«When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less». © Lewis Carroll
Check out that article from Metro. Seems like the text was written by the Belgian anti-piracy association, and the title — by a Metro editor who tried to please the public by indicating that some still like belgian music and movies.
Now, do the numbers given in the article make any sense to you? What would have changed if they were divided by 100 or multiplied by 1000?
Belgium has a multitude of e-government solutions. Local residents have now ID cards in the form of a banking card with a chip, there are services to order certificates online with these cards, pay taxes and check for medicines.
Last week, I was struggling with the Intervat, an online system for entering various VAT declarations. I had no clients outside belgium, so I tried to enter an empty declaration for inter-country transfers when the application displayed an error saying that "the declaration has to contain minumum one client.".
To make sure, I asked the support whether I should send an empty declaration, and got the reply that I have to resubmit my declaration. To top it all, the reply was in Dutch, although my question was in French. I am still trying to figure what to do, and the deadline for the declaration is today.
Казалось, в просвящённой Европе подобные методы революционной борьбы давно вышли из моды, ан нет.
I just received offline spam from Fedict in the form of a letter without any postage marks and with the text on the envelope stating:
"An important message from the government".
The letter contained an invitation to buy a bundle of a PC with 12 months of free internet access for 422 EUR.
Update: Apparently, the same letter was distributed (not sent by post, but carried to the postbox by a spam delivery company) to a big share if not all belgian residents.
Отсталая всё-таки страна Россия. Там всё ещё озабочены проблемами коррупции и взяточничества в то время, как весь цивилизованный мир уже *дцать лет использует создание бизнес-ниш из воздуха как основной приём для повышения благосостояния власть придержащих.
Давайте я расскажу про бельгийский опыт на примере titres-services. Очень простая модель. Кое-какие силы в бельгийских органах власти протолкнули проект по прикрытию чёрного рынка работ по уборке дома, глажке, покупке продуктов и создали вид лицензированной деятельности под названием titres-services, что можно перевести на русский скажем как "талоны на уборку".
Самый простой способ задавить конкурента -- бешено демпинговать, что государство и сделало, выделив полмиллиарда евро в 1-й год на финансирование отрасли. Была выбрана компания дле печати талонов (первый откат), которые продавались населению по 6,70 €. Население могло продолжать оплачивать домработниц по-чёрному, тратя в среднем 8 евро в час, либо по талонам, тратя 4,69 € (2,01 € возвращалось путём уменьшения налогов). Конторам, получившим лицензию на работу по талонам, за каждый талон государство выплачивало 21 € через компанию, занимающуюся приёмом талонов (второй откат). На следующий год сумма эта уменьшилась до 20 €, ещё через пару лет составила 18 €.
In light of the recent accusation of Richard Biefnot (PS), echevin of Housing and Urbanism in Mons, I was trying to figure out what kinds of images he actually possessed and on the basis of what laws he is being prosecuted.
Seems like this simple question is being deliberately obscured by media.
That is, there shall be a difference between possession of e.g. Hentai and of videos of children making sex because the whole point of prosecuting the buyers is to keep the children out of the danger of being abused by reducing the demand. Obviously, no child has been abused in the production of Hentai, or other purely fictional artwork, so this argument does not apply for Hentai.
Unfortunately, it is very hard to find the relevant legislation in order to check whether this distinction is maintained in the legislation, but I would not be surprised if it is not.
Update: Thanks to a fellow lawyer friend, I got a pointer to the relevant legislation, and, I as expected, there is no such distinction, indeed:
§ 1er.
