Let’s face it, news usually means bad news - and the front pages of nearly all today’s Dutch papers are full of just that: bad news. 

The unhappy tidings tell of how we are balancing on the rim of a – potentially - deep valley to how a poor Orange got squashed, and from how we’re facing an awfully frightening freeze to how vulnerable citizens face abandonment by their ‘betters’.

Valley of economic woes
Starting with that rim on which we balance, Trouw opens with a bar graph showing the  Netherlands’ Gross Domestic Product every quarter since the end of 2009 (all ‘nice’ blue upward bars, until the 3rd quarter of 2011, which has a ‘bad’ red downward one) and under that the headline “Recovery nipped in the bud”.

Today’s de Volkskrant also has charts and graphs on its cover and its headline is “Consumption falls, recession looms”. The paper goes on to explain: “The Dutch economy shrank in the 3rd quarter, the only one of the five largest Eurozone economies to do so. A combination of government cuts and falling consumption caused the economy to shrink by 0.3 percent compared to the preceding quarter... “The paper also gives us a perhaps surprising – or not? –comparison: the economy of the troubled Eurozone actually grew by 0.2 percent as a whole in the same period, mainly thanks to Germany and France it seems. 

Yes, while the Netherlands had seemed to be faring relatively well since it emerged from the previous recession, things are now not going so well. Inside de Volkskrant, however, a Rotterdam businessman tries to put everything into a certain perspective: “We’re so well off that the economy can stand a couple of quarters of shrinkage. Is it really so bad to have just two television sets instead of three?” 

Orange squash(ed)
If you follow your – international – soccer, then you may well have guessed what the large and mainly orange-coloured photo on the front of today’s De Telegraaf is about. Yes, last night Holland lost a ‘friendly’ match (such an odd word I think – the Dutch use the much better term ‘practice’ or ‘exercise’ game) against archrivals Germany, going down 3-0 in front of a German home crowd in Hamburg.

Thankfully, I guess, this was NOT a qualifier forthe Euro 2012 competition next year – the Dutch are safely through to that. Yet, it was still pretty dreadful, it seems. De Telegraaf headlines its report “No chance .... Germany leave Oranje looking foolish”.  The paper describes this as a ‘rare humiliation’ for the Dutch squad. Today’s AD also gives it a front-page photo and follows with a short description of what it calls a “painful punishment for the Dutch eleven.”

Inside de Volkskrant the criticism of the guys in orange is clear and oh-so-very razor sharp: “Zero passion, zero quality, zero discipline: the Netherlands made a complete cock-up of the whole thing against Germany. Germany was a harmonious orchestra, the Netherlands a drunken brass band.”

I know close to zero about football, so I wonder if those who saw the match - and are capable of being objective about such things - would agree with de Volkskrant’s commentator Willem Vissers. One thing I think they would agree on: he doesn’t mince his words!

For fear of freezing
Just under its football photo AD tells us with a certain degree of relish “Netherlands ready for ‘horror’ winter“. Yet another in a long list of reports about the oncoming 2011/2012 winter in western Europe being set to be a ‘super chiller’ of enormous proportions. A winter which will bring some kind of mini ice age lasting weeks if not months.

AD reports that the Dutch are getting ready en masse by buying everything they can lay their hands on that may afford some protection against the ice and snow. It almost rather makes you wonder how consumption can be so low (see first section above) if everyone really is buying “snow boots, ice scrapers (heated and unheated), ice blankets, boots [...] and winter car tyres,” etc.

On its inside pages AD explains that this rush to prepare has – understandably – been prompted by the unpreparedness of many for last year’s surprisingly colder-than-normal winter. But the reaction of the particular family featured in the article is more radical than most. Last year the roads in their part of the country were left almost impassable due to snow and ice. With no winter tyres for their car the Kroek family were forced to keep their children home from school for a number of days. On the days when they could drive, the journey to school sometimes took one and half hours (they were travelling from one town to another to get to that school).

AD goes on, however, to relate how “the surprise effect of last winter” actually made the family decide to move. This means that, as mother Inge Kroek explains, “our sons no longer need to miss a single day of school” ... and that’s whatever the weather may bring, for the Kroeks have also bought just about  everything one might possibly need to survive a ‘Siberian’ winter.

Do it yourself, citizens!
I suppose the winter tale in AD isn’t really bad news, though the bad weather could be if it comes to pass, but the main story in de Telegraaf takes us right back to where we started. “Government won’t provide crisis relief” is the headline. “Citizens will have to get through the crisis on their own,” the article states, “Don’t expect any extra support from the authorities.”

This, the paper says, is the cabinet’s reaction to the aforesaid 0.3 percent decline in economic growth.  Economy Minister Maxime Verhagen reportedly believes that Germany and France are doing better because people there have had larger pay increases in recent years and are therefore spending more.  Although this keeps their economies growing, he says it wouldn’t be good to copy them, “because then you price yourself out of the market”.

Meanwhile, with “state coffers empty”, according to de Telegraaf, the government will not do anything to cushion the latest blows. Mr Verhagen says the stalling economy needs to be stimulated by business and industry and that because this country relies very much on the economies of others, “We benefit when it goes well in other countries, but we also feel it when other economies develop less well”.

In light of this statement and with Germany being the Netherlands main trading partner by far, how come that country has 0.5 percent growth while the Netherlands has a ‘shrink’ of 0.3? There must be a simple answer...