Morning Briefing – Tuesday, October 22

The Copenhagen Post’s daily round-up of the front pages and other major Danish news stories

Oct 22, 2013

Bike injuries vastly underreported
The number of people injured in bicycle accidents may be as much as 10 times higher than the official figure. Some 3,600 people are reported as getting hurt in a bicycle accident each year, but that figure only includes incidents in which the police were involved. Reports by Odense Universitetshospital and Vejdirektoratet, the state organisation responsible for the nation’s roads, conclude that the number is vastly below the actual amount. A proposal to shift responsibility for recording bicycle injuries to hospitals would cost upwards of 20 million kroner annually, but has been greeted warmly but health authorities, cycle advocacy groups and the police. Studies show that as much as 80 percent of the population cycles on a regular basis. – Jyllands-Posten

Development minister aware of climate organisation’s questionable spending
After dogging Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the opposition leader, for two weeks, the problems at GGGI, a climate organisation, now appear to be implicating members of the government. Christian Friis Bach, the development minister, is coming under increasing pressure to explain why he did not inform parliament about fiscal irregularities at the South Korea-based organisation. Bach said that, in hindsight, he should have spoken up after being informed of a South Korean report detailing the organisation’s excessive spending, but said that since it did not meet the definition of corruption, he had not been obliged to do so. Other members of parliament said the questionable spending, which included paying for employees’ housing and mis-use of the organisation’s vehicles, did amount to corruption. GGGI received at total of 60 million kroner in Danish foreign aid in 2011 and 2012. – Berlingske

“Immoral” offshore accounts
Hiding money abroad in tax havens amounts to “theft” of money from society, according to the tax minister, Holger Nielsen. Danes have as much as 150 million kroner hidden away in tax havens abroad and a DR documentary found that there was no shortage of tax advisors openly willing to help people squirrel their money away. Nielsen called hiding money offshore, as well as helping people to do so, “immoral”. The government, according to Nielsen, was stepping up efforts to find and tax money stored in tax havens. – DR Nyheder

Teacher training more important than experience, study shows
Young teachers are better than their more experienced colleagues at getting students to improve their reading scores, according to a study due to be released today. Students taught by teachers with between two and five years of experience showed better results than students taught by teachers who had between five and 30 years in the classroom. Measured in terms of reading progress, students of younger teachers were a month ahead of those taught by more experienced teachers. Compared with students taught by teachers with over 30 years of experience the gap was twice as great. Katja Munch Thorsen, the head of EVA, an educational assessment group, said the results showed that teacher training played more of a role than experience when it came to teacher performance. – Politiken

Editorial Excerpt | Stop the political games
It’s unfortunate that a caste of young people who have studied (or in some cases still are studying) political science are occupying an increasing number of seats in parliament. There they and the government’s equally youthful spin doctors spend their time manipulating each other. How liberating it would be if these political games could be stopped by influential MPs with experience from outside of politics. – Information

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