Kitty's Corner

A tiff between neighbours has turned into what sounds like a horror movie for 23 families who face being moved out of an apartment building due to the aggressive behaviour of one other family.

Life has reportedly been hell for the 23 families since last October where the family in question moved in. The residents have allegedly faced harassment, violence and threats from the family on a daily basis.

The conflict peaked on Monday while the family accused of the rotten behaviour was entertaining relatives. Their children reportedly began throwing rocks and spitting at other families in the building’s playground area. When they were told to stop, their parents came down to the playground armed with knives and clubs. Two residents were injured and taken to hospital, while one man was arrested.

Threats have since followed the incident, including the Lebanese family spray painting, "We've killed a man. Watch your step. Ha ha!" on the sidewalk outside the building. But instead of the aggressive family being forced to move out, the housing association has instead volunteered to relocate the other families at no charge. The reason is that the one family cannot be evicted until the matter is settled through a court order.

The head of the social services department, said the city did not have the power to negotiate solutions in household or neighbour disputes. But the city would step in and evict the family as soon as it had the legal means to do so.

The 23 families previously filed their case with the Tenant Complaints Board and the family was "evicted" by the board – a decision that must be upheld in the court before it can be actualised.

In the meantime, many of the building’s residents were reportedly living in fear, especially those who testifying in the eviction case.

When talking about cars in my country, it's not just the purchase price that makes buyers cringe.
Denmark also has the highest vehicle licence plate registration fees in all of Europe at 1,180 kroner (158 EUR). That’s 1,000 kroner (134 EUR) more than it should be, according to consumer groups.

Both the Association of Danish Car Owners (FDM) and the Danish Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises are criticising the fee as a not-so-honest way for the state to make vast sums of money off the nation's car owners.

According to the government's budget for 2009, fees associated with licence plates, vehicle registration and change of ownership are expected to bring in 780 million kroner (104 million EUR) to the state's pockets. In all, consumers will pay around 29 billion kroner to the state this year for the luxury of owning a vehicle.

The Tax Department itself indicates that service costs pertaining to plate registration amount to 160 kroner (21.5 EUR), with the plates themselves costing 22 kroner (3 EUR) each.

Overall car owner fees have dropped in the past two years, according to Tax Ministry figures, which show state incomes of around 36 billion kroner (4.8 billion EUR) in 2007 compared to the current 29 billion kroner (3.9 billion EUR) this year. But while licence plate fees are expected to drop next year, overall costs for vehicle owners are expected to rise again to give the state around 33 billion kroner (4.4 billion EUR).

I've always thought that the idea of licence plates with your own text on it was kind of stupid. I mean - it's only for show off, or...? But - if you had a car or another vehicle with a plate on it - and you didn't have to pay for getting your own text on it - What would your text be?

Following a meeting with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London earlier this week, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he would push for a referendum on the Euro currency to be held during the current election period - just as his predecessor, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, promised early this year.

But he added that he would initially like to see Ireland ratify the new EU constitution, after the nation rejected the previous draft last year. He said he also wants to secure a solid majority in parliament prior to holding the proposed referendum.

Recent polls have shown a majority of the public to be against adopting the Euro, continuing the trend from the last referendum in 2000, when the public voted to keep the krone by a 53 to 47 percent margin.

The PM has called Denmark's EU-supporting parties to a meeting to discuss the issue today.


They can discuss all they want. I'll vote no to it. Again - and again - and again - and I hope they give up eventually!

Danish is one of the world’s strongest languages. Danish is one of the world’s most described languages in grammar books, dictionaries and the like. And Danish is certified by treaty as an official EU language and thus has international status. Not bad for a small language, eh?

Danish is far from being in danger. Far more languages will disappear before Danish disappears. Nevertheless, the state of the Danish language is a perennial topic of political discussions. English is typically named as the biggest threat. Sometimes young people’s language use is the target of criticism.

In the 1700s only Copenhagen Danish has carried prestige with it. Someone who lived around the year 1900, if transported to the world of today, would ask why all Danes speak Copenhagen Danish. The only remaining difference between Jutland Danish and Zealand Danish now is in intonation. In 1900, there were wide differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.


Another interesting this is that young Danes understand Norwegian less well than young Norwegians understand Danish. The opposite should be true, because the difference between written and spoken Norwegian is much less than in Danish. But Danes can’t understand Norwegian because it is slightly different from Danish. Norwegians, on the other hand, are systematically taught to understand different forms of spoken Norwegian – they learn that things can be done differently. For that reason, Danish isn’t so foreign for them. And for that reason, Danish is on its way out of the Scandinavian linguistic community.

A further detail about Norwegian can be added: Norwegian words can be spelt in a variety of different ways. Danish decision makers’ argument in favour of standardised spelling is that it is more difficult to learn to read if words can be spelt in more than one way. That’s not true. Norwegian children read just as well as Danish children.

The Danish Free Press Society will soon be selling signed reprints of the infamous Mohammed cartoons to raise money for its daughter organisation, the International Free Press Society.

The controversial cartoon originally appeared in JyllandsPosten newspaper on 30th September 2005 causing a national and international debate on the freedom of speech and the press. I've blogged about this several times.

The 1000 reprints, signed by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, are of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. They will be available for sale on the society’s website at 185 Eur.

However, the project to promote the freedom of speech and the press faced an unexpected hurdle when the society was unable to find a Danish printing company willing to reprint the drawings for them: The society contacted six different printers, all of whom turned the job down. In the end, a foreign printer was contracted to print the 1000 signed samples.

The president of the Free Press Society said that one of the printers told them that they would not be successful finding a Danish printer, because rumours of the controversial printing order had spread.

He told Jyllands-Posten newspaper that, despite the freedom of speech being protected in the constitution, he feared that one day printers would avoid printing certain books out of fear of reprisals.

The Danish Free Press Society was founded in 2005 as a private organisation with no state funding, which champions the cause of freedom of speech in society.

In conjunction with its coverage of the society’s latest news, Jyllands-Posten newspaper chose to print the Mohammed cartoon in question. The editor said the decision was "purely journalistic" and was not intended as a sign of support or otherwise.

"It is nothing special. We shouldn’t be afraid of showing a cartoon," he says. "In the same way as when our front page story about President Obama required having a photo of him, if we talk about a cartoon in a story, then we should show it."

And I agree. I do believe in freedom of speech.