The claim is that poor people have a human right to beg. I’m skeptical but suppose it’s true. Brussels has professional beggars. Beggars who are not poor cannot use the human rights defense.

As for genuinely poor beggars, they should be getting social aid. The aid should account for level of need, number of dependents in the family, etc. Begging abuses that balance and disproportionately rewards those who create a public eyesore. Donors who go through a charity have some confidence that there is an even distribution and a vetting process to weed out the non-poor beggars. Doesn’t the social system satisfy the human rights of the poor? If not, why not?

Grabbed the PDF and commented over here with:

The Norweigans missed the most important (and easiest!) action:

• Public services themselves need to get off Facebook & Twitter. If they can’t walk the walk and take their own advice, it’s not just an optical embarrassment. As someone who already boycotts the shitty gatekeepers (Cloudflare, google, ms, fb, apple, twtr), I am already free from enshittification --- except when I must interact with a public service.

WTF?! The only unmanagable evil force I must deal with comes from the gov itself, who imposes shitty gatekeepers in the course of doing public tasks. I can’t boycott the government.

Belgian public services ALL use Microsoft for their email. So you should do everything on paper in Belgium. But what do they do? They scan paper letter/form/submissions and then they email it to themselves via Microsoft’s server. I shit you not. Microsoft is inescapable even by the most disciplined. And it’s only because the government itself will not ditch the motherfuckers.

Exceptionally, it’s somewhat redeeming that the Norweigans mention that public services should use open source. But that just scratches the surface. The very first thing they should do is get off Facebook and Twitter.

I have no 1st-hand experience with being homeless but Belgium appears to be on the ball with welfare. They have shelters, social housing, and food. I would be surprised if anyone was starving.

I think the homeless shelters exclude drunks. So I can see how a alcoholics might fall through the cracks on that and I believe this is why we see some people sleeping on the street. If the shelters were open to drunks, that would fail to incentivise fighting the addiction. But I don’t imagine that drunks are denied food. In any case, I don’t see how giving to beggars is a good solution. I would sooner look for a charity that tries to address any shortcomings and give to them because they will ensure the aid is better allocated than ad hoc begging.

It’s bizarre that a liberal party politician is praising this, considering Deutsche Bank is relatively evil for anyone who is progressive. It has ties to Bank of America and heavily finances fossil fuel.

“the non-profit that has been campaigning for years for places to swim outdoors in the capital.”

Interesting to see what an uphill battle a simple and non-controversial change is.

It should be in here:

https://refli.be/fr/lex/1994000357

AFAIK there is no English translation published.

Considering De Lijn unlawfully refuses cash payments in Brussels, those looking to dodge De Lijn’s fares would be wise to simply offer cash. When the driver refuses, (and they will), the consumer has a strong case for not paying a fine.

Note this trick only works in Brussels. In other regions, De Lijn has a shop that accepts cash.

Good news. Let’s put this to the test.

For some reason I thought Brussels had no gov, which would make petitions useless. OTOH, it was a competition. Perhaps no gov outperforms the rest of European democracies after right-leaning autocracies took power.

Expect to see signs like “need money to pay my €500 begging fine”.

The rules also prohibit “aggressive, intrusive or intimidating” begging across the entire city for a two-year trial period, after which the policy will be reviewed.

WTF? Why is that just a trial? I have been sitting at a restaurant and had beggers get in my face when I ignore them, waving their hand in front of my face as if to check whether I am blind. That kind of shit should carry the highest penalty.

Also when they find a high-traffic bottleneck, they sit right in the bottleneck to make it even harder to walk along with a crowd of tourists who have to squeeze through a choke point. Tolerance should be lower in those cases.

Opposition parties, including Greens and left-wing groups, voted against the measures.

Yikes. Should be the other way around. Right wing groups oppose welfare but advocate begging because it puts the payers in power. Left-wing groups are smarter, and advocate for fair distribution of wealth. Giving to beggers is contrary to that, as those who create the biggest eye sore get paid, not those who need help the most. As a liberal, I want to see a fair distribution. Every payment to a begger is unfair.

The Norweigans missed the most important (and easiest!) action:

• Public services themselves need to get off Facebook & Twitter. If they can’t walk the walk and take their own advice, it’s not just an optical embarrassment. As someone who already boycotts the shitty gatekeepers (Cloudflare, google, ms, fb, apple, twtr), I am already free from enshittification --- except when I must interact with a public service.

WTF?! The only unmanagable evil force I must deal with comes from the gov itself, who imposes shitty gatekeepers in the course of doing public tasks. I can’t boycott the government.

Belgian public services ALL use Microsoft for their email. So you should do everything on paper in Belgium. But what do they do? They scan paper letter/form/submissions and then they email it to themselves via Microsoft’s server. I shit you not. Microsoft is inescapable even by the most disciplined. And it’s only because the government itself will not ditch the motherfuckers.

Exceptionally, it’s somewhat redeeming that the Norweigans mention that public services should use open source. But that just scratches the surface. The very first thing they should do is get off Facebook and Twitter.

I’m confused by the relationship between your 1st and 2nd sentence. Your 1st sentence is about making a long stop and your 2nd is about taking an indirect route.

An SNCB worker told me the EU law which allows people to stop at a station along their route and take a break and return to the itinerary has been eliminated. So we no longer have that right under EU law but you seem to be saying Belgium gives passengers the right to stop when travelling within Belgium, correct?

About the app… I have no clue. Google maps with public transport option on?

I should clarify that I would never download an app from Google playstore or use Google Maps (or any google service). I was asking for tools (or “apps”) that can be run using a browser (most websites are actually javascript apps these days). And I would be open to f-droid apps or other free software.

Anyway, since the EU law was dropped my hunt for a resource that lets me pin a waypoint but not the destination is somewhat moot. Although perhaps still interesting in light of the Belgian law you mention.

Did you eventually get your answer?

I don’t have a concrete answer so I did not respond when I first saw your post. When there is a cross-border scenario within the EU, data subjects have the right to choose whether to file locally or in the remote country. And generally if two SAs are working together on the case, the data subject can designate which country is the lead supervisory authority. I don’t imagine that this aspect would change when the UK is involved as the UK’s GDPR closely mirrors the EU one.

I suppose it doesn’t help that when people install their own solar panels, the injection rate in Brussels is a small fraction of the consumption rate. IIRC, I think I pay around 30 ¢€ per kWh. If I injected energy from PVs, I would get 2 ¢€ per kWh.

Nice! Good riddance to the Google boot-licking tracking scooters! Hopefully the damn things will stop needlessly cluster-fucking the bicycle racks so we can actually secure our bikes.

Most legit providers offer filter rules you can configure as you need.

Filters are for email post-delivery. By the time a server is executing your filter instructions, Microsoft’s server has already delivered the message and disconnected. It’s too late at that point. If some rare mail service were to bounce a message based on user-specified filters, it would have to be after the msg has already been delivered. This would risk “backscatter”, whereby the bounced response attempts to connect to the /perceived/ sending server, which could be incorrect. And even if it is correct, the sending server may not accept the bounced msg.

The configuration I describe can only competently be done on the server and it necessarily must be the same behavior for all users on that server because the refusal happens before the sending server even has a chance to send an SMTP “RCPT TO” line.

Unless you are intentionally finding services that do not use M$ infrastructure then you risk losing a lot of access.

It would be senders who lose access. I’m already happy to not connect to surveillance advertisers. The idea is that users on surveillance ad platforms lose access so they cannot deliver to my inbox.

I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, it’s not great that they have the liberty of writing a vague or minimal standard for themselves. But at least you can hold them to their own standard. And in situations where there is no standard in place, you can argue that your CFREU Art.41 rights are generally undermined.

A good judge would treat an unwritten standard in favor of the complainant. There is a legal concept in contract law that says the benefit of vague or ambiguous terms in a contract goes to the party who did not draft the contract. This principle punishes the side who had the advantage of writing the contract for their negligence. Hopefully a similar concept would be considered in the case of good administration. Not sure if this principle exists in Europe or how realistic that is.

I have encountered several cases where a Belgian administrative office violated the Belgian standards. In principle I can escalate a complaint on that basis. I would not consider this useless.

Thanks! IIUC (from a machine translation), there is no code of “good administrative” conduct for Germany:

Administrative Procedure Act (VwVfG) § 10 Non-formal nature of the administrative procedure The administrative procedure is not bound to specific forms unless there are special legal provisions for the form of the procedure. It is simple, practical and quick to carry out.

What they don’t mention is that ~15 or so years ago beer in the US was all garbage. But the trend of artisinal beers and microbreweries started to take off. Now you can get decent domestic beer in an ordinary grocery store in the US. So they no longer have to rely so heavily on Belgium for that.

On top of Trump’s tarrifs, that would explain why exports are expected to drop as far as the US market goes. Not sure how big of a chunk that was.

From the article:

Critics say this trend leads to unfair competition for European online shops and increases the risk of fraud, such as undervaluation, counterfeiting and non-compliant products.

Critics of what? Surely they must mean critics of the previous status quo, not critics of the new policy. The new policy gives EU shops an advantage over non-EU shops.

“If you have eight different items in your parcel ordered online, this tax will amount to 24 euros in total. In some cases, the value of the tax will exceed the value of the parcel.”

Oof. That’s harsh for online shoppers. But as an offline-only consumer, I welcome this new policy. It’s all a swindle anyway. Even when customs duty was /zero/ they would charge a flat “clearance fee” of €10. My first imported item was worth <€10 but I was forced to pay €10 for the “priviledge” of the courrier dealing with customs on my behalf. WTF.. I got fleeced. My first online purchase became my last.

So now I buy everything offline, locally. Some items I can no longer find in local shops. When I ask for an item expected to be in a shop, shop owners are not embarrassed to say “get it online”. Went to a battery shop. Their sole trade is to just sell batteries. I used to be able to say “I need a battery for laptop model XYZ”. They would order it and call me when the order is ready for pick-up. No longer. Now they say go online. If you need a non-standard battery, you’re fucked in Brussels.

Maybe this new law will help the offline market improve.

Any email service could be configured to block Microsoft.

Indeed, whoever controls the server could do that. But who does? I don’t have an always-on WAN-facing machine, so I am interested in finding an email provider who does the blocking because as an end user I don’t have the privs.

I’m not sure why you want to do that at the platform level though. That’s a great way to not have delivered legitimate email traffic.

Microsoft is a surveillance advertiser who I boycott. I do not want to feed MS’s ad machine. For outbound mail, I can do an MX lookup first and only send email to non-MS non-Google recipients, but that’s not reliable because some recipients mask their email providers using a firewall like barracuda networks. So when such users try to email me, I would like their email to be refused.

About blocking “legit” traffic, MS does that anyway. I’ve seen MS reject RFC-compliant non-spam email 1st hand. I am happy to reciprocate.