Tide turning against freedom of info proposal
The Copenhagen Post’s Children’s Fair is back!
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19 - 25 April 2013 | Vol 16 Issue 16
Grab your sledge and head to Greenland
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Denmark’s only English-language newspaper | cphpost.dk PETER STANNERS
NEWS
Nationalists hope that Holger Danske will arise from his slumber and prohibit his sale to foreigners
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NEWS
From Boston to Bethlehem Following the Boston tragedy, a pair of Danes prepare to host the first ever marathon in Palestine
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Unlikely duo What do a 30-year-old Russian and a 59-year-old Dane have in common? KVINFO’s mentoring programme
According to a woman’s magazine, the vagina needs a new name that won’t make us giggle or gag
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BUSINESS
Telecommunications companies team up to bring new paying options to smartphones
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Parents look to sue councils over teacher lockout RAY WEAVER
The death of the Dankort?
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As the dispute heads into its fourth week, parents and kids are running out of patience. Meanwhile, some students may not have enough hours to graduate
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ARENTS across the country are looking into the possibility of dragging their local councils into court over the ongoing teacher lockout. “We have started to receive inquiries from parents asking if there is anything they can do via the courts,” Mette With Hagensen, the head of parents’ group Skole og Forældre, told Newspaq. “They want to know if they can sue their local councils or the state for not fulfilling their compulsory edu-
cation and supervisory duties.” According to Hagensen, parents are reporting that their children are beginning to miss going to school and the comfort of their daily routines. The teachers’ unions are also hearing from exasperated parents. “The messages are beginning to make their way to me, and I am taking them seriously,” Anders Bondo Christensen, the head negotiator for the teachers’ union Danmarks Lærerforening (DLF), told Newspaq. A representative from the local government association KL, which along with the national government is preventing teachers from going to work, said that any parents looking to sue are on a fool’s errand. “The councils will provide children with the education that they need, if
not right now, then at a later date, so it is hard to see where the parents have a case,” said KL official Lene Møller. Schools can add the hours lost to students in grades 0 to 8 into next year’s curriculum, but students currently set to graduate from the ninth grade may well wind up short of the legally-mandated number of school hours. When the lockout was first enacted, many analysts expected it to run for just two weeks, and teachers said that they would be able to fit the hours in. But that now appears less likely as the lockout wraps up its third week with no end in sight. “I would think that more or less all ninth grade classes are now below the minimum number of hours,” Jeanne Jacobsen, the head of the Copenhagen branch of Skolelederforeningen, a
union representing headteachers, told Politiken newspaper. Teachers in other councils are reporting the same problem. According to KL, the Education Ministry will ultimately decide what councils should do if they cannot meet the minimum requirements. The ministry said it is the councils’ responsibility to make sure that the number of required hours is met. Møller said that KL hopes that the ninth graders’ missing hours could be made up by students taking extra afternoon classes once the teachers were allowed to work, but that suggestion was not well received by DLF. “It’s a bit arrogant to suggest that teachers should just take on extra hours,” Dorte Lange, DLF’s vice president, told Politiken.
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OPINION
THE COPENHAGEN POST CPHPOST.DK
19 - 25 April 2013
My top three bafflers in Denmark
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DO NOT get baffled easily, or shocked for that matter. Happy, emotional or irritated are entirely different matters though – those emotions can occur in the blink of an eye. I attribute this to having lived in India – a melting pot of contradictions, many delightful, some plainly unacceptable. But, over the past year in Denmark, I’ve had some interesting experiences that have truly baffled me. #1: When smiling or talking to a baby is met with suspicious glances
The Balancing Act BY SARITA RAJIV Sarita Rajiv recently moved from sunkissed India to snow-topped Denmark. Having hopped from east to west, she finds herself performing a balancing act between her old and new lives. A communications specialist in the past, she is now a gifting specialist. For more, visit ilovegifting.me
BAFFLER number one came my way when I had a natural reaction to a baby on a bus who was gazing solemnly at me. I smiled at the baby and looked up at the mother to say how adorable her child was. Wrong move, it seemed. The lady glanced at me warily. I didn’t give it much thought, attributing the mother’s reaction to having a bad day. The next time, I went a step further and said “hej” while reaching out to hold the finger another gurgling baby was holding out to me (yes, babies and I do seem to have a connection). Once again, suspicious glances came my way.
I was baffled. Isn’t the innocence and beauty of babies meant to be admired? In India, mothers welcome smiles and conversations with their precious offspring. To them, it’s a validation from a neutral, third-party observer that their baby is indeed captivating and adorable – that they are not biased to think so. How was I to know that in Denmark a smile could be construed as an attempt to kidnap the baby right under the parent’s nose? I mean, they do leave their babies in prams outside shops and cafes ... all alone. Several such glances later, I stopped peering into prams. I just dart quick looks from the corner of my eye. #2: When sweets are prohibited, but alcohol and cigarettes are not CELEBRATING my three-year-old’s birthday at her daycare turned out to be the occasion for baffler number two. I decided to get a cake big enough to share with all the children in the daycare, not just my daughter’s room or class. Turns out, I wasn’t being magnanimous, just naive. The cake was returned in half because one of the daycare workers de-
All that leisurely bending, stretching and singing while in the buff is unnecessary cided that the children were eating too many sweets. Imagine the horror! I tried, really hard, to understand the harm caused by eating cake once in a while, but failed spectacularly. I blame my sweet-clogged Indian genes for this. It’s hard to fathom the strict discipline parents here enforce when it comes to eating anything remotely sweet, while at the same time being so tolerant about underage drinking and smoking. Sure, too many sweets and candy is harmful for children. But, isn’t there a bigger cause for worry when 12 to 13-year-olds drink and smoke? #3: When Danes strut their stuff in the buff THIS ONE came in the form of my first culture shock here. In India, a visit
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to the swimming pool entails taking a shower – with the option to keep your swimsuit on and in the privacy of an enclosed space – before you head to the pool. Added to that, Indian swimwear is designed with modesty, not swimming in mind. In a league of its own, it has several elements – a high neckline, sleeves and built-in tights. The pièce de résistance is the frock swimsuit: a one-piece swimsuit with a frill attached, meant to modestly cover the hips, butt and any accompanying cellulite! Indian women in bikinis are as rare as a full moon eclipse. I was prepared to see women in bikinis. You can imagine my surprise – no, let’s make that shock of the openmouthed, gaping kind – at the spectacle of nude women in the changing rooms here. My three-year-old daughter stared like only children can. And to think I had planned to send her with her father! Really Danes, all that leisurely bending, stretching and singing while in the buff is unnecessary. These are perhaps complete nonincidents for most people. But then living in a foreign land wouldn’t be quite as interesting if the balance didn’t yo-yo every now and then, would it?
The Vikings have returned … unfortunately
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Christian Values BY CHRISTIAN WENANDE Christian Wenande’s Danish/American background caters well to a city brimming with cultural diversity and strife. The CPH Post journalist loves life in Copenhagen but yearns for the indomitable mountains, rolling prairie and starry nights of his Wyoming sanctuary.
T SEEMS like the popular new television series ‘Vikings’ coincides with the rise of a neo-Viking movement that is taking the world by storm. While rape and pillaging may have not returned into favour, the brutish behaviour of Danes abroad seems to be very much back in style. The Vikings have indeed returned! Late last year, an intoxicated Viking landed in legal trouble for groping a waitress at a Dubai beach club. In February, a horde of 5,000 plus Viking youths descended on Prague, laying waste to their hotel rooms, vexing local authorities with booze-fuelled rampaging that even saw some turn on each other in a pair of stabbings. A month later, young brazen Viking women bared their breasts on a Brazilian beach, stunning the locals. The Danes were unaware that topless sunbathing was not permitted in Brazil, despite the popular images of scantilyclad women on the Copacabana beach that leave little to the imagination. And just last month, another group of drunken Vikings caused a stir
in China when they forced a bus driver to pull over at the side of a busy highway in Shanghai so they could relieve themselves of the copious amounts of ale they had consumed. Odin would be proud. The events would have been worthy of some Viking chronicle (not that Vikings could read) documenting the adventures and exploits enjoyed by the fierce warrior people in the year 1013. Surely not 2013, right? There seem to be more and more stories of young Danes behaving poorly abroad, disrespecting local customs and laws, and generally sullying Denmark’s long-enjoyed reputation as a peace-loving, law-abiding torchbearer of tolerance. But then again, why would Danish youths show anything but contempt for their hosts on their travels, when their supposed leaders and role models display similar traits of mono-cultural buffoonery? Dansk Folkeparti (DF) MP Maria Krarup recently caused a minor crisis between Denmark and New Zealand when she insulted the traditional Maori
powhiri ceremony that welcomed her and the Danish Defence Committee on a recent voyage to the island. Aside from looking down at the “weird rituals” and “uncivilised” welcome, which most foreign envoys would consider an honour to experience, Krarup found it displeasing that she had to rub noses with her Kiwi counterparts instead of shaking hands in greeting. Needlessly, the Kiwis were none too impressed. I find it particularly worrisome that a Danish emissary can be so ignorant when the traditional greeting of the Inuits in Greenland is also the rubbing of noses – an action called kunik. With such a disrespectful, xenophobic mentality, Krarup shouldn’t be going to New Zealand, or anywhere else for that matter, in any official capacity. In fact, judging by a recent statement from DF spokesperson Jens Henrik Thulesen Dahl, perhaps it would be best for all involved if DF stays safely inside Denmark’s borders. In a Politiken newspaper article from last week, Dahl argued that “one
shouldn’t be allowed to establish an English-language education designed to get a bunch of Romanians up here so they can claim SU [and have] their education paid for only to return home. Therefore we need to see if there is even a need for English-language educations.” With Denmark trying to shake its reputation as a country that caters poorly to its foreign residents, while desperately needing to attract highly-skilled international workers, the narrow-minded, nonsensical ramblings from DF is the last thing the nation needs. And what’s with always picking on Romanians? Every time DF criticises policy involving foreigners, they have a Romanian scapegoat at the ready. The only thing missing is the inclusion of Goebbels-like propaganda images. And really, Krarup, what is more uncivilised: a country welcoming foreigners with a traditional dance displaying the proud heritage of its indigenous people or a bunch of Vikings whipping their boobs out while pissing and stabbing each other in the street? Christ, even the Romanians are shocked.
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