No one single issue dominates the papers this Monday morning, they serve up a smorgasbord of news but none of the items on offer are particularly tasty. Perhaps the papers are suffering from winter blues.

Miracle in Brussels
Several papers cover the miraculous news from our neighbours to the south: Belgium finally has a new government after more than 500 days of negotiations. "Finally, a coalition agreement in Belgium," sighs de Volkskrant on its front page. The paper writes: "Socialist Party leader Elio Di Rupo has finally managed to cobble together a government after forcing an agreement on the €11.3 billion-worth of cuts that Brussels must make to its 2012 budget."

It’s the first time in 40 years that Belgium will have a French-speaking prime minister and Trouw advises Mr Di Rupo to take a ‘language bath’ in the Netherlands to improve his Dutch. De Volkskrant also comments on Mr Di Rupo’s language skills: “his weakest point is his poor Dutch," writes the paper, adding "He has been trying to learn it but due to an automobile accident and an airbag, he is partially deaf. His ‘airbag Dutch' won't make it easier for the first French-speaking prime minister since 1974 to win the trust of the Flemish community."

Nightmare in Mali
Several papers cover Friday's kidnapping of a Dutch man in Mali: "Dream holiday for Sjaak and Til turns into a nightmare," headlines AD. The paper reports that the couple ignored "serious and repeated warnings and followed a route that the foreign ministry had designated as dangerous because it has an increased threat of kidnapping." AD also says the couple ignored advice from local police officers. According to AD, Tilly's journal entry reads, “I think the warnings are a load of rubbish."

"Dutch train driver snatched in Mali, African holiday extremely dangerous," squeals De Telegraaf on its front page. According to the paper, a gang of heavily-armed men attempted to snatch a group of tourists sitting outside a restaurant in Timbuktu on Friday afternoon. A German man was "shot in cold blood" when he resisted. Forty-five-year-old Tilly managed to get away but her 51-year-old partner Sjaak was grabbed by the gunmen and hasn't been heard from since.

The Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on the case and police in Timbuktu say the kidnappers haven't made any demands and there are no negotiations at present.

VVD pats itself on the back
The governing VVD party held its autumn conference this past weekend and it was a cosy little gathering, says de Volkskrant, except for the chair of the youth wing who "refused to play along and play nicely." The paper said the gathering of Dutch liberals was supposed to be "pleasant and amicable" but the meeting was hijacked by JOVD chair Martijn Jonk, who told party leaders that VVD councillors and MPs must improve their behaviour as there are far too many questionable affairs involving representatives of the governing party.

Mr Jonk told the gathering, which included the prime minister and various members of the cabinet, "everyone who has stuffed themselves with goodies from the state banquet and those who have enriched themselves through their position in the party or government deserve to be tarred and feathered and thrown out."

AD writes that around 1,500 party members gave 'their' prime minister a standing ovation on Saturday and congratulated themselves on the party's unity after years of internal division and the excellent ratings in the opinion polls. However, not everybody is satisfied with being self-satisfied.

AD reports that VVD member Berend Stolk told the congress that, although it was wonderful that the party had delivered a prime minister for the first time in its history, the party has to act. "At the moment, we're behaving like a well-fed cat, lying in the sun, purring away without a care in the world. But a party isn't a good time club and if we want to win the next election we have to stop being afraid of debate and disagreement."

Metropole number one
For the first time in its existence, the Metropole Orchestra is sitting at the top of the hit parade, but the orchestra itself isn't sitting pretty: the Rutte government has completely cut the orchestra's subsidy. De Volkskrant writes, "almost every band and artist that has worked with the orchestra has had a top 10 hit and now it's the Metropole's turn: the protest song Worldwide Orchestra shot to number one on the Mega Top 100 on Friday."

The orchestra hopes the song will challenge the cabinet to "rethink the way in which the subsidy cuts have been applied to the Metropole Orchestra."

The Metropole Orchestra is world-famous and has played and recorded with many of the greats in pop and jazz including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Antony and the Johnsons, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick and Shirley Bassey.

Word of 2011
We're coming up towards the end of the year and it seems as though every organisation is choosing an event, person or word of the year. This past weekend it was the turn of the Onze Taal (Our Language) society to choose its word of the year - weigerambtenaar. Unfortunately that's three words in English - refusenik civil servant!

The word refers to civil servants who refuse to perform marriages for same-sex couples. AD reports that the 1400 people attending the society's annual conference chose refusenik civil servant as the word of 2011 in preference to Arab Spring and pee-bag.

Over the last two weeks, language lovers suggested and voted on the funniest or most representative word of the year on the society's website. Some of the other words that were in contention included casino pensions, app, occupy and company poodle. The least popular word was euro crisis; that's hardly surprising and I'm fairly sure it's not very popular with most other people in the European Union either.