Rubbish is piling up in the streets

Used pizza boxes, hot dog wrappers, empty cigarette packs and other bits of rubbish are piling up on the country’s streets and sidewalks. According to a Politiken Research survey of the nation’s 98 councils, only two of the 44 that answered said that the amount of garbage on the streets was lower than five years ago. The survey also showed that the 44 councils were not spending more money on cleaning up – about 350 million kroner a year – than they were two years ago. – Politiken

Is Denmark getting ugly?

Lars Juel Thiis, the head of the state's art fund, Statens Kunstfond, has argued that the architectonic landscape in Denmark is on the demise, Jyllands-Posten newspaper wrote. Thiis criticised various councils for lacking an architectural policy and for allowing cheap and ugly buildings to be constructed, particularly next to motorways. Thiis pointed to several examples along the E45 motorway, a row of cheap concrete buildings in Hedensted and a Boeing 727 airplane placed near the highway in Skanderborg. – Jyllands-Posten

Rejsekort cost in the billions now

The travel card, Rejsekort, which was supposed to revolutionise public transport but instead turned into a long-delayed project that has left commuters unsatisfied, has now cost national rail operators DSB over a billion kroner, according to their annual report from 2012. But the true cost of the beleaguered Rejsekort, which was delayed for years with problems the Transport Ministry attempted to cover up, is unclear because DSB only own 50.5 percent of the Rejsekort A/S stocks. Experts speculate that the overall cost of the Rejsekort is well over two billion kroner. – Ingeniøren

Danes big fans of authority

The demand for people to respect societal authorities in Denmark has been on a sharp rise over the past ten years, according to the European Values Study. The study, which compared data from all over Europe from 1981 to today, showed that Danish citizens, more than most in Europe, yearn for a higher level of respect for the nation’s authorities, rising from 38 percent in 1999 to 63 percent in 2008. The demand for authority is still higher in countries such as Great Britain, France and the Netherlands, but the percentage has always been high in those countries when compared to Denmark. – Kristeligt-Dagblad