They are welcome to it. This article appeared earlier in the Financieele Dagblad  More >

Dutch is no longer a popular choice for prospective students but universities are partly to blame, says Lotte Jensen, professor of Dutch cultural and literary history at Radboud University in Nijmegen. In recent weeks newspapers have been reporting on the alarming decline in the number of young people opting to study Dutch at university level. It is a worrying development which, if the trend continues, could land Dutch in the department of minority foreign languages. There are several reasons why this should not be allowed this to happen. Not only do we need academically trained Dutch language and culture graduates to teach at secondary schools, we also need specialists to conduct research into the Dutch cultural heritage. Johan Koppenol, professor of Dutch literature (1100 to 1800) at the VU University in Amsterdam, rightly said that a profound knowledge of the Dutch language, culture and history has never been more relevant: all current public debates are about language and culture – from the national anthem to immigration and integration.’ Negative attitude Teachers at secondary schools and universities are doing everything in their power to promote Dutch for the benefit of future generations. But there is one thing they have no control over and that is the negative attitude of some university officials towards the Dutch language. If they think Dutch is a second-rate language, what are future students going to think? We have witnessed the rapidly declining status of Dutch in university education: 74% of master degrees are already conducted in English and the number of English-language bachelor courses is growing apace. Increasingly, English-language courses are poaching students from their Dutch-language equivalents because future students think the former carry more status. This also has a negative impact on Dutch as a subject in secondary schools. The message to students is that they had better concentrate on their English language skills if they want to go on to higher education. Internationalisation The recently agenda on internationalisation published by the association of universities VNSU is an abject example of just how undervalued Dutch is. There are pages and pages about the importance of internationalising university education (i.e. switching to English) while at the same time Dutch is relegated to second place. The association mentions in passing that there will have to be a ‘sufficient’ number of bachelor courses in Dutch at a national level but fails to explain how many ‘sufficient’ actually is. No mention at all is made of Dutch-language master degrees. We see a reflection of this attitude in a letter sent to MPs by education minister Ingrid van Engelshoven. In it she pledges her support for more internationalisation and an extension of the law to give English-language education even more headway than it already has. Cast aside It isn’t until  the final paragraph that the minister mentions the importance of Dutch: ‘We must not cast aside Dutch as a language used in culture and science too lightly.’ Several Dutch language students have been pondering this one. Does it actually say we can cast aside Dutch provided we don’t do it too lightly? I was pleasantly surprised when the minister of all people addressed the audience at Tilburg university at the opening of the academic year in Dutch. The reason for this, she said, was to promote a better balance between languages, a slightly lopsided view since the rest of the ceremony was conducted completely in English. President of the executive board Koen Becking justified his use of English by saying ‘I’m doing my speech in English, because that is what we do when there are people among us who do not speak Dutch’. Apart from a not too polite dig at the minister, this also illustrated how lightly some people cast aside Dutch. We really want new students to choose Dutch but it would help if university officials everywhere would demonstrate that they take the language seriously. This article appeared earlier in the Volkskrant      More >

Society has nothing to apologise for but ING does, says VVD MP Roald van der Linde, who is the party's financial markets spokesman in parliament. ‘It’s MPs who are fuelling public mistrust,’ said Henk Breukink, a member of the supervisory board at ING, in a recent opinion piece in the Financieele Dagblad. When I read this I nearly fell off my chair and I don’t think I can have been the only one. For years ING has looked the other way as criminals laundered the proceeds of their criminal activities. Far from incidental, this was part of a structural policy which criminals were quick to turn to their advantage while the chic bankers of the ING pretended not to notice. The end result was an out-of-court settlement of €775m, the biggest settlement the Netherlands has ever seen. As MPs, we represent the people and it is our job to call out these bankers. We are not alone. The finance minister said the practices at ING were ‘extremely serious’. Ordinary citizens are at a loss to understand how their bank could have been mixed up in this and are wondering how it has managed to get away with just a settlement. No remorse I have not been able to detect any signs of remorse at ING. As far as I know it has not written any letters of apology to the customers and shareholders who are paying for this transaction. I have yet to see an interview with an executive or board member explaining what happened. Instead, Breukink is referring to ‘an industry’ in the broadest sense, which is ‘fuelling mistrust towards big organisations’. But it was ING that was in the wrong – not MPs, not the minister and certainly not the public. Breukink claims that public trust in institutions is waning. That is true, and it is mostly down to the credit crisis and the role of big financial institutions in it. It is up to those institutions to rebuild that trust and avoid a repeat. Looked the other way ING workers have looked the other way, and they did so knowingly. Until now they have escaped the consequences, hiding behind the system. I am a lawyer and even I find this difficult to explain. Try applying the same reasoning to an ‘outlaw’ motorcycle club: only the chairman steps down but the boys can carry on because they  were just doing what the club system asked of them. The VVD is a party that wants a good climate for businesses in this country, with a strong financial sector. But we also want a country in which companies have their house in order. We need the banks to tackle terrorism and other crimes and we need them to support sustainability and finance new innovative businesses. That means all sides will need to come together and discuss effective regulation and joint action plans. It is up to ING to take up the challenge and show it can regain people’s trust. This article appeared earlier in the Financieele Dagblad  More >

It's not the glass ceiling that keeps women from the top positions but the sticky workfloor of part-time jobs, says Barbara Baarsma, director of knowledge development at Rabobank and economics professor at the University of Amsterdam. If, like me, you think quota are a paternalistic panacea for the lack of women in top executive positions, you are duty-bound to monitor the labour market for women with an eagle eye. Unfortunately, the last 15 years do not make for happy viewing. The good news is that in 2018 over six in ten women are in work, half a woman more than in 2003. Having children is, apparently, no longer the hurdle to employment it used to be. Some 29% of working women have jobs in management, which is a good sign as it paves the way to the top. Compared to the 26% of women who work full time, women are not doing badly at all. The ratio is much lower for men: 73% work full time while ‘only’ 71%  of managers is male. But apart from this not much has changed since 2003 and in some respects women’s position on the labour market has worsened. They are working part time more often when working full time would improve their chances at climbing the corporate ladder. Meagre score The rungs that lead up to a position on the board of directors or the supervisory board are the so-called executive management functions. Only one in eight of these were held by women in 2017. In this day and age that is a very meagre score. But in order to qualify for a function such as this, years of full time working experience and a willingness to put in the hours are a must. That is where the women come a cropper. Highly trained women are working full time more often (by an increase of almost 0.5% since 2003) while the percentage of full time working women with a mid or low level of education fell by 4.5 percentage points. As long as this situation persists, quotas are not going to make any difference. The problem is not so much a glass ceiling as a sticky work floor littered with small part time jobs. Women – and men – are of course free to work part time or not at all but only as long as society is not called on to foot the bill. Financial independence Relatively small part time jobs also undermine women’s financial independence. To be economically independent means to be able to survive on an income without having to rely on a partner or the government. The norm for economic independence is a net income from work of more than 70% of the net minimum wage. Thanks to the fact that more women work and the economic upturn, 60% of women are economically independent in 2016, still 20 percentage points down on men. But the figures are showing some worrying trends as well, especially among women with a low level of education. Only a quarter can look after themselves financially while women with mid-level qualifications struggle at just over 50%. Women who are not economically independent are in a vulnerable position when it comes to a divorce. According to figures from the socio-cultural think-tank SCP they see their spending power plummet by an average of 25%. The chances of a divorce happening are 40%, which makes working a small part time job, or not working at all, a risky strategy. Longer hours The best insurance for financial independence is not a partner who earns more or social security but sufficient own income. And that usually means working longer hours. The position of women on both sides of the labour market spectrum would benefit from women working longer hours or full time. It is the only way to increase the number of financially independent women and open up the road to the top jobs. Women don’t need the old fashioned boost of quotas. They need a modern labour market policy which will stimulate working longer hours while offering decent conditions such as adapted school schedules, flexible working hours and good child care at reasonable cost and not subject to a seesaw government policy. A cabinet who will make this a priority can ditch quota once and for all. This article appeared earlier in the Financieele Dagblad  More >

There they are again: the spending power predictions. Don't you believe them, says economist Mathijs Bouman. Crack open the beer, we’re having a party. Next year spending power is up by 1.5%. For a while it looked as if the meter would get stuck at 1.3% but in an ultimate pre-budget day effort the government cranked it up by means of a number of measures. What these measures are we do not know – I’m guessing it will be something to do with a slight increase of the tax break for the elderly and some extra allowances for people on minimum incomes – but we do know they mean an extra 0.2 % to spend. This is important for people on benefits and pensioners in particular, because the gap between these groups and those in work is in danger of getting larger. The economic upturn means a healthy rise for the latter, and the government undoubtedly had to tug the national duvet quite rigorously to smooth the creases of injustice. But it worked: according to the calculations of the CPB everyone will be tucked in warm and snug. Almost everyone will be better off and both pensioners and people on benefits will share in the bounty generated by a reviving economy. Moaning economists So is everybody happy? No. A handful of economists are pointing and waving frantically but cannot prevent an oblivious government from walking into the trap that is the spending power projection. Instead of a proper fiscal and economic policy to consolidate prosperity it is once again about niggly little percentage points for some group or other. The cake is divided fairly but no one is worried about the size of the cake. The result of the Dutch fixation on these projections is sub-optimal policy which is turning the population into a permanently surly mob. What we should do is agree is to do without a single purchasing power projection for an entire cabinet period. My prediction is that policy will improve and people will be less dissatisfied. Artificial story Spending power projections do not tell the real story. They tell of an artificial The Netherlands with 10,000 virtual Dutch people who all live in the CPB’s central computer. The predictions about the economy and the policies hammered out by the politicians are applied to these imaginary people. So if the CPB says ‘purchasing power will go down’ it is talking about the purchasing power of these non-existent digital households. It gets worse: it is actually only talking about one of these households. The CPB is reporting the ‘median’ purchasing power, i.e. the percentage of the middle households if you put all 10,000 virtual household in a line from low to high. MPs will spend a whole day debating the merits of the budget based on this single, virtual household. I could think of more useful ways of spending that time. Of course, the CPB is open about the limitations of its calculations but in politics such nuances are ignored completely. Real spending power There will be no mention during the debates of the difference between the statistical purchasing power calculated by the CPB and the dynamic purchasing power which is what people are experiencing in real life. The CPB takes it as given that workers will stay in work and that the unemployed stay unemployed. Only changes in wages, prices, benefits, and government policy are thrown into the calculation mix. It is estimated that next year some 125,000 people will find a job. But the accompanying rise in income is nowhere to be found in the static purchasing power projections of the CPB. Neither are promotions (and the rise in wage that implies) which increase as the economy improves. The national statistics office CBS includes these data in their historical purchasing power figures. Their chart shows that the real (‘dynamic’) purchasing power almost always pans out better than the static predictions of the CPB. Looking back at the static CPB figures we are led to believe that we are always getting less. Way to keep the population happy. Making purchasing power projections is silly. They don’t tell the truth, are unreliable and are keeping people ignorant and angry. Let’s pack it in. This article appeared earlier in the Financieele Dagblad  More >

Last week, the Dutch media was full of a new scandal, which they dubbed 'the Polish fraud'. But the expose only covered part of the story, and the real scandal is going unmentioned, says Malgorzata Bos-Karczewska, editor of Polonia.nl. Social affairs minister Wouter Koolmees wants to come down hard on Polish fraudsters, who are claiming unemployment benefit while living back home in Poland.  He is, of course, totally justified in doing so, but in essence it is not enough. Why? Because the way temporary employment agencies operate is pushing Polish workers into unemployment and forcing society to foot the bill. Instead of focusing on the symptoms, the minister would do better to eliminate the root cause of this particular ill. The Netherlands is sloppy when it comes to its treatment of other EU country workers. The Poles, so beloved of employers for their capacity for hard work, are ending up on unemployment benefits by the thousands each year at the expense of the taxpayer. Cheap labour Poles come to the Netherlands to work. If there is no work, go home, they are told. There is work of course, but not for people who want to build a career. The demand is for flexible, cheap labour. And if that means taking advantage of unemployment benefits at the same time, so be it. According to figures from the CBS's Migrant Monitor, some 14,110 Poles living in the Netherlands received unemployment benefits in 2015, a big increase compared to the 5,670 Polish claimants registered in 2012. How many are tied up in the new scandal is unknown, but the Dutch media spoke of 'thousands'. Around 80% of Polish migrant workers are taken on by temporary employment agencies. And thanks to flexible contracts, it is very easy to ditch them when the work runs out, or if a worker becomes too lippy (complaints about bad and expensive housing, wages and deductions). If you wonder why employment agencies are complaining about the lack of Polish workers: now you know. The benefit route So here's where it gets complicated. Some 70% of Polish workers are in phase A, the first phase of the staffing agencies’ (ABU) collective labour agreement for temporary workers. Phase A lasts 78 weeks and during this time workers have minimal protection. Poles usually work on short-term contracts (ranging from a single week to a couple of months) or on a temporary contract which ends automatically once the client stops hiring or if the worker falls ill. Temporary employment agencies have a motive to sack people after six months because they don't have to pay any pension premiums. In the meantime, each EU worker builds up the right to three months of unemployment benefits, providing 26 of the last 36 weeks were spent in work. Many employers want to prevent workers entering the more expensive phase B because it means a minimum pay-out of 90% of wages if there is no work to be done. A temporary worker who has worked for two years or longer also has a right to financial compensation if the work runs out. Dismissal law But the pay and conditions deal has the solution to their problem. If the time between contracts is exceeds six months (three months for seasonal jobs) the worker starts from scratch, back at phase A. The trick is to force Polish workers to go on the dole for an extended ‘holiday’ of six (or three) months. Once the six months are up the Poles can come back to work, where they will begin from scratch with a six month contract which puts them back in phase A. And so the cycle continues: end of contract, benefits, ‘holiday’. Polish workers remain stuck in phase A, do not build up rights and are relegated to the benefit system at the expense of the taxpayer. Such is the business model of temps agencies. Cost of living A cynic would say that unemployment benefits offer some compensation to Poles who are being exploited by opportunistic agencies. After all, the cost of living is cheaper and many Poles choose to spend their enforced ‘holiday’ in Poland. And of course, many may have nowhere to live anyway when the work is done because their housing is part of the job. This is, of course, no justification for breaking the law. But it does highlight the double standards. The other day I met a Pole who was fired from one day to the next. The work, in horticulture, wasn’t too bad, he said, but he couldn’t say the same thing for the temps agency. Self-regulation He asked me why the Dutch government seems to be so reluctant to get tough on these agencies. I told him that unfortunately he was at their mercy. They don't need an official licence to operate and the government inspectors are overwhelmed with cases. Of the 20,000 temporary employment agencies operating in the Netherlands, only a quarter has an SNA certificate. The rest are not interested in self-regulation. All this could change if the government and public opinion realise that temps agency practices are deliberately putting Poles on the dole. There is more stake here in financial terms than simply catching fraudsters. It is time to clean up the temporary employment agency sector. Malgorzata Bos-Karczewska is an economist, journalist and the editor of Polonia.nl the website for Polish nationals in the Netherlands. This article is also published in the Volkskrant (Dutch) and on Polonia.nl (Polish).  More >

Banks that settle scandals out of court continue in their wicked ways. Instead, they should be hauled before a judge so justice is seen to be done, says economist Mathijs Bouman. But Mr Hamers, how do you explain the fact that your own computer system was programmed deliberately to limit alarm signals over possible money laundering practices to three times a day? The public prosecutor gazes at the ING boss Ralph Hamers for a long time before adding: ‘And how could it be that your bank – in spite of repeated warnings by supervisors – simply refused to set aside extra money to comply with the legal obligation to prevent money laundering? Answer me that, Mr Hamers, if you can.’ Coming soon to a court near you? No, unfortunately. ING ‘forgot’ to properly monitor account holders’ money laundering practices but will not be held accountable in court. The public prosecution office decided to settle for an amount totalling €775m. It’s the toughest settlement ever and it will hurt. But I would rather have had a court case in which guilt and retribution could have been discussed for all to witness. Risk Wilfred Nagel, the ING’s chief risk officer between 2011 and 2017, would have been in the dock as well. We know Nagel as a man who can be vehement in his defence of the banking sector in the public debate. That is very brave of him and makes him popular with journalists as many bankers are less than communicative. He is, then, the very man to explain to the judge – and the rest of the country – how a systemically important bank such as ING could have strayed so far from the straight and narrow. Perhaps the public prosecutor could have reminded him of the first paragraph of the Compliance Risk Management Charter so prominently displayed on the IBG website: ‘ING is committed to the preservation of its reputation and integrity through compliance with applicable laws, regulations and ethical standards in each of the markets in which it operates.’ Please explain the gaping abyss between theory and practice, Mr Nagel. Guilty I am not out for anyone’s blood, that is not what it’s about.  But a public court case would result in clear norms visible to the whole of society. The bank must plead guilty, account for its actions and take responsibility. Settlements are too much like a tax on crime: just pay the government its due and carry on banking. In the wake of the credit crisis (when banks promised to clean up their act) one scandal followed another, from Libor and currency manipulation to interest swaps and from money laundering to sanctions evasion. Many cases were settled out of court. But clearly settlements are not enough of a deterrent. So can we have a proper reckoning next time, in court, so the government can show the public that breaking the law can never be a matter of business-as-usual. This column was published earlier in the Financieele Dagblad  More >

The Netherlands is a pretty stable, well-integrated and prosperous country. So why do the white Dutch talk about the failed multi-cultural society? asks journalist and writer Hassnae Bouazza. The media and politicians have been banging on about it for over twenty years: the multicultural society has failed and we are living a multicultural nightmare. I have never understood the failed-multicultural-society mantra. You might as well say the sun has failed. The multicultural society is a fact and that’s it. Like any other society it has its share of friction, groups that get along or not. Put people together and this is what you get, regardless of background. We live in a pretty stable and very prosperous country and the only way you could cry failure is if society doesn’t live up to a preconceived ideal. If your idea of success is a society in which everybody thinks alike, loves the same things and laughs and cries at the same things it’s not society that has failed but your sense of reality that needs a check-up. While all this was going on and everyone with a non-native background was constantly being held responsible for this so-called failure, another drama unfolded, one that is becoming increasingly visible. It’s the tragedy of the native Dutch. Cohabitation Take actor Gerard Cox who complained to newspaper the Volkskrant that he doesn’t recognise his Rotterdam anymore because of all the non-white people milling around there. You would think that after 50 years of cohabitation with large groups of non-natives the ‘white native’ would be used to the presence of other cultures. Generations of Dutch people have grown up alongside communities with different cultural roots but, one way or another, the resentment towards them remained. And it’s becoming ever more visible. Foreign minister Stef Blok doesn’t mince words: according to him ‘man’ is genetically programmed to reject ‘the other’. You would hope that people who make such sweeping statements would be speaking for themselves alone. But Blok and Cox are no longer exceptions, they are the norm. Undiluted opinions You have only to look at the opinion pages and sites to see the sort of thing people are venting and that goes double for those who feel themselves safe on Twitter and Facebook. And they may not represent the real world but Twitter and Facebook do offer a window on the undiluted opinions that we see reflected in the election results. Here’s a small sample: this type of native Dutch person, sometimes lovingly called ‘the concerned citizen’ is adamant the borders should be closed to anyone but him. He wants to be able to live anywhere in the world without any obstacles put in their way, including pesky long queues at the border. How the latter can be achieved with those borders firmly closed is anyone’s guess. This same group of Dutch people is opposed to diversity, even if they themselves live abroad. The native Dutch person is in favour of freedom of speech. It’s a sacred right, as we have been told ad infinitum over the last decades. Some even argue for a right to offend, but here is where we run into a slight problem. That unlimited freedom of speech is limited, to the native Dutch. As soon as an imam wants to exercise the right, the law is changed especially for him so he can be prosecuted. Any non-white person who has a problem with that is told to piss off. Timid newcomers This concerned citizen also likes to tell women 'to get some dick' when they have a dissenting opinion. He threatens women whose opinion he doesn’t like with rape while at the same time criticising Islam because of the alleged misogyny of the religion. But this ‘dick caller’ will never call Islam a religion because his political leader says it’s an ideology and what he says goes. Concerned citizens love to put their noses in other people’s business. Women shouldn’t be allowed to wear a burkini but topless is a no-no too. Halal ritual slaughter should be banned but not factory farming. They don’t like Muslims but go on all-inclusive holidays to Turkey and Egypt. The native Dutch citizen expects his non-native countryman to participate but not too much and to tow the line and not get all cocky and criticise Zwarte Piet, or think of a career in politics. This is the native tragedy in a nutshell: ‘foreign’ is only accepted if you can chew on it or profit from it. All the native Dutch person is interested in is what he can get out of the multicultural society: good food, cheap labour, affordable pedicures. Then it’s back to the white bubble where white is might. Western discontent All this is part of a greater white western discontent. It explains the brutal rise of the extreme right in Europe and the USA. The white man, used to being top dog, is feeling threatened by ‘picaninnies’ and feminists, see extremists like Jordan Peterson and Steve Bannon. Bannon is even planning a European tour to lend a helping white hand. But you see, Dutch people with different cultural backgrounds are no longer the timid newcomers of 50 years ago. They have roots here and the Netherlands is their country. When once they had to content themselves with substandard jobs their integration (which they were so emphatically told to achieve) is now completed and they are fully paid up members of this society, despite the obstacles and racism they experience every day. And that is what makes the tragedy complete: the inability of white Dutch citizens to keep up in a changing world in which they are confronted with emancipated and successful people of colour who have made their way on their own merits and who will no longer be told that their identity is problematic. This column was first published on the lifestyle website Aicha Qandisha.  More >

How many people in uniform does it take to kill a duckling? In the case of the duckling born on top of a five-floor block in Amsterdam west, the answer is 13 – which was certainly unlucky for the bird itself. It all began when a neighbour alerted the animal ambulance people to the presence of a female mallard and one tiny duckling, which were stuck on the parapet, 20 metres up above a street in the 19th century zone. The duck had obviously given birth to her hatchlings somewhere on the roof but had now found herself on a narrow edge with no access to food or water for her brood. The animal ambulance people went up to the top floor flats armed with nets in an effort to catch the hapless family…. who of course did not want to be caught. Cage There was much too-ing and froo-ing and waving of arms and eventually the duckling  was caught – a tiny little thing which peeped plaintively as it was put into a cage and set on a table in the street. Mother duck was by this time frantic, flapping back and forth across the street looking for baby. Well, I say baby, but apparently there were two – and one duckling which had been spotted earlier in the afternoon, had completely vanished. Where ever could it be? We, the neighbours, the animal ambulance people scoured the plants in our geveltuintjes and looked under cars. There was a faint peeping sound. It appeared to come from our drain pipe. Peep The animal ambulance people got out a stethoscope and started listening at the pipe. They decided duckling had fallen in and was stuck in the bend at the top. We politely explained we were not that keen on having our drain pipe – which is fairly old and fragile – taken off to search for a day-old duckling – which of course immediately branded us as hideous animal killers. The animal ambulance people went into a huddle, refused to tell us what they were planning and called the fire brigade who turned up with not one, but two fire engines and nine firemen. Now, I should stay at this point I have always had a soft spot for firemen and in my days as a cub reporter would always volunteer to go out to fires so I could get to meet them. I’m afraid the squat little balding man with a big ego and a short fuse who refused to shake hands rather put me off. He told us that we could not stop him dismantling our drain pipe and - pompously - that the fire brigade is there for 'man and animal'. When we explained the drain pipe is old and could crack, he started waving around a very large and heavy wrench in a most menacing way. Police At that moment, two police officers arrived to order the crowds who had gathered in some numbers and were all filming the fire engine ladder which was by now up at the roof. The two firemen in the cage were pulling and shaking the drain pipe. We watched as they pulled off the top bit with the bend and found nothing. Gradually they came lower. Each piece of pipe was thoroughly inspected. Each was empty. Eventually they got down the wisteria, which winds its way around the pipe and, though still in bloom, was just over its best. As they started trying to peel it off, I lost my cool completely and shouted at the top of my voice; ‘My beautiful plant and all for a fucking duckling’. They did stop there… not because of my shouts but because the bottom piece of pipe  was dug into the ground. To get that out, they would have had to break open the street, and perhaps that was going just a tad too far for a duckling? They did open the drain for a check and put in a camera. Then, after more huddled conversation, they gave up. Orphan They attempted to put back the drain pipe but not very well and we are now in the middle of emergency repair and insurance claim chaos. The one duckling that was saved was taken off to the asylum as an unwilling orphan, leaving its panicky mother behind. And what happened to the other mystery duckling? Seems pretty obvious to us. If it was stuck in the pipe – and no-one knows for sure – when they started shaking the top, it probably dislodged and fell 20 metres to the ground, breaking its neck. In all the exercise took several hours, a hell of a lot of manpower, a lot of iphone storage space and god knows what the final bill will be… and all for a tiny duckling that will probably get eaten by water rats anyway. The irony being that those firemen accusing us of hating animals all probably went off home and tucked into a nice factory-farmed piece of pork or had a broodje kroket in the canteen. Hypocrisy at its finest.  More >