Today’s Volkskrant makes a case in favour of most people’s pet hate number one: traffic jams. Devoting almost a whole page to defending congestion, the paper says it’s high time we learnt to ‘love and cherish’ traffic jams.

Because they aren’t really that bad. Not for the economy, not for our health and certainly not for the 15 million people who are not affected by them.
The paper goes on to quote Patrick Potgraven of the Traffic Information Service who, it points out, has gained experience in his field just by driving to work every morning. ‘We mustn’t forget that there are only a few hundred thousand people who are stuck in traffic jams on a daily basis,’ says Potgraven.
And he’s not the only traffic jam fan quoted in the article. Among the various experts is traffic psychologist Cees Wildervanck who like many colleagues says that being stuck in traffic is therapeutic: ‘Listen to the radio, follow a French course, don’t think about anything. Why are traffic jams always associated with time wasting?’