[robowombat]

The end-result, as Mr. Belien documents in a depressing final chapter, is the most corrupt, highly taxed, economically inefficient, and constitutionally undemocratic country in Europe. The economic statistics are bad enough. Belgium has the highest percentage of social beneficiaries in the world -- more people live on social benefits than work for a living. But the scandals are worse. Leading Belgian politicians, mostly in the socialist party, have been slapped lightly on the wrist after pleading guilty to serious charges of corruption. Yet while indulging establishment politicians caught committing serious crimes, the courts have outlawed the largest political party in Flanders on spurious charges but in reality because, as everyone knows, it threatens the oligopolistic control of government by the Belgicist establishment.

[Sam the Sham]

He left out the Marc Dutroux scandal.

[sarasmom]

As a fan of Douglas Adams, I have always been slightly curious as to why he choose "Belgium" as the entire known universe's most profane and insulting "four letter word" ever devised and rarely uttered.

[Ninian Dryhope]

I liked Antwerp. Beautiful little city.

[Verginius Rufus]

I've also read speculation that Queen Victoria was not the daughter of her legal father...that would help explain why the hemophilia gene shows up in some of her descendants.

Belgium is approximately the area that had been known before the wars of the French Revolution as the Austrian Netherlands, earlier as the Spanish Netherlands--those parts of the Netherlands which had remained under Spanish rule when the northern provinces gained independence. If the Spanish had been less or more successful in the 16th century, there wouldn't be two countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) occupying that space today.