More on the unions’ pension deal row – if you can remember what it was about. The papers chip in with suggestions on how to deal with rampaging hooligans. De Volkskrant lets you have a go at cutting public spending yourself. NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next are fed up with “immigrant hassling”. And school’s out for sailor girl Laura Dekker.

Pension squabble rolls on
The trade unions have voted in favour of the latest deal with the government on raising the retirement age, this morning’s front pages report. Again. This might seem like a déjà vu – it was yesterday’s front page story too. And it’s one of those political stories that’s been rumbling on for years.

Here’s the story. Again. The unions in the FNV confederation finally voted on the pension deal. A majority voted in favour. But the two biggest ones – representing 60 percent of all union members – are against. They indignantly withdrew their backing for FNV leader Agnes Jongerius. She says, “she doesn’t find the discussion about her leadership the most interesting of topics,” writes Trouw. I’m inclined to agree, so we’ll leave it at that.

While they were at it, the unions agreed on their annual wage demand in the run up to the government’s official budget announcement tomorrow, de Volkskrant reports. It’s two-and-a-half percent – two percent to compensate for inflation, and some extra to make up for all those government cutbacks. De Telegraaf frowns disapprovingly in its editorial. In such tough times for business, we should all be tightening our belts, the paper says.

By the way, what was actually in that pension deal the unions were voting on? If you’d like a reminder, you won’t find it in the papers today.

Hooligan war
“Turn your rioting son in!” AD splashes this plea from Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb across its front page, in the wake of this weekend’s football riots in which police drew their guns to fend off rampaging hooligans. In just a few hours, thousands of Feyenoord supporters signed a petition condemning the violence, the paper reports.

Mayor Aboutaleb tells AD he won’t be spoiling the fun of the “real supporters” by scrapping any matches. So what’s the answer? Certainly not to express sympathy for their motives, as the Rotterdam club’s supporter’s association has done, says de Volkskrant’s editorial. “Isolate them and drive them out,” the paper advises.

“The Lower House has declared war on the hooligans,” De Telegraaf is pleased to report. A majority of MP’s want to toughen up the existing football laws according to the UK model.

Meanwhile, the paper blames the violence on a softly-softly police approach. It seems the police have been holding cosy chats with the hooligans to “solve the conflict”. “Apparently criminals aren’t to be locked up, but to be welcomed at the conference table!” the editorial fumes.

More on the story

DIY cutbacks
Fancy a crack at working out the Dutch budget yourself? You can have a go here and “put yourself in the prime minister’s shoes”, de Volkskrant offers (you’ll need to be able to speak Dutch, I might add).

Before throwing its do-it-yourself budget open to the public, de Volkskrant first asked a representative group to try their hand at slashing public spending. So what did they opt to chop?

Certainly not healthcare or the police – they were sacred, however much the survey group was asked to cut in total. Civil servants and defence were popular targets for the axe. And the participants were prepared to chop the controversial Dutch mortgage tax relief – as long as it didn’t cost them too much. They were also happy to raise corporate taxes – even if it made the Netherlands less competitive internationally. And what was consistently the most popular cutback victim? Development cooperation. What a nation of altruists.

Immigrant hassling
A game of “hassle the immigrant”. That’s how nrc.next describes the Netherlands’ imminent burqa ban. And the paper’s big sister NRC Handelsblad slams the move in a scathing editorial. Carnival costumes are excluded from the ban, so the burqa will now become a handy form of anti-Freedom Party fancy dress, the paper says.

According to nrc.next, the burqa ban fits in a “hassle the immigrant” pattern: the Netherlands has consistently been introducing tough anti-immigrant laws in breach of international treaties, and just hoping nobody takes the matter to court, the paper claims. NRC Handelsblad is seriously concerned at what it sees as an alarming concession to the Freedom Party.

But as far as AD is concerned, the burqa ban is just a sop to the Freedom Party to keep up the government’s rightwing image. The cabinet’s minority in parliament means that the prime minister is being forced to opt for a middle course, and stay friends with nearly everyone in parliament, not just the Freedom Party. In reality, the paper says, the cabinet isn’t so far to the right at all.

Sailor girl quits school
Remember sailor girl Laura Dekker? She’s now 16 and quietly ploughing her way across the seas in her yacht Guppy, in her bid to become the youngest person to sail round the world solo, Trouw and de Volkskrant report. After blocking her trip when she was 14, the child protection court finally gave her the go-ahead to set off last year.

She solemnly promised of course that she would be keeping up her schoolwork on the way, Trouw explains. “An immediate threat to her cognitive development is hereby averted,” the court decided. And Laura set sail with a special package of schoolwork on board.

But now she’s off on the other side of the world, Laura’s much too busy for such trivial matters. No, she’s given up school she told the Dutch youth TV news from Australia. She’s got better things to be doing, she says, like changing the oil and repairing the deck. And there’s nothing the child protection authorities can do about it, says Trouw. The sailor girl has escaped.