Article

2007-11-06 Europe

Belgium still without government after 149 days

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Posted by Seafarious 2007-11-06 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 Here's the missing part of the headline:

... and nobody has noticed yet.

Posted by OldSpook 2007-11-06 00:20|| 2007-11-06 00:20|| Front Page Top

#2 If you haven't used it for half a year, you probably don't need it.

Posted by SteveS 2007-11-06 00:30|| 2007-11-06 00:30|| Front Page Top

#3 The old government continues to run things until replaced. I imagine they're quite satisfied with the current quagmire.

The article omits a few key words that help bring clarity to the current situation. The country is split between its richer, Dutch speaking, peasant half (the Flems) and the poorer, French speaking, aristocrat half (the Wallons). Even yet, the Flems are the labourers, the plumbers, the laboratory technicians, the secretaries. The Wallons are management, they all went to the right schools, and they moan about the cost of maintaining the family's 14th century manor house. (I got to listen to that last at length from the real estate agent who found us a house when we transferred there.) Oh, and the Flems deeply resent their taxes going to support maintaining the manor houses their former overlords are living in.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-11-06 04:37|| 2007-11-06 04:37|| Front Page Top

#4 Belgium---an early example of nation building.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2007-11-06 06:11|| 2007-11-06 06:11|| Front Page Top

#5 Thanks, TW. Interesting! Richer peasants and poorer aristocrats? My irony meter is pegged!

Posted by Bobby 2007-11-06 07:46|| 2007-11-06 07:46|| Front Page Top

#6 TW:

Since I am married to a Belgian who happens to be Flemish and we continue to travel there and understand daily what is happening I take exception to your description. Obviously, you lived in Brussels (which is the capital of Flanders but has been Franconized). The nobility in Belgian is evenly split - actually lately it is leaning more Flemish than Walloon. The management of the country, if you consider commerce, business and industry is decidedly Flemish - it is the opposite of what you prosist. Walloonia is stuck with a French model of economics, culture and life-style and it is one of the reasons they have been unable to keep up with the Flemish who are industrious, intelligent, multi-lingual (unlike the Walloons who refuse to learn even Dutch) and more productive. Their education and finance systems are equal only to the German and Dutch systems. The Walloons are the brakes and the Flemish the gas pedal. The Walloons cannot exist with the Flemish but the Flemish can exist very easily and more comfortably without the Walloons. The problem is what to do with Brussels since it is part of Flanders but because of the EU it has become more and more French speaking and culturally Francophile. Sooner of later there is going to be a break-up and it is the Walloons who will suffer because of their intransigence and world opinions of them that are completely 180 degrees out of reality.

Posted by Jack is Back!">Jack is Back! 2007-11-06 08:59|| 2007-11-06 08:59|| Front Page Top

#7 Jack, thank you for bringing an insider's view. You're right that I came from the Brussels angle -- we lived in Overijse (across the woods from the royal residence in Tervuren, outside Brussels, for the rest of you) for the year we were there. In terms of the aristo/management:peasant/labour thingy, Mr.Wife explained that was the situation at the Belgian branch of the multinational corporation he works for, not because of innate ability or corporate desire, but because of a somehow French-enforced caste system.

I didn't realize that Belgian nobility is split; I always had the idea that the royal court spoke French. Agreed, however, that the strength of the country is Flemish, and the French are a drag in every way they can be.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2007-11-06 09:13|| 2007-11-06 09:13|| Front Page Top

#8 IIUC, Wallonia actually used to be the most prosperous and industrialized area of the two, but it has fared very badly since the post-industrial turn of the 70's, and is now stuck in a client/socialized type way of doing politics. In many way, this is quite similar to the north of France, which is very close culturally, and has the same history (prosperous heavy industries area, that went downhill).
What Flanders has is a tradition of business and entrepreneurship, that has allowed it to make the best out of the post-industrail socieies.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-11-06 10:07|| 2007-11-06 10:07|| Front Page Top

#9 Could you stop naming the Wallons as the French?

Also Wallonia's downturn began well before the 70s.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2007-11-06 10:21|| 2007-11-06 10:21|| Front Page Top

#10 Sorry, JFM. Just because the French look down on them as the hillbillies of the Francophone world, just as the Dutch look down on the Flems the same way (I was positively shocked by the things my mother casually said when I told her I taking a Dutch class put on by the Overijse commune, and she only spent about the second decade of her life in Holland!), doesn't change what they are. The same with the French Swiss and the French Canadians. They are all French people who did not make it into the nation of France when the borders were finalized, although technically the French Canadians were deserted by the Motherland when France lost to England in America.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2007-11-06 11:08|| 2007-11-06 11:08|| Front Page Top

#11 I'm sorry.

I am sure the situation is a serious matter to those directly concerned, but (speaking from ignorance, of course) ...

"Belgian nobility is split"

...has got to be the funniest thing I've heard in days

Posted by kelly 2007-11-06 11:21|| 2007-11-06 11:21|| Front Page Top

#12 Hopefully, the U.S. Congress will follow Belgium's lead--come to think of it maybe they are already there.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-11-06 11:27|| 2007-11-06 11:27|| Front Page Top

#13 TW

I suspect the French-speaking Swiss would have about as little qualms in shooting at the French Army than the German-speakers had when they shot German planes who had violated their airspace. French speaking Switzerland never belonged to France and I am unaware of any special positive feelings towards the French.

About Quebecois, the nationalists between them could want their own state but union with France that is another thing. One of their favourite sentences is "Maudit français, mange donc de la marde" (Bloody French, eat shet <- not a typo)

For the Wallons that is more compliacted. Belgium was an artificial creation aimed at avoiding France becoming a military island (that is the only border who is not covered by the sea, tall mountains or major rivers, it is also the border who is closer to Paris). For most of her history France would have had more resources than needed to build a fleet far stronger than the English one, provided it had secure borders and no need to keep a large army, thus the need for her rivals and specially for England of preventing France of gobbling what is today Belgium. Now I am not so sure about how Wallons feel toward the French but I am certainly alarmed at the perspective of having them in France if half of the horror stories the Flemish tell of them are true. AFAIK in France we haven't families who have been living from welfare for three generations (except perhaps in Corsica, who has a lot of privileges dating from Napoleon).

PS: A couple decades ago there was a showman who specialized in "Belgian jokes" where Belgians appeared like morons. Example: "How do you sink a Belgian submarine: you knock at the door"

Posted by JFM">JFM 2007-11-06 11:49|| 2007-11-06 11:49|| Front Page Top

#14 JFM:

Belgium was originally a landholding of the Duke of Burgandy and up until the late 1930's even the Flemings were required to speak French. French was the language of education and commerce basically up until the end of WW2. The royal family (remember he is The King of the Belgians not Belgium) still speaks primarily in French but have now been forced to also speak in Dutch especially in appeareances in Flanders. I believe the statistic is something like - for every Fleming that speaks French there are 6 Walloons that don't speak Dutch. But now the issue is not so much language or culture but responsibility, growth, leadership, etc. that is dragging down the socialist/green types that are predominantly Walloon and the more center right pro-business, pro-trade, pro-expansion Flanders.

Posted by Jack is Back!">Jack is Back! 2007-11-06 12:08|| 2007-11-06 12:08|| Front Page Top

#15 Bloody French, eat shet <- not a typo

The Quebecois say that about everyone, as far as I can tell. ;-) My darling mother-in-law was thrilled to take American citizenship and give up her last tie to the place.

Lovely history lessons, JFM and Jack. Thank you.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2007-11-06 12:24|| 2007-11-06 12:24|| Front Page Top

#16 Speaking more than one language is a good way to divide people.

Posted by wxjames 2007-11-06 13:07|| 2007-11-06 13:07|| Front Page Top

#17 Actually speaking more than one language is a very good thing for uniting people.

The difference is, there must be a primary common language that everyone speaks (common core culture), before you get into the second language.

This does not exist in many of the old feudal contructs in Europe like Belgium, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia (which wisely split thus avoiding the issue), etc.

Which is why those places are having trouble.

Posted by OldSpook 2007-11-06 13:38|| 2007-11-06 13:38|| Front Page Top

#18 TW and Jack is Back

When I said was an artificial construct I wasn't referring to the country ever having been French (they were vassals of the King of France but that nwas before the hundred years war). More about hearts and minds: many Wallons and Flemings served with distinction in Napoleon's armies. Now, of course, the forced coexistence under a corrupt state (the Belgian reigning dynasty has had an extraordinary level of corruption) has alinated the Flemings of everything speaking French but I am not sure that in 1830 they would have rejected becoming French. After all we have Flemish speakers in France.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2007-11-06 14:36|| 2007-11-06 14:36|| Front Page Top

#19 "Maudit français, mange donc de la marde"

Yeah, but it's said with that great québecquois accent, so it actually sounds very nice. I knew a french canadian who could mimicry perfectly *french* accent, that was really impressive, and really funny.
About Belgium, there's this book by Belien which seems interesting, haven't read it, of course.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-11-06 14:48|| 2007-11-06 14:48|| Front Page Top

#20 I go to Walloon Lake (northern part of the lower peninsula of Michigan) and the time spent there is decidedly unproductive. Hell on the liver too. Some things translate well from the old country.

Posted by remoteman 2007-11-06 18:47|| 2007-11-06 18:47|| Front Page Top

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