The Knights of the Orange Underpants Edition - Week 9 - 2026

·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

An AI voting guide told some voters that D66 merged with GroenLinks-PvdA and that the PvdA was religious.

Lelystad Airport remains gloriously unopened. The hosts begin with another chapter in its long-running saga, treating the airport like a project too inactive to die and too inactive to live. It is infrastructure as national slapstick. The line about an airport that refuses to come to life lands because, somehow, nothing keeps happening in new ways. The Frankenstein comparison earns its keep. Then the show turns to savings and assets, where the government once used a fictional four percent return to decide what people owed. The Supreme Court did not buy it. The version explained here is simple enough for pub economics: imaginary earnings are not earnings. European human rights get pulled into the mess because ordinary low-interest savings accounts were taxed as if they had performed with far more ambition. A new system had to happen. Naturally, it took years and years. Eventually there was a bill. Almost at once, cryptocurrency investors and people backing startup businesses pushed back, especially smaller investors worried about heavy tax on unregulated assets. Heinen now says he heard them, which leaves the process in a perfectly Dutch state of comedy: Parliament already passed the bill, but it is being revised before it has properly landed. The last cabinet barely got it through. A new cabinet arrived on Monday, the plan was withdrawn, and the BBB was furious. Then comes the suit critique, because politics also means mint green, baby blue, and the suspicion that a salesperson saw him coming.

As heard by us

Two Dutch institutional absurdities, handled with dry precision and just enough ease to keep the policy moving.

This weekly Dutch News Podcast episode moves between two familiar Dutch headaches: Lelystad Airport still cannot get off the ground, and the savings-and-assets tax system has been rebuilt under pressure.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For Dutch politics, from the stubborn Lelystad Airport saga to a reopened savings-and-assets tax fight.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from DutchNews Podcast