u/Quiet_Illustrator410

I was doing my morning media briefing today and I found a very positive news on Brussels Times (here) about how "Flanders reintegrated over 10,000 long-term sick into labor market". For a region of just 6.5 million people, this is not a small number - so surely worth appreciating.

However, what left me speechless for quite a while is reading the next paragraph, namely that "Belgium is estimated to have 585,000 people who have been unable to work for over twelve months due to illness".

I actually thought for a second that there was a typo, and it is actually 58.500 but nope - more than 5% of the entire Belgian population, and almost 10% of working age population (20-60 years old) is long-term sick. Not one in 100, not even one in 20 - almost 1 in 10 working age people in Belgium are long-term sick.

To me, this number is striking - as someone coming from Eastern Europe (now fully Belgian citizen) with background in statistics, I know data for the country I was born in is more than twice lower.

Does anyone know why it is so common? Is there some form of systemic abuse, where it is simply very easy to grant long-term sick leave? Is there little to no control of it? I really could not find any reliable explanation, other than Belgium has very generous policy regarding sick leaves. Furthermore, Belgium actually has very "normal" data regarding regular sick leaves of couple of days (see). So it seems majority of workers actually do not use much of sick leaves - but there is also a sizeable minority that use them to an extreme extent.

I am really curious what is the cause - loopholes in the system? Cultural? Are there maybe specific regional differences regarding over-representation of long-term sick?

I am looking into (finally!) ditching an iPhone and moving to a European phone. I would like to move to Google-free Android (not convinced yet about using Linux on a phone). So far, I identified two potential candidates:

1. Volla Phone Plinius Plus
2. Fairphone 6 (or 7 soon)

Volla does look like having better specs on paper (e.g. "triple rear camera with up to 64 megapixels and a front camera with up to 32 megapixels"), but it uses Volla OS, which seems to be some fork of lineage OS, wherease Fairphone uses the more established eOS.

Do you think it would be possible to install eOS on Volla? Or just safer to go with Fairphone, as it is more popular? I have to admit that I really like the fact that Volla Phone is (partially) made in Germany, plus its specs seems simply better.

Thanks for advice and other recommendations - I might have missed some other phones. For me, the priority is really longevity (so RAM, CPU) and camera (both front and back).

O really like the Ortlieb Commuter Backpack for cyclists, as it seems very durable, waterproof and overall solid. However, it has to me one fatal flaw - it has no outside bottle pocket or holder. For me, keeping bottle inside the bag next to my laptop, potentially moving or tilting downwards, is just too much of a risk.

So I wanted to ask - is there a solution for this bag to accommodate holder for water bottle? Are there any similar backpacks (simple, solid, waterproof) but with a bottler holder? Thanks for tips and suggestion!