Archive for June 14th, 2008
One More Note on Ireland
This time a post by Kevin O’Rouke on voxEU:
A glance at the electoral map suffices to confirm what earlier opinion polls had indicated: the Irish vote divided along class lines in a stark and disturbing fashion. In the most affluent constituencies of Dublin, such as Dun Laoghaire, where even a modest home can cost upwards of €1 million (although that is changing), 60% or more voted for the treaty. In working class areas of the city, it was the no vote which scored in excess of 60%. Brouard and Tiberj (2006) show that precisely the same division between rich and poor, or the skilled and unskilled, can be discerned in the French 2005 vote.
There are at least two ways of interpreting such [voting] patterns. The first would hold that well educated voters are more politically sophisticated and better able to understand the issues involved in a complex amendment to the institutional underpinnings of the European Union. The second interpretation is that, on the contrary, both rich and poor are capable of correctly discerning where their economic interests lie, and vote accordingly. The argument would be that globalisation generally, and European integration more narrowly, has overwhelmingly favoured skilled workers, at least in affluent countries such as France, Ireland and the Netherlands. Unskilled workers, by contrast, feel under threat from Romanian (or Asian) competition, or immigration from Eastern Europe and further afield. And while those of us who are more fortunate might regret it, it is hardly surprising that — in accordance with Heckscher-Ohlin logic — they vote accordingly.
As they say: Read the whole thing.
A House for Mr. Christensen
Please allow me to deviate from the political comment and other kinds of irreverent observations and give you a minor insight in what is really troubling me right now. The thing is – I have a new job, and that’s good. But I have to move, and that is, if not bad, then a pain in a certain part of my anatomy, especially as the move is from Västerbotten to Funen. Not that there is anything wrong with Funen, but we are talking about a distance of something like 1500 km.s: You don’t just make a call at a landlord or an estate agent.
The next problem is that the Danish housing market has gone completely bonkers during the time I’ve lived in Sweden. Just to give you an impression: Back in 1990, I bought a small apartment in Copenhagen NV for 250.000 DKK with a down payment of 25.000 DKK. No big deal. In early 1999 I sold it for 350.000 DKK. Nice – but two years ago I saw an advert for the apartment below mine – the asking price was … wait for it … 750.000 DKK. During my time in Sweden I’ve had rented apartments and put my savings in stocks and bonds and there was no way the stock market would follow the rise and rise of house prices. Still, I could set a reasonable target for ca. 1.000.000 DKK with a down payment of 100.000 DKK and that would buy me a reasonable 2-room apartment in Odense, provided a mortgage institute would lend me the rest of the money.
So, what are the pros and cons of buying and renting?
The big pro of buying is that you (I) are (am) your (my) own landlord, and after all you (I) know what kind of monkey you (I) are (am). Prospective sellers and mortgage financiers may also like to know that there is virtually no risk of me being unemployed for the coming 2,5 years. (The only real risk would come in the form of long-term sickness). Important knowledge in the present situation!
The cons are that a) I have no idea if I will be staying in Odense after the 2,5 years (probably not), b) selling a house or an apartment costs lots of money and c) after ten years of an uninterrupted boom, signs are that the Danish housing market is entering a more uncertain phase. Finally, as I’ve been out of the country for almost ten years, I am an unknown entity to financial institutions. (You may like to know that I have no debts … whatsoever!)
The big pro of renting is flexibility: In the worst of cases, you are only stuck with an apartment for three months. Generally there is also less uncertainty financially in renting than in buying – the risk of making a loss is much smaller.
The cons are that a) the market is rather opaque and b) you don’t know the landlords. For better or worse, the estate agent market in Denmark is dominated by a handful of firms which means that you only have to check three or four homepages to get an impression of the lay of the land. If you need an apartment at short notice public housing companies are out of the question and you really lack credible lists of potential landlords.
Let me just note that one of the advantages of having the local council as your landlord of last resort (which I’ve had since 1999) is that there are limits to the degree of monkey business you can be exposed to as a tenant. One problem with the Danish portals for rented apartments is that they don’t show any information about who the potential landlord is – you have to check the phone number on Eniro – and then, in the absence of knowing a lot of people in Odense, do a googling to see if there are stories about the person or firm in question. (Fortunately, a fellow blogger gave me a lead which I will be following)
Oh, well. I hope to have the thing settled before the end of June. I’m generally a slow starter and a ferocious finisher.
Names
Ask a Dane, and you will find out that we still expect Germans to be called names like Helmut or Horst if they are men or Waltraut or Irmgard if they are women. As it is, Leon and Marie were the most popular given names to Germans born in 2007.
On the other hand, Müller, Schmidt and Schneider are the three most common family names in Germany – Schröder by the way is a regional variation of Schneider.
For many reasons, Denmark has had its share of people with German-sounding names – how about a Prime Minister Schlüter or Buhl1 – while English names have been rare.
Names can have social and political overtones – in the recent state election in Hesse, the CDU under the very German Roland Koch campaigned against “(Social Democrat Andrea) Ypsilanti and (Green Tarek) al-Wazir and the Communists” and you would be a fool not to see the xenophobic notes being played here. Frau Ypsilanti was born Dill (and actually shares her family name with a well-known Dutch soccer player) but kept the name after divorcing her Greek husband. As it turns out, the name Ypsilanti has a certain fame in Greek political history.
But I’m digressing. The real point of this post is that while running through my Google Reader I noted that CDU in Niedersachsen has a new chairman as Christian Wulff decided to concentrate on his work as state premier – and perhaps also a future in Berlin.
The name of the new CDU chairman in Niedersachsen?
David McAllister!
- I would expect that this is a Germanisation of Boel, though [↩]
links for 2008-06-14
Ireland and the EU
I decided to take a look at the latest Eurobarometer (autumn 2007) to see how the Irish place themselves with regard to the EU and European institutions. To make a very long story short, the Irish do not appear to be particularly Euro-skeptic, at least not in the British meaning of the term. See for instance this map:
Note the difference between Ireland and the UK!
The Irish also have higher trust for the EU than national political institutions:
However, when asked about political efficacy, the Irish tend to think that their voice is not heard in the EU:
Going Dutch
Well, what else can you do after watching the Dutch making first Italy and the France look like extras on the field.
Truly awesome.