The row between conservative Euro MP Hans van Baalen and the Nicaraguan government is continuing in the Dutch press; "Van Baalen is furious," screams a headline in De Telegraaf. The populist broadsheet continues in a rather hysterical vein: "after being physically and verbally threatened, accused of plotting a coup, called a Dutch pirate, and being thrown out of Nicaragua, Euro MP Hans van Baalen was finally able to set foot on safe European soil on Monday".

Trouw provides us with the background to the story: last week MEP van Baalen was in Managua to chair a meeting of the International Liberals, which represents more than 100 Liberal parties across the globe, and he met with representatives of Nicaragua's liberal opposition parties. He accused  left-wing president Daniel Ortega of manipulating the constitution in order to run for a second consecutive term and persuaded the divided opposition to unite and field a joint candidate to run against Mr Ortega in the 2011 presidential election.

The Protestant paper reports that Mr van Baalen was accused of interfering in the internal politics of a sovereign nation and ordered to leave the country. Things well and truly heated up after a deputy minister said the Netherlands was "a shitty little country". However, calm appeared to return after Managua apologised to The Hague.

But things have heated up again; according to Trouw, President Ortega has now accused Mr van Baalen of sounding out the army leadership as to the possibility of staging a coup d'état. The Euro MP dismissed the accusations as "ridiculous," adding "Ortega is just trying to destroy the Liberal opposition's credibility". De Telegraaf quotes him as saying, “absolute nonsense, just more of the usual nonsense that Ortega spouts”. 

Unions on collision course with cabinet over salary demands
AD reports that the FNV trade union, the Netherlands' largest, will enter the 2010 round of Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) negotiations demanding a wage increase of 1.25 percent. The paper notes somewhat laconically that the FNV’s wage demands will not be welcomed enthusiastically by organisations representing employers (VNO-NCW) or the government.

Trouw writes that Social Affairs Minister Pete Hein Donner called for a wage freeze earlier this year and the FNV’s demand will be "a disappointment for the government". According to de Volkskrant, the VNO-NCW says the FNV’s demand is irresponsible and the union has, "conveniently forgotten about the worldwide economic crisis". Economic crisis or not, the cost of living has risen quite dramatically over the last year or two, and ordinary people are bearing the brunt of the extraordinary avarice of bankers.

Health care costs skyrocket
The public health care system underwent a major reorganisation in 2006; the government at the time promised that premiums would not rise astronomically and the new system would give people more choice. However, costs have risen quite dramatically; Trouw reports that an independent investigation has determined that the premium for a basic health care policy has risen by 28 percent since the new system was introduced.

The investigation also revealed that basic health care policies will rise by an average of 41 euros in 2010. However, consumers (we are no longer patients, we are health-care consumers) are actually paying more as the figures do not take into account the abolition of the no-claim bonus and the introduction of a mandatory 200-euro own risk provision. The 1.25 percent wage increase demanded by the unions will just about cover the increase in health care costs.

Police still required to fulfil ticket quota
De Volkskrant reports that Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst infuriated opposition members in the lower house on Monday when she informed MPs that the policy of requiring police officers to write a certain number of tickets per month will be maintained. According to the minister, "handing out tickets increases officers' authority" and the policy "is popular as people approve wholeheartedly when police officers ticket motorists for running red lights or tailgating".

Opposition MPs sneered that police officers and are now nothing more than "glorified tax collectors". VVD MP Laetitia Griffith accused the minister of seeing ordinary citizens as "an easy source of ready cash for the government".

Trouw writes that the minister also called for a change in police culture that would allow police to "more readily resort to violence if necessary". Minister ter Horst says, for years, the police have been told to talk first and only use violence as a last resort," and although she does not want to see that completely turned around, "police should not feel completely restricted, especially when it comes to preserving their own lives".

Campaign for fair trade chocolate letters
A present of a chocolate letter is a long-standing tradition marking St Nicolas' day on 5 December in the Netherlands; a chocolate letter corresponding to the first letter of one's name was always one of the gifts given to children, although these days, adults get chocolate letters as well. De Volkskrant tells us that in times long gone by, arguments over the size of the letter dominated the conflicts on St Nicolas day - children with names beginning with M or W are the lucky ones as those letters contain considerably more chocolate than the letters names beginning with an I or a J - but the argument over the chocolate letters has now shifted from size to content.

The paper writes that Oxfam Novib has started a campaign calling on manufacturers to use cocoa produced by small-scale sustainable farmers. The aid organisation says that 85 percent of all the chocolate letters available in the Netherlands are bad in that they contain cocoa produced by huge multinationals that do not pay the farmers a decent wage. The "dump the 19 million bad chocolate letters" campaign aims to draw attention to the "hundreds of thousands of farmers in developing countries who are the victims of unfair practices".

The organisation says just 3.5 million of the 23 million chocolate letters sold annually in the Netherlands contain fair trade cocoa and has called for all chocolate letters to be fair trade by 2010.