Thursday 30 June 2011

SOCIAL NETWORKS (2)

I said in my earlier post that nobody should doubt the value of social networks.

However, what goes up can also go down. Back in 2005, Facebook and Twitter barely existed. MySpace was the leading social network then, and had such a large market share that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was prepared to pay US$580 million in order to get its hands on it. However, after mounting losses caused by the flight of users to newer sites, MySpace was sold this week for a reputed US$35 million.

The newer sites are currently worth billions. But will they remain so?

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 29 June 2011

THE PERCEPTION OF CRIME

One of the concessions that the Danish People's Party extracted from the Government in exchange for supporting its long-term financial stability plan was a doubling of the punishment for robberies and attacks in people's homes. This is a huge, and worsening problem, and something needed to be done to reassure ordinary Danes.

Really? Denmark is in fact one of the safest countries in the world. I have never seen a policeman in the village where I live, and I would be hard pressed to think what he would do here. In 2010, there were only 289 robberies in people's houses nationwide. Given the country's 2.5 million households, that means the chances of being robbed were about 0.012%. Despite that, it has emerged that around one in seven Danes keep a weapon at home to be used against a potential robber. A fair proportion of these are guns.

How come there is such a discrepancy between perception and reality? The answer in my view is the toxic combination of sloppy media and right-wing populist politicians. If Danes don't feel safe, then who can?

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 28 June 2011

DANISH BANKS

One of the things I like about living in Denmark is the large number of small banks. My personal bank is Vestfyns ("West Fünen") Bank, which has just seven branches; four on the island itself, and three just over the Little Belt on Jutland. They are mulling over the idea of opening a branch in the big city of Odense, which would be a major development. For U.K. readers, imagine living in (say) North East Essex, and banking with the Bank of North East Essex.

The great advantage of a small bank is that you can deal with human beings. I know most of the four or five staff in my local branch, not least because I meet them in other contexts. When I ring up the bank, I am having a conversation with an acquaintance, who recognises my voice. That makes security issues much less of a hassle. They will, for example, give me account information without making me go through the equivalent of airport security.

There is no disadvantage with technology; I have internet banking, and debit cards like everybody else. My forex rate will be slightly worse than if I banked with (say) Danske Bank. But let's be honest, how often do I buy forex?

All in all, a successful rural organisation, which makes money by taking in local residents' cash and deposits, lending them out at higher interest rates to local businesses and home owners, and paying staff a modest amount from the difference.

There is only one problem with this business model; it is rather dull. That's as it should be, in my view, but boredom has been one of the great (and least reported) villains of the recent financial crisis. All across Denmark - and other places - a generation of rural and small-town bank managers decided that they should spice up their lives by getting involved in all sorts of new products (notably derivatives and commercial property) and in places further away from the head office than a bicycle ride. The predictable result was a mess, as losses on one particularly egregious deal wiped out profits on lots of bread and butter business. Over the course of the past few years, a whole series of small savings banks and regional banks in Denmark have gone bust; among them Roskilde Bank, Amager Bank and Fionia ("Fünen") Bank. Yesterday a local bank in north west Jutland, which has traditionally made its money through lending to local pig farmers, went bust after its loans to a German solar power manufacturer went sour. That's a typical example.

The danger now is that there will be a rush of further consolidations and takeovers in the Danish banking sector, that could lead to the sort of oligopolistic market that exists in (for example) the U.K. Although that might make sense from a purely financial point of view, it would be a bad thing for the consumer. I no longer have a U.K. bank account; and I was unhappy with my bank for most of the 20 years before I closed the account last year. Here's hoping that Vestfyns Bank can stay independent for a while yet. I rather like talking to humans.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 27 June 2011

CAROLINE WOZNIACKI (2)

Denmark is in mourning after the exit of Caroline Wozniacki, world number 1 and top seed, from this year's Wimbledon, in only the fourth round. It's difficult when you have only one good player and in a sport which is not traditionally Danish. Media interest has been so high, that TV2 Sport have been reduced to interviewing virtually anyone who has ever met her; this morning it was her French racket-stringer, who popped up on the screen. It also meant that I had to watch her match this afternoon instead of the Murray-Gasquet encounter on Centre Court, which I was more interested in.

As readers will know, I am not a great Wozniacki fan. My family think this is mere anti-Danish prejudice, but it is not. Here are my reasons.

She is young, athletic and has solid groundstrokes and a good serve. She is rarely injured, and plays a lot of tournaments. Put that all together, and it means she wins a lot of matches and ranking points, enough to give her the number one spot (particularly when a number of the other potential number ones, such as the Williams sisters and Clijsters, have been injured). However, when it really matters, in the major tournaments, she seems to lack the imagination to finish the points. She rarely comes into the net to volley, and seems content merely to keep the ball in play rather than going for a winner. She beat someone fairly easily last week, but still had fewer winners; it's almost as if her opponents lose rather than that she wins.

Today's defeat at the hands of 24th seed Dominika Cibulkova followed a similar pattern. Wozniacki played a solid first set and her opponent made lots of mistakes; 6-1 to the Dane. Then Cibulkova began to find her range and go for her shots. She won the second set in a tie-break; and despite being a break down in the third, came back to win it 7-5. At one point, the screen showed that she had hit 24 forehand winners during the match to Wozniacki's 7; in other words, the Slovak was trying to win, the Dane was trying not to lose.

My personal view is that Wozniacki needs to dump her father as her coach and team up with someone else. He has instilled the necessary qualities of fitness, technique and willpower; but she needs to learn how to volley, how to slice a backhand, and (most of all) how to mix it up. It will be the hardest thing in the world to dump a family member as coach; but until she does, I don't think she will win a Grand Slam tournament.

Walter Blotscher 

Sunday 26 June 2011

HOLSTENSHUUS

Our 60km cycle ride this morning took us past Holstenshuus, a lovely stately home in the hills of southern Fünen.

The name ("Holstein's house") is a reminder of the influence of north Germany on Denmark in former times. In contrast to other mediæval monarchies such as France and England, the Danish monarchy remained elective rather than hereditary, with kings being acclaimed in the four parts of the realm; Jutland, Fünen and the Isles, Zealand, and Skåne (now southern Sweden). In return for their acclamation, the barons naturally extracted concessions, which kept the monarchy weak. Things reached a low point during the reign of Christoffer II (king from 1320-6 and again from 1329-32). His accession charter promised to drastically reduce taxation, which inevitably suited the nobility, but equally inevitably impoverished the Crown. The finances got so bad that by the end of his reign, the country was effectively mortgaged to the powerful Counts of Holstein. Their grip was so strong that Denmark had to manage without a king from 1332 to 1340.

Holstenshuus reflects these events. First mentioned in the sources in 1314, it was at that time called Finstrupgård ("Finstrup farm") after the neighbouring village. Then the Holsteiners moved in.

Although the Danes subsequently managed to get back control of  their own country, German influence remained widespread. The Hanseatic League, controlled by Lübeck, was the most important economic player in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, and Low German was the lingua franca of the whole Baltic Region. German was also the language of the Danish (and Swedish) courts, many of the Danish king's ministers were of German origin, and German princesses provided a string of suitable royal brides. It was not really until the 19th century that Denmark was run by Danish-speaking Danes.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 25 June 2011

A LICK OF PAINT

It's amazing what a lick of paint will do. I lived in Dar es Salaam for 8 years and I always thought that the city would have looked a lot nicer if more buildings had been painted. Here in Denmark most houses are rendered (i.e. a cement mix is smeared over the brickwork) and then painted. That makes a colourful contrast to the U.K., where most houses have unadorned and slightly boring brickwork.

In our back garden (the one I am currently turning into a lawn) there is one of those old-fashioned metal hand pumps. A rusty old thing, it sticks up out of the former well, which serviced the farmhouse before it was connected to the town's mains water supply. I have blocked up the entrance to the well, and today I painted the hand pump a metallic black. It now looks terrific. 

Walter Blotscher

Friday 24 June 2011

GREECE (4)

Greece is between a rock and a hard place, as the Americans say. If its Government doesn't make even deeper cuts in public spending and commitments, then it won't get the second bail-out from the E.U. that is currently being discussed. If it does, then it is likely to become one of the most unpopular Governments anywhere, ever.

Last week the Prime Minister reshuffled his Cabinet, replacing his Finance Minister, and then got the new Government approved by the Greek Parliament. However, that was not enough for other E.U. leaders. At the recent summit, they made the next tranche of funds conditional on the next round of cuts' first being passed by Parliament. A vote on them is scheduled for next week, and it is by no means certain that they will be approved.

Outside experts seem to be agreed that Greece is bust, and that the only question is when everyone admits it. I am not so sure. Rescue packages buy time, which is a precious commodity in financial crises. However, in order to get this time, the Greek Parliament has to approve the new cuts. Will it?

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 23 June 2011

POTENTIAL MELTDOWN (2)

April's potential meltdown was narrowly avoided. But that doesn't mean that it has gone away. Indeed, if an agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling is not done by 2 August, then the Federal Government will have to start shutting down and/or default on its debts. Neither prospect is at all appealing.

Talks aimed at getting that agreement are currently going on between the various parts of Congress and the Administration. The issues are the same as they were three months ago; so too is the gulf between the various parties. Expect this one to "go down to the wire", as they say in America.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 22 June 2011

THOR

Last night I went to watch Thor at the local cinema with my children. The film is riding high in the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. at the moment, and I can see why; it's good entertainment, even if it is nonsense.

There is however a problem in watching a film laced with Norse mythology in the company of intelligent young people, who actually know a fair amount about Norse mythology. Afterwards they tell you all the things that the film got wrong. To name a few; Thor couldn't fly but went around in a chariot pulled by two huge billy goats, there were other sons of Odin apart from Thor and Loki, Odin didn't lose his eye in battle but exchanged it for wisdom drunk from Mimir's well, Heimdall the guardian was not a cool, black dude, and he also had a huge horn, Thor's hammer was much smaller. And so on and so forth.

In particular, his hammer wasn't sent by Odin to Earth (Midtgård) until Thor became worthy of it, but was stolen by the giant Thrym. However, I suppose that if the film hadn't changed that part, then there wouldn't have been an opportunity for Natalie Portman to look winsome as a human research scientist swooning over atmospheric disturbances and Thor's muscled torso. Their unrequited love sets up the possibility of a Thor II. No doubt that will be mythologically incorrect as well.  

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 21 June 2011

LIBYA (3)

Libya seems to be sinking into the kind of low-level stalemate, that many - myself included - feared might happen.

Neither Colonel Gaddafi's regime nor the rebels have won a decisive victory, and both seem to have solid control over roughly half the country. Civilian casualties from stray NATO bombs have occurred; and there will be more of such mistakes. Senior military men in the U.K. are muttering that the straightened defence budget can't handle a prolonged conflict. Other countries say that they are running out of ammunition.

Some NATO members have "recognised" the rebel regime; though what that means in practice is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, sceptical voices, notably Arab League Chairman Amr Moussa, are beginning to call for a ceasefire.

The Western world is good at getting into wars, but much less good at getting out of them and/or resolving the underlying political issues. Libya is going to be a big test for NATO's non-military skills.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 20 June 2011

MODERN COMMUNICATION

Last week the battery on my mobile telephone packed up. No problem. I rang the telephone company, got through immediately (a pleasure in itself), and asked the pleasant young man for a replacement phone. Not a high-tech Blackberry/iPhone telephone, just an ordinary bog-standard telephone that can make calls and send SMS's. Easily done. I would have to change my existing agreement; but the phone cost only kr.1 and it would be with me either Thursday or Friday. Good.

It is now Monday, and no phone has arrived. So I rang the telephone company. This time I did not get through first time, but had to wait in a queue for ages. Finally a pleasant young woman came on the line. I explained what had happened, and asked her to check the status of the order in the system. It was now that the wheels began to fall off.

1. The pleasant young man had not ordered the phone we had talked about, but another, completely different phone.

2. The system had then had a glitch and had cancelled the order.

3. Worst of all, nobody had told me this (before you point out that they couldn't ring me, I should say that they have both my E-Mail and physical addresses).

The poor young woman got a bit of an earful, I'm afraid, before I calmed down, and we did the whole thing again. She assures me that the phone will be with me by Wednesday, and possibly tomorrow (though she can't promise anything). We'll see.

After I had put the phone down, I was left wondering how on earth the earlier communication could have gone so wrong. Was the young man just bored, and anxious to get rid of me? Could he have misunderstood my model choice (no; I picked a model off their website while we were talking, and the one he then ordered is not on their website)? Was there an evil gremlin inside the computer system?

I was left thinking that sometimes, the more we communicate, the less we understand each other.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 19 June 2011

ADVERTISING ON T.V.

One of the things I noticed this time I was in the U.K. was the amount of advertising on television. During a one hour programme on an ITV channel, there would be four breaks for adverts. This was, to put it mildly, intensely irritating.

There is of course advertising on television in Denmark as well. The smaller independent channels have similar amounts of advertising, which I presume is one of the reasons they stay small. However, the big advertising channel here is TV2, which is owned by the Government. They have advert breaks; but they make sure that they are between programmes, not during them. In particular, they don't interrupt films; I can live with that.

The U.K. is following the trend of the United States, which has had wall to wall advertising on television for decades; and I anticipate that that trend will eventually reach Denmark. However hopefully not for a while. Sometimes it helps being a small backwater with a minority language.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 18 June 2011

U.K. HEALTH REFORM (2)

The Coalition Government's plans for shaking up the much-loved National Health Service were radical, though misguided in my view. Too radical for many. Following the inevitable backlash, the Government called in April for a 2-month "listening period", during which people could come with their criticisms. Nothing wrong with that, in principle; the problem was the timing. This sort of thing is usually done before legislation is submitted to Parliament, after the publication of a White or Green Paper. But the NHS Bill was already wending its way through Parliament, so stopping it must have caused some problems.

Given the Liberal Democrats' thumping at the local elections in May, and the rejection in the referendum of changing the first past the post electoral system, which they had campaigned for, their leader Nick Clegg badly needed something concrete to show that his concept of "muscular liberalism" was not merely an empty slogan. The listening period provided it. In teaming up with healthcare professionals anxious to protect their turf, they have put a huge spanner in the original works. Budgets will still be transfered to general practitioners and primary care trusts will go; but instead of the change being compulsory and by 2013, it will be voluntary and over a longer time period. Other changes are that hospital doctors and others will have a say in the GP consortia's purchasing decisions through clinical "senates"; and the health regulator's former duty to promote competition between healthcare providers has been watered down to a requirement to use competition to ensure choice and integration. 

The original blueprint, although wrong in my view, at least had the merits of simplicity; GP's would see to nearly all of a patient's healthcare needs, either providing it themselves or purchasing it from third party providers (both private and public, who would compete to supply it). The new proposals look a bit of a dog's breakfast. The layers of bureaucracy will stay the same (PCT's out, clinical senates in), GP's get more reponsibilities but not more power, and the private sector is still banging on the door, trying to get in. All in all, not a good reform.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 17 June 2011

THE 2011 PROJECT (3)

The 2011 Project is going well. After Claus chewed up all the roots and stumps behind the house, I started levelling the ground. I was armed with just a rake; but I have learned over the past month that a rake is a very effective tool.

The first picture shows the ground before Claus got going.





And here is the same after I had levelled most of the area and sown grass as an experiment.














I levelled the last bit this week. And tonight I caught the mole that was having fun in the newly derooted soil. Tomorrow I will start sowing grass before the Mole Army send in reinforcements.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 15 June 2011

WASSY

Wassy is a small town on the river Blaise in the eastern part of Champagne, not much bigger today than it was in the mid-16th century. At the time the walled city and its surrounding land were part of the French royal demesne. In 1562, the usufruct (the right to the profits) of this estate had been given to Mary, Queen of Scots as part of her jointure as widow of the recently deceased French King Francis II, and the rights were being managed on her behalf by her uncle Francis, Duke of Guise.

On Sunday 1 March 1562 Wassy was the scene of a massacre. The numbers were relatively small, some 50 Protestants killed and a further 200 wounded, but it shocked the whole of Europe. In terms of public opinion, Wassy was the Srebrenica of the age. Polemics for or against it were written in French, German, Dutch, English and Latin; and the illiterate were informed through widely circulated woodcuts. It became the opening drama in a series of conflicts, the French Wars of Religion, that would last for thirty six years, cause widespread destruction and cruelty, and tear France in half.

Nobody knows exactly what happened, but it is unlikely that it was premeditated. The Duke of Guise was an experienced and successful soldier, who was passing through Wassy with a band of armed retainers on his way to Paris. If he had really meant to kill all the Protestants, who at the time were holding a religious service in a barn within the town, then it is unlikely that anybody would have survived. However, in the febrile religious tension of the time, this was glossed over. Protestants were terrified by the massacre, and took to pre-emptive strikes against their actual or perceived enemies. Reprisals and assassinations became the norm. Indeed, within a year, Guise himself was dead, the victim of an assassin's bullet.    

Wassy holds lessons for us today. Although religious issues were hugely important to just about everybody in this period, they were not the only issue; there were Protestants loyal to the Catholic king, and there were humanist Catholics (notably Guise's brother and head of the French church, the Cardinal of Lorraine), who recognised that the established church needed to be reformed. However, as the violence escalated in the wake of the massacre, those in the middle got squeezed. Much against their temperament, the Guise family ended up as the champions of the ultra-Catholic party in France, and it was the Cardinal who pushed through the final hardline provisions of the Council of Trent that fossilised Catholicism for almost 300 years.

Secondly, despite the shedding of large amounts of blood, neither side could win, there were simply too many of the other persuasion on the other side. It took a long time for this to sink in, before the Edict of Nantes, granting religious freedom to the Huguenot Protestants, was enacted in 1598 by King Henry IV, himself a former Protestant. But not before most of the leading protaganists on both sides had been murdered or killed in battle.

Thirdly, the conflicts resulted in a breakdown in moral values. If assassination of one's religious opponents could be portrayed as fulfilling divine will, what was likely to happen to lesser courtesies?

Today's tensions are more between religions than within them; between Muslim and Christian, or Hindu and Muslim. Those involved would do well to look at Wassy, and ponder its consequences.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 14 June 2011

THE TURKISH ELECTION

There were two clear results from the Turkish election. The first is that voters are broadly happy with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's track record, giving him 326 seats in the 550-seat Parliament and a third term of single-party Government.

The second, on the other hand, is that they do not want a new constitution written unilaterally by Mr. Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) Party. The existing constitution was drafted by the military following a coup in 1980, and all are agreed that it has to be changed. In the event, AK fell short of both the 367 seats (two thirds of the total) required for unilateral constitutional changes, and the 330 seats (60%) whereby changes can be passed by Parliament and then ratified in a referendum. That was despite Turkey's system of proportional representation, which sets an unusually high threshold for parties to obtain representation of 10% (2-5% is more usual) and so puts small ones at a disadvantage.

AK and Mr. Erdogan will now have to write the new constitution in conjunction with the opposition. In the long run, this will be no bad thing. Constitutions are supposed to last through thick and thin; and those that are written by only one section of society rarely last (witness Turkey's current one). With the European Union looking on anxiously from the sidelines, a broad-based constitution can only be to the country's good.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 13 June 2011

TENNIS IRRITANTS

There are a number of irritating things about modern tennis.

The first is the habit of juggling the balls prior to serving. The ballboys give the server more than two balls, usually three but sometimes four, the server looks at them intently (as if mentally calculating whether they are exactly spherical), chooses two to serve with, and gives the remainder back to the ballboy. This goes on before every point. You could understand it if the balls were like my own, all roughed up and with some lacking an even bounce. But in professional tennis matches, the balls are changed every nine games, which hardly gives the players time to knock them out of shape.

The second is the habit of towelling themselves down. After four or five shots - perhaps even after just a serve - the player points a finger at one of the ballboys, who is unfortunate enough to have to hold their sweaty towel, and wipes himself down with it. This goes on before every point. You could understand it if they played at 100mph for two hours without a break. But in professional tennis matches, they have a pause every two games, where they drink liquid, get their mental shit together, and (wait for it) towel themselves down. Furthermore, two games of tennis can be as little as 8 points; they also have sweatbands on their wrists if things get really bad between breaks.

All this fiddling around puts me off the tennis itself. Others too, probably. Mats Wilander, a great former champion and a very good commentator on Eurosport, says that tennis is losing popularity amongst the young, and that the authorities are thinking of ways to change things. His suggestions include abolishing the warm-up (what other sport warms up for an official 10 minutes before the players start?) and abandoning the second serve. The idea is to make the game flow more.

The third irritating thing is Andy Murray. But then you knew that already.

Walter Blotscher   

Sunday 12 June 2011

MARMITE

"What's Denmark doing, banning Marmite?". I was hardly off the plane, before I was being bombarded by irate Brits, angrily standing up for a cherished icon.

I suppose I should have been prepared. I had received E-Mails before I had left, telling me that this was the number one item on the BBC evening news, and demanding answers. So I did some research. Yes, the Danish authorities had stopped the sale of Marmite here. However, that was because all products that have added vitamins and/or minerals require a licence, and the manufacturers of Marmite had not asked for one. The Danes were at pains to stress that they had not said no to a licence, they just hadn't been asked for one. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding.

And a bit of a storm in a teacup. I have never seen Marmite sold in a shop here, and I don't know a single Dane who says they like it. Perhaps that's why they didn't apply for a licence, it wasn't worth the cost. 

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 11 June 2011

THE HONOURS LIST

Twice a year, at New Year and to celebrate her official birthday (which happens today), the Queen doles out honours to worthy Brits. Lots of them. This time the civil list ran to 45 pages, and the overseas and military one to a further 14, probably more than 1,000 people in all. The United Kingdom must be the most "honoured" population in the world, no other country has so many knights running around, or Grand Commanders of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (GCMG; God calls me God, in the jargon).

I have always hated the honours system. Since I am going to be the party pooper, I thought I would explain why.

1. The Queen doesn't really have anything to do with it. The whole thing is cooked up by a bureaucratic committee in Whitehall, which is bombarded with proposals, and which then sifts through them before making "recommendations" (i.e. orders) to the sovereign. The number of honours in the Queen's personal gift is very limited.

2. It is inconsistent. Why is Paul McCartney a knight, but not Ringo Starr? Or Mick Jagger, but not Keith Richard or Charlie Watts? Why did Clive Woodward, manager of the successful 2003 rugby world cup team, get a knighthood, but the captain Martin Johnson only a CBE and the rest of the team (i.e. the ones that actually did the job) mere OBE's? Why today has Janet Suzman, an Oscar-nominated actress, been made a Dame, whereas Colin Firth, an Oscar-winning actor, been made the lesser CBE? I could go on.

3. Many honours simply go with the job. CEO's of big companies get knighthoods, CEO's of very big companies (eg B.P.) get a peerage. The top three grades of civil servants and military folk nearly automatically get honours, as do top diplomats. Medical professors and loyal members of Parliament are often knighted, nurses and stroppy backbenchers get nothing. I could go on.

4. The most common honours are part of the Order of the British Empire. Hasn't anybody realised how anachronistic that sounds?

Aah, I hear you say, you're just upset at the system because you haven't got an honour. While the latter is true, it is also true that I would refuse one if offered. A (very) small minority of people do that, though you understandably don't hear much about them.

I know it is highly unlikely that I would be offered a gong, but just in case it happens. "Famous Blogger Refuses Knighthood"; you read it here first.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 10 June 2011

BORDER CONTROLS

The minority Danish Government is getting itself into a mess over the reintroduction of border controls. As I mentioned on 13 May, this was the price extracted by the right-wing Danish People's Party for signing up to the long-term changes in pensions and efterløn, that are supposed to balance the state's finances by 2020.

The pickle comes from having to deal with two very different audiences. Domestically, the reintroduction of border controls, notably on the motorway into Denmark from Germany (though not on the lane the other way), is to deter rising international criminality, notably by Eastern Europeans from Romania and Bulgaria. Such tough talk allows the DPP to burnish its credentials as the party of law and order, and may help its core voter group (pensioners and soon-to-be pensioners) forget that the party has abandoned its cast-iron commitment to efterløn. But it is a nonsense. First, because criminals - being criminals - will simply find another way to get into the country (eg a small boat at night across the Baltic). Secondly, and more importantly, if such a criminal were stupid enough to be found at the border, then by definition they would have had to have committed a crime somewhere other than Denmark. 

The other audience, consisting of fellow E.U. member states and Danish business organisations (Germany is Denmark's biggest trading partner, and the most likely means for getting Denmark out of recession), is concerned about restricting the E.U.'s commitments to the free movement of goods and people, and the possible illegality of the proposed measures under the Schengen Agreements. Here the Government is soft-pedalling the proposed measures, saying that they are merely a question of extra customs officers and spotchecks. Surely nobody could object to something so mild?

The demands of presentation are reflected in the Danish and English versions of the agreement, which are markedly different, much more than translation wrinkles. So different in fact, that there are already mutterings about Denmark "speaking with forked tongue". Keeping the DPP onside is - as, indeed, it has been since 2001 - a key element of the Government's programme. However, obtaining a reputation as a country that can't be trusted must surely outweigh that. Or so you would think.

Watch this space.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 9 June 2011

POTHOLES

"Where does the word pothole come from?" asked my friend on the way to Keswick, as we bounced over yet another one on the narrow Lake District road.

Where indeed? So I looked it up. Originally, they were viewed as positive things; rock formations in the American West shaped like cyclindrical pots, either on the sides of mountains or in the beds of streams and glaciers. They were caused by water grinding a pebble onto soft rock over the course of millions of years. Once asphalted roads began to appear at the beginning of the last century, potholes came with them. If the road wasn't properly drained, then the water would work its way under the asphalt and erode the base, eventually causing part of the road to collapse.

Of course, what looks nice on a mountain by the side of the road doesn't look quite as attractive when your front tyre is fast disappearing into it. Even if they are the same thing.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 8 June 2011

BACK FROM HOLIDAY

We had a great time in the Lakes. For the nth year in a row, we had fantastic weather, with no rain at all. Last Friday we went up Scafell Pike, at 978 metres the highest peak in England, by the Corridor Route, and it was baking. So it was a bit of a relief when Saturday was cloudy. After cycling and walking in sunny weather, my legs now look a bit like Neapolitan ice cream; vanilla white on the ankle and at the top of the thigh, and brown in between.

Being on holiday, I took the opportunity to grow a beard, something I haven't done for 20 years. Unlike the last effort, it turned out to be quite salt-and-pepper like. My sister-in-law, she who normally cuts my hair, said it suited me, so I may keep it for a while. 

Not much has happened in the kitchen garden while I was away; though I think I can see the first potatoes beginning to poke up through the soil. My new grass area has taken hold, however, which is good. Tomorrow I'll do some weeding and mowing.

As usual, I bought a lot of books in England. Plus I took back one of my mother's three jars of Roses lime marmelade. I am already looking forward to having some on my toast tomorrow morning.

Walter Blotscher