I think this might be the best book swap I've ever done.

This quote in the NRC article ('Ill also post link) gets to the bottom of where the inspectorate got it wrong: they judged the reports based on whether a reader would come away thinking: "I want to buy this product". By that measure, a positive review on TripAdvisor would count as advertising.

I wanted to write that the Dutch foreign minister had condemned the sanctions on the ICC, but then I saw what Tom Berendsen actually said. It's wetter than an Amsterdam canal in a thunderstorm.

A feature of far-right groups is the tendency to take the notion of playing the victim to grotesque extremes. Such as here, where Farmers Defence Force handed out yellow stars at its protests against the Dutch government's plans to curb nitrogen pollution by buying out farmers.

Sad to read this. My wife had this in the last few weeks of her life as the cancer ripped through her body. It's a devastating thing to happen to an actual human being. Which is why I'm reporting you, grift bot.

Sometimes I have a mad moment when I think about moving back to the UK, but inevitably something like this comes along and the moment passes.

Ik heb oprechte vragen hierover. Waar is de onderbouwing voor deze constatering? Hoe veel mensen zijn doodgegaan of zelfs licht gewond door het geluid van een langzaam rijdende bruidsstoet? Zijn er überhaupt statistieken? Waarom wordt dit soort onzin klakkeloos overgenomen door de media?

A Partridge-inspired opening sentence from Chris Mason here. "The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding, in this case, is a football."

So good to see Mr Brobbey put his difficulties behind him and achieved enlightenment through football. #WC2026 #Netherlanns #Sweden

Come on spammers, make a bit of an effort. It's not 2003 anymore.

I'm a godawful pub bore. Why does nobody ever buy *me* a drink?

This is the strongest line-up for the Festival of Unintentional Comedy I've ever seen.

… yeah Bluesky's great cos it's got no algorithm so it doesn't make any stupid assumptions about what content you want to s– (note: I blurred the man’s n1pples to sidestep the stupid prudish non-algorithm)

The people who write this kind of hagiographic guff should be locked in a room and made to listen to Vogon poetry until their kidneys jump out of their ears.

Rob Jetten again under fire for not standing up stronger for Dutch activists who were mistreated and humiliated on camera by the Israeli government. While Giorgia Meloni condemned Ben Gvir's antics without reservation, Jetten passed the buck to his foreign minister, Tom Berendsen.

Thinking of entering this travel website for the Granta Commonwealth Prize.

What's the deal with spammers getting all passive aggressive when you won't let them waste your time? Do they seriously think boilerplate vagueness and guilt-tripping are some kind of magic formula?

On Polymarket you can still get odds of 9% on a hantavirus outbreak this year. So this is basically a deposit savings account that pays 8.9% interest in December on payments made in May. In case you're wondering why X is full of people screaming THE NEXT PANDEMIC IS HERE.

Beetje retro, die bodycams van Albert Heijn (via @rtl.nl )

The sun came out for five minutes today. Then realised it was in Glasgow and concluded it must have taken a wrong turn.

The 16th-century equivalent of Trump shoehorning his way into hit movies like Zoolander and Home Alone 2. Hearteningly, the rich donor's name has been lost to history.

I've given up trying to work out what is and isn't an Onion headline.

Steve Witkoff is echt de Marjolein Faber van Amerikaanse onderhandelaars. open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Predictably, however, far-right politicians have seized on them to fuel their claims that the Dutch Muslim population is teeming with violent anti-Semitic extremists. Just like the terrorists, they hope their support will grow if Jews in the Netherlands believe it's no longer safe to live here.

Rob Jetten's first international phone call as prime minister was not to the American president, the British prime minister or the German chancellor, but the president of Ukraine, on the eve of the anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion. Changed times.

Veelzeggend dat er maar één PVV-minister in beeld verschijnt als hij dit zegt, en het is niet “goudhaantje” Marjolein Faber maar Barry Madlener.

The parties making small gains since October are mainly left/progressive: D66, GL-PvdA, PvdD and Volt. 50Plus buck that trend, but they're also a party that you'd expect to benefit from the focus on the retirement age in last week's debate. Coalition trio (D66, VVD, CDA) are down 3 seats to 63.

Probably my favourite sentence in the PVV saga so far: “Joost Eerdmans is not interested in turncoats”. That's former CDA, LPF and Leefbaar Rotterdam politician Joost Eerdmans, leader of JA21, a party that broke away from FVD a week after it presented him as a candidate for the 2021 election.

Polls suggest there's been a lot of movement within far-right block since the election: JA21 are up to 11 seats, while Forum voor Democratie have doubled their vote share and are breathing down the necks of the PVV. The three parties' combined share is unchanged, but they've now split into four.

Sjaak Massop, 65, made the most of a rare opportunity to go cross-country skiing in the dunes of The Hague. "There's only a very thin covering on the ground so it's hard going," he said. "I keep fit cycling and rowing, and doing this when I can."