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On the front page of De Volkskrant we see soldiers in the streets of Amsterdam, but for once it is not a terrorism scare. The soldiers are temporarily replacing more than 100 fire fighters who started a wildcat strike on Thursday, leading Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen to request emergency assistance. The strike is in all the papers this morning, and opinions are divided to say the least.
The reason for the firemen's drastic move is that a special early retirement deal has just been scrapped from their collective labour agreement. But De Telegraaf says the deal was "overly luxurious" to begin with and the fire fighters shouldn't moan. The paper stresses that the strike does not have the support of the unions - the firemen just collectively called in sick - and that it is dangerous to the public. The Algemeen Dagblad 's headline says enough: "firemen playing with fire."
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Calling in the army is not much of an alternative, according to the papers. They all warn that soldiers do not have the right training for this kind of work.
The Algemeen Dagblad quotes a defence union spokesman who says: "sure, these guys know what to do if there's a fire at an airport, but that's a different kettle of fish from a burning block of flats full of people." And there is a further complication, as De Telegraaf explains that some of the soldiers it spoke to actually sympathise with the striking fire fighters and are therefore reluctant to help.
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On a very different note: pop star Robbie Williams graces the front page of the Algemeen Dagblad this morning after a lightning visit to the Netherlands. The singer spent all of five hours here to appear on a popular TV show. But what he actually appears to be doing in the Algemeen Dagblad's photograph is passionately kissing the neck of talk show host Albert Verlinde.
Mr Verlinde has never made a secret of his preference for men and Robbie Williams in particular, and his comment afterwards was "I'm not going to wash that neck ever again!"
But it is a remarkable scene to say the least, as Robbie Williams just fought and won a court case against an US tabloid for suggesting he was gay.
Dirty laundry
Gay or not gay is usually not the kind of question people in the Netherlands would get worked up about, but this morning is an exception. The fallout still continues from revelations made by a leading crime reporter about state secrets on two computer discs "misplaced" by the secret service.
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But that's not all: another file on the computer discs was evocatively called "D66's Dirty Laundry." D66 is the junior partner in the current government, and the Algemeen Dagblad quotes one of the party's leaders who believes the file may be a list of D66 members of parliament who are gay. But the party and everyone else will have to keep biting their nails until Sunday, when Peter R. de Vries' television programme goes out on air and all will be revealed.
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Finally to the bizarre story of a row over a gravestone from De Telegraaf. Bas Verbeek, a gentleman in his eighties, is "at his wit's end" says the paper, now that the town of Hulst has removed his late wife's headstone from the local graveyard. The town authorities ruled that the text chiselled onto the stone was "inappropriate."
According to De Telegraaf, what it said was: "here lies my beloved wife, who was killed by the revolving door at Morres' furniture emporium." A spokesman for Morres confirmed to the paper that the late Mrs Verbeek did indeed get stuck and was taken to hospital where she passed away a few days later, but - he stressed - "it wasn't the revolving door's fault."
Tags: Albert Verlinde, dirty laundry, Dutch, Dutch TV, firefighters, firemen, gay, Job Cohen, kiss, Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn, press, Robbie Williams, secret service, strike, underage boys