Today’s Dutch dailies ponder the downfall of another Dutch bank, steel themselves for a wave of anti-deportation violence, reassure us about the trigger-happy tendencies of the Amsterdam police and issue a warning to mothers-to-be.

While yesterday’s papers reported that the future of the troubled DSB bank was hanging by a thread, one glance at any of today’s front pages is enough to tell you that the thread has well and truly snapped. “DSB Bank collapses” is the headline in AD. “Run on bank fatal for DSB” is de Volkskrant’s take on events, while NRC Handelsblad comments that “in the space of two weeks, DSB went from a healthy but controversial bank to one that has been given up for dead … the whirlpool it found itself in resulted in money flowing out and confidence ebbing away”. The paper goes on to explain that the bank isn’t bankrupt but can no longer meet its payments and will now be dismantled.

Does this latest financial drama represent a body blow to the financial sector in the Netherlands? NRC Handelsblad quotes Finance Minister Wouter Bos who insists that the bank’s demise is not a result of the financial crisis. “This is an individual, relatively small bank which got into trouble by itself as a result of its business operations, concerns among customers, unclear communication and the resulting uncertainty.”

DSB Bank: What do the papers think?
So what do the papers make of this sorry state of affairs? De Volkskrant reckons “there are only losers” in the current situation. While the biggest loser is the DSB Bank’s founder Dirk Scheringa, the paper muses that the greatest loss could well be to society at large: “confidence in the banking system has once again fallen and the risk of this happening again has increased now that savers have realised that they can issue a vote of no confidence in a bank with just a few clicks of the mouse.”

De Telegraaf reckons that the bank’s downfall was inevitable but nevertheless asks “how is it possible, when questions have been asked about DSB’s business practices for a very long time, that the watchdogs did not intervene until this weekend? … Everyone involved in DSB’s downfall should be held accountable for the part they played, especially since many of them remain active in all kinds of positions in the financial world.” Trouw agrees that “restoring trust in the banking sector is now the highest priority.”

Dutch gear up for anti-asylum policy extremism
Several of today’s papers pick up on a warning issued by the Dutch intelligence service AIVD that protestors against the government’s policy on asylum seekers are adopting more violent tactics, similar to those seen in the animal rights movement in recent years. De Telegraaf takes up the news with the greatest enthusiasm, announcing that “Terror hits people involved in the deportation of illegal immigrants”. The paper warns “Our country is now home to a new group of radicals who do not shrink from violence and attacks.”

De Telegraaf could be accused of laying on the drama a bit thick with its talk of “small extremist cells operating in the dead of night” but their take on the matter is backed up to a considerable extent by Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst, who describes this latest development as “intimidation which deeply affects the lives of the victims and society as a whole.” Some activists also like their purple prose, one promises that “a ribbon of fire is on its way to consume seats of government, government buildings … walls and closed doors, acting like explosive between locks and hinges”. So far the only thing to have gone up in flames is a builder’s hut at a site where a new detention centre is to be built, but the minister has promised “firm action”.

Home births: telling the true story
Trouw focuses on a recent medical article calling for women to be better informed about giving birth at home. The paper reveals that the Netherlands is unique in the Western world when it comes to home births: 30% of Dutch mothers give birth at home compared to 3% in the UK and only 0.5% in the US. In the 1970s, that figure was a massive 70% but has fallen considerably in recent years, partly due to the fact that women now tend to be older when they have their first child, thereby increasing the chance of complications.

Trouw notes that home birth is a topic fraught with emotion and that the majority of women decide on a home or hospital birth based on the advice of friends and their mother rather than cold hard facts. Research shows that almost half of women who start off giving birth at home end up being taken to hospital during labour, due to problems or as a precaution. And that can often have a very negative impact on them. In order to address this issue, one of the midwives involved in the research is planning to organise information evenings for expectant mothers to remove any mistaken ideas and tell them what to expect if they do end up giving birth in hospital.

Police shootings: a rare occurrence
In the wake of a number of high-profile incidents in which the Dutch police have been accused of being a little trigger happy, De Telegraaf issues some reassuring statistics: “On average a policeman in Amsterdam draws his gun just once in his entire career and the chance that he actually fires a shot is many times smaller.” The latest figures released by police in the Amsterdam region reveal that the police drew their weapons a total of 87 times last year and actually pulled the trigger only four times.

A spokesman for the police union tells De Telegraaf “This proves that we are doing our work effectively and that we are well trained to only use our guns in exceptional circumstances.” It remains to be seen whether the figures will help counterbalance the angry responses that police shootings can spark, such as those that followed last weekend’s incident in Amsterdam, during which a policeman shot an armed man in the leg. The police have now included films on their website to inform the public about their work, one of which features police officers talking about their experiences of using firearms.