Helle Thorning-Schmidt may have narrowly missed receiving a new ‘nose’, but her involvement in the ‘Christiania Case’ is the latest in a long line of scandals that have come to define her time in office. While the PM may have gotten off from a nose job, fellow cabinet members Annette Vilhelmsen and Martin Lidegaard did…

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I don’t want to get into the habit of recycling column ideas, but let’s face it – news, especially in Denmark, has a cyclical pattern. Two years ago, spurred on by my own letter from Udlændingestyrelsen calling on me to renew my temporary permanent residency (‘temporary permanent’ – isn’t that term wonderful?), I took measure…

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On the same day this column appeared in print format, I addressed a small group of expats at the International House as a ‘democracy role model’. My immediate thought when invited to take part was that they must have found the wrong guy, but after speaking with the organiser I realised that, through virtue of…

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Thanks to a lovely getaway to the Canary Islands last week, I did something that is increasingly difficult in this day and age: I largely cut myself off from the outside world. With my days full of sun, fun and activities and my evenings filled with a pleasant exhaustion and an internet connection that was…

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If foreigners living in Denmark were to make a list of their grievances – and let’s face it, we’re generally a whiny lot, so it wouldn’t be terribly hard – poor customer service would probably be near the top. So sadly it came as little surprise to me when getting my home internet connection fixed…

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Like many foreigners in Denmark, I have a complicated relationship with the Danish language. Currently, I’m not as good as I’d like to be, but probably a lot better than I let on. In the hopes of improving my situation, I recently decided – nearly two years after I passed my required Danish classes –…

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There is not much way around it: last week was a bad one for the United States. From the Boston Marathon bombing bringing terrorism back to American shores, to the subsequent manhunt that unfortunately sent a clear message that one deranged man can completely shut down a major US city, it was a long, rough…

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I suppose you might be expecting a letter of congratulations, and in some ways you are right. You’ve had great success over the past couple of weeks in carrying out co-ordinated raids and crackdowns on organised crime. You’ve collected weapons – including a pair of machine guns – and ammunition, and you’ve arrested key members…

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With the strange, twisted tale of Morten Storm continuing to garner attention outside of our nation’s borders, Denmark finds itself a minor player in the ongoing controversy surrounding the US’s use of unmanned drones.   The story of Storm, who directed the CIA’s drones to the hideout of American-born al-Qaeda member Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen,…

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Everyone knows by now that study after study has declared Copenhagen the best city in the world. We’ve racked up distinctions like ‘smartest city in Europe’, ‘best quality of life’, ‘best city for cyclists’ and, of course, Copenhagen is the capital of the ‘happiest nation on Earth’, to name but a few. But Copenhagen doesn’t…

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Somewhat overlooked amid the political wrangling over the 2013 budget and the headline-stealing elimination of the fat and sugar levies, was the government’s promise to invest 10.5 million kroner over the next two years to improve the handling of family reunification cases at Udlændingestyrelsen (Immigration Service). The money was part of a larger effort to…

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