I had to smile at this blurb from the From Our Own Correspondent website:
Whoever wrote that doesn't appear to have noticed the irony or the fundamental contradiction contained therein.
That one-time "famous Dutch tolerance" on the issue of immigration (i.e. suppressing any questioning of immigration) sounds rather like the famous BBC "tolerance" on the same issue in years gone by.
If you recall, this kind of thing used to go on at the BBC (as reported by Stuart Pebble in his BBC Trust report on BBC impartiality):
If you recall, this kind of thing used to go on at the BBC (as reported by Stuart Pebble in his BBC Trust report on BBC impartiality):
As for Gabriel Gatehouse's report, it was much like his reports elsewhere. He wasn't breathing a sigh of relief at Geert Wilders's "pretty distant second" in the Dutch elections because "if blunt words aimed at foreigners was what the electorate was after they need look no further than the Prime Minister himself." Mark Rutte had "told Dutch citizens of Turkish descent to behave themselves or eff off".
"For me," Gabriel said, "hearing these words in the mouth of a Dutch prime minister was profoundly discombobulating. Was this still the country I'd grown up in? If tolerance was gone, what was left?"
Oh well, at least the Dutch still ride bicycles and eat mayonnaise with their chips.
