How bad is it really? A few lied lines in a Ministry of Education, Culture and Science booklet? Pretty bad. Because it's an outright lie, and a government that lies is not to be had. Because: how can you trust them anymore? How often does this government actually do that: openly lie, for no other reason than to justify its own policies? I was shocked and actually still am. Ill-informed ministers, I can imagine. Nonchalance, there was with the Cabinet Rutte already added as a matter of course. But lying? Politicians often use it, and then they lie themselves, because they are not usually lies, but this is so different.

We are talking about one paragraph in the booklet 'key figures', in which the ministry gives a numerical overview of its own policy area every year. That picture is extremely favourable. The numerical overview shows a core-healthy cultural sector, which, thanks to a subsidy policy that has been restrained for years, is extraordinarily enterprising and allows the government to recoup the subsidy it has paid twice over.

The paragraphs crammed in at the request of the new cabinet are recognisable. After a passage demonstrating the Dutch business sector's lack of willingness to give, it suddenly says that the cultural sector should be more willing to ask. This occurs in more places. For instance, figures show that unemployment among artist graduates is relatively enormous, with many of them able to find work quickly thanks to incentive projects. However, it then had to be inserted that the main incentive scheme for artists, the WWIK, will be abolished.

Something similar happens with the culture card. It is proving extremely successful and leading to much more cultural participation among young people. The figures show that. But that culture card will be abolished: that has already been laid down in the coalition agreement. There were countless questions from politics and society about the motivation for its abolition. When the answer kept coming, it became clear to everyone that this was a blunt cut without political or ideological justification.

Until Friday the 20th, then.

Because what does it say under that numbers story about the success of the culture card? We took a picture of it:

So this led, thanks to twitter, to the realisation that Halbe Zijlstra had added this sentence, without realising that a coalition agreement can never 'fall back' on a report by the Court of Audit that does not appear until more than six months after the agreement. So here he is trying to give a justification after the fact, and in doing so he mercilessly falls through the cracks as someone who implements cuts for which there is no substantive motive. That he is then naïve enough to think that the phrase will go unnoticed long enough until it will count as standing history is extra culpable.

You can read how that went down below: (Edit 2018: because Storify will soon go offline, and the Court of Audit has removed the tweets in question, we are posting a screen dump here:

Personally, until Friday 20 May 2011, I was inclined to give the cabinet a grain of doubt here and there. That they might have had a point. After that Friday, that advantage definitely evaporated. This cabinet is pulling the wool over the eyes of thousands of hard-working Dutch people, who are losing their jobs and seeing their sales plummet because of a joke. Shall I use the Wilders word? Just once: it's a disgrace.

The entire document, as published on 20 May, can be read here.