Quote Originally Posted by King Henry V
What is the stance of Flemish people on independence? A friend of mine who's Flemish says that 80% of people are for independence.
Only a minority truly wants independence, most people just don't care too much.

The whole issue of independence is played out by politicians and laced with false promises and unrealistic scenarios. I've said it before, Belgians are very isolationistic, we tend to be focused on ourselves and our immediate environment and not all that aware of what happens 50 miles away.
So the politicians have sold us on the whole independence thing. It's not surprising that the biggest support for this is found in the part of the country furthest away from the language border (support for Vlaams belang is mostly due to immigration issues, they're a bad gauge for support of independence).

The reason most people want independence is simple: taxes. They believe we'll be better off. Sure they can whine about the language conflict and other things, but the real issue is simply: taxes. There is no desire to found the Glorious nation of Flanders, people just want to pay less taxes.

Of course, because gaining independence is a gradual process here, at least according to the politicians, what this really means is that we get more electable positions each year, which means we pay more to the politicians. We are a country of 10 or so million people and have four governments (Federal, Brussels, Flanders and Wallony), which we all have to pay. I'm not sure how the language regions are represented these days, but rest assured that we have at least 4 parliaments too. Yep, they all get payed. all this for a country you can cross by bike in a single day if you put some effort into it.

The independence thing is a scam, and the Flemish are falling for it by the millions.