The CADS Jubilee Boat Trip is this month. Make your ticket reservations now. Seats are filling up fast, and last reservations need to be with myself or Allan Poot by the 21st. Let us know ASAP whether you are coming and if you will bring a guest.

Last month the hotel arranged for us to lunch outside on the terrace in front of the bar, which was great fun. It was sunny and warm (remember what that is?), and Wout van der Toorn gave us the low down on his new book. Last night we went to the IGC in Amsterdam for dinner and a tour of the club, courtesy of Benno Pieters, and afterwards we occupied the Krasnapolsky bar to watch Holland beat Germany. But it was not to be…. …jammer!

The Eurozone leaders continue to chat whilst Europe burns. The Dutch coalition has meanwhile given up on government, and is taking the summer off. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the Dutch tax office, which is as busy as ever!

The tragic farce of David Cameron and the gutter press drags on, with daily appearances in front of Lord ‘The Beak’ Justice Leveson, and Nick Clegg thumbing his nose up politely at coalition partners, i.e. instructing his party to abstain, but not vote for, the Labour motion to refer Cameron’s minister and former Eton roomie Jeremy Hunt to the parliamentary standards authority. Apparently Cameron thinks it OK for a minister to be chummy with News International when they are bidding for additional chunks of the British media. But then he would, given his exceeding close personal relationship to the dreadful Rebekah (LOL).  Meanwhile, John Major disclosed that Rupert Murdoch asked him to change British policy on Europe, or else. Major refused, all the News International media changed sides to support Labour, and we got Tony Blair for a decade. Earlier, Murdoch told the inquiry that he never asked for anything from a politician, and that his editors are independent. So Murdoch’s a liar then. Let’s see if he gets arrested for perjury sometime soon.

On the CADS website you find the progress of the Dutch summer, courtesy of Alison Smith and John Richardson. There are 8 days before it starts, so improvement is expected!

And in London a water pipe broke, resulting in all public transport grinding to a halt, storms  over the whole of England, and houses flooded as far away as Eastbourne… …it would never happen in The Netherlands – would it?