What I learned from doing my essays

So, now my essays are done and I can relax for a few days before polishing the essays and going all out on my dissertation.

Some of the things I learned from doing these essays:

• The Netherlands are really very much over-regulated, so much so that any amount of information available on things for which the government is responsible is completely overwhelming - but not necessarily very helpful. I think they're trying to create opacity through transparency. That said, really crucial information still needs to be WOBbed (Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur, or the Law on Transparent Governance) and won't be released easily.
• I really don't like the system of amendments to British laws. It's incredibly opaque. 
• The different legal approaches of the Netherlands and Britain make for legal constructions that are surprisingly similar despite being based on completely different legal ideologies.
• Britain is safety before privacy, the Netherlands vice versa - for now.
• I really enjoy doing comparative legal research.
• The Media are evil.
• People don't care about what's real, only about what fits with their own idea of reality. 
• The Media pander.
• The Media have always been evil. There has never been such a thing as "oh my, the media sure weren't that bad-news-oriented when I was a kid" - they were, it's just the same state of mind as the one that goes "today's youth sure weren't as badly behaved in my time!" that makes you think differently.
• I really enjoy doing media-sociological research.
• Effective policing is really difficult. 
• Transnational crime hinges on market forces, not on transnational policing efforts.
• Europol has a really annoying website.
• Europol's annual OCTA reports are very clear, but not very helpful.
• Europol's publications reflect the country that Europol is located in - the Netherlands.
• Europol's publications are mainly pro-Europol propaganda.
• Europol is really pessimistic with regards to the future of transnational crime in Europe.
• I should never toss out old papers, and also not any of the paragraphs I take out of papers to diminish the word count.
• In order to actually effectively approach transnational crime, law enforcement in Europe needs to be harmonized to a degree that would make even the most pro-European party cry about loss of sovereignty. 

So that's some of the stuff I learned from doing these essays. Fascinating stuff, really.