Blue in the face: Dutch businesses heed furry Brexit monster

A furry blue monster aimed at spurring companies in the Netherlands to take Brexit seriously may look slightly odd but seems to be doing a good job, the Dutch government has said. The enormous Muppet-like creature, unveiled in a tweet last week showing it sprawling unhelpfully across the desk of the foreign minister, Stef Blok, had prompted 10 times more companies to take an official “Brexit scan”, the foreign affairs ministry said. A spokesman said on Tuesday that on the day Blok launched the campaign, 6,832 companies assessed the impact upon their businesses of Britain’s forthcoming departure from the EU at the brexitloket.nl website, compared with 691 the previous day.