2024-08-31 08:57:06
Does the royal family have a trust issue on the gift list?
When the royal family released the list of gifts it had received throughout this year, the response was one of admiration for the effort of transparency – but skepticism because many important features may have been left out.
The list, released on Thursday, is the first of its kind released by the palace. He had such gifts as a sled dog whip, a silk tie, two French hats and many other apparently harmless items (the rope was presented during a visit to Greenland).
However, the president of the anti-corruption charity Transparency International, Jesper Olsen said there were several problems with the list, which covers gifts received by the royal family between February 7th and June 30th.
It does not mean full transparency because there are many conditions that apply, meaning that items can be left in the list and future dates.
Olsen emphasized the fact that tickets to events do not count as gifts.
“It is natural that the royal family attends many events for official purposes. But if they are private, there should be transparency if the tickets are a gift. Otherwise, they should pay if it is not in the list,” he told the Ritzau newswire.
“It’s really in the royal family’s interest to avoid the attention that can happen when there’s no transparency,” he said.
Personal gifts from friends and family will also not be included in the list, although the palace has not specified such.
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“It’s a gray area. Of course there should be a private space. But the palace also has the word that the royal couple is friends with a high-profile person in Denmark’s business sector,” said Olsen.
In the past, the palace accepted donations from business but has changed that practice and returned donations from companies, he told Ritzau.
But Olsen says this information is not enough.
“A gift from a company should not be given under the guise of being a private gift. I would like to see a better description of the guidelines the palace uses when it says something is official or private. That will give more confidence,” he said.
Copenhagen burns a million cigarettes to power 3,000 homes
Some 26.5 million illegally manufactured cigarettes and 18 tons of tobacco were burned at the Amager Bakke waste disposal facility in Copenhagen on Friday.
Because the company directs the output from its incinerators into the power network, the cigarettes will end up supplying power to 3,000 homes in the city, according to the director of the Amager Resourcecenter (ARC), Jacob Simonsen.
The Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen) has estimated that it lost up to 200 million krone in taxes as a result of the case. Part of that has now been recovered, on the road, as free energy: the seized tobacco products, stored in the Secret Tax Office warehouse after the case was closed, on Friday were loaded into trucks before they go to Amager and drop into the incinerator.
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Thank you for (selling) all the fish
When a reader recently pointed out that fresh fish counters, the kind you can find in Carrefour or Waitrose, are very rare in Denmark, we wondered why. After all, Denmark has a large fishing industry and the whole country is within a two-hour drive from the coast.
So why don’t supermarkets in Denmark bother with fresh fish statistics?
We asked around and found out from the Danish Chamber of Commerce that “our best bet is that the business case doesn’t work. That if the supermarkets have it on the shelves, they will not make a profit on them. “
Royal Fish, one of the leading buyers and sellers of Danish fish, puts the near non-life of fresh fish counters in supermarkets down to the Danish penny scrimping.
“The main reason is that the Danish people will not pay for fresh food,” says CEO Donald Kristensen.
“In Denmark we do not have the habit of spending a lot of money on food. If you compare to other countries in Europe, it is one of the countries where people spend the least,” he added.
It’s not because of a shortage of fish, he insists. Despite the decline of fish stocks in the waters around Denmark and the crisis in the Danish fishing industry, there is plenty to catch in Danish waters.
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“We have a lot of fish but we export it all to the rest of Europe,” he said. “We work with only fresh fish and 99 percent of it is exported to Germany, France, Spain, Italy, in fact all of Europe.”
So there you are. If you want fresh fish in Denmark, your best bet is probably to visit one of the mobile vans that sell fish from supermarket car parks on a set day each week, or a specialty market like Torvehallerne in Copenhagen.
If you fail, you may have to catch the fish yourself.
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