SOCIAL NETWORKS (2)
I said in my earlier post that nobody should doubt the value of social networks.
However, what goes up can also go down. Back in 2005, Facebook and Twitter barely existed. MySpace was the leading social network then, and had such a large market share that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was prepared to pay US$580 million in order to get its hands on it. However, after mounting losses caused by the flight of users to newer sites, MySpace was sold this week for a reputed US$35 million.
The newer sites are currently worth billions. But will they remain so?
Walter Blotscher
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
THE PERCEPTION OF CRIME
One of the concessions that the Danish People's Party extracted from the Government in exchange for supporting its long-term financial stability plan was a doubling of the punishment for robberies and attacks in people's homes. This is a huge, and worsening problem, and something needed to be done to reassure ordinary Danes.
Really? Denmark is in fact one of the safest countries in the world. I have never seen a policeman in the village where I live, and I would be hard pressed to think what he would do here. In 2010, there were only 289 robberies in people's houses nationwide. Given the country's 2.5 million households, that means the chances of being robbed were about 0.012%. Despite that, it has emerged that around one in seven Danes keep a weapon at home to be used against a potential robber. A fair proportion of these are guns.
How come there is such a discrepancy between perception and reality? The answer in my view is the toxic combination of sloppy media and right-wing populist politicians. If Danes don't feel safe, then who can?
Walter Blotscher
One of the concessions that the Danish People's Party extracted from the Government in exchange for supporting its long-term financial stability plan was a doubling of the punishment for robberies and attacks in people's homes. This is a huge, and worsening problem, and something needed to be done to reassure ordinary Danes.
Really? Denmark is in fact one of the safest countries in the world. I have never seen a policeman in the village where I live, and I would be hard pressed to think what he would do here. In 2010, there were only 289 robberies in people's houses nationwide. Given the country's 2.5 million households, that means the chances of being robbed were about 0.012%. Despite that, it has emerged that around one in seven Danes keep a weapon at home to be used against a potential robber. A fair proportion of these are guns.
How come there is such a discrepancy between perception and reality? The answer in my view is the toxic combination of sloppy media and right-wing populist politicians. If Danes don't feel safe, then who can?
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
DANISH BANKS
One of the things I like about living in Denmark is the large number of small banks. My personal bank is Vestfyns ("West Fünen") Bank, which has just seven branches; four on the island itself, and three just over the Little Belt on Jutland. They are mulling over the idea of opening a branch in the big city of Odense, which would be a major development. For U.K. readers, imagine living in (say) North East Essex, and banking with the Bank of North East Essex.
The great advantage of a small bank is that you can deal with human beings. I know most of the four or five staff in my local branch, not least because I meet them in other contexts. When I ring up the bank, I am having a conversation with an acquaintance, who recognises my voice. That makes security issues much less of a hassle. They will, for example, give me account information without making me go through the equivalent of airport security.
There is no disadvantage with technology; I have internet banking, and debit cards like everybody else. My forex rate will be slightly worse than if I banked with (say) Danske Bank. But let's be honest, how often do I buy forex?
All in all, a successful rural organisation, which makes money by taking in local residents' cash and deposits, lending them out at higher interest rates to local businesses and home owners, and paying staff a modest amount from the difference.
There is only one problem with this business model; it is rather dull. That's as it should be, in my view, but boredom has been one of the great (and least reported) villains of the recent financial crisis. All across Denmark - and other places - a generation of rural and small-town bank managers decided that they should spice up their lives by getting involved in all sorts of new products (notably derivatives and commercial property) and in places further away from the head office than a bicycle ride. The predictable result was a mess, as losses on one particularly egregious deal wiped out profits on lots of bread and butter business. Over the course of the past few years, a whole series of small savings banks and regional banks in Denmark have gone bust; among them Roskilde Bank, Amager Bank and Fionia ("Fünen") Bank. Yesterday a local bank in north west Jutland, which has traditionally made its money through lending to local pig farmers, went bust after its loans to a German solar power manufacturer went sour. That's a typical example.
The danger now is that there will be a rush of further consolidations and takeovers in the Danish banking sector, that could lead to the sort of oligopolistic market that exists in (for example) the U.K. Although that might make sense from a purely financial point of view, it would be a bad thing for the consumer. I no longer have a U.K. bank account; and I was unhappy with my bank for most of the 20 years before I closed the account last year. Here's hoping that Vestfyns Bank can stay independent for a while yet. I rather like talking to humans.
Walter Blotscher
One of the things I like about living in Denmark is the large number of small banks. My personal bank is Vestfyns ("West Fünen") Bank, which has just seven branches; four on the island itself, and three just over the Little Belt on Jutland. They are mulling over the idea of opening a branch in the big city of Odense, which would be a major development. For U.K. readers, imagine living in (say) North East Essex, and banking with the Bank of North East Essex.
The great advantage of a small bank is that you can deal with human beings. I know most of the four or five staff in my local branch, not least because I meet them in other contexts. When I ring up the bank, I am having a conversation with an acquaintance, who recognises my voice. That makes security issues much less of a hassle. They will, for example, give me account information without making me go through the equivalent of airport security.
There is no disadvantage with technology; I have internet banking, and debit cards like everybody else. My forex rate will be slightly worse than if I banked with (say) Danske Bank. But let's be honest, how often do I buy forex?
All in all, a successful rural organisation, which makes money by taking in local residents' cash and deposits, lending them out at higher interest rates to local businesses and home owners, and paying staff a modest amount from the difference.
There is only one problem with this business model; it is rather dull. That's as it should be, in my view, but boredom has been one of the great (and least reported) villains of the recent financial crisis. All across Denmark - and other places - a generation of rural and small-town bank managers decided that they should spice up their lives by getting involved in all sorts of new products (notably derivatives and commercial property) and in places further away from the head office than a bicycle ride. The predictable result was a mess, as losses on one particularly egregious deal wiped out profits on lots of bread and butter business. Over the course of the past few years, a whole series of small savings banks and regional banks in Denmark have gone bust; among them Roskilde Bank, Amager Bank and Fionia ("Fünen") Bank. Yesterday a local bank in north west Jutland, which has traditionally made its money through lending to local pig farmers, went bust after its loans to a German solar power manufacturer went sour. That's a typical example.
The danger now is that there will be a rush of further consolidations and takeovers in the Danish banking sector, that could lead to the sort of oligopolistic market that exists in (for example) the U.K. Although that might make sense from a purely financial point of view, it would be a bad thing for the consumer. I no longer have a U.K. bank account; and I was unhappy with my bank for most of the 20 years before I closed the account last year. Here's hoping that Vestfyns Bank can stay independent for a while yet. I rather like talking to humans.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 27 June 2011
CAROLINE WOZNIACKI (2)
Denmark is in mourning after the exit of Caroline Wozniacki, world number 1 and top seed, from this year's Wimbledon, in only the fourth round. It's difficult when you have only one good player and in a sport which is not traditionally Danish. Media interest has been so high, that TV2 Sport have been reduced to interviewing virtually anyone who has ever met her; this morning it was her French racket-stringer, who popped up on the screen. It also meant that I had to watch her match this afternoon instead of the Murray-Gasquet encounter on Centre Court, which I was more interested in.
As readers will know, I am not a great Wozniacki fan. My family think this is mere anti-Danish prejudice, but it is not. Here are my reasons.
She is young, athletic and has solid groundstrokes and a good serve. She is rarely injured, and plays a lot of tournaments. Put that all together, and it means she wins a lot of matches and ranking points, enough to give her the number one spot (particularly when a number of the other potential number ones, such as the Williams sisters and Clijsters, have been injured). However, when it really matters, in the major tournaments, she seems to lack the imagination to finish the points. She rarely comes into the net to volley, and seems content merely to keep the ball in play rather than going for a winner. She beat someone fairly easily last week, but still had fewer winners; it's almost as if her opponents lose rather than that she wins.
Today's defeat at the hands of 24th seed Dominika Cibulkova followed a similar pattern. Wozniacki played a solid first set and her opponent made lots of mistakes; 6-1 to the Dane. Then Cibulkova began to find her range and go for her shots. She won the second set in a tie-break; and despite being a break down in the third, came back to win it 7-5. At one point, the screen showed that she had hit 24 forehand winners during the match to Wozniacki's 7; in other words, the Slovak was trying to win, the Dane was trying not to lose.
My personal view is that Wozniacki needs to dump her father as her coach and team up with someone else. He has instilled the necessary qualities of fitness, technique and willpower; but she needs to learn how to volley, how to slice a backhand, and (most of all) how to mix it up. It will be the hardest thing in the world to dump a family member as coach; but until she does, I don't think she will win a Grand Slam tournament.
Walter Blotscher
Denmark is in mourning after the exit of Caroline Wozniacki, world number 1 and top seed, from this year's Wimbledon, in only the fourth round. It's difficult when you have only one good player and in a sport which is not traditionally Danish. Media interest has been so high, that TV2 Sport have been reduced to interviewing virtually anyone who has ever met her; this morning it was her French racket-stringer, who popped up on the screen. It also meant that I had to watch her match this afternoon instead of the Murray-Gasquet encounter on Centre Court, which I was more interested in.
As readers will know, I am not a great Wozniacki fan. My family think this is mere anti-Danish prejudice, but it is not. Here are my reasons.
She is young, athletic and has solid groundstrokes and a good serve. She is rarely injured, and plays a lot of tournaments. Put that all together, and it means she wins a lot of matches and ranking points, enough to give her the number one spot (particularly when a number of the other potential number ones, such as the Williams sisters and Clijsters, have been injured). However, when it really matters, in the major tournaments, she seems to lack the imagination to finish the points. She rarely comes into the net to volley, and seems content merely to keep the ball in play rather than going for a winner. She beat someone fairly easily last week, but still had fewer winners; it's almost as if her opponents lose rather than that she wins.
Today's defeat at the hands of 24th seed Dominika Cibulkova followed a similar pattern. Wozniacki played a solid first set and her opponent made lots of mistakes; 6-1 to the Dane. Then Cibulkova began to find her range and go for her shots. She won the second set in a tie-break; and despite being a break down in the third, came back to win it 7-5. At one point, the screen showed that she had hit 24 forehand winners during the match to Wozniacki's 7; in other words, the Slovak was trying to win, the Dane was trying not to lose.
My personal view is that Wozniacki needs to dump her father as her coach and team up with someone else. He has instilled the necessary qualities of fitness, technique and willpower; but she needs to learn how to volley, how to slice a backhand, and (most of all) how to mix it up. It will be the hardest thing in the world to dump a family member as coach; but until she does, I don't think she will win a Grand Slam tournament.
Walter Blotscher
Sunday, 26 June 2011
HOLSTENSHUUS
Our 60km cycle ride this morning took us past Holstenshuus, a lovely stately home in the hills of southern Fünen.
The name ("Holstein's house") is a reminder of the influence of north Germany on Denmark in former times. In contrast to other mediæval monarchies such as France and England, the Danish monarchy remained elective rather than hereditary, with kings being acclaimed in the four parts of the realm; Jutland, Fünen and the Isles, Zealand, and Skåne (now southern Sweden). In return for their acclamation, the barons naturally extracted concessions, which kept the monarchy weak. Things reached a low point during the reign of Christoffer II (king from 1320-6 and again from 1329-32). His accession charter promised to drastically reduce taxation, which inevitably suited the nobility, but equally inevitably impoverished the Crown. The finances got so bad that by the end of his reign, the country was effectively mortgaged to the powerful Counts of Holstein. Their grip was so strong that Denmark had to manage without a king from 1332 to 1340.
Holstenshuus reflects these events. First mentioned in the sources in 1314, it was at that time called Finstrupgård ("Finstrup farm") after the neighbouring village. Then the Holsteiners moved in.
Although the Danes subsequently managed to get back control of their own country, German influence remained widespread. The Hanseatic League, controlled by Lübeck, was the most important economic player in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, and Low German was the lingua franca of the whole Baltic Region. German was also the language of the Danish (and Swedish) courts, many of the Danish king's ministers were of German origin, and German princesses provided a string of suitable royal brides. It was not really until the 19th century that Denmark was run by Danish-speaking Danes.
Walter Blotscher
Our 60km cycle ride this morning took us past Holstenshuus, a lovely stately home in the hills of southern Fünen.
The name ("Holstein's house") is a reminder of the influence of north Germany on Denmark in former times. In contrast to other mediæval monarchies such as France and England, the Danish monarchy remained elective rather than hereditary, with kings being acclaimed in the four parts of the realm; Jutland, Fünen and the Isles, Zealand, and Skåne (now southern Sweden). In return for their acclamation, the barons naturally extracted concessions, which kept the monarchy weak. Things reached a low point during the reign of Christoffer II (king from 1320-6 and again from 1329-32). His accession charter promised to drastically reduce taxation, which inevitably suited the nobility, but equally inevitably impoverished the Crown. The finances got so bad that by the end of his reign, the country was effectively mortgaged to the powerful Counts of Holstein. Their grip was so strong that Denmark had to manage without a king from 1332 to 1340.
Holstenshuus reflects these events. First mentioned in the sources in 1314, it was at that time called Finstrupgård ("Finstrup farm") after the neighbouring village. Then the Holsteiners moved in.
Although the Danes subsequently managed to get back control of their own country, German influence remained widespread. The Hanseatic League, controlled by Lübeck, was the most important economic player in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, and Low German was the lingua franca of the whole Baltic Region. German was also the language of the Danish (and Swedish) courts, many of the Danish king's ministers were of German origin, and German princesses provided a string of suitable royal brides. It was not really until the 19th century that Denmark was run by Danish-speaking Danes.
Walter Blotscher
Saturday, 25 June 2011
A LICK OF PAINT
It's amazing what a lick of paint will do. I lived in Dar es Salaam for 8 years and I always thought that the city would have looked a lot nicer if more buildings had been painted. Here in Denmark most houses are rendered (i.e. a cement mix is smeared over the brickwork) and then painted. That makes a colourful contrast to the U.K., where most houses have unadorned and slightly boring brickwork.
In our back garden (the one I am currently turning into a lawn) there is one of those old-fashioned metal hand pumps. A rusty old thing, it sticks up out of the former well, which serviced the farmhouse before it was connected to the town's mains water supply. I have blocked up the entrance to the well, and today I painted the hand pump a metallic black. It now looks terrific.
Walter Blotscher
It's amazing what a lick of paint will do. I lived in Dar es Salaam for 8 years and I always thought that the city would have looked a lot nicer if more buildings had been painted. Here in Denmark most houses are rendered (i.e. a cement mix is smeared over the brickwork) and then painted. That makes a colourful contrast to the U.K., where most houses have unadorned and slightly boring brickwork.
In our back garden (the one I am currently turning into a lawn) there is one of those old-fashioned metal hand pumps. A rusty old thing, it sticks up out of the former well, which serviced the farmhouse before it was connected to the town's mains water supply. I have blocked up the entrance to the well, and today I painted the hand pump a metallic black. It now looks terrific.
Walter Blotscher
Friday, 24 June 2011
GREECE (4)
Greece is between a rock and a hard place, as the Americans say. If its Government doesn't make even deeper cuts in public spending and commitments, then it won't get the second bail-out from the E.U. that is currently being discussed. If it does, then it is likely to become one of the most unpopular Governments anywhere, ever.
Last week the Prime Minister reshuffled his Cabinet, replacing his Finance Minister, and then got the new Government approved by the Greek Parliament. However, that was not enough for other E.U. leaders. At the recent summit, they made the next tranche of funds conditional on the next round of cuts' first being passed by Parliament. A vote on them is scheduled for next week, and it is by no means certain that they will be approved.
Outside experts seem to be agreed that Greece is bust, and that the only question is when everyone admits it. I am not so sure. Rescue packages buy time, which is a precious commodity in financial crises. However, in order to get this time, the Greek Parliament has to approve the new cuts. Will it?
Walter Blotscher
Greece is between a rock and a hard place, as the Americans say. If its Government doesn't make even deeper cuts in public spending and commitments, then it won't get the second bail-out from the E.U. that is currently being discussed. If it does, then it is likely to become one of the most unpopular Governments anywhere, ever.
Last week the Prime Minister reshuffled his Cabinet, replacing his Finance Minister, and then got the new Government approved by the Greek Parliament. However, that was not enough for other E.U. leaders. At the recent summit, they made the next tranche of funds conditional on the next round of cuts' first being passed by Parliament. A vote on them is scheduled for next week, and it is by no means certain that they will be approved.
Outside experts seem to be agreed that Greece is bust, and that the only question is when everyone admits it. I am not so sure. Rescue packages buy time, which is a precious commodity in financial crises. However, in order to get this time, the Greek Parliament has to approve the new cuts. Will it?
Walter Blotscher
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