The elaborate floral arrangements that adorn the steps outside St Peter’s Basilica every Easter may fall victim to some government budget-cutting back where the flowers were grown. The Dutch bishops’ conference has been donating tens of thousands of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other flowers and plants to the Vatican Easter Mass annually since 1985, perhaps not coincidentally the date of a tour by the late Pope John Paul II that drew so many protests that one Dutch prelate called it “the worst papal visit of all time”. But differences with the Vatican have nothing to do with the possible end of this modern tradition. It turns out that the Dutch Government, under pressure to cut its budget to meet EU deficit targets, recently scrapped subsidies for several agric