Brussels

It’s hard to get solid info on this. Yes, cheques are very unpopular. But I’m looking for concrete info. Has anyone seen a cheque being used in the past five years (outside of a museum)?

A young banker just told me cheques do not exist. I said “what about cashier’s cheques?” Response: all cheques are gone - non-existent. A banker should know but maybe this young banker is speculating on the basis of never seeing one.

The linked page shows Ing’s fees for cheque processing, which suggests the banker I spoke to may be misinformed. What is a “Circular cheque”? Is that the same as a personal check or is it a banker’s cheque? (edit: possible partial answer)

People were saying cheques are gone 10 years ago, but I know it was misinfo then at least in terms of banker’s cheques. Suppose banker’s cheques are really gone (which was predicted 10 years ago). How are people making a down-payment on a house these days? Electronic transfers are not instant. IIRC even the fastest transfers take hours to execute. A house deal involves the simultaneous exchange of money and signatures at a meeting that could go as quick as 45 minutes. Only a banker’s draft (cheque) can accommodate that. There is a reason why a screenshot of an electronic transfer often has a phrase like “this is not proof of payment”.

One problem I hope a cheque will solve is a creditor is demanding payment and they refuse cash. I refuse to open a bank account just to pay them. bPost has problems. So I’m looking for more options. I wonder if any bank would give a banker’s draft in exchange for cash, and I could perhaps deliver the cheque by hand or by registered mail.

I sent a letter to Brussels from Brussels, formed in this style:

Attn: <employee name>
<org name>
P.B. <box №> <street>
1030 Brussel

I only added the attn: line to the top. The street probably should have been on the next line. The letter came back 3 months later with this bPost sticker:

"ne reçoit pas/plus le courrier a l’adresse indiquee"

So apparently something is wrong with that address. Whatever the problem, I cannot imagine why it took 3 months for bPost to figure out there was a problem.

I heard that any change to a structural wall requires planning permission from the city, in Brussels. That includes drilling to simply insert a bolt.

Is that true? Does anyone have the legal citation?

I think everyone ignores this law for small tasks. But I would like to know the letter of the law on this as all brick walls are generally considered structural and load-bearing.

Interesting excerpt of Belgian law:
(fr)

§ 3. La fonction de membre du service de médiation est incompatible avec :
1° un mandat public rémunéré;
2° un mandat public conféré par des élections;
3° la profession d'avocat;
4° la fonction de notaire, magistrat ou huissier de justice;
5° un mandat ou une fonction au sein : …

(en; machine translation)

§ 3. The member of the mediation service is incompatible with:
1° a paid public mandate;
2° a public mandate conferred by elections;
3° the legal profession;
4° the function of notary, magistrate or judicial officer;
5° a warrant or function within: …

Item ③ is a bit surprising. I think I would want mediators to have as much legal background as possible since it is those skills that are used. What am I missing?

Or is it just that mediators cannot work in the legal field in parallel to their mediation gig due to potential conflicts of interest like representing an entity who may need mediation?

Hence why false advertising is not controlled. Who regulates the self regulators? Apparently no one. If “Jury d’Ethique Publicitaire” neglects false advertising, there is no recourse.

This seems like a new bit of enshitification from Sibelga. Isn’t it somewhat incompetent to use a captcha just to collect 3 numbers? The graphical images they push are surely heavier than 3 numbers. We’re talking around ~20 digits in total.

If they are really worried that someone would stuff random numbers into their UI, a simple password would separate the ham from the spam.

Anyway, I don’t do CAPTCHA. Especially Google’s. I wonder how many people will solve their CAPTCHA and reinforce the anti-humanity problem. As I see it, we have a duty to not give the meter reading and make them send someone to read the meter.

I’ve always wondered why I never receive mail on Saturday, despite seeing bPost workers out making deliveries. Well I finally received mail on Saturday. It came from a Flemish political party 1 week after the election took place. The letter urges me to vote for them on June 9th. The postmark is too faint to see a date but obviously this must have sat in bPost for quite a while.

I just wonder what is going on at bPost that they seem to be delivering lost and found mail on Saturdays but not unlost mail.

What are these “Élections” stamps? Are they normal stamps, or are they just for political parties perhaps with lower pricing?

Belgian elections occurred on Sunday, June 9th. Sunday makes the most sense if it must be on just one day. But some people still must work on Sunday. And they could even be called into work last minute. So the question is, how do they satisfy their voting obligation, assuming they miss a deadline for absentee ballot (assuming that’s an option)?

@[email protected]

I had a look at what I pay for gas and electric in recent years:

mid-2022: elec→ 12.8¢/kWh :: gas→ 5.4¢/kWh
mid-2023: elec→ 21.2¹¢/kWh :: gas→ 7.4¢/kWh
mid-2024: elec→ 16.4¢/kWh :: gas→ 6.0¢/kWh

¹ (this price could even be higher because 8.4¢/kWh is also quoted for “distribution” and it’s unclear if that’s included in the 21.2¢ or if it’s added to it.)

I have struggled to grasp why Belgians have such a strong bias for electric ovens. Gas ovens are nearly non-existent and those that are being sold by places like Kreffel are very low-end. I have never seen an oven without a thermostat outside of Belgium. But in Belgium gas ovens have no thermostat. They just have levels 1 through 10 like on the stovetop. I only say this to illustrate how unpopular gas ovens are in Belgium.

Why is that the case, considering Belgian electricity costs more than double the cost of gas? I asked a few appliance salespeople. Paraphrasing:

• answer 1: “safety, because some years ago a gas line fueled a fire that killed many people inside the building”
• answer 2: “convenience, because by law every time you open the oven door the gas must shut off and it’s inconvenient to restart the oven every time you check on your food” (another sales person disagreed when I brought this up)
• answer 3: “efficiency”
• answer 4: “people prefer evenly distributed dry heat over uneven moist heat” (did not come from a sales person but this point is sometimes made by random consumers)

“Efficiency” is the most common answer. But I’m not convinced. The conversion of gas to electric at the powerplant is extremely lossy. Then the transmission of electricity is substantially lossy as well. The conversion back into heat energy in the kitchen is efficient, but big losses were already suffered just to get the electricity to the wall.

When some people use the word “efficient” they actually mean “economical”, but it’s probably not that either. Sure, from the wall to the food, an electric oven is more efficient than gas because the gas must be vented. But to be ecomonical the electric would have to use ~70% less kWh than gas, which seems highly unlikely.

I agree with answer 4. But that depends on what you cook. Dry heat from an electric oven is bad for baking cakes, but it can be remedied by filling a tray of water. Moist heat from gas ovens is not ideal for cooking crispy things like pizza crust, but it’s not a show-stopper. It’s also possible to add convection capability (a fan) to a gas oven to even the heat out.

I would easily trade some cooking conveniences for a lower energy bill. Just wondering why the most cost effective choice is so unpopular.

update -- answered

A lot of non-viable unlikely theories were given, but I think @mani1989 comes closest to a likely answer:

“cooking is not that significant on your energy bill”

So IMO efficiency is simply not a factor and Belgians are favoring electric ovens for their cooking performance.

I metered a small poorly insulated portable electric oven running at 200 °C for 30min. Came to 0.4 kWh. By today’s costs, it would cost €24/year to do that daily. Any efficiency differences between properly insulated gas and electric ovens would surely amount to less of an operational price difference than the net price of running a lousy oven, despite proper ovens being double the size.

I doubt a better answer than that will emerge. Though I suspect it neglects differences in the cost of the oven itself, which I don’t have figures for but IIRC electric ovens cost more.

This would also be a different story for pros who would cook with big ovens for several hours a day.

#askFedi #physics @[email protected]

In 2016 it was €6.50 for 5 EU stamps. I thought that was extortionate then, as US stamps were 47¢ for a letter that has roughly the same range.

5 EU stamps in Belgium are now €13.30. WTF. So not counting printing costs (which have doubled over the past year) the cost of sending a letter from Belgium with EU reach is €2.66. Compare that to today’s price for a US stamp: 68¢.

Even a global stamp in the US with worldwide reach is $1.65. So it costs about ½ as much to send a letter from the US to Netherlands than from Belgium to Netherlands.

Environmentalists are probably happy with that but privacy advocates who reject Google’s chokehold on email, CAPTCHAs, and other enshitification are getting bent over.

There are only three GSM carriers in Belgium:

• Base (Telenet)
• Orange (formerly Mobistar)
• Proximus

There are also some MVNOs, which offer their own plans but they are just a middleman service to one of the above three. I have no idea what the MVNOs offer apart from Mobile Vikings. There are many in different small hole-in-the-wall shops. This is the pricing for data on the first two:

Base: €15 → 8gb for 2 months

A top-up of €15 comes with 4gb of data expiring a month later. That is bundled with €15 in call credit. So at the end of the month you still have €15 in call credit if you make no calls. Then you can spend €15 in call credit to get another 4gb with a 1 month expiration.

Orange: €15 → 9.5gb for 7 weeks

A top-up of €15 comes with 5gb of data expiring a month later. That is bundled with €15 in call credit. So at the end of the month you still have €15 in call credit if you make no calls. Then you can spend €5 in call credit to get another 1.5gb with a 1 week expiration. Every week that purchase can be repeated, obviously just 3 times (thus giving 3 weeks more).

Proximus: shit… doesn’t matter

Proximus discriminates against cash payers by giving them a quite shitty deal, so they should be avoided on general principle.

(MVNO) Mobile Vikings: €15 → 8gb for 1 month

This is obviously a junk deal because you pay the same price for the same volume at Base, but it’s only good for ½ as long.

Use it or lose it

It’s a shame these are use it or lose it policies. Even if you buy more data credit before expiry, your old residual credit does not rollover to the next term. Orange is more data for the money but you have 4 expirations to deal with, each of which are chances for lost data credit, compared to Base where you have just 2 expirations.

Crowd-sourcing appreciated

If anyone knows about what other MVNOs offer, please chime in.

updates

(MVNO) Lyca sells you an empty SIM card for €5, so already a bad deal. Then if you add €15 that can be used to buy 5gb data. But it comes with zero data, so in effect it becomes like double the cost of Orange.

(MVNO) Voo (merging with Orange) give 10gb for €18 and that’S the bottom tier. So you must pay €3 more than Orange and the full balance is consumed by the 10gb. And of course you have use 10gb in the month or lose it. It’s obviously a worse deal than Orange.

It’s quite difficult to find information on election candidates in English, and on top of that I only use Tor for the web which really narrows the election information available to nearly nothing.

I found this Tor-friendly page:

https://www.angloinfo.com/how-to/belgium/moving/voting

The main political parties are listed there. Only 6 political parties apparently respect privacy enough to serve Tor users. Of those, only two parties offer information in English:

• CDH (center / Centre Democrate Humaniste, previously christian democrats [fr]) ← open to Tor users but no English (redirects to https://www.lesengages.be)
• Ecolo (Green Party [fr]) ← open to Tor users but no English
• MR (liberal / Mouvement Réformateur [fr]) ← open to Tor users but no English
• PS (Socialist / Parti Socialiste [fr]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• PTB (extreme left [fr]) ← open to Tor users but no English
• Parti populaire (extreme right party [fr])
• Défi (previously part of the MR, now more at the center [fr]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• CD & V (center / Christen Democratisch en Vlaams [nl]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• Groen (Green Party [nl]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• N-VA (Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie) ← open to Tor users and has info in English
• Vooruit (Socialist / Sociaal Progessief Alternatief [nl]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• Open VLD (liberal [nl]) ← uses Cloudflare’s walled-garden to block Tor users
• Vlaams Belang extreme right and nationalist party ← open to Tor users and has info in English
• Pvda (extreme left [nl]) ← open to Tor users but no English

N-VA looks like a winner purely on the merits of digital inclusion and rights, and motivated enough to reach English speakers. But this party really looks right-wing and possibly a bit xenophobic (though a bit ironic since their site has an English version).

Any references to English, Tor-respecting election info would be appreciated.

Several Belgians have said generally the national ID card is for official government operations not for the private sector; willy-nilly requests to show it should be refused in general. But then in reality ID card is demanded in countless commercial non-gov scenarios:

• GSM registration
• banks when opening accounts
• receiving bPost registered letters (bPost is technically a private enterprise)
• bPost cash→electronic payments on invoices
• Flixbus to confirm travellers are those named on tickets (drivers refuse Mobib cards as ID proof)
• Electro-Depot asks for ID if you want an extended warranty on an appliance

I think the first two are likely part of a government mandate. But what about the other cases? As a test, I sometimes present my Mobib card which shows my pic and name. Certainly the Mobib card is less sensitive than the ID card. Sometimes it’s accepted.

bPost

When paying an invoice via bPost, the demand for ID is quite intrusive. They don’t just look at the card, they make a record of it. There is a trend of finance orgs willy-nilly overcollecting more information than KYC laws actually require. In some countries, the KYC laws are written that banks /can/ collect whatever they want, but it’s not obligatory beyond some very mininal basic info. Then banks go ape-shit collecting all because the KYC law gives them liability immunity if the info is leaked or misused.

Is there a legal obligation for bPost to know who pays an invoice along with the residential address of the payer? The GDPR is being violated in Belgium with reckless disregard and people just go along with it, so I wonder if this is yet another case of data minimization not being adhered to.

Flixbus

I’m not sure if Flixbus treats national and international trips differently, but in any case I cannot see good cause for demanding national ID/passport when only crossing Schengen borders. I suspect the only reason Flixbus cares is because ticket pricing is dynamic and they want to prevent consumers selling/tranferring tickets to other consumers -- which is purely a commercial motive.

A Flixbus driver once accepted my Mobib card for ID. The line rightfully moves so fast they don’t seem to really be comparing names. If I presented an ID with the name “Cookie Monster” they probably wouldn’t notice. But anyway, other drivers have refused the Mobib card. If it’s true that national ID cards are only for official uses, I have to question the lawfulness of Flixbus demanding gov ID for the apparent purpose of mitigating ticket transfers from one person to another.

Does anyone know anything concrete about obligations to present ID cards?

If I had refused to show the Flixbus driver my ID card, he would have refused me service. Would that be legally actionable?

The linked page is accessible to everyone because a US-based NGO has mirrored Belgian law and made it accessible to all people. But attempts to directly visit www.ejustice.just.fgov.be is blocked if you are on the Tor network. The packets are silently dropped making it look as if the website is offline; so the Tor community is not informed that there’s actually a block in place preventing them from reading the law.

Ironically, the Belgian DPA also pubishes the privacy law but DPA’s website also block Tor in the same undignified way.

Before Proximus drilled into the façades of homeowners without consent, they announced it and offered free interior installation in return.

It’s still a bit off. Easements are supposed to be written into the title of the house and the easements on my street do not include attaching wires to the façade. So IIUC, in principle they should have to install poles or run the cables under the sidewalk.

I can understand they want to save money. But they should need permission at a minimum to drill into façades without an easement. It’s a bit disturbing for a couple reasons:

• Proximus charges a staggering €60+/month for access
• Proximus unlawfully refuses cash payments

Both of those issues ultimately make the service exclusive. That is, many people probably cannot afford €60/month. Unbanked people are also excluded from service. So two groups of people are unreasonably excluded from fiber service yet they must tolerate having cables attached to their house that they cannot use.

Now a new fiber competitor “Digi” (aka “Citymesh”) is drilling into façades to install their own fiber alongside Proximus’ fiber. They made no announcement, warning, or apology. It’s unclear why they cannot simply zip-tie their cable onto other cables.

But what is going on? They say they cannot share Proximus’ cable and that they must run their own. But according to the linked article Digi has a partnership with Proximus. Are they partners or competitors? It could be both, but what’s the bottom line for consumers?

I have no idea if Digi would be cheaper or if they would accept cash, but their website is in Cloudflare’s walled garden so they are unacceptibly exclusive just by that alone. Services that are exclusive should not be able to drill into people’s houses like this.

The rumor I heard was that if you buy a product that fails before the warranty ends, you do not need to contact the manufacturer (in #Belgium). You can simply return the product to the merchant and the merchant must deal with the warranty service.

A store manager refused to accept my return of a device that died after 2yrs+2 months, which was covered under a 3 year warranty. He said I must deal directly with the manufacturer. I threatened to complain officially and the manager gave in. But then as he was angrily returning money to me, he said he is only required to handle warranty service for the 1st two years and that he is making an exception for me. I figured he was confused because 2 years happens to be the length of the EU implied warranty. I had not heard that it was also a limit of the store’s obligation as an intermediary.

To complicate matters, the product was marked down on liquidation because the store apparently severed ties with that manufacturer. Though I doubt that’s relevant to my situation because it would not void the warranty. But the article also says merchants must accept returns for any reason in the first 14 days, yet the store makes that zero days for liquidated goods. Does that break EU law?

Anyway, I need answers. Maybe I owe the manager a bottle of wine. The linked article indeed confirms sellers must handle warranty returns for up to 2 years. But that’s EU-wide #law. What about #Belgian national law?

Next question, out of curiousity: normally manufacturers have a choice whether to replace, repair or refund. Is that choice passed through to merchants? Or are merchants required to handle this with one instant transaction (thus no repair as the consumer would have to return to the store later)?

Brusselstimes is a walled garden, so the content is below to ensure everyone can read it:

Activists installed over 400 fake advertising billboards across Europe, including in Brussels, this weekend to call out misleading adverts by car companies Toyota and BMW.

Three activist groups (Subvertisers' International, Brandalism and Extinction Rebellion) targeted Toyota and BMW by placing parody advertising billboards just as the European Motor Show in Brussels gets underway. They are calling on governments to introduce "tobacco-style" advertising bans on environmentally harmful products, such as SUVs.

"Toyota and BMW use slick marketing campaigns to promote over-sized SUV models that clog up urban neighbourhoods," said Brandalism spokesperson Tona Merriman, adding that these large vehicles present an increased risk to pedestrians.

The creatively designed posters feature images of "highly polluting" vehicles, with one artwork showing a Toyota Landcruiser driving through urban streets as pram-pushing pedestrians, children and cyclists rush to get out of the way.

'Lies and aggressive lobbying'

The "hijacked" billboards aim to highlight misleading adverts, with the activist groups explaining that, while Toyota and BMW often draw attention to their electric vehicle (EV) range in their adverts, both are still heavily invested in selling highly polluting combustion engine vehicles.

"In 2021, just 0.2% of cars sold by Toyota were EVs, of which only 0.5% were battery EVs," Merriman explained. "Meanwhile, 99% were hybrids (partly powered by fossil fuels), of which 4% were plug-in hybrid EVs, emissions from which can be up to 12 times higher than reported."

With their actions, the organisations also called out the companies' aggressive lobbying against climate policy. They pointed to the fact that, last year, Toyota was ranked the 10th worst company in the world by InfluenceMap for their anti-climate lobbying, the worst ranking for any car manufacturer. (BMW was ranked 16th worst overall.)

"While Toyota improved its climate policy engagement transparency over the past year, it continues to oppose policies designed to phase out the internal combustion engine," the report noted.

Merriman also noted that, while Toyota was pushing its 'Beyond Zero' sustainability adverts, it was also lobbying governments around the world to weaken air quality plans and threatening legal action to protect their profits: "Their adverts are duplicitous."

More robust policies needed

With these actions, the activists are aiming to secure more robust policies from governments to regulate the advertisement of environmentally harmful products — including an "immediate end" to advertising for the most polluting vehicles, especially SUVs — and to prevent misleading claims from big polluters regarding their environmental impact.

The activist groups noted that there is "growing international momentum" for introducing tobacco-style advertising bans on such products.

Campaigners from Adfree Cities (UK), Badvertising (UK), Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (France), Climáximo (Portugal), Greenpeace International and 35 other organisations have also called for this type of legislation.

Belgium has adopted an “official” app so that anyone can signal for help, so long as they belong to this exclusive group:

• Must have a smartphone (presumably recent).

• Must be a trusting patron of Google or Apple.

  • Consequently, must also have a mobile phone number and the will to trust surveillance advertisers with it (even though the app can make emergency contact without phone service).

• Must install and execute proprietary closed-source software (thus must trust closed software and be ethically aligned with it).

• Must be willing to leave Tor to access the 112.be website.

For privacy, my mailbox and buzzer does not list names. Thus bPost has no way of knowing who lives in the house. So it’s fair enough that they simply deliver everything that matches the address.

I still get mail from someone who has not lived in the house for ~10 years. I also get mail from recently departed residents.

What is my legal obligation? And apart from legal obligation, what is the normal practice?

This is what I have been doing:

① × through the name & address ② write “retourner à l’expéditeur” on the envelope ③ circle the return address ④ drop it in a red bPost box

I read that in some countries it’s illegal to write on envelopes on the off chance that ink bleeds through or a hard strike of a ball point pen damages the document inside (which could be a birth certificate). What’s the expectation in Belgium?

One utility company is relentless with repeatedly sending mail to a past resident. I’ve returned ~20 or so envelopes and they are not getting message.

In one uncommon case, an envelope arrived for a past resident with no return address. What happens with that?

Every 4 years the Commission is willing to hear from individuals as to whether the GDPR is working. If you’re an individual, you likely got no justice from the Belgian DPA. Now you can report the DPA.

That link goes to a PDF which contains a link to another PDF which is a questionaire that can be emailed to the Commission. The email address they give is not on a Google or MS server, thus apparently usable.

Note that the questionaire mentions a deadline of 18 November 2023, but that was for feedback from select groups. The deadline for the general public is 8 Feb.

The tap water in Brussels is at the high end of the hardness scale which shortens the life of Brita filters. The water also seems dicey in terms of cleanliness. On a couple occasions I’ve seen something floating in the tap water in two different apartments. So I switched to bottled water.

It’s half-tempting to switch to Brita filtered tap but hard to say if the price is justified.

One Brita filter is ~€9. That would normally be good for 120 liters of water at low or avg hardness. But what if the water is very hard.. how much does that change the replacement calculus? If I figure the filter life is ½, then we’re paying €18 to filter 120 liters not counting the city water cost.

Cheap bottled water is €1.20/5 liters. So 120 liters is €28.80. Thus AFAICT bottled water is ~60% pricier than filtered. Seems worth it considering that horror story where someone found cockroach eggs in their Brita filter (not sure where that was, and some would praise the filter for doing its job.. but still..)

Since September, COVID vaccinations in Brussels have become exclusive. That is, by appointment only -- and they only attempt to give two ways to make an appointment:

• telephone
• web

The website does not even load for me. ~~Perhaps hostility toward my browser or network (tor)~~ (it’s broken outside tor too). Telephone is only good for people who maintain credit for outbound calls. I suppose it’s a small group of people being marginalized by this limitation but still a bit off that they don’t take walk-ins for public safety. UPDATE: the COVID hotline is actually closed down now!

Also disturbing that the website does not simply list the addresses where the vaccinations happen. You are forced to use their interactive map which is broken at least for some people. Probably useless for blind people.

Note that I’ve heard the efficacy of the COVID vaccine falls off after ~6 months and if you are much beyond that then it’s almost like you’re unvaccinated.

Code Red, who previously protested Engie, now has a #PeopleNotFlights movement to oppose the state’s subsidization of the aviation industry.

“ClientEarth alleges that the Belgian National Bank's participation in the CSPP, by not taking into account climate, environment, and human rights impacts, violated Article 11 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and Article 37 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (both concern the obligation to integrate environmental protection into EU policies).”

^ wow. Really disturbing that a national bank has such controversial investments. When a commercial bank invests in fossil fuels, we can boycott. But you can’t boycott a national bank.

People living in Belgium are sometimes legally obligated to perform an administrative task. At the same time, sometimes the only mechanism to do so imposes some technology that’s actually exclusive.

E.g. you cannot register/deregister from a commune because your browser is not compatible with the website.

So the question is: have there been any court cases where someone did not comply with an obligation because there is no longer an analog way to do it? Are there any protections in place?