h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To me personally it is a fortune that is not exploited enough by some of my fellow Belgians. I am happy to have good friends in both communities (sorry for the German community that I will ignore for the sake of simplicity, but may they be assured that I regularly tune in to the Belgischer Rundfunk, especially at carnival time) This is the result of my endeavours to learn to speak flemish correctly by consequently seeking out flemish groups. Even though the public opinion in the french speaking part tends to depict them as being very closed to french speaking people, I have never experienced this but on the contrary have been helped along and received with open arms. I can only hope that a flemish speaking person would be as well received when doing the reverse. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn one more, so everyone should try and make utmost profit of the Belgian situation and learn all the national languages correctly, be it only to learn new languages more easily.
It is a pity that politicians on both sides use (and create, entertain and amplify) tensions resulting from different mentalities and economic situations to impress the electors. The media help them along in this path by blazing out with "them bad guy, we good guys" stories whenever one of them talks his head off about language matters. The surest way in Belgian politics to slow down anything and get maximum coverage for the topic is to make it a language issue.
Because of course there are differences: the Flanders are economically thriving, having low unemployement, while the Wallonie is faced with an old economy (closed down coal mines and therefore steel manufacturing also closing down because it is not economic any more to bring in the coal and ore with max 1350tons ships through canals of about 50-100km). On the other side, Flanders will be faced shortly (well in about 10-20 years) with an ageing/diminshing population while the birth rate in Wallonie is still quite high, helping the Belgian demographic structure to try and stay young. It is my belief that both regions need each other and that we have to get rid of people making anuisance of themselves by trying to pour sand in the federal state and trying to make Belgium break open. Our new government is a light of hope because I have had the impression over nearly one year now that they try to approach problems with a broader vision than those language troubles.

That's completely true...