Gerrit van de Kamp, of the police union ACP considers civil
patrols as potentially dangerous. He called them activities in the twilight zone. Yet
there are already 700 such civil patrols. They operate in half of the Dutch
communities. Van de Kamp admitted that the authorities do not succeed in
dealing with the feelings of intimidation and insecurity in The Nethelands.
Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders reacted to King Willem
Alexander’s speech on the occasion of the opening of the parliamentary session
by saying that he felt like being in the Efteling theme park of fairy tales. He
said that the speech contained the government’s fairy tales, which are unrelated
to reality, which looks totally different. In his view citizens have seen that the
country has been destroyed by the cabinet. Wilders referred to the negative
changes in social affairs and to the increases of rent. Wilders mentioned the
influx of asylum-seekers and commented “we nearly lost our country.”
Dutch soldiers from the elite Dutch Corps of
Command Soldiers (KCT) are fed up with the weekly call for prayer from a mosque
close to their barracks in Roosendaal. They have hired a lawyer to end the noise.
The soldiers say that the call for prayer is imposed on them against their
will. It creates negative associations among soldiers who have served in Muslim
countries. 
Within a few weeks almost 600 children have been taken out
of nine Dutch schools who are considered by Turkey to be close to the Turkish Gülen
movement. This represents about twenty percent of all pupils of these schools. In
two schools almost half the children have been taken out. The national primary
school council PO says that such a sizable departure in a short time has never
happened before. Also a number of teachers have left the schools. 
A study carried out for insurer Zilveren Kruis by TNS-NIPO
shows that one out of six employees in the Netherlands has sleep problems.
Almost two thirds of these have concentration problems the next day or make
mistakes. The researchers say that not only private issues cause sleep problems,
but that half of these problems are work related. The researchers recommend that employees
be allowed to have short sleep breaks during their work.
When Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the Dutch Parliament,
he shook hands with Dutch parliamentarians. When he put out his hand to Turkish
born Dutch parliamentarian Tunahan Kuzu, the latter refused to take it. Kuzu
leads a small minorities’ party, Denk, which was founded after he was expelled
from the Labor Party, the ticket on which he was chosen in the last elections.
In a short video, Netanyahu called the incident a typical illustration of who
wants peace in the Middle East and who doesn’t. 
The Turkish ministry of foreign affairs has written on its
website that Dutch Prime Minster Rutte’s remarks toward some Turkish Dutch
to shut up and go back to Turkey is unworthy of a Prime Minister. Rutte had made
these remarks in a TV program concerning Turkish Dutchmen who had harassed a TV
journalist during a demonstration in Rotterdam 
