Archive for March 16th, 2010
Yikes! The Conservative Minister Is a … Conservative
Leave aside the Brønderslev case (executive summary: Local councils shunting problem families between them), the new immigration policy agreement (executive summary: Get out of here) and the xFactor texting scandal, and we have the story about the resumé of the new Minister for Social Affairs.
Usually with politicians and others, the problem has been that something was on the resumé which – all things considered – the person in question would have been wiser to leave out.
Two cases in point: The Swedish labour market minister Sven Otto Littorin did not know an accredited university from a non-accredited university – his MA could have been academically sound, but it could also have come from the University of Duckburg or some diploma mill. The MA was quietly dropped.
The Danish employment minister Inger Støjberg is a journalist. No problem there: “journalist” is not a protected title, but you can only get a recognised diploma from DJH, SDU or RUC. The courses Støjberg had taken was from a people’s high school. They were promptly left off.
But how about Benedikte Kiær? Well, she informs us that she worked in the kitchen at “Viften” in Tivoli and wasted five years studying chemistry before opting for political science (hmmm…. and how does this fit with the government’s line that young people should start studying immediately and not waste any time taking the wrong subjects, by the way?) but somebody googled her and discovered that she had been a member of the Centre Council of CEPOS, the very high-profile liberal-conservative think tank. (You won’t find her on the list now) That one did not make it to the resumé.
Oh dear. The Social Democrats are up in arms and so is the Danish People’s Party. I suspect that the people at CEPOS are a bit disappointed as well – after all publicity is the main raison d’être for the think tank.
In any event, if we look through the list, we will find such raving extremists as Bernt Johan Collet (former Conservative MP and defence minister), Ditlev Tamm (professor in law who also wrote a book about the history of the Conservatives between 1970 and 2000), Anne Birgitte Lundholt (former Conservative industry minister) and Grethe Rostbøll (former Conservative minister for cultural affairs). Even if none of these are prominent in today’s Conservative Party, we can still argue that there are affinities between the Conservatives and CEPOS – so the real news is that the Conservative minister is a … Conservative.
If only she had told us, things would have been so much easier.