Q Fever and the continuing snow and travel chaos dominate today's papers. Shareholders are asked to be responsible, there are allegations of Dutch town-hall graft, and a baby gets delivered to a supermarket.

Q Fever and intensive farming
The farmer is slumped in the snow, his hands covering his bowed, tearful face. Today's de Volkskrant chooses to lead with a tragic personal story taking place on a small goat farm. It illustrates the human side to the government's draconian measures to deal with Q Fever.

Nrc.next simply lists the facts. Yesterday saw the start of the cull of about 40,000 pregnant goats and sheep throughout the Netherlands. The Q Fever bacteria can be spread through the air after delivery or miscarriages. The animals are being given two injections by vets: the first puts them to sleep and the second kills them. So far, six people have died in the Netherlands and thousands have been infected with the disease.

oing back to the story in de Volkskrant, the vet putting down the goats on the small farm says: "It really goes against the grain to be killing animals which could be perfectly healthy. The thing is that there's a real risk to people's health."

The farmer in the photo tells the paper: "Maybe people will wake up and realise that animal diseases like Q Fever are a sign that there's no harmony between man and animal. The consumer wants cheap food. Farmers are forced to reduce costs, often at the cost of animal welfare."

 
He and his girlfriend want to reduce the scale of their farm still further. "But then," he explains, "consumer behaviour will have to change as well. As things are now, I won't be able to pay my rent with what I get for the milk from the goats I still have."

 
Snow, commuter misery and frozen points
All today's papers deal with the continuing snow and more importantly the continuing travel chaos it is causing. De Volkskrant concentrates on train travel, explaining that the trouble is frozen railway points. Dutch rail's answer is simply to leave them in one position, but this means far fewer trains can use the network.

Although the most important points, all 6500 of them, are heated, 60 percent use gas burners. While these work well with ice, snow can simply put out the flame. To replace them with electric heaters would, says a rail spokesperson, "involve an extremely large investment and [...] repair work on the whole rail network."

 
De Telegraaf is not content to just report the problems, but chooses to lead with Dutch Rail's advice for people not to use the train unless it's absolutely necessary. Is it absolutely necessary to go to work? Employers are furious at the ambiguous advice.
 

The paper reminds us that the economic damage is running to millions of euros. It says some firms are sending taxis to collect staff. They reckon the fare is less than the cost of a lost workday. A spokesman fumes: "The VNO-NCW employers' association is bewildered that snowfall paralyses the whole of the public transport network".

 
Citizen shareholders should do their bit
Something a little different graces one corner of Protestant daily Trouw's front page. It reports that shareholders are being called on to do more to curb excessive wages in business. Jos Streppel from the Monitoring Corporate Governance Code Commission says company boards should also be more open with their shareholders.

 
More detail should be given, for example, about the precise composition of executive salaries. This would allow shareholders to judge whether or not these were justified. "This lack of transparency is typical of Dutch culture," says Mr Streppel.
 

He argues that new legislation has given shareholders much more power, but this is not being fully exercised. He believes, as good citizens, they ought not simply to be led by the desire for their own financial profit.
 

Town-hall graft?
The Dutch are fond of financial scandals and when these involve prominent figures, especially politicians, their interest is even more intense. Nrc.next obliges today with a report about Maastricht's Mayor Gerd Leers.

 
He bought a holiday home for 250,000 euros in a project being developed in Bulgaria by a company part owned by a Maastricht council officer. The mayor and his colleague are both alleged to have used their positions to help the project along. Bulgarian politicians in charge of granting permits for a yacht harbour to be constructed as part of the villa project are said to have been invited to Maastricht town hall.

 
The Integrity of Dutch Councils Bureau (BING) is investigating possible wrongdoing and will report on the affair early in January. Mr Leers, meanwhile, has decided to sell his holiday villa. His lawyer says the mayor wants "to get rid of the villa as quickly as possible" even if it ends up costing him money. "He'll take the loss," says the lawyer.

Crime in the snow
Today's AD picks up on a flurry of snow crime stories. On its front page, it alerts us to the fact that groups of youths in Gouda are forcing cyclists to stop by building blockades out of snow. Once stationary, they are robbed. The police have nabbed five teenagers for the scam.

 
A similar racket but on a larger scale is reported from The Hague, where gangs of youths have been building snow roadblocks and robbing motorists caught in the traps.

 
The paper provides us with a happy ending to a third story which begins with a father leaving his five-month-old baby on the back seat of his car. While he nipped off to check on whether the trains were running, the vehicle was stolen.

 
The thief decided stealing a baby was a bit more than he bargained for and dropped the infant off at a supermarket. Staff smelt a rat, took the car's registration number and phoned the police. The thief couldn't get far in the snow and was picked up shortly afterwards. The father was reunited with his baby. Well, it's a happy ending if you're not the thief.