A protest march against government cuts to arts and culture gets mixed reactions in the press. Amsterdam's restaurants are angry with a website that sells cheap wine. And how some civil servants are turning into journalists.

March of Civilisation – is it too late?
The top story in today’s papers is the protest actions against Dutch government cuts to the arts and culture sector. The protests started on Sunday night with a March of Civilisation. The demonstrators walked 25 km from Rotterdam to The Hague, where parliament will debate the planned 200 million euros in budget savings on Monday.

According Trouw the situation is pretty dire: “March as last straw for the arts”. The paper quotes artist Ann Wenzel, and organiser of the March of Civilisation: “The budget for the visual arts is to be reduced by 50 percent. That is disastrous.”

Director of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen agrees: “In arts the poverty line was reached long ago.” If the government goes ahead with its plans, Mrs Wenzel fears it will have international consequences as many top artists will go abroad.

De Volkskrant wonders whether it is all too late, asking: "Can protests still prevent plans?" The paper gives us all the ins and out of the cuts and subsidies in the arts sector, concluding that there might still be hope. “Possibly there will be so much commotion about known groups and festivals disappearing that there will be a rebate of, say, 50 million euros .”

Read the RNW coverage of the story

Politicians aren’t barbarians
But not all papers agree with the protests. According to AD’s editorial, the “March of Civilisation is very short sighted”. It tells its readership that civilisation in the Netherlands is not under threat as the title suggests and that civilisation means prioritising.

Apparently not all politicians are happy with the title of the protest action either. VVD (liberal) MP Bart de Liefde is quoted saying: “I don’t consider myself a barbarian and the millions of people who support the plans don’t either.”

De Telegraaf also thinks the claim that civilisation in the Netherlands is under threat is a “gross exaggeration”. Government subsidies only “make artists and the art world languid... Just continuing to give subsidies wouldn’t be fair to other sectors that do face huge cuts.” The paper forgets to mention that in the last round of cuts four years ago, the arts and culture sector was already badly hit.

Read about how the cuts will affect RNW

‘House wine’ causes angst in Amsterdam
De Telegraaf tells us about a website that has caused fury in Amsterdam’s top restaurants. The website, www.sterwijnenthuis.nl (which means the top wines at home) has collected details of all winelists in 60 of the city’s best eating establishments, and has bought its own supplies of all the wines listed, which it is selling via the Internet. What’s more, the prices are a lot lower than the ones charged by the restaurants. For example, a bottle of wine costing 50 euros in the restaurant sells for just 15.40 euros.

Some of the restaurants are so angry with the man who had the idea for the website, Gijs den Hollander, that they want to take him to court. The website mentions the restaurants that serve each wine, and the owners say he has not received their permission to use the names. A meeting of the 34 best restaurants in the Netherlands, which belong to the Alliance Gastronomique, will be held on Monday evening to discuss what steps to take.

Mr Den Hollander says he’s surprised at the reaction, and that he has received praise from some restaurants, wine merchants and wine enthusiasts. He argues that when people taste a fine wine and know which restaurant serves it, that makes it more likely that they will choose that restaurant next time they dine out. He even says that one restaurant owner told him: “If we’d had the idea, we’d have done it ourselves.”

Civil servants become journalists
Nrc.next publishes a colourful bar chart which reveals how many people work at the press offices in the various government ministries. A reorganisation has reduced the number from 800 to 600, but the newspaper notes that this is still three times the number of accredited parliamentary journalists.

Socialist Party MP Ronald van Raak questions the role of some of these employees. He says that recently the press department at the Ministry of Defence took over the role of independent journalists and carried on its website its own report of a debate in the Lower House, complete with a commentary, which he described as “very coloured.” So much for independent journalism...
 

(hs/as)