Trouble with foreigners in today’s papers. Firstly, the French. There’s outrage as a French TV car shoves a Dutch Tour rider off the road. And worries that Air France might finally be about to swallow Dutch airline KLM whole. As angry shopkeepers ban young Moroccan customers, researchers claim all that moaning about immigrants is based on myth. Meanwhile, the humble potato is set to conquer new territory thanks to a scientific breakthrough.

Outrage at Dutch Tour rider’s crash
The lacerated buttocks of Dutch Tour de France cyclist Johnny Hoogerlander dominates this morning’s front pages. Photos show him hooked by his shorts on a barbed wire fence. AD has diagrams and video frames to explain exactly how a speeding French TV car swerved to dodge a tree and sent riders in the leading group flying.

The papers are seething with indignation at our boy’s undignified and painful upset. “The awful thing is that French TV is the Tour’s main sponsor. These people make their own laws,” Dutch International Cycling Union boss Martin Bruin tells AD.

“It’s a scandal,” Tour chief Christian Prudhomme agrees. “The riders should state collectively that the limit has been reached,” comments the paper’s sports editor. But sadly, he concludes, they’re all too preoccupied with their own interests, and we’re not likely to see a riders’ uprising against media recklessness any time soon. More

Mass immigration: a myth
“There’s mass immigration. The multi-cultural society has failed. And the left is to blame for it all.” nrc.next sets out what has become a mainstream Dutch view of immigration. But none of it is true if you look at the facts, say two prominent migration researchers, the brothers Leo and Jan Lucassen. nrc.next devotes a double-page spread to their findings.

Firstly, going by the figures, there’s no mass immigration, the brothers say – just 3,900 newcomers a year coming from countries seen as “problematic”. Secondly, immigrants in the Netherlands are actually doing pretty well. And finally, it was actually the centre-right parties that first brought in Turkish and Moroccan labour in the 1960s and 1970s. In those days, the leftwing Labour Party objected to foreigners coming in and taking Dutch jobs.

The Lucassen brothers call for “more facts, more pragmatism and, above all, less emotion in the debate,” says nrc.next. “Politicians have constructed their own reality” on the integration debate, the paper sums up. What’s more, “The constant moaning about foreigners is starting to harm the Netherlands internationally.”

Jeweller bans young immigrants
De Telegraaf has a story that highlights the thornier side of the integration debate. “Shop bans immigrants,” runs the headline. A jeweller in the southern city of Nijmegen has banned young immigrant customers after it was robbed eight times. All the robbers were either Moroccan or Antillean, the shopowner says.

The local equal opportunities commission has received a complaint. “If need be, I’ll explain the story to the judge,” says the jeweller’s wife. “Sixteen-year-old Moroccans have no reason to come here,” she says. “They can’t buy anything. Why should I cause myself trouble by letting them in?”

The jeweller says he’s turned to anti-immigrant Freedom Party MP Hero Brinkman for support. After all, this ex-policeman is hardly known for a softly-softly attitude towards young Moroccan troublemakers. But even he says the shop is going too far. He can understand why the shopkeepers are fed up, he tells De Telegraaf, but a ban isn’t the answer. His solution? “Tougher sentences.”

Dutch airline to be eaten up by French
De Telegraaf is fretting about another problem with foreigners in its lead story. “KLM looks like it will be swallowed up by the French,” the paper warns. At the moment, the former Dutch airline is still a more or less independent company within the Air France-KLM alliance. But in 2013, Alitalia will also be joining the club. And after the reorganisation, KLM’s general manager will have to report to a French boss.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is suspicious of the move and concerned about the loss of a Dutch influence, says De Telegraaf. But Air France-KLM says there’s nothing to worry about. It’s still “one group, two airlines,” says a spokesperson.

Better spuds
Scientists from Wageningen University have got themselves plenty of coverage this morning. One group has worked out that an average of two insects splatter dead on a car licence plate every ten kilometres, de Volkskrant, AD and De Telegraaf report. More

Meanwhile, other Wageningen researchers have come up with a more practical discovery, as we learn in de Volkskrant. They’ve unravelled the genome of the most important Dutch culinary ingredient: the potato.

There are twice the number of genes in the potato genome than the human one, Trouw reports. “This doesn’t mean the potato is more complex than human beings,” the paper points out, in case you were concerned. A lot of the genes are probably copies.

The research will make for “quicker and better spuds”, says de Volkskrant. The hope is that the genome map will help scientists produce varieties with more nutritional value and more resistance to pests, disease and drought. If so, Dutch-bred spuds will be able to conquer new regions of the world.

(mb/kh)