There’s been a bit of discussion on Twitter this morning with @megankenna and @thefashioncloud at the prohibitively high cost of Wifi in and around the EU quarter in Brussels. Many conferences are organised in hotels and the cost for wifi can be up to €25 per day. This, I fear, is at least as much thanks to the lack of competition among hotels and venues in the EU quarter as anything else!
Anyway, so what’s the solution? Continue reading
Chaussée de Charleroi - light stuck on yellow - Jon Worth, CC
Traffic light stuck on amber.
For 6 20 days solid*.
And no-one has done a thing.
A STIB tram passes this light every 10 minutes – it’s at the southern end of Chaussée de Charleroi. At least one police vehicle will have passed it each day. At least one person from the commune of St Gilles will have passed it each day. At least one person who works for the Bruxelles-Capitale region will have passed it each day. You see what I am getting at… je m’en fous, writ large.
I’ve now personally informed Bruxelles Mobilité about the issue – let’s see what happens.
In the UK there is a wonderful little site called Fix My Street to deal with things like this. You mark a cross on the map, and report potholes, broken traffic lights etc., and the system mails the relevant local authority… and about half of the issues get solved.
I suspect that things go a little deeper in Belgium – it’s more a need to Fix My State than it is the need to Fix My Street. For the hell of it I’ve bought fixmystate.be and fixmystate.eu, just in case I have the energy for a bit of MySociety inspired social entrepreneurship in the Belgian capital.
(P.S. Just for a bit of added spice there was a van, illegally parked, with no hazard flashers on, parked beside the traffic light when I took the picture…)
* – first time I saw it was Monday 15th March, I’m writing this Saturday 20th March, and I’ve passed it on my bicycle at least once every day in between. It may be longer of course…
[UPDATE - 4.4.2010]
I’ve been away from Brussels for almost 2 weeks… and the traffic light is STILL on amber! Today is 4th April, so that means the light has been on amber for at least 20 days now. And I still don’t have any response to my e-mail from Bruxelles Mobilité.
[UPDATE 20.4.10]
The traffic light has now been turned off completely…
Kitten - CC/Flickr
Aggghhhhh, it’s another one of those days where Belgium is driving me utterly insane (similar to the post issue the other day). There were two young kittens trapped in the basement of my building, presumably the offspring of a stray cat, and I needed to try to work out what to do about the situation. I first asked some neighbours in my building – they seemed completely unconcerned, despite the fact that the cats could be nesting in their own belongings in the basement. I went and introduced myself to the old woman that lives opposite – she was at least friendly but could not help.
So I tried to research the matter. I know what to do in the UK – call RSPCA – and they even have a step-by-step guide on their website. But Belgium? I first came across an organisation called Infor-Animaux in Ixelles, and gave them a call. The man on the phone was horribly rude, not even letting me end my sentences before lecturing me that I should call a vet. A vet? Pay? When the cats don’t even belong to me or anyone in my building? He then suggested I wait until Monday and call the commune. Remarkable.
I don’t even like animals that much, and here is someone at an animal service caring even less than I do.
Today is a bank holiday in Belgium. But for me that means little – I have projects to complete, so I need to work. In addition I urgently need to post a letter to the UK, but I’m out of stamps. Can I manage to find a postage stamp for purchase anywhere in Brussels? Absolutely not.
The long hours post office at Gare du Midi is shut, and the smaller supermarkets that are open today do not sell stamps. Larger supermarkets sell stamps, but they are shut for the holiday… Newsagents stores are no better. I wanted to scream at the woman at the Relay shop at Gare du Midi “c’est un jour ferié” – yes, thank you, I know, but have you ever had the thought in your small, statist, anti-customer, rules-obsessed, restricted brain that someone might want to buy stamps outside the opening hours of a post office, and that asking at a newsagent store is actually sensible? Oh, and while we’re at it, tomorrow (a normal work day for the rest of Belgium) it’s actually hard for me to get to post office because I have a bunch of meetings to attend. And no, I don’t actually care whether the post is not going to be picked up from the post box today – I need to get the letter in the post box today. It’s not complex.
CC / Flickr
The picture on the right is a machine that applies the durable, thick paint to roads. I show it here because employing one of those is Belgium would really help me avoid having a nasty accident in the near future. The chances of it happening – unless I mount a renegade road painting movement – are probably nil. But here’s to hoping.
Anyway, why do I want to paint white lines on the roads of Belgium, and Brussels most specifically – for it is in the capital that I am always on my bicycle and come close to accidents almost each and every time I ride. The problem is that there are 2 issues with the junctions here – the first is that there are almost always no lines painted on the road to indicate which way the traffic should go. Secondly, the priorité à droite rule applies, so in the case that a priority is not clear then drivers should know who wins (although no-one knows really what the rule is, as this news story in French shows).