WordsForPress
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I’m Gordon Darroch, I’m a journalist, writer and copy editor. I moved to The Hague (Netherlands) in 2014. Before that I lived in Glasgow. I specialize in general newspaper and magazine features, book reviews, legal issues, media matters, autism, football, rugby, athletics.
WordsForPress
6d ago
I can’t hear the word verbinden any more,” lamented Geert Wilders at the start of a doom-laden New Year tweet. “The problem is not that we are failing to connect, but that we do not take a strong enough stand against those who want to destroy our streets, our neighbourhoods and our country.” Explaining why ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
2M ago
Dick Schoof’s response to the eruption of racist violence in Amsterdam was to declare that the Netherlands has a problem with integration. He was right, but not in the way he meant. In the last week his cabinet has been disintegrating faster than a New Year bonfire on Scheveningen beach, after Geert Wilders spent the ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
2M ago
At his most recent weekly press conference Dick Schoof was asked if he was concerned about the human cost of his government’s plans to enact the “strictest asylum policy ever”. His dismissive reply – “I can’t see why this isn’t a humane policy” – was a telling insight into the way the cabinet perceives refugees ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
3M ago
The Netherlands may be down to its last three Michelin-starred restaurant, but the connoisseur of government incompetence has rarely had such an exquisite spread of mouthwatering delicacies to savour as this week. On Tuesday Marjolein Faber, the immigration minister with an overactive imagination, sparked chaos when she declared that the legal advice setting out the ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
4M ago
Before declaring a crisis, first make sure you have one. That, at any rate, seems to be the approach of asylum minister Marjolein Faber to the issue that has dominated Dutch politics since Dick Schoof’s cabinet took office in July. When the PVV minister wrote to European home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson informing her that ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
4M ago
Geert Wilders’s meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the weekend came as a surprise to many, not least the members of the Dutch government. Wilders apparently arranged the meeting on his own initiative by the picturesque shores of Lake Como, during a conference organised by an Italian think tank. It was a cordial ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
4M ago
Has any politician’s stock fallen as fast in recent times as Pieter Omtzigt’s? Little over a year ago, at the launch of his party, Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC), it seemed he could do no wrong. His tireless campaigning to expose the childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire) allowed him to stand apart from the tarnished brand of ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
7M ago
Marjolein Faber, the prospective minister for Asylum, Immigration and Integration, had a script and she was sticking to it. The MP for the far-right PVV party no longer believed that refugees were complicit in a programme of omvolking, or the deliberate destruction of native people and cultures in Europe through “population replacement”. She had been ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
7M ago
You probably know how the game of Jenga works, but just in case: players build a solid tower made of wooden blocks and take turns to remove the blocks one by one and lay them on top until the structure collapses. The person who pulls out the last block loses. The most common strategy is ..read more
WordsForPress | The website of Gordon Darroch, freelance journalist
10M ago
During the Troubles, people in Northern Ireland liked to say that even the dogs in the streets knew who planted the bombs. In a small community where mortal enemies lived cheek by jowl, names of perpetrators rarely stayed secret for long, even when cases never came to court. Politiek Den Haag is a similarly claustrophobic ..read more