Jacob Christensen

Imagine the Swedish football league without a team from Gothenburg, the Spanish league without a team from Barcelona or the Italian league without a team form Milan. You’d miss something, wouldn’t you?

One of the strange aspects of the Danish league has been that the teams from the major cities outside of Copenhagen have had a really hard time etstablishing themselves during the last 20 years. AaB from Ålborg is the only team which has made something approaching a stable performance, while OB (Odense) and AGF (Århus) generally have been non-distinct.

AGF was relegated to the …eh… something-something League (the second flight) last year following a string of mediocre performances but to the united joy of players, management, supporters and local politicians finally managed to fend off competition from Fredericia and will join Lyngby (which filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and was relegated all the way down to the amateur league) in the Superleague next season.

My “home team” AB has struggled but managed to stay in the 1st Division.

Roadworks, originally uploaded by jacobchristensen.

And while we’re at it: Here’s a massive roadwork not too far from my mother’s house in Gladsaxe.

Motorring 3 around Copenhagen – originally built between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s – is being expanded from two to three lanes in each direction.

Besides the public sector quality reform (and of cause the fall-out from the split of the Social Liberal Party), the dismal state of the Danish transport infrastructure has been the main point of interest in the media lately.

The big white elephant towering over all other issues has been the planned Fehmarn Belt-connection which would link Seeland and Northern Germany and give Swedish and Norwegian exporters better communications to the German market. One obvious problem with this project has been that while the German government has paid lip-service to the project, it has always backed out at the last minute when the Danes believed that a final deal was about the be made. To make a long story short: If the Fehmarn-link is to be built, the Danes will have to pay for the party.

Another big problem has been what to do with the Copenhagen-Ringsted railway which is seriously short of capacity. Plans to build a new, fast connection over Køge have been put forward but have up until now been blocked by a sundry coalition of NIMBY local politicians (and the Social Liberal Party).

In the meantime, the railway system is literally falling apart and the regional and inter-regional road traffic is increasing so that motorways and bridges built in the 1970s and 1980s are beginning to feel the strain.

According to Danish TV2, the Liberal Party will announce a very ambitious plan for upgrading the road and rail infrastructure including both new connections and expansion of existing.

The comprehensive initiative is interesting but will surely also be controversial, as the Transport portfolio is taken by the Conservative Party, and the plan as presented by TV2 does not come with economic calculations.

After a long and complicated series of negotiations, the Danish government today entered an agreement with representatives of local and regional authorities and the trade unions representing public sector employees about a long list of measures to secure and develop the quality of public services in Denmark and to make local and regional authorities attractive workplaces.

Worth noting is section 36 which includes the introduction of an academically and practically based MPA programme. I’m not quite sure what relationship this programme will have to existing MPA programmes such as that offered by Handelshøjskolen in Copenhagen.

Another point worth mentioning is that while LO (representing blue collar-workers) and AC (representing academic staff) signed the agreement, FTF (representing “ordinary” white collar-workers, nurses, police officers etc) had left the negotiations and were not explicitly part of the deal.

Full text of the agreement (in Danish) is here.

This post grew out of a discussion with Flemming Juul Christiansen about the possibility of Niels Helveg Petersen (father) handing over the role as foreign policy spokesman to Morten Helveg Petersen (son) as part of the leadership change in the Social Liberal Party. Morten is the third generation of the Helveg dynasty- but wait: There is more… fathers, sons, daughters, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, husbands-and-wives, ex-husbands-and-wives, distant relatives. You want’em – the Danes got’em. Here goes:

• The Aukens – Svend, Margrethe, (Gunvor), Ida / SD, SF
• The Baunsgaards – Hilmar, Bernhard / RV
• The Christensens – J.C, Marie (Knud Kristensen should be a distant relative) / V
• The Christmas-Møllers – John, Pia / KF
• The Dohrmanns – Helge, Jørn / FrP, DF
• The Dybkjær-Nyrups – Lone, Poul / RV, SD
• The Dyremoses – Henning, Charlotte / KF
• The Estrups – J.B.S, Jørgen, Elisabeth Arnold / H, RV (Technically, this should probably be the Scavenius-Estrups and include Jakob, Erik, O.C. and Harald – 1920 saw no less than three Scaveniuses as foreign ministers of Denmark!)
• The Hartlings – M.P, Poul /V
• The Helvegs – Kresten, Lily, Niels, Kirsten Lee, Morten / RV
• The Hækkerups – Lars Andersen H., Hans K, Hans (2.), Per, Grethe, Eva Smith, Hans (3.), Klaus, Lise, Ole, Karen, Nick / SD (The most numerous political dynasty in Denmark even if they are not the Kennedys)
• The Høgsbro-Appel-Dahlerup-Gahrtons – Sofus, Svend, Elin, Erik, Ulla, Drude, Per + Johannes Fog-Petersen / V, RV, DF, JL, (mp) (More than 100 years and two countries!)
• The Jakobsens – Erhard, Mimi / CD, SD
• The Kofoeds – Niels Anker, Thor Gunnar / V
• The Kramer Mikkelsens – Jens, Lars / SD
• The Larsen-Jensens – Winnie, Claus /SD
• The Lykketoft-Hildens – Mogens, Jytte / SD
• The Madsen-Mygdals – N.P, Thomas / RV, V
• The Møllers – Axel, Poul, Lis, Per Stig, Lene Bro /KF, SD
• The Nødgårds – Poul, Karin / DF
• The Samuelsens – Ole, Anders, Mette Bock / RV, NA
• The Skaarups – Birthe, Peter / DF
• The Søvndahl-Frahms – Villy, Pernille / SF (I’ve always found it slightly amusing that Pernille Frahm happens to share her family name with a rather famous German politician)
• The Thorning-Schmidt-Kinnocks – Neil, Helle / Labour, SD (Former British party leader is father-in-law to Danish)
• The Tørnæses – Laurids, Ulla / V
• The Weisses – Ove, Birte, Lars / SD
• The Winthers – Else W. (Andersen), Anne Mette W. (Christiansen) / V

• HanWorks Research: Eric Schmidt with iPhone (Photos)

  Eric Schmidt showed off his iPhone when he spoke to the World Economic Forum at the Google Campus yesterday.

  (tags: apple google gadgets iphone)

• VK: Ett år i Umeå

  I dag skriver jag en krönika i tidningen med tankar efter att ha bott ett år i Umeå och lite grand med anledning av Fokus ranking av vilka kommuner i Sverige som det är bäst att bo i:

  (tags: sweden journalism umeå)

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  (tags: usa housing policy economics)

• Dyrare utlandsresa i kronfallets spår

  Kronan har försvagats påtagligt sedan början av maj, till nackdel för svenskar som vill semestra utomlands

  (tags: sweden economics currency europe)

• NAR and Housing Forecasts

  (tags: usa housing economics)

• Presentation Zen: When there is no quite, there can be no loud

  When there is no quiet, there can be no loud. And where there is no nothing, there can be no something. In what ways, then, can we apply the spirit of “dynamic range” to all aspects of our live presentations?

  (tags: teaching technology presentation web2.0)

• FAZ.NET – „Sächsischer Sumpf“: Gekränkte Eitelkeiten und Existenzängste

  Es ist zu berichten von einer Melange aus ernsthaftem Bemühen, gekränkter Eitelkeit, Misstrauen, Erfolgsdruck, Existenzangst – aber auch aus Übertreibungen.

  (tags: germany politics saxony corruption crime)

• Fruits and Votes: The US: Now a two-party system for the first time ever?

  …the question for the US party system would be whether greater consistency and distinctiveness of party positions–and discipline in legislative voting–will increase demands for new parties.

  (tags: usa politics politicalscience parties academic)