Police clash with hooligans in the popular dailies, and unions clash with each other in the serious ones. The government is in hot water, but the opposition leader has nothing to crow about. A burqa has become a pricey garment to wear in the Netherlands. And Amsterdam cyclists moan about tourists on two wheels.

Police draw pistols in hooligan showdown
The blurry front-page pictures in the popular dailies show a line of tense police, pistols drawn, ready to fire, like a scene from a cop thriller. It was a standoff between Rotterdam police and fans of local football team Feyenoord. The hooligans were trying to storm the team’s offices close to the stadium. And the situation got so dodgy the police inside the building drew their weapons to hold the crowd at bay. One sympathetic bystander approvingly egged the police on to “shoot ‘em up”, the mass-circulation De Telegraaf reports.

Apparently the supporters are fed up with the team’s board. “Total intimidation is the tactic of a minority to make the last board members step down,” De Telegraaf explains.

“The police are sick of the hooligans,” runs AD’s headline. “The public are crying out for action,” adds De Telegraaf. It’s a fine opportunity for indignant editorials from the two papers. Last year a new Football Act was passed and it’s about time the new powers were used to slap stadium bans on hooligans, says AD. “They’re spoiling the fun of millions of Dutch people who enjoy football,” De Telegraaf chimes in. “This serious criminality should be driven out of society with a hard hand.”

Unions draw pistols in pension showdown
Showdown number two – it’s the serious dailies front page choice. And certainly no candidate for a thriller, combining as it does the words ‘pensions’ and ‘trade unions’.

The unions are at loggerheads over the government’s pension reform, says de Volkskrant. At the weekend it seemed a deal to raise the retirement age was in the bag, as a big construction union swung behind it, the paper explains. But the two unions in the FNV confederation who still oppose the deal are fuming. A majority of the FNV unions might have come out in favour, but the two biggest public sector and industrial unions argue that the vote is undemocratic because between them they represent 60 percent of the confederation’s members.

What’s more, the dissenting unions reckon it was they who winkled the latest round of concessions out of the government, while FNV leader Agnes Jongerius bungled the negotiations.

Trouw sums up in an incisive front page analysis. There are two possibilities. Either the whole pension reform row has been dominated by a small gang of radicals among the dissenting unions’ members, while the silent majority faithfully back their leader Agnes Jongerius – or it hasn’t and they don’t. It’s one or the other. Now, shall we move on?

Government under fire
The government was under attack from all sides in the weekend papers. NRC Handelsblad led with claims that the cabinet is using “six clever tricks” to create the impression it’s meeting its 18 million euro cutback target:

1. Spend more
2. Raise taxes
3. Let others make the cuts
4. Put off spending
5. Avoid difficult decisions
6. Keep Greece out of the book-keeping.

De Volkskrant ran with the story that the cabinet wouldn’t get anywhere near to cutting back non-Western immigration to the extent it has promised Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in return for support in parliament.

Meanwhile, Geert Wilders has been making threatening noises that he will withdraw his support for the government if a new round of cutbacks hits his voters, AD explained at the weekend. So Labour Leader Job Cohen has been calling his bluff, this morning’s Trouw reports: “Go on, do it then, pull the plug!”

The opposition might smell blood, but Job Cohen has nothing to be triumphant about himself, AD reports this morning. The mild-mannered ex-mayor enjoys just 18-percent of his own voters backing as the best opposition leader, a recent survey found.

Burqa ban
In a cartoon in Trouw, a woman clad in a burqa complains about the rising cost of living, “And now clothing costs are going up by 380 euros a day.”

De Volkskrant devotes its editorial to the government’s new burqa ban, which allows police to slap a 380-euro fine on women wearing a full veil. “Integration can’t be enforced by the police,” the paper argues. “Fining women in burqas will undoubtedly be exploited for publicity by radical Muslims,” and “a marginal phenomenon will become a media circus”.

The paper has also managed to track down a veil-wearing woman for an interview. Shaista Khan (27) was born in The Hague, her parents are Pakistani-British. She explains how over the years she’s become more and more devoted to her religion. She’s unmarried, and it’s her own decision to wear the veil, she insists. And there’s no way she’ll be changing her dress now it’s banned by law she says. “The only option is to move to another country,” she says. “I’m thinking about Britain.”

Wobbling tourists in Amsterdam
Amsterdammers are fed up with tourists on rented bikes wobbling their way through the streets and getting in the way of the speeding locals, nrc.next reports. There’s even a page on Dutch social networking site Hyves devoted to moaning about them.

The paper wonders if they cause a lot of accidents. “They cycle through the streets in groups and they’re often very clumsy,” a police spokesperson admits. “But they’re aware of it themselves so they take extra care.”

He reckons it’s the impatient locals who cause the trouble. “They leave home five minutes too late and try to make up the time on the way.”

Tram rails are the biggest enemy of the cycling tourist, according to one bike rental company. “It’s mostly broken bones, broken teeth, and injuries to the chin.” Enjoy your trip to Amsterdam.