DANISH UNEMPLOYMENT

By some other countries' standards, Denmark has a low level of unemployment, just 4.8%. However, that figure is not evenly distributed. In some parts of the country it's 3% or less; in others, it's over 6%.

What is interesting is that it is often lowest in kommuner in "udkants Danmark", those far from the big cities. This is due not so much to booming growth in these areas, but the fact that able-bodied people of working age, notably the young, are fleeing to the big cities, leaving behind those who, by definition, can't be unemployed (because they are pensioners, or sick or otherwise can't work full-time).

The widening gap between the big cities and the countryside is slowly but surely moving up the political agenda here. If otherwise thriving rural businesses can't get the labour they need, then that gap is likely to increase before it narrows. And that concerns politicians of all stripes.

Walter Blotscher

ELECTION FEVER (7)

Yesterday Lars Løkke Rasmussen announced his government, which was even narrower than I expected. It will consist of his own Venstre party alone, none of the three other right-of-centre parties will take part. Not only will it command the immediate support of just 34 of the Folketing's 179 MP's, but it will be led by the leader of the third largest party. In British terms, it would be as if Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage were Prime Minister, and not David Cameron or Ed Miliband.

With so few people to choose from, Mr. Rasmussen has shrunk the Cabinet from 20 to 17, and brought in the former head of the main employers' organisation to be his Employment Minister. His Government programme is also decidedly thin on specific proposals, reflecting the fact that he doesn't have a Parliamentary majority for anything, and so must strike deals with both left-wing and right-wing parties if he wants to get anything done. Fortunately, political horse-trading is Mr. Rasmussen's forte, he being a leader who would rather get things done than set out grand principles.

Can such a government last? Mr. Rasmussen seemed pretty upbeat at the press conference announcing the programme, and clearly thinks he can last a full 4-year term. However, he should also reflect on the last occasion there was a single party Venstre government, back in the 1970's after the first oil crisis. Poul Hartling had even fewer MP's then than Mr. Rasmussen now, namely just 22. He ruled for only 14 months, from late 1973 to early 1975, before throwing in the towel and handing over to Social Democrat Anker Jørgensen, who had been his predecessor. If things don't go well and quickly, then the same thing could happen again.

Walter Blotscher

GREECE (9)

I haven't written about Greece for some years. Mainly because the long-running tragedy has been going on for so long, but also because the solution is never clear.

However, what is clear from the latest negotiations is two things. First, that the left-wing Government under Alexis Tsipras elected in January is hopelessly out of its depth. And secondly, that the rest of Europe is heartily fed up with them.

Today's announcements that Greece will hold a referendum on the latest offer from the rest of the E.U. (an offer which the Greek government is urging its people to reject) and that its banks will remain closed in the meantime, are good examples. The referendum will be on the basis of a legal agreement which expires on Tuesday, so what is it worth? Furthermore, no modern country can operate for long without a banking system.

It's still  - amazingly - not too late to reach agreement. But the odds are shortening on a Greek bankruptcy.

Walter Blotscher

ELECTION FEVER (6)

As I thought might be the case, the forces pulling apart the four right of centre parties that won last week's general election were bigger than the forces pulling them together. After a week of negotiations, Prime Ministerial candidate Lars Løkke Rasmussen has had to accept first, that no government could be formed with all of them and secondly, that no government can be formed with any of them except his own party Venstre. The others are now advising him to form a minority government, which they will support (or not?) from the sidelines on single issues.

I can see why the others don't want the responsibility of joining any government. Joining means painful compromise, and they are all terrified of being accused of breaking promises to their core voters (which is what happened when the left of centre coalition was formed in 2011). Yet can you really form a government when your party has only 34 seats in Parliament out of 179, and when that party is only the third largest? It does seem a rather odd idea.

Walter Blotscher

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Sometimes an idea comes along that is (with hindsight) so obvious that not only is it accepted immediately, but everyone wonders why on earth nobody had thought of it beforehand. One such idea concerns public libraries.

Not so long ago, libraries - nearly all of which are public institutions - were being squeezed mercilessly. People were reading less, and those books that were being read were moving to Kindles and other tablets. Meanwhile, on the other side, local authorities were being forced into savings in (expensive) staff.

The new idea, made possible by technology, was unmanned libraries, as has happened in my local town. Entrance is gained using one's health insurance card, which is also the means for borrowing or returning a book. Staff are available at various times of the day; but if they are not, then you can go through the whole process yourself. That in turn allows libraries to be "open" longer, so that (eg) people with jobs during the day can go to the library in the evening.

There is in theory the possibility that a local citizen can enter the library, nick all the books and run off with them. However, the combination of video cameras and the ubiquitous health insurance card makes this highly unlikely. Besides, unless the thief is a book collector (remember that for a book lover, the service is still free), stealing a load of second-hand books won't produce much cash.  

Walter Blotscher

FREE SCHOOLS (4)

Consolidation in the Danish school sector continues apace, with the number of free schools creeping up. Since I last wrote about this in 2012, the total has risen from 526 to 550, covering 110,000 pupils. This is despite the fact that the subsidy given by the state to free schools has fallen from 75% to 71%.

Although there are concerns about the state education sector, much of the development continues to take place in rural areas, where free schools are replacing small state schools that would otherwise have closed. That process is far from complete.

Walter Blotscher

CULTURAL DISSONANCE

I have been to two completely different cultural experiences at the local cinema during the past 24 hours.

Yesterday it was opera, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Three and a half hours of nonsense plot, fantastic arias, and great music, with champagne and cake in the interval. This evening it was Mad Max Fury Road, all nonsense plot, desert, pyrotechnics and relentless action.

I loved both of them.

Walter Blotscher

A WET AND COLD SPRING

It will have come as no surprise to anyone living in Denmark that spring was pretty miserable this year. The average temperature for May was 9.7 degrees, when it's normally over 11 or 12. And, with the exception of 1983, there was more rain in the month than at any time since records began in 1874.

The cool weather has extended into June, with average temperatures around 12.3 degrees instead of the more usual 14 plus. Nor does it seem likely to be any different in July. It doesn't look like I will be doing much sunbathing this year.

Walter Blotscher

ELECTION FEVER (5)

The British decided, after five years of coalition government, that they didn't like it very much, and went back to electing the Conservatives with a majority. If they had seen the results of Thursday's general election in Denmark, they would probably have recoiled with horror.

Viewers of Borgen will know that you have to count to 90 to get a majority in Denmark's unicameral 179-seat Folketing. On that basis, the right-of-centre "blue block" won over the left-of-centre "red block" by 90-89 (the victory is in fact a bit more decisive than that, since the red block won all four of the seats decided in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands; by convention, they don't vote very often and certainly not when it comes to forming governments, if they can help it). So the red block candidate for Prime Minister (and current holder of the post) Helle Thorning-Schmidt has resigned, and the top job will go to the blue block candidate, opposition leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen. So far, so simple; but there are also complications, on both sides of the aisle.

Ms. Thorning-Schmidt in fact managed to increase the Social Democrats' number of seats for the first time since 1998, and her party will be comfortably the largest in Parliament, with 47. Despite that, she chose to resign as party leader on election night, after 10 years in the job. It is highly likely that she will be replaced by the outgoing Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen, long viewed as the Crown Princess.

The reason behind the red block's overall loss was the collapse of the vote for both the governing coalition partner the Radicals (who went from 17 seats to 8) and the former coalition partner Socialists (who went from 16 to 7). Since the very left-wing Enhedslisten rose slightly from 12 to 14, much of the slack was taken up by the new party the Alternative, who stormed into Parliament with 9 seats, an astonishing result, given that many commentators thought that they would not get over the 2% threshold.

There were also complications within the blue block. In the previous Parliament Mr. Rasmussen's Venstre were the largest party, with 47 seats, but they got a drubbing this time that reduced them to 34, their worst result in 25 years. The biggest party on the right is now the very right-wing Danish People's Party, with 37 seats. Particularly in the conservative, rural areas of southern Jutland, there was a switch from one party to the other by voters disgusted with Mr. Rasmussen's perceived lack of personal probity (see my earlier posts). Despite the DPP's being bigger, it is still Mr. Rasmussen who is likely to become Prime Minister. In British terms, this is a bit like Nigel Farage saying before the election that he would support David Cameron in government, UKIP doing better in the election than the Conservatives, and Mr. Cameron still becoming Prime Minister. Yet it doesn't seem that odd in Denmark.    

The other parties on the right are the ultra liberal, pro-business Liberal Alliance, who had a good election and went from 9 seats to 13; and the Conservatives, who continued their decline and had the worst election ever in their 100-year history, falling from 8 seats to 6. In the last period of right-of-centre government in the noughties, Venstre were big brother and the Conservatives little brother; but it's hard to remember that in the period before that, during the 1980's, it was the Conservatives who were big brother, and Poul Schlüter was Prime Minister for more than a decade. Today the Conservatives face possible extinction.

As Prime Ministerial candidate, Mr. Rasmussen gets first chance to form a government. If it consists of all four blue parties, then it will have a majority. However, although in theory all blue, there are in fact huge (and, in my view) unbridgeable differences between them. The DPP is an odd mixture of nationalist and socialist policies, that has done a fantastic job of staying out of government and exerting influence as a protest party. But as the biggest party on the right, can it remain a protest party and continue to shirk responsibility for running the country? And if it does join the government, can it avoid messy compromises and maintain its squeaky clean on-message reputation?

The DPP will probably get support from the others for more immigrant and asylum-seeker bashing. But it also wants to leave the E.U., whereas the other three don't. And whereas Venstre went to the polls on a promise of "zero % growth" in the world's biggest welfare state, the DPP wants to increase public spending, particularly on its core supporters amongst the elderly, while both the Conservatives and Liberal Alliance want to take an axe to the public sector and thereby give room for tax cuts. Against that background, a more likely scenario is a minority Venstre-led government, perhaps with one or more of the other three, but not all of them.

What to make of all of this? The most obvious, and most depressing, conclusion is the collapse of the traditional political parties, particularly in the centre ground. Parties of the extreme left, extreme right and oddballs (the Alternative, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands) now hold 64 seats, more than a third of Parliament (equivalent to around 220 in the House of Commons). As in other countries, people are fed up with politicians and politics as usual. Which means in turn that the next four years will be unusually interesting.  

Walter Blotscher

BLANK VOTING

Why would anybody take the trouble to go to the polls, and then not vote for any of the candidates on the list?

Unlike in some countries, voting is not obligatory in Denmark. Nevertheless, it has one of the highest voter participation rates in the world, consistently over 80%. Against that background, you would have thought that blank voting was particularly pointless. But in yesterday's general election, the number of people who blank voted was the highest since the second world war (when people were encouraged to protest against the German occupation).

The figures are still low in the total scheme of things; 29,920 or 0.84% of all votes cast. However, the trend is clearly up. More and more electors think that none of the options are worth voting for, and that is a little bit worrying for the health of Danish democracy.

Walter Blotscher

WATERLOO

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. In British mythology, this was one of the great victories of our history, alongside Trafalgar, Agincourt and such like, big enough to warrant its own expression in the English language (to meet your Waterloo). However, the fact of the matter is that it is just that, a myth. Only around a third of the Duke of Wellington's 75,000 strong army was in fact British, the rest being made up of troops from the King's Hanoverian Duchy, plus other Germans, Dutch and Belgians. Even more fundamentally, Waterloo was merely the fourth day of a series of battles in which the French fought both the British and Prussian armies. It is true that victory at Waterloo was finally secured when Blücher's Prussians arrived on the battlefield during the late afternoon and early evening. What is left out of many British history books is the coordination of the armies in the preceding days, and the fighting that took place up until then.

Napoleon had been defeated in 1814 by a coalition of Britain (fighting mainly in Spain and at sea) and the continental powers, Prussia, Russia and Austria; and in the spring of 1815 there were occupying armies in southern Belgium, the British to the west with headquarters in Brussels and the Prussians further east. In an age before the telegraph, and complicated by notions of honour, national pride and precedence, allied armies didn't always coordinate well. However, Wellington and Blücher admired and respected each other; and virtually the first thing they did on learning of Napoleon's escape from Elba in March 1815 was to meet and agree what they should do if he crossed the frontier and attacked. They also took the opportunity to survey various potential battlegrounds, and pick the most advantageous; Waterloo was a strongpoint defending Brussels that was Wellington's preferred position.

Given the combined British/Prussian superiority in numbers (and leaving aside potential reinforcements from Austria and Russia), Napoleon's strategic plan was to drive a wedge between the two armies, and defeat one before turning on the other. Moreover, in defeating the one, he hoped to attack with a united army before the opposing one could concentrate (the allied forces were spread out over a large area in order to minimise the economic burden on the local population, and it would take them at least a day or so to rendezvous at a particular place). This was a gamble of a plan, to say the least. The surprise was not that Napoleon tried it - after all, he had gambled before and won - but that it very nearly worked; as Wellington later put it, Waterloo was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life".    

Napoleon crossed the frontier on 15 June and punched his way between the allied armies up to Charleroi. On the 16th he fought a major battle with the Prussians at Ligny, north east of Charleroi, while sending Marshal Ney northwest up the Charleroi-Brussels road to take the capital by surprise and provoke panic. Ligny was a bloodbath; the Prussians lost 30,000 killed, wounded and deserted, at least a third of their force. Blücher himself lost his horse and was nearly captured. However, they held firm and managed to withdraw during the night. Crucially for the later campaign, they did not withdraw east towards Namur as Napoleon had expected, away from the British and thereby increasing the gap between the two armies, but northwest to Wavre, parallel to the Charleroi-Brussels road and in accordance with the earlier arrangement that the allied armies would work together.

Ligny, rather than Waterloo, was Napoleon's great opportunity. That he couldn't crush the Prussians there was due to unexpected resistance by the British the same day at Quatre Bras, a key crossroads on the Charleroi-Brussels road that blocked Ney's path. In trying to force a way past the British, Ney used up more and more French troops that could otherwise have been used at Ligny. The result was that the French, instead of following the plan of destroying one army before tackling the other, ended up fighting a large part of both. They inflicted huge damage on the allies, but couldn't land the decisive blow.

Thinking that the Prussians were out of the game, Napoleon sent a portion of his forces to pursue them the next day and swung the bulk of his army left and towards the British. But then his famous luck deserted him. The spring and summer of 1815 had already been unusually wet; but on the 17th it rained for virtually the whole day and night in one of the worst downpours that contemporaries had ever seen. The terrible weather allowed Wellington to retreat from Quatre Bras along the Brussels road to his preferred defensive position at Waterloo, and consolidate his forces there. He sent word to Blücher that he would stand and fight on the 18th, provided one of the Prussians' four corps would march from Wavre and support his left wing. In the event, Blücher turned up with three, which is why the final victory was so decisive.

The weather also played its part on the 18th itself. First, the battle didn't start until 11.00am, relatively late for a summer day, since it took so long to get the guns into position on the waterlogged ground. Secondly, although it was only 8 miles from Wavre to Waterloo, and his three corps started early in the morning, the terrain was so difficult that it took Blücher eight hours to get there. Wellington had, therefore, to hold the Waterloo ridge with a weak left wing for most of the day.

Napoleon only realised in the afternoon that the Prussians, instead of retreating away from the British, were in fact coming to support them. Now his only hope was to crush the British before they arrived, so he threw everything at them, including the Old Guard, the elite troops that were normally only sent in in order to secure victory. The British lines wobbled but held out (just) until Bülow's corps arrived in the early evening and crashed into Napoleon's right wing. What had been a front against the British now turned into a horseshoe against the British and Prussians. Numbers began to tell; the French retreated and then fled.

The carnage at Waterloo was immense, the density of killing being greater than that byword for senseless slaughter a century later, the Battle of the Somme. In particular, most of the veteran British infantry were destroyed, one reason why Great Britain stayed out of a continental war until the Crimean adventure in the 1850's. Napoleon was finally defeated, and Prussia emerged as the leading land power in Europe. The effects of that were not fully felt for some time, but they were felt in the end. However, that did not stop British commentators and historians from claiming that it was the Brits that won it, a view that has lasted ever since.

Walter Blotscher

TEACHERS' PAY

Almost exactly two years ago, Danish local authorities and the teachers' unions engaged in a bitter strike over working conditions. This resulted in a lock-out, in which the authorities shut schools and teachers didn't work. After a month or so, the Government imposed a settlement, the central part of which was the obligation for teachers to spend all of their working hours on site instead of (for instance) preparing for lessons or marking at home or somewhere else. The new arrangements have been in place since the start of this year's academic year, last August.

Or have they? It is not just teachers that think that the idea of forcing professionals to work in a particular place at a particular time is old-fashioned. In an age where the watchword for many other employees is "flexibility", what is the point of forcing a teacher to mark twenty essays in a cramped teachers' room (with all the risk of disturbance) instead of in their study at home with a cup of coffee? And why should they have to mark them between the hours of 8 and 4, Monday to Friday, instead of Sunday morning or other times of the day?

Data just released show that many local authorities regret the attack on teachers' cherished flexibilities. The settlement included an escape clause, the so-called "local deal", whereby a local authority could do a deal with its employees outside of the settlement, if it saw fit. Intended to be used only sparingly and in special circumstances (eg a school on an island), it is now clear that at least half of all local authorities have taken advantage of it, and that proportion is rising all the time.

If most people take advantage of an exception to the law, does that mean that the law is in reality a dead letter? Many people, though perhaps not the politicians that crafted it, would say yes. I agree.

Walter Blotscher

ELECTION FEVER (4)

It's fairly straightforward who can vote in the forthcoming Danish general election. Or is it?

One problem is if you are Danish and live abroad. In many countries, you don't lose the right to vote if you move abroad, provided you keep up a registration. But in Denmark's Basic Law, you have to have a "fixed place of abode within the Kingdom", and that has been interpreted as meaning that you have been resident for two years. If you have lived abroad for longer than that, then you lose the right to vote.

It is estimated that this will affect some 160,000 Danes over the age of 18. In a close race, that could be a deciding factor.

Walter Blotscher

LE MANS

I like many sports, but motor racing is not really one of them. I once went as a child to watch a motorcycle race at Mallory Park, and the two things I remember were the deafening noise and not being able to work out who was in the lead. Modern technology has probably sorted the second of these out; but if anything, the first has got even worse. I am definitely not a petrolhead.

The Le Mans 24-hour race, which has just finished, is one of the more silly events on the calendar. For a start, it is not a race in the traditional sense, since there is hardly any competitive overtaking. What you need is a car that can keep going at 300 km/h for a whole day, and drivers who won't fall asleep during the night and so crash out of fatigue.

Still, it obviously appeals to some people. The carpenter I use to do jobs in the local cinema travels to France each year for a weekend of Le Mans watching. I have to say that I don't understand him.

Walter Blotscher

SWEDISH ROYALTY

The last of the Swedish king's three children, Prince Carl Phillip, got married today. Nothing out of the ordinary in that. Sweden changed its succession law some time ago, so that his elder sister Victoria will become queen; and she has already had a daughter, who will become queen in turn.

However, what was out of the ordinary was the Prince's choice of bride. 30-year old Sofia Hellqvist is a pretty girl-next-door, who has been in the Swedish version of Paradise Hotel, worked as an underwear model, and posed for a lads' mag clothed in nothing more than a boa constrictor. If the Prince loves her, which he obviously does, then who cares about her past? I suspect that at least some in royal circles do.

This matters, since the Swedish royal family is not as popular as (say) the Danish equivalent next door. Liberal attitudes to non-discriminatory succession rules can, and do, lead to liberal thinking that perhaps a monarchy is anachronistic in the 21st century. Things haven't been helped by unflattering revelations about the current king.

So it is likely that Princess Sofia, as she now is, will keep her tattoos out of public view, do lots of charity work and provide a royal baby or two in the near future.
   
Walter Blotscher

BANKS

What is a bank? The answer to that question is not as easy as it might appear at first sight. In the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was one of the U.S.' answers to the Depression, it was defined as an organisation which took in deposits and made loans. But banks got round that rule by setting up holding companies with subsidiaries that did one or the other but not both. Eventually the exceptions got to be so numerous that the act was abolished.

Banking has a contradiction at its heart; people can withdraw their deposits on demand, but banks can't liquidate their loans as quickly. As such, it requires a suspension of belief, namely that not everyone will withdraw their money at the same time. And that in turn suggests that managers of banks ought to be cautious and dull. The biggest lesson of the past 15 years is that bank managers are not nearly as cautious and dull as they should be.

Which makes the decision of General Electric to liquidate its in-house bank GE Capital very welcome. GE makes things like light bulbs, nuclear reactors and jet engines. Yet at the time of the 2008 crash, GE Capital had grown to become the fifth biggest lender in the United States, too big to fail. It's hard not to think that at least some of the time, GE Capital managers made decisions under pressure from GE salesmen. That's not a good idea.

If banking goes back to being boring, then it might not be such an attractive career option for ambitious youngsters. That would be no bad thing in my view.

Walter Blotscher

CENSOR FOOD

The Danish education has lots of oral exams, and not just in language subjects. Maths, for example, which I have never done orally in the U.K.

The general rule is that pupils are examined by their normal teacher, who prepares the questions, and an external censor, either from a nearby school or appointed by the ministry. Fairness and a lack of partisanship are maintained by having a rule, whereby if there is disagreement about a grade, then it is the censor's that counts.

I have two maths classes and an English class, and so am a censor elsewhere for the same amount. I quite enjoy the process, since you get to meet other teachers and exchange ideas and gossip. However, even more than that, I enjoy the lunches. School cooks compete to provide the best possible lunches for their censors, so that they will spread the word about how good they are. So yesterday I had Mexican tortilla wraps, followed by rhubarb crumble and cream; and today I had baked salmon with asparagus followed by ice cream and redcurrant sauce!

Walter Blotscher

ELECTION FEVER (3)

The Danish general election campaign is rather depressing. The main theme is a race to the bottom to promise to be as hard as possible on refugees and asylum seekers.

"Vote for me, I will bash the Syrians" is a pretty nihilist platform. Unfortunately, I am going to hear much more of that sort of thing for the next 10 days.

Walter Blotscher

CRUTCHES

While I was in England, my elder son broke his leg and associated ankle ligaments in an accidental football tackle. He now has a metal plate in his ankle, and is hobbling around on crutches. Not surprisingly, he decided to come home and be looked after here.

Today my wife was operated on, and got a new half knee. She now has a metal plate in her leg and is hobbling around on crutches.

My task over the next few weeks will be to avoid the crutches and look after these two people.

Walter Blotscher

THE FRENCH OPEN

Novak Djokovic missed the opportunity to join a select group of seven (Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal), who have won a career grand slam in tennis, when he surprisingly lost in four sets this afternoon to Stan Wawrinka. Going into the tournament, Djokovic was a heavy favourite; already world number one, he had won pretty well everything so far this year, including the Australian Open in January. Even more importantly, he had beaten his nemesis Nadal in straight sets in the quarter finals, thereby joining an even more select group that have bested the Spaniard at Roland Garros (him and Robin Søderling in 2009). Going into the final, he must have felt that he would never have a better chance to win it.

True, he would have to beat Wawrinka, a gifted player who has bloomed late in his career (he is now over 30) and had won the Australian Open last year after beating Djokovic along the way. But Wawrinka is also erratic, who can just as easily go out in the first round as win a tournament; and (that Australian victory notwithstanding) he has a dismal career record against the Serb. When the first set went to Djokovic, it seemed to be business as usual.

However, Wawrinka then stepped up a gear, serving consistently at over 200 km/h  and spraying winners from both wings, particularly the backhand. Djokovic didn't play at all badly, but was essentially blown off the court. Wawrinka had previously said that he would have to play the match of his life to win; he did.

In many ways, the clay court French Open is the hardest of the four to win, unless (like Nadal) you have grown up with it in the southern Mediterranean. Many great players have won the other tournaments, but stumbled at the French; Sampras, McEnroe, Connors, Edberg and Becker in my lifetime, for instance. Similarly, there are many who have won the French, but none of the others; Kuerten, Gomez, Moya, Noah, Bruguera, Costa, Ferrero. Even Nadal's record of 14 grand slam titles would be much more modest, were it not for his 9 French Open titles.

Djokovic will come back next year, and - barring injury - will have a good chance of winning. However, that chance will not be as good as it was this year. It will have been a tough defeat to swallow.

Walter Blotscher

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

It is exactly 100 years ago today that women in Denmark got the vote. This required a change to the country's Basic Law, so it was fitting that it took place on 5 June, which is Constitution Day (and is nowadays a half holiday).

The changes in 1915 also allowed wage earners (as opposed to property owners) to get the vote. But that is not what is remembered.

Walter Blotscher

THE ALTERNATIVE

Alternativet ("the Alternative") is a new political party in Denmark. Founded by a former Culture Minister, who was felled because he had used his partner's private offices for public cultural events, it has quickly managed to acquire the thousands of signatures required before a party can run in a general election.

The Alternative's policies are, to put it mildly, a bit batty. Its two most well-known are that all Danish agriculture should be organic (there's not enough land for that); and that the working week should be reduced from 37 hours to 30 (which would lead to a Greek-like economy, according to experts). Despite that, it obviously appeals to a section of society, which is fed up both with the current emphasis on economic austerity and with politicians in general. A party needs a minimum 2% of votes under Denmark's system of proportional representation in order to gain seats in Parliament; at the moment the Alternative is polling 4%.

All of which means that in an increasingly tight race before the general election on 18 June, the Alternative matters. And that is reflected in the increasingly shrill tone with which the mainstream parties are denouncing it as a lunatic fringe. It is a lunatic fringe; however, in bashing it so vehemently, those parties are giving it a credibility which it would otherwise lack. I would have ignored it and let people make up their own minds.

Walter Blotscher

DANISH AIRPORTS

As a flat country with lots of islands, Denmark ought to be well served by airports. Copenhagen is efficient, and polls well for service; but elsewhere, things go downhill rapidly. The main airport for Århus, the second city, is an old German military airfield stuck out on a peninsular to the east; while the main airport for Jutland as a whole, Billund, is in the middle of nowhere (other than being next door to Legoland). Neither airport has a rail link, and both are poorly served by public transport.

The problem is worst for Århus. Billund has benefitted from the arrival of Ryanair and its designation as a Ryanair hub (precisely because it is in the middle of nowhere); passenger numbers have risen from under 2 million 10 years ago to almost 3 million last year. Århus, by contrast, has been stuck on 500,000 for a decade, and the number is falling. The slack is being taken up by the airport at Aalborg in North Jutland. Aalborg is only the fourth largest city in Denmark, and much, much smaller than Århus, yet passenger numbers there have risen over the same period from 500,000 to almost 1.5 million.

For the municipal authorities that own Århus, something must be done. So they have now identified four potential sites to the south of the city. They are all close to the main north-south Jutland motorway, and so would be good locations. Unfortunately, they are also in residential areas (which will lead to fierce Nimby resistance) and would compete with Billund (which will defend itself vigorously, not least on the grounds that it already exists).

Jutland definitely needs two major airports, but probably not three. So it is unfortunate that the existing ones are not really in the right place. It's not a problem unique to Denmark (the U.K. springs to mind, for instance); but it's a problem nevertheless.

Walter Blotscher

 

ELECTION FEVER (2)

A general election was called in Denmark while I was away on my walking tour; it's going to be held on 18 June. As a Brit, I am not allowed to vote; though I will be following it closely.

Some people thought that Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt would go early; others that she would wait until the last possible moment of the beginning of September. For what it's worth, a month ago I predicted June.

I should be a political pundit on Danish T.V.........

Walter Blotscher