Empty pew syndrome growing more acute
“Pioneer country” panned for biomass plan
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14 - 20 December 2012 | Vol 15 Issue 50
Christmas down the pub
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Denmark’s only English-language newspaper | cphpost.dk COLOURBOX
NEWS
American tourist’s runaway lorry death leads to criminal charges against city and vehicle’s driver
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NEWS
Someone is lying Former PET agent Morten Storm and agency head Jakob Scharf are telling very different stories
4 OPINION
As mining projects and cheap labour head to Greenland, questions are asked about the openness of the process We hear a lot about the country’s Christmas traditions, but it turns out most of them aren’t even Danish
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BUSINESS
SAS mounting a turnaround, but questions about earnings remain
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Price: 25 DKK
Early snowfall a pain in the municipal wallet BJARKE SMITH-MEYER
Flying out of crisis
9 771398 100009
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While many councils say they are almost out of money for snow removal, Copenhagen says it learned its lesson from snowy winters in 2009 and 2010
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HE WINTER storm that dropped as much as 20cm of snow on much of Denmark over the weekend has placed a financial strain on a number of councils as they continue to struggle to clear roads. In the northern Jutland town of Frederikshavn, where snow-clearing costs are as high as 50,000 kroner an hour, the council estimated that it spent 700,000 kroner a day to keep roads and walkways clear on Sunday and Monday. After the first snowstorm of the sea-
son, councils could be facing a repeat of the financial problems they faced in the back-to-back snowy winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11. In 2009, snow costs left the counsils 216 million kroner overbudget, while in 2010, the amount mushroomed to 1.3 billion. In Copenhagen, the snowy winter of 2010 meant that even though the city went nearly 20 million kroner over budget on its winter services, the then deputy mayor for environmental and technical affairs, Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard (Socialistisk Folkeparti), had to apologise for snow removal that “could have been much better”. Niels Tørsløv, a spokesperson for the city of Copenhagen, assured city residents that wouldn’t be the case this year. “We’ve deliberately put extra funds aside for this sort of scenario,” Tørsløv
told The Copenhagen Post. “So unless the situation gets consistently worse and worse throughout the winter, we’re confident we won’t be running out of money anytime soon.” Tørsløv suggested that councils finding themselves short on funds take a second look at their planning procedures. “We’d be very happy to share our winter strategy with other councils,” Tørsløv said. “But yes, it’s a problem, and one that we’ll have to adapt to in the future.” While Tørsløv may be confident in the city’s ability to keep the streets clear, the snowstorm that began in western Jutland on Sunday night and wrapped up on Monday afternoon when it moved east past the island of Bornholm, did its best to wreak havoc with the trains, planes and automobiles around the country. Rail service DSB faired best, cancel-
ling only five percent of its departures on Sunday. Copenhagen Airport, on the other hand, saw 22 flights cancelled and a further nine redirected on Sunday after drifting snow forced the airport to close one of its main runways. Road traffic had it worst. Over 1,800 motorists needed roadside assistance from Falck and Dansk Autohjælp on Sunday alone, as some cars couldn’t start and many others had spun off roads clogged with churned-up snow. But as Mikkel Andreas Beck, a Falck spokesperson, explained, the number of people needing help was by no means extreme. “This is nothing,” Beck told the Ritzau news bureau. “We’ve had winters in which 5,000 cars have had to be pulled out of the snow in a single day.”
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