Friday 30 November 2012

MY MOTHER-IN-LAW

It's my mother-in-law's birthday today, so congratulations to her. That's also why I am not blogging today; I have been to her house for tea and dinner. Apart from this, of course.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 29 November 2012

THE 2012 PROJECT (4)

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you apply a chainsaw with a brand new chain to a large tree trunk, it's like a knife going through butter. The metal is quite soft, so it loses its sharpness after a while. But I was still able to do some serious chopping this morning.

With the onset of winter, it's time to do some more work on the 2012 Project, licking the orchard into shape.We had also run out of wood for the stove, and my wife was beginning to nag me. As well as an annoying sycamore that was encroaching from the wood, I chopped down the two pear trees which I had left earlier this year. I have cut them right down to just above ground level, and hope that they will begin to recover next year in the same way as my resilient apple tree has done next to the house. After lugging the lumps of trunk into the barn, I went to work with my axe. There's now a fair stack of wood, that should last us until Christmas, and a pleasant tiredness in my shoulder muscles.

I inherited the Husqvarna chainsaw, plus the padded safety overalls and helmet with mesh visor, from my father-in-law, who had purchased it just before he died. Since then, I have not only used it a lot, but have learned how to maintain it, clean it, oil it, and change the chain (major achievements, given my lack of practical skills pre-2000). It wasn't starting well this week, and I thought it might be because I am not strong enough any more. However, when I took it yesterday to the local shop that helps me in these matters, the mechanic took the top off and immediately said "you're missing a spring". Without the two springs attached to the rotor, you can apparently tug on the rope handle from now until next year, and still not get it started. You learn something every day.

Two new springs and a chain later, and I was all set. I am not a weedy forester after all.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 28 November 2012

DEFENCE SPENDING

If building a new airport brings out the most Nimby-ish (not in my backyard) tendencies in folk, then defence spending must represent the other end of the spectrum. Nobody wants to give it up, as events in Denmark are demonstrating.

The combination of the end of the Cold War, the collapse of communism, and budget constraints are forcing all rich, developed, nations to review the amount they spend on defence. Modern threats require more intelligence, fewer "boots on the ground", and more cooperation, both between individual services jealous of their turf and traditions, and between nations. Denmark is no exception to these trends.

Earlier this year, the politicians in Copenhagen agreed to cut Dkr.2.7 billion from the defence budget in order to reduce the tax burden on businesses. That was the easy part; the problems come in deciding what to cut and where. Abolishing værnepligt, a sacred cow to those on the right, is difficult to oppose when more than enough young men are volunteering anyway. But the real deal-breaker is closing barracks.

Army bases provide lots of employment, often in out-in-the-sticks places that don't provide many alternative jobs. So as soon as any closure proposals leak out, up pops a local mayor on the news to tell the nation that closing this or that base would be a catastrophe for the local economy and society. These mayors cover the whole political spectrum from left to right, so there are no easy answers, particularly when the current Government is a coalition with a bare majority (defence spending has a tradition of being agreed "across the aisle"). Indeed, some of the national politicians, while agreeing to the cuts in principle, feel unable to support the details because they represent a constituency that (yes, you guessed it) has an army base in it that may get closed.

Not an easy problem to solve. How the Government tackles it will affect in large part the local elections due next autumn. Denmark is a decentralised state, where local councils have real power, so national decisions that adversely affect local interests will almost certainly get punished.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 27 November 2012

RELATIVITY

This is going to surprise some people, but Albert Einstein was not really a very good mathematician. Sure, he was good with numbers. But he was not in the same league as (say) Euler, Gauss, Cauchy or Riemann. The Swiss-born Euler, who was headhunted to be director of the Russian Imperial Academy in the eighteenth century at the vast salary of 3,000 roubles, was so prolific that the official Russian scientific journal was still publishing the backlog of his 886 original mathematical works some forty five years after his death. Einstein's special theory of relativity, on the other hand, used equations called the Lorentz transformation that had already been worked out by someone else, namely the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz.

Does that mean that Einstein wasn't a genius? On the contrary, he was. But not for the reason people commonly suppose.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Newtonian mechanics had reigned for 300 years. I stand on a hill and watch a train go past at 100 km/hour. A man on the train walks forward through the coaches at 5 km/hour. I say that relative to me, the man is travelling at 105 (100 + 5) km/hour. What is more, if I were an observer on the train itself, I would come up with the same answer.

Newtonian mechanics had since expanded to include the new field of electromagnetism, encompassed in the equations of James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. But then came the scientific bombshell of the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887. Boiling this down to its essentials, this showed definitively that the speed of light was the same in all frames of reference. To use the train analogy, the speed of light for the man on the hill would not be the speed of light on the train plus an extra 5 km/hour, it would remain unchanged.

Mathematicians got to work, and Lorentz soon quantified the effect. But nobody could work out why there was an effect. Most people agreed that it was due to the ether, something in the air that affected light in some way. It took Einstein to show them that they were wrong.

His great insight - which in many ways is more philosophical than mathematical - was to say that the units were different. What is a meter to the man on the hill is not a meter to the man on the train; and what is a second to the man on the hill is not a second to the man on the train. In other words, there are no Newtonian absolutes, how we measure things depends on where we are. For speeds that are small relative to the speed of light, the differences are tiny, infinitessimal even (the Lorentz transformations use a factor equal to the square root of (1- v^2/c^2), so for ordinary measurements like the speed of the train, the factor is essentially 1). But as and when velocities start getting up towards the speed of light, the effects start to become large. And the speed of light, c, is constant in all frames of reference, because it is c train meters/train seconds, and that is the same as c hill meters/hill seconds.

It takes a genius to overturn, or at least expand, a scientific paradigm. Freed from thinking in purely Newtonian terms, it allowed scientists to move on from looking at what happens when things move really fast to looking at what happens when things get really small (which is what quantum theory is all about). Relativity and quantum theory have never been reconciled, though the hope of Einstein and many others was that they are both part of an even larger idea. He never managed to prove that, though he did enough in my view to justify his huge reputation.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 26 November 2012

AUTUMN TASKS (2)

Like last year, November was unusually dry this year, so I have done a lot of autumn tasks. Starting with leaves. Being next to a wood, and having a huge beech tree right next to the house, an awful lot of them fall on the house, the yard and the lawns. Sweeping up leaves is a bit like mowing the lawn; a repetitive task that gives plenty of time for introspection.

But I have also been productive. I finished a new terrace (pictures later), and have rendered the foundation on the third side of the barn. I have also built a new rose garden at the front of the house. My mother-in-law thought that the original one round the back was too close to the wood, and that the plants would not get enough sun. That was a correct decision, so last week we dug them up and moved them to their new home.

I also trimmed the beech hedge. As part of that, I discovered a mole that was going berserk under it. I don't mind that, just so long as he doesn't move out and destroy my lawns. After letting him have fun for a week or so, I got tired of the sport, and bagged him in my trap. God, I'm good at mole-hunting.

All that remains is for me to clear out the leaves from the guttering. My daughter has agreed to hold the ladder while I do that on Saturday morning. Then we will be all set for the winter, which is coming next week.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 25 November 2012

THE E.U. BUDGET (2)

I predicted last month that this week's summit to agree the 2014-20 framework for the E.U.'s budget would end in gridlock. That duly happened; after a two day dialogue of the deaf, everybody agreed to go home and try again in the new year.

My prediction, though correct, was not particularly insightful. Because the underlying problem is that Member States disagree hugely about what the E.U. Budget is for. For countries such as the U.K., it's a waste of money that should be kept as small as possible. For the new club members from Eastern Europe, it's a way of reducing the income differentials vis a vis the earlier fifteen. For southerners with lots of farmers, it's an important source of funding, now that domestic budgets are being squeezed. For federalists, it provides useful transnational funding for research and education. And so on and so forth.

These differences have always existed. But with 27 Member States and the European Parliament all having a veto, the permutations and complications have become increasingly complex. Before the last 7-year framework, the Germans, in a spirit of compromise, threw in an extra Euro1 billion at the last minute in order to get an agreement. Now nobody has Euro1 billion to spare, and they would not be inclined to offer it up, even if they had.  

It is not easy to see how this one will pan out. It could be that everyone is just posturing before accepting an unpalatable outcome. Personally I doubt it. To take but one example. Denmark's demand for a rebate of Dkr.1 billion (a figure calculated from its Dkr.800 million contribution to the U.K. rebate plus Dkr.200 million to the other rich countries' rebates) has already been factored in to the Government's long-term financing plans, and sold to the Danish electorate as such (i.e. in the bag). Other Governments face equally restive Parliaments and/or electorates. Against that background, the budget negotiations could well run for some time yet.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 24 November 2012

HUNTING

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was a best-selling book during the 1990's, which basically said that men and women are from different planets. Unless and until both sexes recognise this, misunderstandings (and worse) will abound.

Education has softened the edges of the "man as warrior, woman as nurturer" stereotype, but one area of life where it still seems to hold true is hunting. Lots of people hunt in Denmark. Not, as in England, in red jacket and on horseback, riding after hounds and chasing a fox (the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable, as Oscar Wilde once famously put it); but in olive green jackets, on foot, and with a rifle. Deer, pheasant, wild duck, and the occasional hare seem to be the targets. We get a lot of the first two in the wood next to our house, so autumn weekends are often punctuated by loud bangs. They were out in force today.

In order to hunt in Denmark, you need a licence, a "jagttegn". 171,609 of these were issued in 2012, of which 161,740 were to men and only 9,869 to women. It seems that the role of women is still mainly to feed those men after they have come in from a hard day's work shooting, and to cook whatever they come back with (something, I have to say, that my mother-in-law does very well indeed). There may be equality between the sexes in the workplace, but there is certainly not out in the sticks.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 23 November 2012

LOCAL CUSTOMS (2)

Tonight was the annual pre-Christmas dinner at the village hall. It was just like last year; which is the whole point.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 22 November 2012

THANKSGIVING FOOTBALL

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.; congratulations to them. My son is spending the day with a very good friend of mine from university days and his family in Greenwich, Connecticut, so he should have a good time.

As anybody who has seen Friends will know, one of the traditions of Thanksgiving is American football. Watching the game on television while stuffing the turkey, that sort of thing. And one of the traditions of American football on Thanksgiving is that it always involves the Detroit Lions. The tradition goes back to 1934, when the franchise decided to play on the Thursday in order to boost the crowd, the football team being at the time markedly less popular than the successful baseball team in the same city.

In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys made a similar decision. Since then, they have played every Thanksgiving except twice.

With the proliferation of television, the football league decided in 2006 to add a third game, thereby giving the public 9+ hours of football during the holiday. This match is not awarded to any particular team.

I have just watched the end of the first match, between Detroit and the league-leading Houston Texans. Houston should have won easily, but it ended 31-31 in normal time, when I came in. The 15-minute overtime period was sensational, both teams conceding turnovers and missing by inches field goals that would have won the game. Finally, with 2.21 left in the game, Houston slotted a field goal to give them the win. It was Detroit's ninth successive Thanksgiving defeat.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 21 November 2012

A RELIGIOUS ELECTION

Two of my recent posts have been on religion and elections. The two came together yesterday.

At issue was whether the Anglican Church in the U.K. would allow women bishops. These are already present in other Protestant churches (such as the Danish Lutheran); and 29 of them have been consecrated in other parts of the Anglican Communion such as the United States and New Zealand, of which 23 are currently active. The Church of England has permitted women priests since 1994, but bishops are the real deal, not least because they run the show. 324 voted for the measure, and only 122 against, so presumably bishops are now allowed, right?

Wrong. The general synod of the Church of England votes in three separate houses; bishops, clergy and laity. Each house has to pass the measure in order for it to go through. Furthermore, a "pass" requires a two thirds majority rather than the normal 50%. In the House of Bishops, the vote was 44 in favour, with 3 against and 2 abstentions; and in the House of Clergy it was 148 in favour versus 45 against. The problem was in the House of Laity, where the vote was 132 in favour versus 74 against. A substantial majority, but six votes shy of the two thirds required.

Both the current and future Archbishops of Canterbury support the principle of women bishops; backed by an almost unanimous House of Bishops, this means that the issue is not going to go away. However, having been defeated, the measure can't come back to the synod for the remainder of the current synod's term; which means 2015 at the earliest. And when it eventually does, the synod will still have to deal with an extremely hostile and motivated minority in the House of Laity who are against women bishops on principle, either because they make potential reunion with the (all-male) Roman Catholic church even harder, or because they believe that the Bible rules them out. Finessing this pickle will be the new Archbishop's number one headache.

Left to one side in the fall-out is why an institution has such complex and strange voting arrangements, which leave it hostage to an uncompromising minority that is resistant to change. China's unanimous voting system is looking less bizarre by the day.

Walter Blotscher


Tuesday 20 November 2012

TRAFFIC SAFETY

One thing that seems inexorable is the rise in traffic. What is not necessarily inexorable is an increase in traffic accidents; at least not in Denmark.

Between 2000 and 2011 the number of people killed or injured on Danish roads fell by 56%. The fall in the number of deaths is particularly marked, falling from 406 in 2007 to 220 in 2011, the lowest figure ever. There was no one single reason for this, but a combination of better infrastructure (notably more roundabouts at busy junctions), better vehicles, more measures to control speed, and a reduction in driving under the influence of alcohol.

Traffic accidents impose a huge direct cost on society, in the form of smashed vehicles/insurance payments, medical costs, and lost earnings, in addition to the human costs. It is estimated that the reduction in accidents over the past 11 years has saved Denmark kr.59 billion, which is a tidy sum.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 18 November 2012

ENGLISH PUBS (2)

Readers of this blog know that I like English pubs, and I miss them here in Denmark. And not just for their wares. The buildings, the setting, the log fires; and the signs.

Many pubs in England have always had signs; but a statute of Richard II in 1393 made them compulsory. In an age when most people were illiterate, it helped to be able to recognise a picture, particularly if you were already drunk. Many signs reflected the coat of arms of the local lord; the White Hart (Richard's own), the Green Dragon, the Blue Boar, the Greyhound. There are also lots to do with hunting (the Hare and Hounds, the Falcon), agriculture (the Wheatsheaf, the Plough), transport (the Coach and Horses, the Railway Tavern), the sea (the Volunteer, the Ship), and battles (the Trafalgar, the Alma). Plus, of course, royalty (the Victoria, the Rose and Crown).

Nobody is quite sure which is the most common pub name, but beery guesses put it at the Red Lion. However, what is undoubtedly true is that both the shortest and longest pub names are in the town of Stalybridge; Q and The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer.Rifleman Corps Inn. The last is almost guaranteed to cause a dispute in pub cricket, where you score runs for the number of legs in the sign when you speed past in a car. Rifleman suggests a clip to the offside for two, whereas corps, on the other hand ....

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 17 November 2012

LOCAL DERBIES

The word derby is supposed to have come from the classic horse race The Derby, founded by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a derby had come to mean any sort of sporting contest; so a local derby was simply a sporting contest between two local teams. Nowadays, however, a derby tends to be used exclusively for that local match-up; Manchester United v Manchester City, for instance, or Everton v Liverpool.

There is something special about a derby, that extra rivalry, the extra tension. Today I watched the North London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspurs, who are both based in rather dreary suburbs of London. Both are "big clubs", meaning that they have been around a long time, usually in the best English league, have won championships and F.A. Cups at regular intervals, and have big fan bases (there were 60,000 at Arsenal's modern Emirates Stadium this afternoon). When I was a boy, supporting my home town Derby County, Arsenal were known as "boring Arsenal", having a rock-solid defence and no attackers; 1-0 would have been a high scoring match. But in recent years they have acquired attractive (usually foreign) strikers, and their defence has begun to leak like a sieve. This year's start to the season has been their worst in 30 years.

Today's match started in deafening noise and at 100mph. Spurs were quickest out of the blocks and scored after 10 minutes through their striker Emmanuel Adebayor, who used to play for Arsenal. Shortly thereafter, he got a direct red card for a horrible studs-up tackle (a justified decision, viewed from my armchair), and the game changed. Arsenal upped the pace, scored three times before half-time, and ended up winning 5-2. Theo Walcott had a great game on the wing and got the final goal.

Since the Premier League started in the 1990's, Arsenal v Spurs has been the fixture with the highest number of goals. Business as usual this afternoon.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 16 November 2012

BAD P.R.

You would have thought, given what has happened over the past few years, that bank chief executives would be reluctant to accept large wage increases. In Denmark at least, the opposite is true. Between 2007 and 2011 the chief executives of major Danish banks increased their pay, on average, by 21%. During the same period, profits at the same banks fell by 77%.

To be fair, it is not all their fault. Many human beings are naturally greedy, and most - if not all - accept pay rises when offered. The real fault lies with the Boards of these organisations. Although preaching a capitalist sermon, in which rewards are tied to achievements, they have in fact overseen a system which does the exact opposite. Bank pay went up earlier in the decade, when times were good, and continued to rise when profits went down. If there is one thing that is certain in life, it is that bank pay will continue to go up in the near future, no matter what anybody says.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 15 November 2012

SAS

Back in 1946, when Scandinavian Airlines System, to give it its full name, was founded, it must have seemed like one of those sensible Nordic decisions. With three rich, geographically large, but sparsely populated countries, it made sense to operate one airline over the whole area instead of have the three national carriers slug it out against each other. And for most of the next 50 years, SAS was successful, even though some of its internal arrangements were hardly competitive (eg operating crews in the ratio 3:2:2, Sweden:Norway:Denmark, the same as their joint 50% shareholding is divided up). Aviation during this period was a cosy collection of bilateral duopolies, anti-competitive alliances and restrictions on foreign shareholdings. My wife tells me that during the 1970's, it was cheaper to fly to London from Copenhagen via New York rather than direct, since SAS and British Airways had the point-to-point market to themselves. And I still remember the first time I flew to Scandinavia, in 1986, in a small propeller-driven plane operated by Mærsk Air from Southend to Billund; it cost £450. Today, 25 years later, I regularly fly from Billund to the U.K. in a proper jet for around kr.450, a tenth of that old price. Or even less.

And therein lies SAS' problem. The European aviation market has changed dramatically in recent years, with the liberalising of routes and the arrival of low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, EasyJet and Norwegian undermining the luxury service model that SAS has traditionally provided. The last decade has seen an endless cycle of savings plans, retrenchment, losses and capital injections. The number of employees has fallen from 32,481 in 2004 to 15,142 in 2011, even though the number of passengers has only fallen from 33.3 million to 27.2 million, the number of planes from 297 to 215, and the number of destinations from 146 to 128. SAS is hugely more efficient than it was; but it is still not efficient enough.

And so came the announcement this week of yet another cost-cutting plan. Its ground-handling subsidiary will be sold, and a further 800 jobs will go, though these measures are not the key parts of it. What is different this time is that SAS has decided to tear up the 40 or so (yes, really) agreements it has with the various unions that work for it, and replace them with a much simpler structure. Workers will be expected to take up to 15% cuts in pay (management have already agreed to do the same). And everybody has only a week to agree to the new terms, ending this Sunday.

Such un-Scandinavian business practices have sent shock waves throughout the Nordic world, particularly in Denmark, which is home to SAS' main international hub at Copenhagen. The Scandinavian labour model pits strong unions against strong management in legally binding 2-year agreements, agreements you don't (and often can't) tear up. The fact that SAS has just done so shows how precarious its financial position now is. Rumours say that without new labour agreements, it would have only weeks before it went bust.

In the medium-term the great hope for the company is to be bought by Lufthansa. However, even another state-owned leviathan would not buy a dog; unless and until SAS becomes competitive again, then nobody will buy it. Frantic negotiations are currently taking place between workers and management; most commentators believe that the employees will blink and accept the new terms. The real question thereafter is not what happens to SAS, but what happens to that famously consensual Nordic labour market. After all, there are other companies in other industries with SAS' high-cost wage model and cheaper competition. Perhaps they will be tempted to take the same route.

UPDATE 19/11: The employees did indeed blink and accept the new terms, though the deadline was missed in the case of the Danish cabin staff union. But management stayed firm to their demand that all the new agreements needed to be in place if bankruptcy was to be avoided, and the union caved. The stock market applauded the agreements, sending SAS' share price up 23% on the day. However, it's a sign of SAS' problems that it only got to Skr.6.90; back in early 2009 it was trading at close to Skr.1,500.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 14 November 2012

SKYFALL

I saw Skyfall, the new James Bond film, at the local cinema this evening. 35 customers, including me and my wife; not bad for a wet Wednesday in November.

I loved it. Much less silly than most Bond films, fewer women, and better acting. Daniel Craig looked as if he is getting on a bit in years, which he is. As is the Bond franchise, 50 and still going strong.

Probably the best ever.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 13 November 2012

PAPER

When I was at school in the 1970's, there were a lot of rumours about an imminent paper shortage. Oil had suddenly become four times as expensive in 1973, and paper-making is (or was) a very energy-intensive industry. I don't know that all of the rumours were true, but it certainly provoked a lot of ill-informed teenage discussion in my class.

Looking back on that time, it all seems rather quaint. Because the fact of the matter is that our use of paper has fallen drastically in recent years. Denmark used 1.2 million tonnes in 1995, rising steadily to 1.45 million tonnes in 2006; it then fell back to under 1.1 million tonnes in 2009, and is forecast to keep on falling in the future.

The main reasons are declining sales of newspapers and the sharp drop in letters as a means of communication. Daily print runs of Danish newspapers fell from 1,438,000 in 2001 to 967,000 in 2011; and for Sundays, from 1,344,000 to 832,000. Letters sent through the post fell even more quickly, from 1.5 billion in 1999 to 777 million in 2011.

The meteoric rise of E-Mail, smart phones, sms's and other electronic media have made sending a letter rather old-fashioned. I once applied for a job, in which there were lots of candidates. I got an interview, at which the company said that they had noticed my application, since it was the only one that had come in the post and had a proper signature on it. It wasn't enough to get me the job, though ....

Walter Blotscher

Monday 12 November 2012

STRØGET

This week marks the 50th anniversary of a world first. On 17 November 1962 Copenhagen city council closed the one kilometre long Routen to traffic, thereby creating Strøget, the first ever pedestrian precinct. In February 1964, after a 15-month trial, the experiment became a permanent fixture.

We are so used to pedestrian areas in cities today that it's easy to forget how recently ago they emerged.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 11 November 2012

PRIESTLY CHANGES

There seem to have been a number of changes in the religious world in the last week or so. It's interesting to look at the different ways in which they came about.

Over in England, the Bishop of Durham, Justin Welby, has just been appointed as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, an unbroken line that goes back to St. Augustine at the beginning of the 7th century. The Archbishop is formal CEO of the Anglican Church, that curious hybrid of an essentially catholic ritual and doctrine housed in an organisational structure that broke from Rome in the 1530's because the Pope would not sanction an annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Since then, the church has been the established church of England, with the monarch as its head, and Bishop Welby's appointment reflects that political reality. A committee in the inner reaches of Whitehall draws up a list of candidates, the Prime Minister makes a choice (officially a recommendation to the monarch), and the Queen approves said choice.

Bishop Welby is an unusual appointment. He didn't come to the priesthood until his mid-30's, having worked in the oil industry for more than a decade. He has also been a bishop for less than a year, which is not very long; and in moving into the top job, he has vaulted above other candidates, notably the church's number two, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. The Archbishop of Canterbury's less formal role is as leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, a sort of federation of like-minded autonomous churches. This is under great strain at the moment, since there is deep conflict between liberal-minded episcopalians in the U.S. who tolerate female bishops and gay priests, and conservative Africans who believe that homosexuality is a mortal sin. Born in Uganda, Dr. Sentamu might have been thought to be the man best able to bridge that gap. However, Bishop Welby's experience with finance might have tipped the scales. The Church of England is a huge property owner, and sorting out its ramshackle finances must be a priority.

Here in Denmark, a new Bishop of Fünen was consecrated last weekend. Denmark also had an ecclesiastical revolution in the 1530's, when the then monarch changed over to the Lutheran faith in 1536. The 1849 constitution introduced and guaranteed freedom of religion, but Lutheranism has remained the state religion; the monarch is the head of the church, priests are state employees, and the whole thing is financed by a church tax (though you can opt out of that if you disagree).

The most striking difference about Lutheranism is that there is no equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Each of the 11 dioceses (10 in Denmark itself and one for Greenland) is pretty well autonomous, though convention has it that the Bishop of Copenhagen is somewhat primus inter pares, officiating at royal marriages and such like. One reason is that the historical equivalent of Canterbury during the Middle Ages was Lund, in what is now southern Sweden. This was part of Denmark for 600 years and only became Swedish in the middle of the seventeenth century after Denmark ceded it as the price for losing one of the interminable Swedish wars.

The second difference is that bishops in Denmark are elected. The electorate consists of the priests and members of the local parish councils within the diocese, in the case of Fünen roughly a couple of thousand people. You don't have to be a practising priest in order to stand, though you do have to have the qualifications required in order to be a priest (basically, a master of theology). If nobody gets 50% of the vote, then there is a run-off between the top two candidates. There were four candidates, and the winner this time was a woman, another difference from the U.K. Female priests have been allowed in Denmark since 1948, and the first female bishop was consecrated in 1995. Today more than two thirds of theology students are women, and the clergy is expected to be a female majority profession within the near future. Middle Age clerics would turn in their graves.

Finally, we got a new local parish priest today. The last one had been in the job for 31 years, so it was time for a change. He is being replaced by the grandson of the man who did the job before him. Married to a priest, son of two priests and grandson of another, you could say that he comes from an ecclesiastical family. He was invested by the rural dean; though, being a state appointment sanctioned by the Church Ministry, it did sound somewhat more bureaucratic than (say) Bishop Welby's investiture will be next spring.

My wife has just been elected to the local parish council, one of whose jobs is to appoint the local priest. As part of the welcoming ceremony, the outgoing and incoming councils, plus their partners, were invited to dinner this evening in order to make him feel at home. I sat next to the organist, a charming woman in her 60's who turned out to be an American who had lived in Denmark for 50 years. Over coffee in the drawing room, I then had a long chat on the politics of the Danish church with the dean, a rather florid man who reminded me a lot of a mediæval prelate. There may be many ways of carrying out religion, but a political element seems to be common to all of them.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 10 November 2012

BLOG BUGS

One of the functions in this blog is the ability to click on an underlined link, and be transfered to a previous post on something similar. As in yesterday's post, for instance; I was talking about Barack Obama and put in a link to my post of two years ago on the same subject.

While I was writing it, I happened to notice that other words also had the blue link under them. But these were single words, where I had not made the link; money, date, win, woman. When I clicked on them, I got annoying ads asking me to join a casino, or become friends with Russian women. Even more irritating, I found that the links went through all of my previous 800 or so posts. So whenever I had written the word money during the past two and a half years, there was a link inviting me to find a Russian girlfriend.

When I have IT problems, I usually turn to my son, he of the Globe 6 Adventures blog. Since he couldn't see the links under the words in his Firefox browser, he guessed that it had something to do with the Chrome browser that I use to write the blog (blogger.com being, like Chrome, part of the Google stable). I uninstalled Chrome and then reinstalled it, but the problem remained. However, after surfing on the internet for an hour or so, I found the following link http://wordpress.org/support/topic/unwanted-ads-suddently-overlaying-my-images that told me what to do. It was a problem with Chrome, an extension within the browser called Fast Save. I disabled this, and bingo, the annoying words and the Russian women all disappeared.

Computers and other IT-thingies are very useful tools, until they start to go wrong. At which point, they quickly become frustrating and irritating to someone like me. In this particular case, I persevered, and finally managed to sort the problem out. So I suppose I should view the whole thing as a learning experience.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 9 November 2012

BARACK OBAMA AT HALFWAY (2)

Since American presidents are constitutionally barred from more than two 4-year terms, Barack Obama's victory this week means that he is now halfway through his period in office. Writing after the mid-terms two years ago, I said that he had been a disappointment after the hype of his original election in 2008, and that he faced a tough fight in order to be re-elected. Both the disappointment and the fight continued until this week. In the end he won the fight; now, having secured his re-election, he has the opportunity to do something about the disappointment.

The biggest part of that concerns the fact that America is, politically speaking, split right down the middle. Mr. Obama may have won handsomely in the rather quirky electoral college that ultimately decides; but the popular vote was almost exactly a dead heat. Four years ago, he portrayed himself as a unifier, but the outcome was anything but. True, he has had to deal with a House of Representatives dominated by Republicans of a particularly obstreperous hue. But that doesn't excuse the fact that his re-election campaign focussed almost exclusively on denigrating Mitt Romney's character and achievements, and spent more on negative advertisements than any other in history. Since the Republicans still hold the House, and they are still obstreperous, something has to change if the President is to achieve anything in domestic policy.

And change quickly. Because looming just over the horizon on 1 January is the so-called "fiscal cliff". Unless something is done, the combination of tax rises and automatic spending cuts will be so severe that the U.S. will tip back into recession. Sorting that out would not be easy at the best of times; but trying to do it in the so-called "lame duck" session of Congress before the new representatives take up their seats makes it even harder. And that's not taking the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays into account.

Some sort of fudge will probably be found before 1 January, the alternative is simply too gruesome to contemplate. But it will be a short-term fix that doesn't really solve anything. What is required is a medium-term plan that moves America from trying to be a European country in terms of spending entitlements while being a Latin American country in terms of revenue raising. Such a plan will require genuine compromise with the Republican party, something that Mr. Obama has conspicuously not shown so far.

Some leaders (George W. Bush springs to mind) promise much and achieve little or nothing; some are not expected to do well, and achieve a lot (Harry Truman, say). Barack Obama's problem was that the expectations engendered by his simply getting to the Oval Office were so huge, that he was almost bound to disappoint. That may have been unfair, but politics is unfair. If he wants to be remembered for something more than being the first black President and killing Osama bin Laden, then he needs to roll his sleeves up and get his hands dirty. And soon.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 8 November 2012

DIFFERENCES IN ELECTIONS

Historians will probably look back on this week with interest, as both of the world's current superpowers, namely the United States and China, hold elections to find new leaders at almost exactly the same moment in time. A large part of that interest will be due to the different ways in which those elections are held.

In America, where Barack Obama has just got reelected (more on that another time), two candidates stand against each other in the political equivalent of a boxing contest. They spend huge amounts of time and effort, telling anyone who will listen (and many who don't want to) how awful the other guy is, and that you would be mad to vote for him. There are TV debates and detailed policy discussions, acres of forest are felled in order to provide comments and predictions, the result is close to the end. All of this is incredibly public. Finally, one man wins and gets the glory, the other walks off into the sunset and political oblivion.

Acorss the globe in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China has just started its 10-yearly leadership change. In Chinese politics, nobody says anything really substantive about anything, there are certainly no debates, and no leader spends his time denigrating his rivals (in public, at any rate). Money is spent, but not on political activities, more on extra security to ensure that no ordinary people get anywhere near the building. Oddest of all, everybody knows in advance who is going to win, though nobody is quite sure how the decision is made or who actually makes it. Finally, people who miss out on the top job are usually found some sort of compensation at a slightly lower level.

Which system is better? We often assume in the rich world that our way of doing things is automatically the best, and we often forget that there are other ways of doing things. Certainly, from my son's recent experiences in China, he would say that ordinary Chinese value stability and collective harmony more than the individual pursuit of happiness that seems to drive us. If that is true, then why shouldn't Chinese democracy be different from ours (both of which, incidentally, are different from "true" democracy, as practised in ancient Athens)? In the general election of 1868, William Gladstone came a humiliating third in the two-member seat of South West Lancashire, and became Prime Minister only because he was at the same time elected M.P. for Greenwich, it then being possible to stand in two constituencies at the same time. Since Gladstone's 1868-74 Ministry was  one of the most successful Governments of the 19th century, should we complain because it was the result of "undemocratic" processes? We may dislike the Chinese extreme; but watching the avalanche of money in the U.S. is not particularly edifying either.

As it happens, there was a third election this week, which was my favourite. The Coptic Church in Egypt chose their new leader by having the names of the candidates placed on bits of paper in a bowl, and having a blindfolded boy pick one of them. It didn't take very long, was undeniably cheap, could not be predicted in advance, and - being influenced directly by God - was accepted without protest by all concerned. How about introducing the same system for the E.U.?

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 7 November 2012

TEETH OR PRISONS?

An odd choice, you might think. But one that the Danish body politic has apparently just made. The country has run out of prison space, as rockers and other assorted misfits are increasingly locked up in ageing buildings. 200 new cells are needed, at a cost of Dkr.1.7 billion. Everyone involved in the negotiations over the 2013 Finance Bill agrees that they would be a good thing. But in these straightened times, how to pay for them?

The answer, it seems, is our teeth. To be more precise, the state will sharply reduce, or even abolish, the subsidy for having your teeth cleaned at the dentist. From 1 January, we will be expected to pay for this ourselves; though children, and other priority groups, will presumably continue to get it for free.

Chew on that, voters!

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 6 November 2012

DANISH BANKS (3)

Denmark has many banks, but their number is falling. This week, another one bit the dust, namely Tønder Bank, centred on a small town on the Danish-German border. Most of the customers will be hoovered up by Sydbank, one of the big ones. But the shareholders will be wiped out.

This has happened regularly over the past five years. But what is worrying about Tønder Bank is that its accounts looked terrific and were audited without comment. Indeed, not so long ago, the bank issued a prospectus and raised Dkr.30m in subordinated loans. Customers, local citizens and even members of the bank's board and senior management, all participated. Yet a visit from the financial regulator, the first for many years, led to immediate additional loan provisions of Dkr.300m. The bank's otherwise "healthy" equity had suddenly disappeared.

All of which makes the whole sector extremely nervous. Because it means - in essence - that nobody can believe anything they read in any financial institution's financial statements. Tønder Bank had no particular exposure to problem sectors such as farming, commercial property or alternative energy, so there was absolutely nothing, prior to the regulator's visit, that pointed to a cause for concern.

The other worry is to do with the auditors. As I say, the bank's accounts were certified as fine in each of the last five years. A lawsuit will probably follow, though that will probably be viewed as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Expect more consolidation in the Danish bank sector in the medium term.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 4 November 2012

THE U.S. ELECTION IN DENMARK

If it were up to the Danes, then Barack Obama would be a shoo-in for re-election. A poll of the country's elected politicians showed a crushing 86% supporting the incumbent, while only a handful said that they would support Mitt Romney.

Politics in nearly all European countries are to the left of those in America, so Democrats are nearly always more popular than Republicans. "Liberal" in the U.S. means close to communist, whereas it would be centrist, or even to the right, in Europe. An active role for Government is taken as a given here; in the United States, many people think that the Federal Government should have no role at all. Ron Paul, who ran in the Republican primaries, seriously thinks that the Federal Reserve should be abolished; in Europe, a policy advocating the abolition of the central bank would be considered nutty, and its promoter a nut.

So, if Mitt Romney wins on Tuesday, would Europe fall into a collective depression? Probably not. American presidents are less important than they were, partly because the U.S. is (relatively) weaker in the world, but mainly because it is increasingly turning its attention to the populous and fast-growing nations in the Pacific. Britain continues to bang on about its special relationship with the U.S. President; only the Brits continue to believe it is true. America still has influence, and no European leader would ignore the chance of a visit, either way. But the fact of the matter is that U.S. policy towards Europe will be pretty much the same, whoever wins in two days' time.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 3 November 2012

DOMESTIC AIRLINES

Denmark is not the biggest country in the world, and it's easy to get from one place to another, either by car or train. Nevertheless, there is a need for for a domestic air network, either as a feeder into the major hub at Copenhagen, for short-haul trips from Jutland to the U.K. and Scandinavia, and for domestic routes such as Copenhagen to the island of Bornholm or Copenhagen to Aalborg and the north of Jutland. A large part of that need was met by Cimber Sterling, the latest manifestation of the old Mærsk Air, bought by Sterling, and then merged with Cimber. However, on 3 May Cimber Sterling went bust, throwing the domestic market into turmoil.

The old saw in the aviation industry is that the quickest way to make a small fortune in it is to start with a large fortune. Certainly it is difficult to make money anywhere in the world unless you have a cheap, no-frills, highly efficient operation (eg Southwest Airlines, Ryanair) or protected international routes. And even then, not everyone achieves it. Cimber Sterling had its own large fortune in the shape of its owner, billionaire Ukrainian businessman Igor Kolomoisky. The company collapsed when he decided that a further injection of capital would be throwing good money after bad.

350,000 passengers have disappeared from the domestic market, and it is unlikely that many of them will come back any time soon. However, the good news for the operators that remain (SunAir, DAT, even SAS to a limited extent) is that there is a better chance of their making money. Cimber Sterling was operating a business model that was simply not sustainable; and by removing most of that capacity in one go, it allows those remaining to structure something that can be profitable. This means higher prices for consumers, but the old structure was ridiculously cheap.

In the medium-term, those most affected will probably be regional airports, who benefitted from the landing charges from Cimber Sterling's passengers. Airports are quintessentially fixed-cost businesses, so any loss of revenue flows straight through to the bottom line. However, they too knew - or ought to have known - that they were essentially part of a house of cards. Recognising that, and tackling the situation by attracting profitable airlines, must surely be in their long-term interests.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 2 November 2012

DANISH BANKS (2)

Denmark still has a lot of small banks, including the one I use. The aftermath of the financial crisis has led to some bankruptcies, mergers and consolidations; but there are still many more banks than in (say) the U.K., which has ten times the population. It seems that Danes like local branches populated with humans, and are prepared to pay for that privilege.

Which makes the new strategic plan announced this week by Danske Bank, Denmark's largest, somewhat surprising. Basically, it is going to move towards the British model. Lots of branches, particularly in rural areas, will close, and 1,000 people will lose their jobs in addition to the 2,000 already earmarked to go. Customers buying more than one product will be subject to more intensive advisory services; those with just a current account and not much else will be encouraged to stay at home and make their transactions over the internet. Pensioners and others who have trouble with computers will wither on the vine.

Danske Bank doesn't earn enough money, and the strategic plan aims to rectify that. However, the main reason why the bank isn't profitable has nothing to do with pensioners in local branches (who provide a steady, and cheap, source of deposits) but catastrophic investments in banks in both Northern and Southern Ireland, in the Bernie Madoff scam, and in a host of duff property loans. Merely stopping doing that and similar things would do much to the bank's bottom line.

And what will be the long-term effect of reducing the amount of human contact with its customers? My prediction is that it will be sharply negative. And rightly so.

Walter Blotscher


Thursday 1 November 2012

MORE RULES

All countries have rules. But readers of this blog know that I think that Denmark has more than most. And it's just got worse.

As of today, all bicycles have to have front and rear lights that are clearly visible from a distance of 300 metres (which is the same as the legal requirement for cars). Gone are those small, dangly lights that flicker, often pointing at the ground rather than straight ahead. You now have to have big lights properly bolted onto your frame.

Even worse, the penalty for not complying is a solid kr.700 (or roughly £80). So speeding the three kilometers home in the dark from badminton has just become a great deal more risky. I suspect that the police will initially concentrate their efforts in this area in the major cities such as Copenhagen. But you never know.

Walter Blotscher