Netherlands

Monday

David Horspool

Death and glory: the politics of the World Cup

World Cup fever is a strange affliction. It’s more contagious and unavoidable than Covid, and more widespread too: each new World Cup, as Simon Kuper writes, ‘becomes the biggest media event in history’, which ‘occupies the thoughts of billions of people’. It also produces a cluster of sometimes contradictory symptoms, physical as well as mental. Kuper quotes a study that found an increase of 25 per cent in hospital admissions for heart attacks in England on 30 June 1998, when England played Argentina (David Beckham, Michael Owen and all that). Later, he describes the moment when the American journalist Grant Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm in the media stand

Monday

Thursday

The Spectator

The case against assisted suicide

Those in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill insist they’ve addressed critics’ principal concerns and that ‘stringent safeguards’ are in place. But it is impossible to see how this could be the case. If suicide is institutionalised as a form of medical treatment it is inevitable that vulnerable people will feel under pressure to opt for it, and inevitable that the bill will in time be amended and extended. In Canada, denying assisted suicide to people who are not terminally ill has been ruled to be discrimination Under the terms of the existing bill, a terminally ill person given less than six months to live will

Wednesday

Friday

Sunday

Thursday

Sunday

Friday

Monday

Friday

Jonathan Ray

Forget Amsterdam – spend a weekend in the Hague

I love Amsterdam. I go every year for the galleries, the opera, the beer, the genever, the rijsttaffel, the brown cafés and, well, the fun. I’ve had many a fine time there, sometimes with and sometimes without dear Mrs Ray. It’s a top place.  I was cut to the quick, then, on hearing recently that the good burghers of Amsterdam had asked any British tourists in search of a ‘messy night’ to stay away. Admittedly, this controversial campaign is aimed chiefly at 18- to 35-year-olds on stag parties, rather than senior railcard-holders like me. But any drunk and disorderly behaviour risks a hefty fine and a criminal record – and since

Thursday

Saturday

Sunday

Saturday

Saturday

Senay Boztas

The Netherlands is growing tired of lockdown restrictions

On Wednesday at De Kleine Komedie, the oldest theatre in Amsterdam, the sound of comics on stage will be interspersed with the snips of scissors. Unable to open as a theatre due to the coronavirus restrictions, the comic actor Diederik Ebbinge is defiantly converting the venue into a hairdressers for the day with customers able to watch live acts while they get their hair cut. Fellow comedian Sanne Wallis De Vries is asking theatres up and down the country to sign up and join their haircut theatre scheme on the same day. In the latest phase of the Dutch lockdown, announced at a press conference on Friday night, from today gyms,

Monday

Ross Clark

Europe gripped by a fifth wave

How quickly things change. Just a month ago many EU countries were being praised for keeping some Covid restrictions in place, in many cases operating vaccine passport systems. By contrast, Britain was being attacked for removing most Covid restrictions in July. The UK suffering elevated infection rates ever since, leading to predictions that we could be back in lockdown by Christmas. Now, many EU governments are panicking as infection rates soar — and protesters have taken to the streets to oppose new lockdowns and, in the case of Austria, compulsory vaccinations from next February. What is the situation in the worst-affected countries? Austria Current number of people recorded as infected: 144,442 —

Monday

Ross Clark

Is climate change to blame for Germany’s flooding?

Greta Thunberg has declared the floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands to be the product of man-made climate change, adding ‘We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency, and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent.’ Well, that’s sorted out that one, then. We hardly need Angela Merkel or the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, to confirm it for us. Nor, indeed, do we need to hear from Michael Mann – aka Mr Hockey Stick – to tell us that the floods are the living embodiment of what climate scientists have been warning us about for decades. It was climate change

Wednesday

Senay Boztas

The shooting of a journalist – and the dark world of Dutch organised crime

In an attack that has rocked the Netherlands, a leading Dutch crime reporter is fighting for his life in hospital after being shot in broad daylight. Last night, at around 7.30 p.m., the investigative crime journalist Peter R De Vries was shot five times on a busy street in central Amsterdam after leaving a television studio where he was recording a talk-show. The horror on the face of the Amsterdam mayor was visible at a hastily-organised 11 p.m. press conference to discuss the attack, while tributes for De Vries flooded in from everyone from Dutch king Willem-Alexander to caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Rutte called the shooting ‘an attack on