Airstrip One

Paper of Record? Pah

Michael Gove has written a
piece on Pim's death. Not bad, but a couple of silly mistakes crept in:

promoting a non-white woman from the Cape Verde isles as his deputy

Joao Varela may be a cosmetics executive, but he's a bloke.

Fortuyn may have been the most striking face of Dutch populism but the movement from which he sprang has resources beyond his name. Leefbar (Liveable) Nederland is a populist alliance which has come from the fringes of politics, in the space of months, to threaten the country’s establishment. Even within Leefbar Nederland (LN) Fortuyn was a maverick, ploughing his own furrow in the ethnically charged port city of Rotterdam to secure 17 out of 45 seats in March’s local elections.

Too right he was a maverick. He was forced to leave the party, a fact which Michael Gove - if he was aware of it - does not impart. The party he stood for election for was the Lijst Pim Fortuyn and not Leefbar Nederland.

That being said, I've managed to make a few mistakes in my time, including spelling Mr Fortuyn's name with an e on the end - something which got a surprising number of hits. So if you suddenly notice me spelling proper names not quite correctly, you know I'm just trying to get some more hits - or being dyslexic for the day.

However all being said and done I'm not paid to get my facts straight, Michael Gove (or is it Michael Gov?) is.