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Children bring a lot of worries with them, according to the average parent. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to our Karina. She was 15 when she suddenly became part of my family one Sunday in 2012. The next day, I took her from Vijlen to the Bernardinus College in Heerlen for the first time. There she attended grammar school, specialising in Nature and Health (N&G), and she was an above-average student.
Tradition has it that when the leaves fall, people suffer more from depression. This is partly due to the limited amount of sunlight and the shorter days. I know that psychiatrists use light boxes as therapy for patients suffering from depression. So if you notice that people around you are grumpier than usual, it's probably just the time of year.
My colleague Barbara provided the final push for my inspiration for this month's column. With the elections just around the corner, Barbara sent me a cartoon depicting an inextricable tangle of lines between political parties, showing who is willing to work with whom and who is not.
The CDA campaign leaders have decided on the campaign theme. By choosing the theme of decency, they are really standing out and people are remembering it. It is not only because of this theme that Henri Bontenbal is doing so well in the polls. His media appearances appeal to a significant portion of the electorate. However, the trend shows that his rise is stalling. Apparently, there are limits to appealing to decency.
When talking to grandparents, you may find that they seem overly enthusiastic about their grandchildren. Conversely, grandchildren can be visibly happy with their grandparents. What a special relationship that is
We remember the internet bubble. If your company was not somehow related to the internet, you could only place marginal value on it. In contrast, all companies that were fully committed to the internet were sky-high in the stock markets. We also remember World Online, one of the debacles that cost many investors a fortune.
I was with a notary this week who told me that he had lost two team members to the tax authorities. An accountant accompanying us added that his children, who had studied tax law, had also joined the tax department. And considering the workload compared to what he himself had gone through in his career, he gave them great credit. I wondered aloud how they thought they would build wealth then.
For 15 years, politicians have been trying to reform the pension system. So there must be something wrong with the current system. Fixing what is wrong is apparently very complex. I heard the chairman of the pension funds' umbrella organisation say that we have the best pension system in the world. So why should it be different? In my memory, the criticism of the system once came from the left and had everything to do with the fact that the young were co-paying for the old.