Today's mass-circulation De Telegraaf shocks us with a front-page report on trade union condemnation of Deputy Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Wouter Bos. In a letter to all Labour MPs, 28 leaders of the Dutch trade union federation lambast Mr Bos, calling him "the biggest stain on the credibility of Labour".

His crime is his support for (and joint authorship of) government plans to raise the pensionable age from 65 to 67. The letter accuses Labour under Mr Bos of turning its back on its own grassroots supporters and concludes "in doing so, the party has lost its right to exist".

The union leaders point out that, when he was opposition leader in 2004, Mr Bos walked shoulder to shoulder with union protesters demanding an end to government plans to scrap early retirement rights for Dutch workers. They say his present U-turn means he has lost all credibility with ordinary people.

"In 2004 there was no crisis and now there is. We have to ask everyone to make sacrifices and that's why a balanced raft of measures has been put forward," Mr Bos is quoted as saying in his defence.

The unions are having none of it: "Labour has somehow totally lost sight of standing up for the social rights of the people working the assembly lines, conveyor belts and cranes," fumes one union boss.

No Dutch Pravda-like press
Mr Bos may be disinclined to agree with the conclusions of a book covered in de Volkskrant today on the relationship between the press and politicians. A professor of political theory and his partner, an actress and former director of the Amsterdam City Theatre, trailed The Hague's political performers, both press and MPs, for one year and have now published their findings.

Their main conclusion is that, although politicians often complain about being pursued by a scrum of journalists, they really don't have so much to gripe about. "We, as outsiders, took a fresh, possibly also a little naïve, look and found the press not really so bad," they write.

The professor praises "a collective process of finding out the truth, whereby the truth can come out via many channels, and news reports, in the swarm of journalists, officials and politicians, are immediately tested for accuracy". The Theatre director adds: ""I've lived in a country where the politicians got the press they want: East Germany. That leads to Pravda-like papers".

Working women trapped in poverty
The Protestant daily Trouw covers the plight of the 128,000 young women, many of them single mothers, who live on low wages. A Council of Churches working group says, despite their own best efforts, such women find it difficult to escape the cycle of poverty.

The group looked at women aged 20 to 40. "There's a lot of attention focused on teenage mothers but little is known about this group," says a researcher. The women in question consider economic independence important and 54 percent of them are the breadwinners in their families. This puts them among the growing number of people in the Netherlands who have low-paid jobs and struggle with poverty.

Unmarried motherhood, health issues, poor parents, an immigrant background and missed chances tend to be the underlying causes of their problems. Circumstances have forced many to drop out of education which could have led to better work.

The working group is pushing for wider training opportunities, including study grants for people over 30, to enable the women to escape poverty. It says they shouldn't just be made to take the first job which comes along. "After all," says the researcher," as mothers, young women are role models for their children."

Dutch hold Somali terrorist suspect
Nrc.next reports that a Somali asylum seeker from a centre in Dronten has been arrested on suspicion of terrorism. The 43-year-old came to the Netherlands in 2008 and is wanted by the United States which has requested his extradition.

He is accused in the US of paying for weapons for the "international jihad" and of arranging for people to travel to Somali training camps run by the militant al-Shabaab group.

De Volkskrant says that the Dutch-Somali community has for some time been worried by the stories of al-Shabaab fighters which are doing the rounds amongst its young men. Parents fear their children are being recruited in the Netherlands or via the internet for the fighting in Somalia. The paper points out that, at the end of July, four Dutch youths were picked up by Kenyan police. It was thought they were attempting to enter Somalia and join al-Shabaab.

Sinterklaas tightens purse strings
Finally, AD turns our attention to a national holiday in December. No, it's not Christmas, but the traditionally Dutch feast of Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) which takes place on 5 December. "The Dutch stay true to the Saint" reads its front-page headline. The Sinterklaas celebrations are seen as less commercial than Christmas and the paper says in these hard times people find "family traditions important".

Despite his origins as a Turkish bishop, the saint has, over the years, developed many Dutch characteristics. In these times of economic crisis, it appears he is putting one such characteristic, thriftiness, to good use. AD tells us the presents he will be selecting from the Dutch stores this year will not be as expensive as in 2008. Retailers are bracing themselves for a reduction in turnover compared to last year.