Libya 'steals' the front pages. Could government's retirement reform plans harm an ailing economy? Wild about Wilders because he such a euro sceptic. Flying on TV, two TV comedies tell exactly the same story, but in two different languages.

The lead story in nearly all today’s papers today is understandably – what looks likely to be – the imminent fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Meanwhile, events in Syria and Israel and the Gaza Strip are pushed inside the papers.
 
Force - last resort
But de Volkskrant puts a small opinion piece on its front page – by Arnon Grunberg – that links the three in a reflection on the use of force (or violence – interestingly the word is the same in Dutch):

“We’re supposed to pretend that the use of force is a final resort. Nonetheless, with the aid of NATO, the bullets of liberty are being fired in Libya. While in Syria, the dictator there fires his own bullet [...]. In the meantime,

And I’m put in mind of a song by my favourite band Laibach: ‘War goes on just like before/War goes on, it never ends/War brings bigger dividends’.”

Pension perils
On the domestic front, the government’s plan to change the official retirement age from 65 to 66 (and then 67) is an issue that keeps coming back into the spotlight. At the weekend, Social Affairs Minister Henk Kamp made a gesture that was meant to soften the blow. He says he wants to help people on lower incomes save so they may still retire at 65 after the change to 66 in 2020. As today’s de Volkskrant informs us - and other papers in their coverage too – “FNV trade union federation has doubts about pension proposal.”

AD tells us Mr Kamp is hoping his proposal would help persuade the FNV federation – specifically two of its larger members, FNV Bondgenoten and AbvaKabo FNV - to accept  his reform package. FNV chairperson Agnes Jongerius and some of the FNV unions have already done so, but it was rejected outright by a referendum of actual FNV members.

The unions, AD tells is, find Mr Kamp’s new proposal “too vague”. The paper quotes an executive member of FNV Bondgenoten: “The minister has moved, but is staying put all the same.”

A commentary in left-of-centre de Volkskrant describes the new retirement package as a bitter pill for the unions to swallow, but argues it is needed to keep the pension system affordable. Nonetheless, the author doubts whether Ms Jongerius will be able to get the FNV membership to back her in accepting the package.

The writer continues: “If the union movement does reject the deal, a version which is less favourable to the working population will be implemented. It’s doubtful whether the unions would then be able to mobilise sufficient opposition to stop that.”

The result could be a “trial of strength” between government and unions, and that would “not help the ailing economy”.  To be continued (no doubt)...

Rising stars of the eurosceptical
Bubbling away – and often bubbling up - all this summer has been the euro crisis. Bad news for  some, like Greece, but not for all. As AD tell us, “Geert Wilders: reaping benefits of euro crisis.”

So well is the crisis serving Mr Wilders that his Freedom Party (PVV) now lags a mere one seat behind the governing VVD right-wing liberals in the opinion polls. The VVD stands at 30 seats, the PVV at 29 (there are 150 seats in parliament). Back in April those figures were 36 and 24, respectively. Meanwhile, the once all-powerful CDA Christian Democrats - the junior coalition partner – drops another seat according to the poll, bringing them to a record low of 14 seats. On the other side of the political spectrum, the opposition SP (Socialist Party) is also gaining popularity.

Clearly, Mr Wilders is not only gaining ground, he’s doing so at the expense of the very – minority -   government his party formally ‘supports’ to keep in power. AD quotes a CDA MP who says her party is basically “enormously sick at how the PVV takes the easy way out: just sitting back and heckling from the side lines. But do they come forward with solutions of their own? Forget it.”

Indeed, far from coming up with solutions, Mr Wilders - as AD reports - has been doing things like accusing the cabinet of “throwing away Dutch interests”, compared CDA Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager to a mule and described the government’s Greece policy as “a total mess”.

As Trouw explains this puts the two government parties in a more difficult position. They need PVV support, yet that party is attacking them and growing in popularity as a result. 

One VVD parliamentarian seems to think the government parties simply have to ‘grin and bear it’ right now. She tells AD: “I’m not always best pleased by what Wilders has to say. But I also think you shouldn’t get too het up about it. We now need all our energy to find a solution for the eurocrisis [...] We need to convince parties other than the PVV. Let’s focus on that.”  

Come See Them Fly With Me?
Trouw’s cultural section takes a look two new ‘air travel’ comedy show on TV. One is a British show, made by David Walliams and Matt Lucas of Little Britain fame, called Come Fly With Me. It’s a take-off of a fly-on-the-wall reality series about an airport in the UK, with Walliams and Lucas playing all the parts. It’s being shown here on one of the three public service channels by the VPRO broadcasting organisation, once known as the 'Enfant Terrible' of Dutch public broadcasting for its off-the-wall approach to programming.

Come Fly With Me has been on the air for a few weeks and now one of the country’s commercial channels, RTL4, has just launched its own version of the same show with the Dutch title Zie Ze Vliegen (See Them Fly). The scripts and format have come from the UK original - and much is the same, Trouw tells us, including the same ‘lift muzak’. The characters are also as in the original, but with a different, Dutch cast.

As Trouw reports, this couldn’t be worse timing: “After we’ve heard all the jokes in Come Fly With Me, we get them served up again a couple of weeks later – all nicely translated – by RTL4. Who laughs two times at the same joke?” ... ahem, I believe there are some people who actually do.