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

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

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

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

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

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

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