2023-10-19 06:41:00
Thomas Dermine, Secretary of State for Recovery, was the guest of Bel RTL matin. At the microphone of Martin Buxant, he presented his book, “Wallonia – Flanders, beyond the clichés” and explained why he wanted to write it.
The starting point for writing this book is frustration, rage, anger when we make fun of the Walloons and the Carolos. “It’s really something very deep which dictates
writing this book. I did part of my schooling in Flanders where I was called the ‘luie Waal’ all year round, meaning the lazy Walloon, even though I was not in the worst in the class, far from it. And so indeed, I think that there is an air in Flanders where the Walloons are victims of jokes, of clichés”denounces Thomas Dermine.
The Secretary of State continues: “And this goes all the way to the benches of Parliament. There is a series of clichés that live on. And what made me decide to write this book was a late evening in Parliament, where I was on duty, so the only member of the government, a deputy from Vlaams Belang, launches into a diatribe: the Walloons are junkies, you are lazy,… There, I said to myself: we must re-establish the truth: yes, there are transfers in Belgium but they are not higher than in any other country. On certain social security schemes, it is the young people of Brussels and the young Walloons who pay for the Flemings and above all these transfers become smaller and smaller each year. What is interesting is that even among the Walloons, we are hammered with these clichés so much by Flanders, that we end up integrating them ourselves.
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