More Greece bashing – but the facts don’t help. Minister knuckle-rapping - with a hardwood ruler? Pill-popping schoolgirls. Being positive on the longest day.
 
Today’s Dutch newspapers are much divided on what constitutes front-page news today. The financial crisis in Greece, for example, only makes the first page of – predictably, some would argue – populist daily De Telegraaf.

Bewailing Greeks with hotel vouchers?
Another loan to Greece is a most unwelcome prospect for De Telegraaf and for much of its readership and many more people too. One may agree or not with that view, but you have to admit that the facts as presented in stories such as De Telegraaf’s front-pager, headlined “Greek civil servants travel for free”, are not doing Greece any favours.

It opens: “While Dutch people and other Europeans are forced to tighten their belts to finance the billions in [financial, ed.] injections for Athens, the holidays of hundreds of thousands of Greek civil servants this summer will be paid for by their own government.”

The paper tells us they’re getting vouchers for free hotel stays and ‘sizeable’ discounts on boat trips: “Yet another example of waste by the Greeks who are, at the same time, unashamedly holding out their hand again for more EU billions...".
 
Indefensible defence spending
On the same subject, Spits - one of the country’s three free commuter dailies - features a column by TV presenter and writer Prem Radhakishun which highlights something that – assuming it is accurate – puts Greece in an even worse light.

Mr Radhakishun writes that Greece – still (?)- spends 3.1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the military. That’s more than any of the other 26 EU countries. Within NATO, only the United States spends more: four percent of GDP.

Prem says the reason no one’s demanding that Greece save five billion euros on defence spending is because all the European governments are “puppets of big business” and “nothing is bigger or more powerful than the weapons industry”. He concludes: “We European citizens may again cough up billions so that arms manufacturers can fill their pockets by supplying unusable rubbish. Long live Europe and our democracy”.

Environment minister bad for the environment
Much closer to home, de Volkskrant leads with a tale of naughtiness in our very own Dutch government. It turns out that Deputy Environment Minister Joop Atsma has had his knuckles rapped by a court in The Hague after environmental organisations moved to stop him approving tropical hardwood from Malaysia as a ‘sustainable building material‘ for use by government.

Apparently, a committee, set up by his own ministry, advised against this late last year because it was not at all clear that the wood in question was from truly sustainable sources. Mr Atsma appears to have ignored the advice and wrote to parliament in February this year, saying “If we say no [to this timber], we will drive a wedge between Malaysia and ourselves”.

Inclusion of this wood in the ‘sustainable’ category would help the wood trade here in the Netherlands reach the target of 50 percent of all timber coming from sustainable sources by 2015. But the court has blocked that, much to the satisfaction of GreenPeace, which says “the arrangements the minister appears to have made with Malaysia were extremely flimsy”.

Pill-popping schoolgirls
Much closer to home is the front page story in today’s AD. “Paracetamol taboo in school” is the headline. Regional health authorities have sounded the alarm about the overuse of this particular painkiller by teenage schoolgirls who are getting regular – if not daily – headaches.

Some teenage girls have become bulk users of the painkillers. Ellen van Est, a doctor specialising in the treatment of young people, tells the paper that the girls want to be thin so they often skip breakfast, then come to school where they don’t want to eat or drink anything in the presence of their friends. Headaches are the result.

So the health authorities have decided to act: “It’s really bad for young people to be taking painkillers every day [...]. They simply need to eat something.“ One solution, she suggests, is for schools to keep a record of which girls repeatedly ask for headache relief. Then they can contact the parents and doctors, because “there’s often more to it than just not wanting to eat, and this provides a good opportunity to talk about that.”

Smile, it’s the longest day!
Yes, up here in the northern hemisphere 21 June is indeed the longest day of the year. Dutch cabaret artist (that’s Dutch cabaret, not cabaret of the Liza Minnelli-movie kind) Vincent Bijlo tell us in a column in AD that it’s also been declared Netherlands Positive Day by the Netherlands Positive foundation – an unknown organisation to most in this country.

Vincent then touches on nearly every newsworthy – Dutch - issue of the day when he tells us that today we must therefore focus only on pigs who live in good conditions (not the ones who don’t, see yesterday’s press review), the sun shining (though it is most definitely not), the artistic institutions that will be able to stay open (after the cuts), the chronically ill and disabled who will be able to keep their personal care allowances, etc.

We should also consider that the decision about a new loan to Greece won’t be taken until next month, so we can earn an extra month’s interest on our cash in the meantime. The list goes on. Yes, as he says, today “no bitter whining, no dull moaning” ... it’s Positive Day.

But then, after the year’s shortest night, it will be 22 June and today will be a memory, won’t it?