Jacob Christensen

Just to finish off the weekend’s party conferences: The Conservatives are as unhappy as the Social Liberals and if we look at the development in electoral support since 1973 (it is always a question when you should start such series, cf. the one for the Social Liberals which I decided to start at their historical low point in 1977), it is obvious that the party is stuck in 1970s territory:

The real fun begins when we consider the combined strength of the Liberals (V) and the Conservatives (KF). For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, the two parties managed to form the nucleus of centre-right governments with only 30 to 35 per cent of the vote combined. In the 2000s, they have been hovering between 35 and 40 per cent. And maybe the Conservatives can take some comfort from looking at the Liberal performance during the 1980s. At their best, the Liberals made 12,5 per cent, at their lowest 10,5. It took some time before Uffe Ellemann-Jensen started selling tickets to the Liberal show.

As already said: I’m a sucker for these things. This is the Norwegian me:

Leave aside that all attention this weekend has been focused on KarenDK26 and Caroline Wozniacki, then two troubled parties held their annual conferences. For both the problem is that the parties seem stubbornly stuck both in terms of electoral appeal and parliamentary opportunities. The Conservatives are stuck with some 10 per cent of the vote and while they may be in office, there is a sneaking feeling that the Danish People’s Party is in power.

How about the Social Liberals, then? Well, they too are stuck albeit on a lower level: The party only attracts some 4-5 per cent of the vote in opinion polls and seriously lack the defection alternative in relation to the Social Democrats and the Socialists.

But how much in the electoral doldrums are the Social Liberals? Take a look at this:

As it is, hovering around the 5 per cent mark has been the fate of the Social Liberals for most of the past thirty years, and the 1990s were a particularly barren decade in terms of electoral support: It took a Social Democratic collapse to return the Social Liberals to their 1980s strength. On the other hand, RV spent the years from 1993-2001 in government.

Roger Ebert after watching Jason Reitman’s latest film:

It’s too bad the term “adult movies” means “X-rated films.” It should mean “movies for the mature.”

I’ve heard “Juno” mentioned very favourably – perhaps it is time to get hold of the DVD?

Update: Juno duly ordered along with Thank You for Smoking.

Roger Ebert reviews the Baader-Meinhof Complex film and rates it 2,5 out of 4. I watched it on DVD a couple of months ago and my immediate impression was that I would have been completely lost if I hadn’t been able to check the German Wikipedia’s timeline. I doubt if confusion was a planned part of the storyline.

Or in other words: I pretty much agree with Ebert here. The film is technically impressive and Johanna Wokalek was a very scary Gudrun Ensslin (I think Ebert could have mentioned her a bit more but Martina Gedeck is probably better known to an American arthouse audience). The Meinhof-Ensslin interplay is intriguing and should have been developed. Meinhof and Ensslin were perverted heroes (“hero” is the wrong word as I have absolutely no sympathy for their actions, but I hope you get the point) and both could easily have been the subject of a major fiction or documentary film.

And as recent news show, the actions of the RAF still leaves open wounds in German society.

German Wikipedia page about the movie.

Update: Mainhof corrected to Meinhof, except in the permalink.

The Swedes have Ibrahimovic, we have Rommedahl. What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, Dennis Rommedahl has been the subject on a blog much worthier than mine.

I’m not sure if these decisions are announced by way of an envelope, but I will just note that all of Europe stopped for a minute when it was revealed that UmeÃ¥ will be the European Capital of Culture in 2014. Well, one of the European Capitals of Culture.

DN and SvD also covers the event while Sydsvenskan’s server seems to have been hit by a severe depression and refuses to show me the linked article. (Lund was the other contender for the Swedish title)

Offical Umeå 2014 site.

(The photo was taken on 29 August 2008 and it was the last but three that I took in Umeå)

Right. Bleg #1 didn’t solve the problem, but it gets worse. As the slug says: I’m also trying to figure out just how many morning papers I need. Or want.

Perhaps we should start with the easy bit: I subscribe to Weekendavisen and Die Zeit which arrive each Friday. In case you wonder, the German Wochenzeitung doesn’t mean that the paper is published every week. It means that it takes a week to read the paper. (The same applies to Tageszeitung, at least when we are talking about Süddeutsche Zeitung or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Back in the 1990s – before I moved to Sweden – I subscribed to Politiken and Berlingske Tidende and, let’s face it, reading two different papers was and can still be interesting. Unfortunately, I cleaned my archive when I moved from UmeÃ¥, but as far as I remember a 12-month subscription to any of those papers was around 2500 to 3000 DKK. So subscribing to two papers would set me back 5000-6000 DKKK. These days, a 12-month subscription is 4000+, so two papers would set me back some 9000 DKK now. And back in the 1990s, the internet was something you had access to at work.

Enter my Old Mother who threw a gift subscription to Politiken after me when I moved back to Denmark. That one is up for renewal in mid-October, but just to add to my misery Mother recently decided that I needed a month’s subscription to Berlingske Tidende as well. Or perhaps she was just tired of being approached harassed by Berlingske’s salesforce. So right now I’m back in the 1990s with two morning papers delivered every morning. Except, I no longer get the papers in my hall (or whatever it should be called) but in the post box at the front door to the house.

I don’t know. I think both papers are okay, but 9000 DKK really is a lot of money. A heck of a lot of money, as it is.

My department for some reason subscribes to Politiken, Jyllands-Posten, Fyens Stiftstidende and BT (!), but not Berlingske Tidende. On the other hand, I’m probably, all things considered, more of a Politiken person (you know, self-righteous public employee. The kind who would read The Guardian in the UK. Oh, dear…).

If I was an economist, everything would be easier: They just go for the cheap subscription offers and change papers like other people change clothes.

But: Should it be two or one? And in that case, which one? Decisions, decisions…

PS: When I lived in Sweden things were a bit easier for another reason. DN was the only national newspaper that was distributed every day in the week in Umeå and my workplace subscribed to both local newspapers. That said, reading DN was often a strange experience.

I wonder what that slug will do to my search results – “How to marry a German” is a perennial favourite. But seriously, which is the scarier perspective here: My result or the general result? I hope that the n was pretty small.

Die Zeit on die Alpha-Mädchen.

This would not – and I emphatically repeat: not – have happened in Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s days.

University studies seem to be the cause of every ill from chlamydia over alcoholism to depression.