THE 2012 PROJECT (2)

Today I managed to find my apple expert; he was hiding out under one of his many apple trees. He told me:

a) that I should prune my big apple trees gradually. If you cut them down to size in one fell swoop, then the enormous root activity will - in effect- cause the resultant stump to explode.

b) that I should do this in the middle of winter, in January or February.

God has spoken; his will shall be done. Early next year.

Walter Blotscher

THE LOCAL CINEMA (3)

Things are going well in the local cinema. We have introduced some new ideas (earlier opening times for children's films, day showings for mothers with babies) and have had some good films in August, which have brought in more customers, and thereby more income.

This morning I was the projectionist for three new mums and their babies. We showed the latest Harry Potter film, the eighth and last in the series. I haven't seen any of the first seven, but it didn't really matter. There's a good guy (Harry), a bad guy (Voldemort), and they have an apocalyptic showdown, where you sort of know in advance who is going to win. It's a bit like Lord of the Rings with wands.  

Three paying customers isn't very many. But this is a new thing, and it takes time for the message to get out to potential punters. It should do, since all three mothers liked the film. Even more importantly, so did the babies, who slept throughout. 

Walter Blotscher

IRON WINDOWS

We - and many other Danes - have lots of iron "stall windows" in the barn (see below). The frames are made of cast-iron, and the individual glass panes are fixed to the iron with putty.

I have a mini-project going, where I renovate the windows in the barn so that they look like the renovated ones in the middle building on the right. The frames themselves last for ever. However, the putty dries out over time, and eventually crumbles, making the panes loose. And some of those are anyway cracked or broken. So I will knock out the putty, throw away the glass, paint the frames with a metallic paint, and then put new glass in, using a clear silicate gel instead of the white putty.

This will admittedly take me some time, not least because I have to do about fifteen windows, and each one has a dozen panes or more. But that's the point of having a project, you can do it in stages.

Walter Blotscher

NEIGHBOURS (4)

Last night was the annual street party with our neighbours. This year it was held in the workshop of the man who dug our optic fibre trench. Topics of conversation included the post office's ridiculous new law about where you can and cannot place your letter box when living in a rural area; and the possibility that the kommune will force us to be connected to the town sewage system miles away (we all have perfectly well-functioning septic tank systems, so connecting us will give us nothing except a large bill). Such is life in the country.

As usual, it was very hyggeligt, and gave me an alcoholic headache.

Walter Blotscher

THE DANISH GENERAL ELECTION (2)

After failing to get agreement on his "growth package" designed to kickstart the moribund Danish economy, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen today called a general election for 15 September.

The campaign is already in full swing, and I am currently watching the first debate between the party leaders; more on that another time. In the meantime, two things about Danish elections which always strike me as a bit odd.

First, the only real adverts are large pictures of Parliamentary candidates tied to lampposts. As you drive through a village in Denmark during the next three weeks, you will be bombarded by large smiling faces of people you have never seen before. The day after the election, they will all disappear.

Secondly, those pictures will include a big capital letter, which represents the political party (these letters are also on the ballot papers). Unfortunately, the capital letters don't have anything to do with the names of the parties themselves. So, the "Radikale Venstre" is B, the "Socialdemokraterne" is A, and the "Konservative Folkeparti" is C. And in case you think it goes alphabetically, the "Dansk Folkeparti" is O and the "Liberal Alliance" is I. So there.

Walter Blotscher

THE 2012 PROJECT

I spent most of the afternoon chasing round my home town, looking for an apple farmer. His mother told me he was out in the orchards; but after visiting most of the apple trees within a 5km radius, he was not to be found.

My reason for looking for him is the 2012 Project. This year's has been to build a lawn and a kitchen garden; next year's is to make sense of our own orchard. After decades of neglect, we have huge apple and pear trees. There is lots of fruit on them, but so high up that it can't be picked, it simply falls to the ground and rots. I would like to severely prune the trees, so that they are the height of the commercial trees, about 2 metres. Hopefully, they can then start again from there. But I don't know how I should do it, so that they don't just die, or at what time of the year. Hence my need to talk to the expert.

I didn't find him today, but I will eventually. This is a serious project.

Walter Blotscher

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

The prosecuting authorities in New York have asked the judge to drop the criminal case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. It's important to understand what that means; and also what it doesn't mean.

The case has been dropped because the authorities no longer believe that they can prove DSK's guilt "beyond reasonable doubt", the standard of proof in all criminal cases in the U.S. This is a higher standard of proof than in civil cases, where matters are decided "on the balance of probabilities". And it is right in my view that it should be so. If the state, acting on behalf of society, is going to take away a person's freedom and other rights for long periods of time, then it needs to be pretty sure both that a crime has been committed, and that it has got the right person who committed it. There are, after all, plenty of examples throughout history - too many of them in recent history - where that has not been true.

In a sexual incident that left no signs of violence, and with no third-party witnesses, everything hinges on the testimony of the two persons concerned. Essentially, it would have been DSK's word against hers; and in particular, it would have been his word that she consented (no crime) against hers that she did not (a crime). Unfortunately, she in this instance has repeatedly changed her story, thereby undermining her credibility as the chief prosecution witness. As the motion to dismiss the case succinctly put it, "if we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot ask a jury to do so".

But if the end result is clear, so too are other things. The first is that a sexual encounter between the two did take place. Semen containing DSK's DNA was found on the woman's dress, which "established that the defendant had engaged in a sexual act with the complainant". Because of this and other things, the prosecutors obviously thought that DSK had committed a crime. But since they can't prove it, he must go free (the option under Scots criminal law, of the third verdict of "not proven", is not available in the U.S.).

It is not for me to judge the morality of what DSK has done; ultimately, that is for him and his wife to sort out. But secondly, in choosing to have a sexual encounter of an almost classical "powerful man meets downtrodden woman" kind, and in the five minutes available to him before he had to get a cab to the airport, DSK showed in my view a stunning error of judgement. Even if his case were 100% true (i.e. it was totally consensual), didn't he stop to think how it would look to the outside world if she chose to reveal it? If the whole Clinton impeachment saga demonstrated one thing, surely it was that not only should sexual relations by the world's most powerful men not be an abuse of power, but they should not be seen to be an abuse of power.

It is common to say that France, and French voters in particular, don't care a fig about this sort of thing, and that DSK can quickly resume what appeared to be his otherwise effortless path towards the Socialist Party's nomination as their candidate in the forthcoming Presidential election. I am not so sure. DSK may well have regained his freedom this week; but I think his reputation has taken a dent that it will be difficult for him to overcome.  

Walter Blotscher

THE 2011 PROJECT (5)

How do you build a lawn? Here's how, with some before and after pictures.

I am not quite finished yet. I am going to plant a small rose bed in the middle, and a couple of cherry trees here and there. But we're getting there.

Walter Blotscher

PS It was me who refound my daughter's camera!

LOW-LEVEL WARS

The Libyan episode (or, rather, act 1 of it) appears to be coming to a conclusion. But there are still a lot of other wars going on in the world. Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, to name but three; plus violence in Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe that's not big enough to be considered a real war.

The common thread of all these conflicts is that they no longer make headline news, but are kicked off the top spot by a madman in Norway, riots in the U.K., debt negotiations in the U.S. and even rainstorms in Belgium. Yet the slow drip drip of casualties in these places eventually adds up to a lot of death and destruction; at least a couple of thousand in Syria, for instance.

We are becoming inured to war. And that is not a good thing. 

Walter Blotscher

THE 2011 PROJECT (4)

The 2011 Project is going a bit like the curate's egg; good in parts (up-to-date pictures will be provided, once my daughter has refound her lost camera).

The new lawn part is going fantastically. Certainly my mother-in-law (my technical adviser on matters garden) makes appropriate cooing noises every time she visits. My heart rate went up a few notches, after I came back from holiday and found some molehills on the edge of the new grass. But he turned left rather than going straight on, and I got him the next day under the hedge.

The kitchen garden, on the other hand, has been a bit of a disappointment. That is partly due to my daughter's going into normal teenage mode, i.e. total inactivity. In not doing any work post-planting, she quickly managed to produce half a garden's worth of serious weeds. On my half, my potato plants took hold and flowered. But we were a bit late in planting, so when I harvested the crop this week, there were only 20 or so edible tubers. Mock not; that is the first food ever produced by my own fair hands.

Besides, 20 potatoes is enough for one meal. So tonight I invited my mother-in-law to dinner in order to eat them. After cooing over the new lawn, we sat down to fish in a cream and mushroom sauce, with new potatoes and a tomato and onion salad. I think she liked it.

My daughter's half of the kitchen garden has now been sequestered by me, and de-weeded. Next year I will plant potatoes in it - good for cleaning the soil, sayeth my mother-in-law - and something different in my half. I am starting to get into this horticulture thing.

Walter Blotscher

THE END OF THE REGIONS?

Denmark's middle tier of administration, the five regions, have only existed since the beginning of 2007 (see my earlier post for details). Their basic role is to run the country's hospital system, though they report to elected politicians. Over 200 of them, more than in the Folketing (Parliament).

Since four of the five regions are run by opposition parties, this has obviously irritated the Goverment. So today they announced that if they win the forthcoming general election, then the regions will be abolished, and replaced by three big hospital boards, made up of (unelected) healthcare experts. Any savings realised from not paying expensive politicians will be ploughed back into services.

The most interesting aspect of this proposal is that the regions were the brainchild of Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in his then role of Health and Interior Minister. Ministers are normally reluctant to ditch their pet projects, particularly when they haven't been going long. He must be seriously irritated.

Having more regional than national politicians is a bit odd. Having said that, healthcare is not just something that affects every single citizen at some point in their lives, but is also intensely political. So it's probably a good thing if there is some political oversight of it. Initial reactions suggest that voters think so too; so perhaps it's too early to write the regions off.   

Walter Blotscher

EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

Hundreds of thousands of British children, including my niece, today find out the results of their A-levels, the end of school exams that provide the passport to a coveted place at University (though perhaps not so coveted any more, given that students will have to pay large tuition fees from 2012 onwards).

The results show an increase in the overall pass rate for the 29th year in a row. Furthermore, the proportion of pupils getting the top A or A* grades is 27%, though this is the first time in 14 years that that figure has not risen. That compares with a figure of under 10% for all of the years from 1960 to the late 1980's.

As a mathematician by training, such figures lead to one inescapable conclusion; British children are doing much better academically than they used to. Unfortunately, that inescapable conclusion is contradicted by a mass of other data; from employers complaining about young people's basic skills in literacy and numeracy, from international comparisons, from educational professionals and others. If this is true, then the inescapable conclusion must be replaced by another, namely that an A level is simply not as hard to get as it used to be.

I have always thought that the British system puts too much emphasis on academic qualifications, and not enough on improving the prospects for non-academic children. Other countries I have lived in (eg Denmark, Germany) certainly offer more, and more rewarding, choices for the non-academic pupil, thereby leaving academic qualifications to the truly academic. A system which gives everybody academic prizes at 18 is merely delaying the selection of the academic from the non-academic until after University; by which time everybody will have loaded up on a lot of debt. Since that selection will come eventually, I can't see that that is in the U.K.'s long-term economic or societal interests.

Walter Blotscher

LEARNING CHINESE

On my recent trip to the U.K., I stayed with a friend, who has adopted a Chinese girl, Katie. She was two and a half when they got her, and so already spoke Chinese, which she gradually forgot as she learned English. Now aged seven, she is re-learning Chinese; and we had an interesting chat over breakfast about how she is doing.

I have always thought that Chinese (and other character-based languages such as Japanese) must be phenomenally difficult, not just for foreigners but also for the Chinese themselves. Not the language as such, but the writing. I have a friend who is a linguist, and has a first-class degree from Oxford University (i.e. she is a very bright woman). She had one on one teaching from a Chinese teacher for two years, but eventually gave up; it was simply too difficult.

One reason is that there are in fact two sets of characters; the classical ones, still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the simplified ones used on the mainland, which were introduced by Mao. Furthermore, words made up of more than one character can mean completely different things from the individual characters themselves. Kindergarten is made up of the two German words Kinder (children) and Garten (garden), so kindergarten is some sort of place for children. In her book one of written Chinese, Katie showed me the character for mother and the character for child. Put the two together, and you get the character for good. That's "sort of" straightforward to understand (even if the individual characters are nouns and the combination an adjective); but there is a further complication, in that the word for good is not said anything like mother-child. It's as if the written word kindergarten were in fact pronounced as lawnmower.

One of the great advantages of alphabetic languages is that it is easy to discover the meaning of unknown words. If you don't know what antidisestablishmentarianism means, you go to a dictionary, find the a's, then the an's, and keep going until you come to the word in question; all you need to know in advance is the 26 letters and the order in which they organised. Chinese has dictionaries, but they are much more complex. Finding a character in the dictionary is almost as difficult as knowing and remembering the character in the first place.

Since Chinese people obviously have no difficulty learning to speak Chinese, the questions must be asked why they have developed a written script which is almost impossible for themselves to master; and what that means for a future world in which Chinese-speakers are likely to be one of the dominant forces. The development of "prompt" technologies, in which you write a phonetic sound, and the screen churns out the character, allows Chinese to communicate easily enough today on mobile phones and computers. But can a written language really survive, if its native speakers aren't fully literate in it? Might they instead choose another language (English being the obvious choice) for their written communications?

I don't know the answers to these questions. But I suspect that they will have great importance for the world in (say) 2111. In the meantime, I will follow Katie's progress with more than a passing interest.

Walter Blotscher

THE DANISH GENERAL ELECTION

Denmark must hold a general election within the next three months, and although there has been no official announcement yet, the campaign is already in full swing.

The existing right-of-centre minority coalition between the Venstre and the Conservatives have already announced that they won't be forming a Government after the election with their steadfast supporters, the very right-wing and anti-immigrant Danish People's Party. That will undoubtedly annoy the DPP, and is a policy that may have to be revised if the DPP continues the upward trend it has had since 2001. Particularly if they continue to take votes from the Conservatives.

Aside from inter-party squabbling, the Government's main problem is the economy. After stitching together the so-called 2020 plan, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen annonced at the end of May that the financial crisis was over, that Denmark had survived it better than most, that unemployment had topped, and that things would get better from now on. The strategy was to have 6 months of an improving economic environment, topped by a successful reelection. But last week's financial events have put paid to the idea that the crisis is over, and both the economy and unemployment remain in the doldrums. The Prime Minister is having to do some nimble back-pedalling.

Against that background and the general tiredeness that comes after 10 years in power, this election should be a shoo-in for the opposition. Unfortunately, the economy is voters' biggest concern, and their plans for the economy look decidedly ropey. In particular, the cornerstone of their alternative 2020 plan is that everybody works 12 minutes more a day (i.e. the working week rises from 37 hours to 38). However, this will not be imposed, but through voluntary collective bargaining between employers and unions, in the week after the election. Such a proposal may look sensible on paper; but employers don't want to add to their costs, and all studies show that Danes want to work less than they currently do, not more. This gives the opposition's economic plans a bit of a credibility problem.

Current rumours are that Lars Løkke is now set to call an election for the end of August rather than waiting until the end of October. Voters are more than usually undecided, so the outcome will probably come down to the strength of the various campaigns and/or the impact of unforeseen outside events. Indeed, it is quite possible that neither block wins, and that the DPP ends up holding the balance of power. Not a pleasant thought. 

Walter Blotscher

BADMINTON

As a world sport, badminton has a surprisingly narrow geographical footprint. Basically, there is England, where it was invented; parts of Asia (China, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan), who have all the best players; and Denmark. I have never managed to work out why badminton became so popular in Denmark, but popular it is. Virtually every small town has a sports hall, where badminton is played throughout the winter, not least by me. Though not in the summer, of course.

Not only is it popular, but the Danes are actually quite good at it. Much better than England, for example, which has ten times the population. In the world championships in London that finished today, Denmark had six quarter finalists in the five events. Unfortunately, that tally was converted into only one bronze medal, as the Asian superstars turned the screws in the final rounds. China won all five gold medals for the second year running, which underlines their dominance.

But they had to work hard for it. In the blue riband men's singles final, Lin Dan, three-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist, had to save two match points in the final set before winning his fourth world title over the Olympic silver medallist Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia. In a fantastic match, which I watched during my coffee break, some of the rallies were simply amazing. Given what can be achieved, it's a pity that the sport is not more widely played.

Walter Blotscher

TRAFFIC IN THE U.K.

I hired a car on my recent holiday, and drove around a fair amount. Three things stood out.

First, the quality of Britain's roads, particularly rural roads, is dire; there are potholes everywhere. I know that there have been a couple of bad winters in a row, but even so.

Secondly, the country is full of CCTV cameras. I have mentioned this before, but it still struck me just how many there are. 

Thirdly, there is a humungous amount of traffic. Everywhere and at all times. On Monday I was up early and on the M40 at 5.15am, in order to get to Stansted Airport by 7.00am. I couldn't believe how much traffic there was at that time of the morning, the 4-lane M25 was chock a block.

I like visiting England, but I don't think I could live there. I would quickly end up with road rage.

Walter Blotscher

THE BRITISH RIOTS

It's impossible to know why this week's riots in the U.K. spread in the way they did. A brief look at the press "analysis" merely reveals lots of theories that essentially reflect the individual paper's own prejudices. Social exclusion, absent fathers, spending cuts, welfare dependency, weak policing, racism, gangsta culture, consumerism, opportunism; take your pick.

It is however easier to see why the initial spark came from the Tottenham part of London, after police shot dead a young black man they were trying to arrest. On 6 October 1985 there was a major riot on the area's Broadwater Farm Estate, during which a policeman was brutally hacked to death. Three black men (the "Tottenham Three") were convicted in 1987 of his murder; but their convictions were subsequently quashed by the Court of Appeal in late 1991 after scientific tests suggested that their confessions had been fabricated by the police. That sort of case is hard for locals to forget.

Relations between the black community and the Metropolitan Police in London have long been fraught, not least because the force has a history of institutionalised racism. Independent investigations and inquiries have made recommendations for change, and it is generally accepted that the Met is better than it was. Nevertheless, a police shooting - thankfully, a rare occurrence in Britain - in that particular geographical location was always going to produce tension, however justified it may have been. When a 300-strong group, which included the deceased's family, marched on the local police station two days later to seek "justice", the demonstration quickly got out of hand.

Some of the other areas where rioting followed (eg Brixton) have large black populations; but others do not. As I say, the reasons for its spreading nationwide are unclear, and almost certainly complex. Though that won't prevent politicians and others from giving their simplistic twopenn'th.

Walter Blotscher

ENGLISH PUBS

One of the things I miss about England is pubs. Yes, the beer is warm rather than cold; yes, it is flat rather than fizzy; and yes, it is bitter rather than malty. But I like all of those things, and I like drinking beer in a public place, often situated in a very pleasant part of the world. I am not saying that if I lived in the U.K., I would always be in the pub. But I do like going there when I am visiting.

I have often wondered why Britain has pubs and Denmark, on the whole, does not (and not just Denmark, all of Scandinavia). Both have northern climates too cold for wine, grow a lot of wheat and barley, and like beer. However, whereas the combination in the U.K. resulted in a pub in every village, Danes tend to drink mainly at home. Yes, there are pubs in the larger cities. But there are hardly any village pubs, which are the ones I like most.

Last week I had some great pints of beer in some great English pubs. In chronological order, there was the Perch in Oxford, situated on the far side of Port Meadow (and which I hadn't visited for 30 years or so); the King's Head in Gunnerside, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales; and the Bounty, in Cookham. The last, situated right on the Thames opposite Bourne End, can only be reached on foot or by bicycle, and has a great bitter called Rebellion. I had two pints of it on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and can highly recommend it.

Walter Blotscher

MOLE WARFARE (8)

I think that the Mole Army must be reading this blog. As soon as I announce in print that I am going off on a week's holiday in England, they send a stormtrooper into the top of the new grass area, close to the big beech tree and the wheatfield (see an earlier post for a map of the battlefield). Fortunately, said stormtrooper didn't like the new grass area, since there were only a few desultory piles before he stopped and moved along the hedge into the now dangerouly exposed front garden (I say fortunately, since a reasonably busy mole could have wrecked all of my hard work on the new lawn in the course of one evening).   

Coming back on Monday, I sighed with relief, changed into my military uniform and went onto the offensive. I put a defensive trap on the edge of the new grass area, and then worked my way along the hedge, laying a trap in what I thought was his current position and flattening the remaining piles. Tuesday morning required moving the trap 2 metres to the left. Then, this morning, bingo! One dead mole.

A key victory in this eternal war. And if the Mole Army are indeed reading this, then take note; I have no plans to go on holiday for the rest of this year.  

Walter Blotscher

POTENTIAL MELTDOWN (5)

When I was in the U.K., I said to my friend that I didn't think that the U.S. Congress would do a deal allowing an increase in the Federal debt ceiling before the deadline of 2 August. However, at the absolute 11th hour (President Obama signed the bill on the very last day), they managed it. I was wrong.

Or was I? The deal allows a 2-stage increase in the debt ceiling of US$900 billion in return for spending cuts of US$917 billion. However, US$900 billion is not much more than a drop in the ocean, given the current parlous state of America's public finances. So a 12-man congressional committee, made up of six Democrats and six Republicans, is due to find a further US$1.5 trillion in spending cuts by the end of this year, in return for a similar increase in the debt ceiling. If they can't agree on the cuts, or if Congress doesn't approve them, then US$1.2 trillion of cuts will automatically come into play.

The deal solves the immediate problem, but is an agreement to reach an agreement a real agreement? Given recent events, the likelihood of an agreement on spending cuts seems small. True, deadlock will bring automatic cuts. But Congress can always change its mind on that. Furthermore, everyone outside Congress seems to agree that US$2.4 trillion of future cuts is not enough to solve the country's problems. US$4 trillion is the consensus figure; but since that can only come about if tax increases/elimination of tax breaks are brought into the mix, the one issue which Republicans adamantly refuse to countenance, no real solution is on offer.

That last fact brought a swift response. Standard and Poor's, one of the three main rating agencies, cut the U.S. credit rating from the hallowed AAA, for the first time in history; and then downgraded the debt of the huge state-backed mortgage lenders Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. Stockmarkets fell, and have been falling since.

So was it a real deal? Not in my view.

Walter Blotscher