Monday 27 May 2013

HOSTAS

My mother-in-law told me last autumn that I should move my roses away from the bed I had made on the back lawn, since the nearby wood gave too much shade. So I built a new bed on the front lawn, where there is more sun, and transplanted the roses there. They seem to be doing well (more on them another time).

Sound advice. But what should I put in the original bed? Are there any plants that don't like the sun? The answer, according to my mother-in-law, was hostas, a plant originally from China and Japan that has now been imported into the West. I must say that when she came with these straggly little colourless things back in December, I was decidedly unimpressed. But they seem to have taken to their new environment, and have come up well, as you can see.



The task of keeping the hostas weed-free will fall to my wife for the next week. I am off to England tomorrow on my annual walking tour, back next Monday.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 26 May 2013

ELECTRIC CARS (3)

Three weeks ago, I was saying that times were hard for Better Place, the company that is spearheading the move towards electric cars in Denmark (and elsewhere).

Today Better Place's Danish subsidiary filed for bankruptcy. Times were harder than I thought.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 25 May 2013

CHAMPIONS' LEAGUE (2)

A last-minute goal by Arjen Robben secured Bayern Münich a 2-1 win over German rivals Borussia Dortmund in the final of the Champions' League this evening. A match played at Wembley in London in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel showed German football at its best.

It was fitting that Robben scored the winning goal, despite fluffing some excellent chances in the first half. He had lost in two previous finals, including last year's on home turf against Chelsea, where he missed a penalty. He also lost the 2010 World Cup final to Spain.

Not long ago people were saying that Barcelona were by some way the world's best football club. After their 7-0 aggregate thrashing by Bayern in the semi-finals and then Bayern's win tonight, that mantle has passed to the Bavarians.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 24 May 2013

THE PRICE OF HELP

Denmark's Supreme Court made a decision yesterday, that could have huge consequences for society in the future. Is it legal for a local authority to reduce the amount of home help (cleaning, washing etc) given to a pensioner if that local authority is under financial pressure and needs to cut costs? The short answer is yes.

Back in 1998 all local authorities were charged with carrying out an annual quality assessment for personal and practical help for each and every citizen covered by the services. The assessment includes a description of the level of services. In 2012 the law was amended by including the following sentence; "the decision will be taken on the basis of professional and financial considerations".

Køge Kommune took advantage of this change to reduce the amount of home help available to its pensioners. An affected 87-year old pensioner, backed by the Danish equivalent of Help the Aged, took them to court. It is one thing to reduce the level of service for new applicants, it is quite another to reduce the amount of service already approved and given to a particular pensioner, they argued; after all, that person is not getting any younger or fitter. On this crucial point, however, the local authority won (albeit by a bare majority). The only constraint is that a new quality assessment has to be done before they can reduce or otherwise change the service level.

This decision has immense implications for the future. Pensioners are living ever longer, so the potential costs to local authorities of home help would otherwise have got ever bigger. With this decision, the courts have decided that there is in fact a limit to the financial burden on the state. Although they haven't exactly leaped up and down in public, politicians of all parties will be breathing a sigh of relief.

Walter Blotscher

Wednesday 22 May 2013

THE DANGERS OF TRANSLATION (2)

My prediction in March was that Denmark would eventually offer its Afghani interpreters asylum, as it did for those in Iraq, but that  the offer would be grudging and late. That is exactly what has happened.

It was announced today that asylum would indeed be offered. But the announcement only came about after the British had announced that they would be offering asylum to their Afghani interpreters. As a critic pointed out, Denmark had the opportunity to take a moral stance and offer asylum, irrespective of what other countries did. It blew it.

The right result was achieved in the end. But it left Denmark looking mean-spirited, unnecessarily so.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 21 May 2013

FISCAL CLIFFS (4)

The Government didn't wait until the summer holidays before making changes to its proposal to sort out the "dagpenge problem". By all accounts Enhedslisten played hardball in the negotiations over the Whitsun weekend, threatening to topple the Government if it didn't make concessions. Concessions duly arrived, as I predicted last week. The two crucial ones were:

- First, the Dkr.2 billion cost of the proposal will not be paid for by an extra levy on unemployment insurance payers (i.e. those in work). As Enhedslisten put it, these people didn't get a rebate on their payments when things were going well, so why should they pay extra when things are going badly? The money will instead come from a reduction in an array of general Government accounts. These include providing Danish lessons for adult immigrants, something which Enhedslisten also supports. However, immigrants don't weigh as heavily in the balance at the moment as the long-term unemployed.

- Secondly, Enhedslisten have found an issue where they are driving the political train. As such, the last thing they want is the establishment of an independent commission to deliberate and ponder in the years leading up to the next general election, which precludes all political discussion. The commission has been quietly dropped. Which means in turn that Enhedslisten can spend the next two years banging the drum for more fundamental changes to the dagpenge system, notably a reduction in the number of weeks required in order to re-qualify in the system.

All agree that the dagpenge system is now "sorted". The only thing that is now needed is some jobs for those unemployed people to get. That of course will be a much more difficult project. Which is why I think that sorted is far too optimistic a word.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 20 May 2013

ICE HOCKEY (7)

Sweden won the world ice hockey championship last night in Stockholm, beating Switzerland 5-1 in the final. In doing so, they broke the "host curse"; no nation has won the world championship on home ice since Russia did it in Moscow in 1986.

Under pressure after losing the final to arch-rivals Finland in 2011 and going out in the quarter finals last year, the Swedes started the tournament poorly, losing two of their seven pool matches. However, the late arrival of the Sedin twins and Loui Eriksson after their NHL teams were knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs gave them a classy top line, who could provide much needed offensive power. They helped to turn round a 2-0 deficit against Canada in the quarter final, Sweden eventually going through after a penalty shoot-out. And they were impressive in a 3-0 defeat of Finland in the semi-final. In the final itself, Switzerland came out blazing and deservedly scored first. But then the Swedes gradually applied a python-like squeeze on their opponents, and were clearly on top by the end. I watched the game with my son, who was rooting for Switzerland after living in Zürich and Basel for two years. Even he admitted that the Swedes were the better team.

For the Swiss, bitter disappointment, but they had a fantastic tournament. There are basically seven class teams in international ice hockey - Canada, the U.S., Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - and you have to go all the way back to 1953, when Germany won silver and Switzerland bronze, to find a team outside the top seven winning a medal, let alone the whole thing. Because quarter final knockout stages require an eighth team, the next tier generally have to fight over that. Denmark got it a couple of years ago, Germany and Switzerland sometimes get it as well. But they rarely get any further.

This year the Swiss tore up the traditional script. They won all seven of their pool games, beating Canada, Sweden and the Czech Republic along the way. In the quarter finals they beat the Czechs again, and in the semi-finals scored a deserved 3-0 win against a U.S. team that had knocked out defending champions Russia 8-3 (there are not many teams that have ever put eight goals past the Russians). In the final, they started in the same vein; but it is difficult to play ice hockey at 100mph for sixty minutes, and they eventually ran out of puff.

All eyes now focus on the Winter Olympics in Russia next year. Will the Swedes and Swiss be there again? I doubt it. The NHL doesn't stop for the world championships, but it does generally take a month-long break for the Olympics, so all of the top NHL players will be available in Sochi (which, as Sweden demonstrated, matters). The other teams will get their NHL stars; but since so many of the top NHL players are Canadian or Russian, they will benefit most. Unless there is a quirk of the draw, I predict a Russia-Canada final. I am already looking forward to it.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 19 May 2013

THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST (3)

There were three good things about last night's Eurovision Song Contest in Malmø. First, the number of truly awful songs was greatly reduced (though not eliminated entirely). Secondly, the Swedish organisers took a deliberately low-key approach, notably by having a single host (thereby getting rid of the terrible inter-host banter which usually mars these events). Thirdly, Denmark won, for the third time ever.

This year's dreadful items included Romania, whose male singer suddenly broke into a falsetto halfway through; Greece, who had a kilt-wearing folk group; and Finland, whose barbie doll singer took up the theme of gay marriage and snogged her female backing singer at the end. However, the name of the game is not what you like, but what you think other Europeans will like. Greece did surprisingly well; while Lithuania, who had a bland song that I thought might appeal to lots of people, did very badly.

Some things don't change. The U.K. came near the bottom, after picking as their representative Bonnie Tyler, yet another aged has-been, when most of the other performers were under 25. The number of national hosts speaking French continues to decline, thereby confirming English's almost universal dominance (I counted only France, Belgium and Switzerland, qui parlaient le francais). And they all said "thanks for a wonderful show", even if they didn't mean it.

Denmark's winning entry had a catchy tune, and was sung by 20-year old Emmelie de Forest, who performed in bare feet a la Sandie Shaw more than 40 years ago. Indeed, those times were much on display, since the Armenian rock number was written by Tony Iommi, the Black Sabbath guitarist responsible for the famous Paranoid guitar riff that was a staple of my teenage years. Some overexcited Danes are heralding Emmelie's victory as a cultural triumph. But that's going a bit too far; after all, the song, Only Teardrops, was written in English.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 18 May 2013

A.P.McCOY (2)

Some three years ago, I made a pitch for A.P. McCoy's being the greatest sportsman on the planet, since he had won the National Hunt jockeys' championship every year since he had been professional, fifteen years on the trot. Because of that he was the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2010, the first jockey to win it.

Three years later, he is now up to eighteen titles and 3,863 winners. I rest my case.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 17 May 2013

THE DANISH MODEL (2)

The family doctors are playing hardball in their dispute with the regions. Although the Government has intervened and extended the existing contract for a year from 1 September, the doctors are having none of it. Their union is urging its members to return their public sector licences on 31 August, and practice thereafter as fully independent physicians, charging patients as American doctors do. It would then be up to patients to winkle a refund out of the state.

This hard-nosed stance is overwhelmingly supported by the doctors themselves. Meetings are taking place in each of the five regions to discuss strategy. In the three that have met so far, support for the policy was 96.1%, 95.7% and 90.6% respectively. Basically the doctors are united in their opposition to the proposed reforms.

Faced with this intransigence, the regions are fighting back. It's not certain that patients would be refunded 100% of their costs, they say, we would have to look at them carefully (a non-committal way to sow doubt amongst the general public). Furthermore, once the dispute is over - as, like with the teachers, it eventually will be - it is not certain that licences would be distributed geographically as they were before. More licences would be issued to areas that currently lack doctors; fewer where there are many. In other words, some doctors not prepared to move would end up losing their income from the state. In Denmark, that would, in effect, mean losing their livelihood.

Some of this is skirmishing, but the crux of the matter is that, as with teachers' working hours, this is a fundamental difference of view. Since it is the state that ultimately pays for family doctors, and since it is the state that controls the legislative process, I predict that is is the state that will eventually decide the outcome. But it will be another blow to the famed Danish model of labour relations.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 16 May 2013

FISCAL CLIFFS (3)

Denmark's "fiscal cliff", in which the unemployed drop out of the unemployment benefit system in increasingly large numbers, simply won't go away. For the Social Democrats and Socialists in the coalition Government, it is the main reason why their poll numbers are falling through the floor; and with local elections due this November, anxious mayors and other local politicians are pressing the leadership in Copenhagen to "do something". To be fair, it is not the Government's fault that the two main changes to the system (the reduction in the number of years that one can qualify from 4 to 2, and the increase in the number of weeks you need to work in order to re-qualify from 26 to 52) were tabled by the previous Government, and that the Radicals demanded that the changes be passed as a condition for forming the coalition after the election in-between. Helping the unemployed is a classic task for a left-of-centre government, and it is currently not doing it. The very left-wing Enhedslisten are hoovering up support as a result.

But what to do if the economy remains weak (so no new jobs are being created), and the Radicals are vetoing any modification to the tighter rules? The answer came on Tuesday. Basically, the change from 4 years to 2 will be phased in gradually, so that the reduced period only applies fully to those dropping out of the system in the second half of 2016 or later (none of whom have yet to enter it). Those otherwise dropping out in the first half of this year can now get benefit for 3.75 years, those in the second half of this year 3.5 years, and so on. However, during the additional period which would otherwise not have been eligible, the unemployed will receive a new benefit, not called unemployment benefit; and the Dkr.2 billion annual cost will be financed by an extra levy on unemployment insurance payers (i.e. most people currently working) during this time. Finally, a commission will be set up, reporting in the spring of 2015, with a mandate to recommend long-term changes, if any, to the system.  

This is a clever proposal in many ways. First, it solves the immediate problem, at least for a while. Secondly, it keeps the Radicals on board by not changing the principles behind the recent tightening of the rules. Thirdly, the solution costs the Government nothing, since it is people in work who will pay for it ("social solidarity" is the Government's buzz phrase). Finally, it kicks any more fundamental discussion of the issue into the long grass, since the Government  can respond to any problems raised, especially in the run-up to the local elections, by saying "the commission is looking at the issue, we should wait until it reports".

Clever, but perhaps also a bit too clever. The right-wing opposition think that Dkr.2 billion could be better spent creating long-term jobs instead of transfering money to to those who don't have one. While on the other flank, Enhedslisten scent blood. They want to use the leverage they have in providing the Government's Parliamentary majority to make long-term changes now, in particular a reduction in the length of time required to be in work before you re-qualify for unemployment benefit (which is much lower in other Scandinavian countries, as low as 13 weeks).

The "dagpenge" issue has rumbled on for most of this Government's term. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is understandably anxious to bury it once and for all. A solution will undoubtedly come; but I suspect that there will have to be changes before a final solution is found before the summer holidays.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 14 May 2013

FAILED STATES

I haven't blogged much on what is happening in the wider world lately, since it has been rather depressing. Suicide bombs, collapsing buildings, natural weather disasters, pirate kidnappings. Whenever I open the paper, something bad is happening.

The list of failed states in the world is quite long. Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo, Byelorussia, ..... I am getting depressed again, so I will stop.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 13 May 2013

DANISH GHETTOS

According to the Danish Government, there are 33 ghettos in the country. If it had its way, this would fall to 29. What is going on?

Ghetto is the name given to a residential area in the major cities that has two out of three of a high proportion of unemployed, immigrants and criminality. The term was invented (or, rather, revived) under the last Government, which was in hock to the very right-wing Danish People's Party, who were keen to link those three terms together. The new proposals add income and education levels to the mix, with an area qualifying if it falls on the wrong side of three out of five indicators. This has the benefit of reducing the number of ghettos, but it doesn't mean that the problems of the four areas that drop out have now been solved.

I'll make my position clear; there are no ghettos in Denmark. Ghetto has an unfortunate context in modern European history, but it is a particularly inappropriate concept in Scandinavia. When I first came here in 2000, there was a lot of talk about a "sink area" (the precursor of ghetto) in Odense called Vollsmose. Being keen on cycling, I biked out there to have a look, but couldn't find it. After cycling around for a while, I asked a passer-by if I had come to the wrong place. She told me I was standing right in the middle of it. But this was no sink area or ghetto. There were broad streets, green areas, a marked absence of litter. It looked rather nice.

As commentators have pointed out, the proposed changes in the classification criteria have done nothing to solve what problems there are in these areas. So now the Government has to do something. It could start by dropping the word ghetto.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 12 May 2013

TWO GOOD FILMS (2)

We had two films on at the local cinema this week. Although neither was very popular, they were both very good.

Lore is a German-Australian adaptation of part of Rachel Seifferts novel "The Dark Room". Set just after the end of the second world war, it is about the children of a high-ranking Nazi officer, who has done nasty things on the Eastern Front. When he and his wife are imprisoned by the Allies, the eldest girl Hannelore must take her siblings across a ruined and dangerous country to their grandmother's house on the North Sea coast. Along the way they are helped by a young Jewish man, newly freed from Buchenwald, who represents both everything Lore has been brought up to despise, and their only hope of survival. Excellent.

Nordvest ("Northwest") is a Danish film about this part of Copenhagen, where young men engage in petty crime as a way of earning cash. Similar in many ways to the earlier Pusher films, the crime gets less and less petty, and more and more dangerous. Very realistic, and well-acted by the real-life brothers in the main roles.

Next week it's Silver Linings Playbook, for which Jennifer Lawrence won this year's Oscar for Best Actress. Then Iron Man 3 and Anna Karenina. Lots of good films at the local cinema.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 11 May 2013

TRANSFER INCOMES

There are just over 5.5 million people in Denmark. Of those, just over 1 million are children, some 860,000 are pensioners and 225,000 are in higher education. That leaves almost 2.6 million working and - the most striking number - almost 723,000 on transfer incomes. These are given to people of working age who, in one way or another, are not doing very much; they receive sick pay, are on the dole or maternity leave, have a disability pension, have taken "efterløn" (early retirement) or are being retrained. What is relevant is that they represent more than a fifth of the working age population. Indeed, if you add on pensioners (who receive a state pension), children (who receive child benefit) and students (who receive S.U.), more than half of the population gets some form of income from the state.

The 723,000 is less than the 900,000 of 15 years ago. Nevertheless, it is still worrying, not least because the number of pensioners is rising. Pensioners matter a lot in this debate, since they live longer and longer lives, thereby bringing extra costs, both direct (in the form of pensions paid out over more years) and indirect (in the form of health and other care costs).

Against that background, it is not surprising that the current government is undertaking reforms that attempt to reduce some of these costs. However, such a strategy brings with it two big problems. First, increasing the number of people working is proving to be very hard indeed. Secondly, since reform generally means reduced entitlement, a lot of affected voters are unhappy.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 10 May 2013

GARDENING (2)

My wife and I planted the rest of the kitchen garden this afternoon. Squash, celery, cauliflower, and leeks, the last three being first attempts. However, the potatoes from a couple of weeks back are beginning to poke through, so I am optimistic about the rest.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 9 May 2013

DANISH AGRICULTURE (5)

All economic sectors need renewal, whereby those retiring from the business are replaced by a new generation. Nowhere is this more important than farming. Since land is the ultimate fixed asset, you can't outsource agriculture to China or the Czech Republic.

Which means that it is extremely worrying that young Danes can't get started on the farming ladder. In 2006 there were almost 7,300 farmers under the age of 40, around 15% of the total; today that has fallen to 3,500, or 8%. And that's not because young people don't want to do it; applications to agricultural college are at a record high.

The reason lies in the financial crisis. The huge fall in land prices (admittedly from a ridiculous high) has put many farmers in a position of negative equity. They can't sell their farms and retire without incurring big losses, so their only option is to soldier on and hope for better times. While at the other end, it is almost impossible for young people starting out to get finance from financial institutions who have been burnt by that same trend.

All over Europe the average age of farmers is increasing. Denmark at least has the advantage that a new generation want to get involved. But they can't. This is a bottleneck that needs to be unblocked.

Walter Blotscher

Tuesday 7 May 2013

LEGO (2)

Lego is a great Danish success story. It's also great for the family that still controls the company (and other things as well) through the Kirkbi organisation. The latter's 2012 results showed a profit after tax of Dkr.7.7 billion, and assets up to more than Dkr.40 billion. Those figures buy a lot of small bricks.

Walter Blotscher

Monday 6 May 2013

ELECTRIC CARS (2)

In my earlier post, I said that I thought that electric cars would remain a minority taste for some time to come, not least because of the accumulated infrastructure spent by the fossil fuel industry over the past 150 years. A company called Better Place is doing its best to change that, and has already invested some Dkr.200m in 18 battery changing stations in Denmark. But progress is slow.

So it must have come as quite a shock to the financial backers of Better Place that Renault last week decided that replaceable batteries will not be the way forward for electric cars; they will instead concentrate on fixed batteries that can be recharged at home. This is a real blow to the idea of the replaceable battery, since Renault is the European car manufacturer that has been leading the way in respect of electric cars, and is the only one that has a model where the battery can be replaced. Yet even strong faith in a technology can wilt in the face of poor sales figures. Only 250 of the Fluence model have been sold in Denmark, and only around 2,000 worldwide. That compares badly with sales of other electric models in the Renault stable such as the Nissan Leaf (50,000 worldwide) and Renault Kangoo (9,000).

Better Place is putting a brave face on this unwelcome development, but it must be really disheartening. Infrastructure pundits often say "build it and they will come"; it doesn't seem likely that they will in this case.

We have a family reunion on Thursday. I will be asking my sister-in-law's boyfriend if he has heard the (bad) news. It's no fun being a pioneer.

Walter Blotscher

Sunday 5 May 2013

BRIDGE (7)

I played in the final of the Fünen open pairs championship today. 24 pairs, everyone playing 3 hands against everyone else, 69 hands in all. We started at 9.30 and finished at 19.00; on a hot day, that was a looong day.

We started well, and after 7 rounds had scored +12 (0 is average). However, as the day wore on, we started to slip, then slide, and finally fall all the way down to -89. A modest revival in the last four rounds brought us back up to -56, which was an 18th place.

All of which proved to me that apart from bidding and card play, bridge also includes mental stamina. We got positive scores against the two pairs that eventually came first and second. But that was in the morning, when we were wide awake; in the hottest part of the afternoon, we got -17 against the pair that came bottom (final score -212).

Since my brain has now become completely drained, I am going to go to bed and sleep.

Walter Blotscher

Saturday 4 May 2013

THE DANISH MODEL

The Danish labour market model has attracted attention from other European countries suffering from high unemployment and sclerotic labour practices. The Government here stays out of the way, allowing employer organisations and trade unions to negotiate labour contracts, which usually last for two years. Individual firms that are not part of the employer organisation tend to follow the negotiated contract. It is relatively easy to fire people (though sometimes expensive, if they have been there a long time). And money is available for education and retraining, if you lose your job.

However, just at the moment when other countries are getting interested in the Danish model, the model itself seems not to be working very well. And not just because unemployment has remained stubbornly high for pretty much the past four years. The bigger problem is a series of labour disputes in the public sector. The model works well if the employees are demanding and the employers (various organs of the state) are grudgingly conceding. It works less well if it is the employers who are doing the demanding.

I have written about the teachers' dispute, which ended recently. However, that was followed up by a dispute between the family doctors and the five regions who employ them. As in the U.K., general practitioners are self-employed professionals organised in practices scattered around the country, who act as gatekeepers to the more specialised (and vastly more expensive) hospital system.

Negotiations on a new contract from 1 September fell apart, just like with the teachers, and for pretty much the same reason; who decides? In particular, the regions had two key demands. First, they wanted to remove the GPs' right to veto where new practices can be set up. It's difficult to get doctors, particularly younger ones, to go and live in the sticks in remote rural areas, and that is becoming more and more of a problem. Norway, a much bigger country with roughly the same number of people, has the same problem, and solves it by giving doctors more money if they agree to go to (say) the far north. A similar arrangement could work here; but not if the doctors can block it.

Secondly, they want GPs to be more flexible, opening in the evenings and at other unusual times, in order to cope with more flexible patterns of employment. This will be good for patients, but of course not necessarily for doctors.

With the breakdown in negotiations, the regions announced that the existing contract would end on 31 August; the equivalent, for self-employed people, of a lockout. However, while it took a month for the Government to step into the teachers' lockout, it took them just a day this time around. Children can stay away from school, but sick patients cannot not be treated (even if the effect won't be felt for some four months). As with the teachers, the Government has acceded to the regions' two principal demands. However, it has also extended the existing contract for one year, and urged the two parties to negotiate the details amongst themselves.

In other words, the Danish model is looking increasingly like Government diktat. The GPs are not happy with this, and have even threatened to work without a contract and simply charge patients, as American doctors do. That would be an extremely un-Danish outcome; watch this space.

Walter Blotscher

Friday 3 May 2013

ITALY (3)

The technocratic Government under Mario Monti, which was installed shortly after my last post on Italy, gave way to an election on 24 and 25 February this year. Unfortunately, this produced deadlock. The main left of centre grouping won a majority in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, thanks mainly to a bonus of seats given to the party with the best showing (which was a mere 29.5%). However, that same grouping failed to win a majority in the upper house, the Senate. Unlike in other countries (the U.K., for example) the two houses have equal weight, so you need a majority in both in order to be able to govern.

Adding to the impasse, voters did two further things. First, they decisively rejected Mr. Monti's party, relegating it to fourth place, with 10%. He may well have stabilised the economy and started on the path to reform, but he also brought hardship and austerity in his wake, which was not popular. Secondly, more than a quarter of all votes went to the comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement, which wants to do away with all politicians and replace government with direct democracy through the use of referenda. Since the left didn't want to do a grand bargain with Silvio Berlusconi's right of centre coalition, which came second, Mr. Grillo didn't want to do a deal with anybody, and Mr. Monti had few votes, the result was no Government.

This went on for more than two months, despite repeated efforts by the outgoing President Napolitano to forge a consensus. The election in April of a new President (chosen in Italy by the two houses of Parliament, plus some others, around 1,000 people in total) showed just how lacking that consensus was. After five rounds of voting had failed to produce someone who could command a simple majority, the 87-year old President reluctantly agreed to stand for a second 7-year term. Realising the situation was getting desperate, it then became possible for Enrico Letta finally to put together a cross-party team of Ministers a week ago.

Despite Mr. Monti's earlier efforts, Italy faces huge problems. Of the 34 members of the OECD, the club of developed countries, only Italy had negative GDP annual growth per person between 2000 and 2011 (as a comparison, the U.K. had just over 1% pa, Denmark had the third lowest figure, well under 1% pa, with only Portugal between it and Italy, whereas Estonia and Slovakia were over 4% pa). Translated into plain English, Italy's citizens have been getting poorer for the past decade. Its public debt is the third largest in the world, and stands at almost 135% of GDP. True, Italians save a lot, and those GDP figures may well not take account of a lot of unrecorded economic activity. Nevertheless, the debt burden is high.

Big problems require radical changes. Taking almost three months to form a Government is not a promising start; Mr. Letta has his work cut out if he is to make an impression.

Walter Blotscher

Thursday 2 May 2013

1 MAY

1 May is International Workers' Day, designed to celebrate the world's labour movements. It dates back to the end of the 19th century when trade unions had to fight - often literally - to secure basic rights. In many countries 1 May is a public holiday.

In Denmark, where the spirit of social democracy is strong, 1 May is traditionally celebrated with marches, open-air picnics, and speeches by left-of-centre politicans. The problem this year was that a left-of-centre Government has over the past six months introduced an array of reforms, which the coalition parties' traditional supporters have hated; changes to the dole, a squeeze on public spending and (most recently) the dispute with the teachers. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt had already announced that she would not be giving a speech in Fælledparken, the large park in Copenhagen, which is the focus for 1 May speeches. Who would come instead and what would be the reaction?

Those entering the lion's den included the Social Democratic mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen, and the leader of the Socialists, Annette Vilhelmsen, who were met with so many un-solidarity-like boos and catcalls, that the organiser was forced to call for order. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, on a whirlwind tour round the country giving half a dozen speeches, was drowned out in Aarhus and attacked with a water pistol. Not surprisingly, media attention this morning has focussed on these events, and ignored totally the political messages they were trying to put across.

Danish workers are, in a nutshell, fed up with the Government that is supposedly representing them. With the Social Democrats' poll ratings at their lowest since the nineteenth century, Ms. Thorning-Schmidt is increasingly looking like a one-term leader, with a shortened term to boot.

Walter Blotscher  

Wednesday 1 May 2013

LEAVING HOME (7)

My younger son has been living at home since Christmas. After playing handball for the Great Britain Olympic squad and semi-professionally in Basel, he has come back to Denmark to finish his schooling. He has one year of gymnasium (sixth-form) left, and has been doing it from home as an external student.

I have enjoyed having him here to discuss sport and other matters dear to male hearts. However, living at home in a rural area is a bit dull for a 21-year old, so he is moving to Odense, where he can also get a part-time job and have more fun. He has found a nice flat close to the centre, which he will be sharing; I helped him move his things this afternoon.

So now it's just my wife and I at home. My daughter will be back later this summer for a couple of months before going off to university, but the reality is that the birds have flown the nest.

Walter Blotscher