Made in Denmark

Doing deals

DENMARK is the best place to conduct business over the next five years, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's six-monthly business-environment index. Out of 82 countries Denmark scores highest in most of the ten measures used, such as macroeconomic stability, infrastructure and policy towards private enterprise. Its flexible labour market and highly educated workforce are particularly attractive to businesses. America slips four places to its lowest position since the index began in 1997 as economic and financial conditions look set to deteriorate and trade protectionism to increase. Venezuela tumbles 12 places to languish just below another socialist bastion, Cuba. Only Angola is a worse place to do business.

Source: The Economist

Free speech

Country of smiles and peace

Rainbow

Strange Danish Laws

During the history, Denmark had some very strange laws:

• Restaurants may not charge for water unless it is accompanied by another item such as ice or a lemon slice.
• Before starting your car you are required to check lights, brakes, steering and honk your horn.
• If a horse drawn carriage is trying to pass a car and the horse becomes uneasy, the owner of the car is required to pull over and if necessary, cover the car.
• No one may start a car while someone is underneath the vehicle.
• Attempt to escape from prison is not illegal, however, if one he is caught he is required to serve out the remainder of his term.
• When driving, you must have someone in front of your car with a flag to warn horse drawn carriages that a motorcar is coming.
• Any carport added to a building increases the value of the building by 15.

Public Acceptance of Evolution

Denmark is the second highest, after Iceland.

Bottle Refunds for Charity

In Denmark, as in many other countries, consumers get a refundable deposit on bottles when they return them through a retailer’s collection machine. The machine prints out a slip of paper that states how much they’ll receive at the cash register.

One of Denmark ‘s largest consumer goods retailers, Coop Denmark, has added a charitable twist to the process of redeeming your refund on bottles. They have added a button that lets customers instantly donate their bottle money to charity instead of collecting it for themselves. This partnership between Coop Denmark, UNICEF Denmark and DanChurchAid, has collected over DKK 120,000 (USD 25,750) during the first 3 months of introducing it, proving that tiny donations add up to significant amounts.

Call Girls at Nursing Home in Denmark

When a male resident at Kildegaarden nursing home in Denmark made an indecent sexual proposal to a member of the staff, the home's director, Inger Marie Kristensen, told a nurse to telephone for a prostitute.
"There was a considerable change in his demeanor after the escort girl had paid him a visit," Kristensen said in an interview. "We do this for our clients just as we offer them other services that they need as human beings."
Kildegaarden, located 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Copenhagen in Skanderborg, has about 100 residents, including victims of Alzheimer's disease and strokes. Nurses arranged visits by call girls three times in the past three years.
While Welfare Minister Karen Jespersen says Denmark's 98 municipalities are free to let nurses call prostitutes, some lawmakers are stepping up efforts to pull women out of the profession, which has been legal in the country since 1999.
"I don't want to contribute to keeping this industry in business," said Mie Bergmann, an elected official with the Social-Liberal Party in Skanderborg, who led a failed vote to end prostitution at Kildegaarden.
Denmark is doubling spending to 80 million kroner ($17 million) over the next three years to get women out of the sex trade. The government estimates that 6,000 women work in the profession in the Scandinavian country of 5.5 million.

`Discriminating'
Copenhagen forbids contact with call girls in nursing homes. Other towns don't publicize their policies.
In a poll posted last week on the Web site of national broadcaster DR, 46 percent of 1,982 readers said nursing home staff should be able to organize visits by prostitutes, 45 percent were against the practice and 8 percent were undecided. A margin of error wasn't given.
Denmark's Society for Women started a campaign in March called "Take a Position, Man" urging men to sign up at a Web site to protest against prostitution. So far, 1,887 women and men, including the editor-in-chief of newspaper Politiken Thoeger Seidenfaden, have signed.
The Copenhagen-based Danish Sex-worker Association was established last month in a bid to protect the industry. The leader, who gives her name only as Susanne on the association's Web site, said prostitutes "often" visit Danish elderly homes.
"To forbid vulnerable customers from obtaining the services of a legal business is discriminating, both against the sex workers and the people who need help to get the services," Susanne said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Ban Proposal
An increasing number of Danes oppose prostitution, a December 2006 opinion poll by newspaper Politiken showed. Forty- two percent of 1,180 said prostitution was unacceptable compared with 25 percent four years earlier. A majority of 54 percent approved of prostitution, compared with 66 percent in 2002.
"I don't want a society where some people are used as a vehicle for others to live out their desires,'' Ozlem Sara Cekic, a Danish Turkish member of parliament for the Socialist People's Party, said in comments posted on her Web site.
The Danish People's Party, which backs the minority Liberal- Conservative government in parliament, said earlier this year it may join opposition lawmakers to form a majority in favor of a ban on the sex trade.
The parliamentary committee for social affairs announced this year that it's planning a trip to neighboring Sweden to investigate how that country has handled legislation it passed in 1999 that criminalized paying for sex.
For Kristensen, residents at the Kildegaarden home have rights under the current laws, no matter how old they are. And Danes are getting older. According to the Danish government Web site, on Jan. 1, 2007, 715 people were 100 years of age or more.
"Basically this is a matter of respecting the elderly and their needs,'' she said.

Source: Bloomberg.com

South Park ironize Denmark

Human Tetris (Hul i hovedet)

The Tollund Man

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out there in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

by Seamus Heaney

FLOWmarket

FLOWmarket is a design lab that explores what will be the short commodities of the future. Among the goods on the shelves of ‘FLOWmarket’ are inner calmness, pauses, stress killers, clean air, choice takers. The goal is a holistic view of growth, embracing economics and technology as well as social and spiritual aspects.
FLOWmarket is a shop designed to inspire consumers to think, live and consume more holistic. Initiated by the danish designer Mads Hagstroem, the center is based in Danemark. New design conception for a new life conception.