E.U. JOBS
Like it or dislike it, I think that everyone can agree that the E.U. is a curious institution (or, to be more correct, institutions). And nowhere is it more curious than in its processes for appointing people to its top jobs.
Most organisations use one of two methods; elections (eg Parliament, political parties, unions) or merit (eg companies, civil servants). The E.U. uses neither. Candidates somehow emerge, usually over a long period of time (though all of those candidates strenuously deny that they are in fact candidates). Then, at the last minute, everybody unanimously agrees to the proposal, which this time round took place last night. If it resembles anything, then it's the staged elections to the politburos of the Chinese or Russian Communist parties.
This year's appointments (to the head of the Commission, the President of the Council and the head of Foreign Affairs) were made more complicated by the need to satisfy various interests. A balance between left-wing and right-wing politicians; a balance between small and big countries; tensions between heads of national governments and the European Parliament, which now has more say; the feeling that after 10 years, it was time for at least one of the jobs to go to one of the new countries from Eastern Europe; and the need for at least one of the jobs to go to a woman. Furthermore, given that David Cameron had desperately (and unsuccessfully) tried to stop Jean-Claude Juncker from Luxemburg from becoming head of the Commission back in June, it was felt necessary to find candidates for the other two posts, whom the U.K. could live with.
This balancing act was one of the reasons why Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was in the running to become President of the Council, even though at home she is widely held to be a weak leader, who is on her way out. What eventually scuppered her chances was the appointment of Italy's Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, like Ms. Thorning-Schmidt a left-of-centre woman, as head of Foreign Affairs. That opened the door for a right-of-centre man, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk, to become President of the Council.
With the top jobs now filled, attention turns to who gets what in the new Commission (which, despite being a civil service, is run by politicians or ex-politicians; did I say this was curious?). Since Ms. Thorning-Schmidt had lost out (though of course she was never a candidate in the first place), she was appeased by being promised a "heavyweight post" for Denmark's commissioner. This, somewhat surprisingly, turns out to be Margrethe Vestager, leader of her coalition partners the Radicals, who has obviously decided that the chances of her still being in the Danish Government after next year's general election are minimal at best, so she had better find herself a job in Brussels before it is too late to jump ship.
And when all of that is done, what is the end result? Perhaps the most curious thing is that it is impossible to tell. The outgoing President of the Council, Herbert van Rompuy, was widely ridiculed as a Belgian non-entity when he started, but turned out to be rather good. By contrast, the star of the outgoing head of the Commission, the former Prime Minister of Portugal Manuel Barroso, has probably waned during his 10 years in the job. Mr. Tusk was appointed in part because David Cameron thinks he can broker a deal that will give the U.K. enough concessions that its people will vote in a referendum to stay in the E.U. Time will tell if that is possible; in the meantime, Mr. Tusk promises to improve his English before he starts in the job on 1 December.
I am off to the Czech Republic tomorrow for a week, so no blogging before next weekend.
Walter Blotscher
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Saturday, 30 August 2014
CINEMA TICKETS
Sales of cinema tickets in Denmark are down this year. That is partly due to the good weather of the past couple of months; but mainly because the films have been poor. Danish films in particular have not sold well.
Cinema visits have increased gradually since 2000, from just over 10 million to 13.6 million in 2013, or 2.4 visits per inhabitant. That's less than in the U.S., which had 3.8 visits per inhabitant. It is also a lot less than the record for a year of 56 million tickets; that was back in 1954.
Walter Blotscher
Sales of cinema tickets in Denmark are down this year. That is partly due to the good weather of the past couple of months; but mainly because the films have been poor. Danish films in particular have not sold well.
Cinema visits have increased gradually since 2000, from just over 10 million to 13.6 million in 2013, or 2.4 visits per inhabitant. That's less than in the U.S., which had 3.8 visits per inhabitant. It is also a lot less than the record for a year of 56 million tickets; that was back in 1954.
Walter Blotscher
Friday, 29 August 2014
DEN BLÅ AVIS
Den Blå Avis ("the blue newspaper") is closing after almost 33 years. First published in 1981, it quickly became the best place in Denmark to find or sell second-hand things (though you can also find new things on it). In 2008, the company was sold to E-Bay for kr.2.1 billion, which is quite a lot of money.
E-Bay is not closing the paper because the business is collapsing. Rather, like many other things, it has migrated to the internet, to the sister site www.dba.dk. In 2008, there were some 3 million items for sale on the site; last year that figure had risen to 10 million, and the expectation for this year is 15 million.
E-Bay had always intended to close the paper, when the balance between the print and electronic versions had moved in favour of the latter. That time has now come.
Walter Blotscher
Den Blå Avis ("the blue newspaper") is closing after almost 33 years. First published in 1981, it quickly became the best place in Denmark to find or sell second-hand things (though you can also find new things on it). In 2008, the company was sold to E-Bay for kr.2.1 billion, which is quite a lot of money.
E-Bay is not closing the paper because the business is collapsing. Rather, like many other things, it has migrated to the internet, to the sister site www.dba.dk. In 2008, there were some 3 million items for sale on the site; last year that figure had risen to 10 million, and the expectation for this year is 15 million.
E-Bay had always intended to close the paper, when the balance between the print and electronic versions had moved in favour of the latter. That time has now come.
Walter Blotscher
Thursday, 28 August 2014
AMERICA IS DIFFERENT
One of the ways in which America is different from all other Western nations is its love of guns. There are more guns than people in the country; and the number of people killed from guns there (either by other citizens or the police) is vastly higher than anywhere else. The fearsomely influential National Rifle Association says that it's not guns that kill people, but people who kill people. True; but I also believe that if there were a lot fewer guns, then there would be many fewer deaths.
Every now and then a story about guns emerges from America which simply makes me shake my head. A kid goes berserk at school and kills a load of his fellow pupils; a disgruntled fired employee wipes out his former office. This week's weirdo occurred when a shooting instructor was killed by a 9-year old girl whom he was teaching to use a gun. And not just any old gun, but an Uzi sub-machine gun.
There are parents in America who think that it is a good idea for their daughter to learn to fire an Uzi sub-machine gun. How insane is that?
Walter Blotscher
One of the ways in which America is different from all other Western nations is its love of guns. There are more guns than people in the country; and the number of people killed from guns there (either by other citizens or the police) is vastly higher than anywhere else. The fearsomely influential National Rifle Association says that it's not guns that kill people, but people who kill people. True; but I also believe that if there were a lot fewer guns, then there would be many fewer deaths.
Every now and then a story about guns emerges from America which simply makes me shake my head. A kid goes berserk at school and kills a load of his fellow pupils; a disgruntled fired employee wipes out his former office. This week's weirdo occurred when a shooting instructor was killed by a 9-year old girl whom he was teaching to use a gun. And not just any old gun, but an Uzi sub-machine gun.
There are parents in America who think that it is a good idea for their daughter to learn to fire an Uzi sub-machine gun. How insane is that?
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
GUITAR RIFFS
BBC Radio has held a poll of listeners as to the best guitar riff ever. One of the surprising things about the result was that nine of the top ten were from the time when I bought vinyl records and listened to them endlessly (the only one I didn't know was How Soon is Now? by The Smiths). In an age of endless You Tube videos, does that mean that pop songs no longer use guitar riffs? I think it does.
I had rather hoped that the winner would be Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, which is the first thing that I (and probably millions of other boys) ever learned to play on a guitar. However, that came fourth. The winner was Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. But that still found a soft spot in my heart, since Led Zep II, the album containing the song, was one of the first albums I ever bought, back in the early 1970's.
Walter Blotscher
BBC Radio has held a poll of listeners as to the best guitar riff ever. One of the surprising things about the result was that nine of the top ten were from the time when I bought vinyl records and listened to them endlessly (the only one I didn't know was How Soon is Now? by The Smiths). In an age of endless You Tube videos, does that mean that pop songs no longer use guitar riffs? I think it does.
I had rather hoped that the winner would be Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, which is the first thing that I (and probably millions of other boys) ever learned to play on a guitar. However, that came fourth. The winner was Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. But that still found a soft spot in my heart, since Led Zep II, the album containing the song, was one of the first albums I ever bought, back in the early 1970's.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 25 August 2014
BILINGUAL CHILDREN
It has long been received wisdom that nothing can be done about schools in Danish inner cities that have a high proportion of bilingual children. These schools are often (mistakenly) called ghetto schools, since the non-Danish language is usually one spoken by refugees, such as Somali, Pushtu or Arabic. Such schools become more and more concentrated, as alarmed Danish parents move their children away to schools which are more ethnically pure, or to free schools. As a reaction, politicians are forced to spread the ethnic children around the city, so that they do not all congregate in one place.
Like much received wisdom, this has now been shown to be tosh. Copenhagen has nine schools that are considered to have too high a proportion of bilingual children. In eight of them, that proportion has fallen drastically (97% to 64%, 80% to 40% etc), of itself, and over a relatively short period of time (3 years). It seems that parents of Danish children are quite happy to have their children play with those who may have a different background and culture.
Yet another example of politicians talking a lot and saying nothing.
Walter Blotscher
It has long been received wisdom that nothing can be done about schools in Danish inner cities that have a high proportion of bilingual children. These schools are often (mistakenly) called ghetto schools, since the non-Danish language is usually one spoken by refugees, such as Somali, Pushtu or Arabic. Such schools become more and more concentrated, as alarmed Danish parents move their children away to schools which are more ethnically pure, or to free schools. As a reaction, politicians are forced to spread the ethnic children around the city, so that they do not all congregate in one place.
Like much received wisdom, this has now been shown to be tosh. Copenhagen has nine schools that are considered to have too high a proportion of bilingual children. In eight of them, that proportion has fallen drastically (97% to 64%, 80% to 40% etc), of itself, and over a relatively short period of time (3 years). It seems that parents of Danish children are quite happy to have their children play with those who may have a different background and culture.
Yet another example of politicians talking a lot and saying nothing.
Walter Blotscher
Sunday, 24 August 2014
CARLSBERG v. TUBORG
Carlsberg and Tuborg are Denmark's biggest beer brands. In fact, they are part of the same group, since the two companies merged in 1970. At one time they controlled more than 90% of the market, which was rather boring. As in the U.K., that led to a consumer backlash, and a spate of microbreweries have opened all over the country in recent years. When we were on Bornholm we visited the Svanninge brewery, which has done very well.
Tuborg was originally the bigger brand; but Carlsberg gradually overhauled it, and at the time of the merger was decidedly the dominant player. Since then, Tuborg has tended to be sold slightly more cheaply, which has led to a revival amongst young people.
However, it is in emerging markets that the biggest changes have occurred. Tuborg is storming ahead in Turkey, China and India, which are all large emerging markets. The result is that this year, worldwide production of Tuborg will outstrip that of Carlsberg for the first time in decades.
Not that I care. If I am drinking a Danish beer, I tend to drink Vestfyns, a local brewery 15km down the road.
Walter Blotscher
Carlsberg and Tuborg are Denmark's biggest beer brands. In fact, they are part of the same group, since the two companies merged in 1970. At one time they controlled more than 90% of the market, which was rather boring. As in the U.K., that led to a consumer backlash, and a spate of microbreweries have opened all over the country in recent years. When we were on Bornholm we visited the Svanninge brewery, which has done very well.
Tuborg was originally the bigger brand; but Carlsberg gradually overhauled it, and at the time of the merger was decidedly the dominant player. Since then, Tuborg has tended to be sold slightly more cheaply, which has led to a revival amongst young people.
However, it is in emerging markets that the biggest changes have occurred. Tuborg is storming ahead in Turkey, China and India, which are all large emerging markets. The result is that this year, worldwide production of Tuborg will outstrip that of Carlsberg for the first time in decades.
Not that I care. If I am drinking a Danish beer, I tend to drink Vestfyns, a local brewery 15km down the road.
Walter Blotscher
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