in France your title matters

In France, your title matters. People who have worked for French firms know that the distance from management to employer on the floor is very long.

In many even big companies, you can run a firm with 4 or perhaps 5 layers between the top management and the people working on the floor. In French firms 7 or 8 such layers are not uncommon.

So when a Danish truck driver - Torben Nielsen - drove on his first job as a truck driver, he stood no chance when the truck was stopped in customs and they found drugs. He had just been hired and ordered to drive a truck to Denmark and had no chance to know what was inside the sealed truck. Now he will suffer 6 years in prison in France.

In fact the local Danish job-center had ordered him to take the job or suffer punishment work without pay as it is common in Denmark.

The Danish job-market

When you are fired and unemployed in Denmark, you have to report to the local job-center. Here the case worker has a long list of personal friends where you can be sent to be "job-tested" working an ordinary job but your salary is in fact the unemployment benefit and you do not earn the right to vacation. Sometime like in the case of Torben Nielsen, they send you to an employer telling you to take the job or lose your benefit.

Normally the employers working close together with the case workers at the job-centers are in the export business where salary levels are important, so by hiring a large number of unemployed people while they "job-train" them for free, they can get an edge in the international business.

The losers are of course the unemployed people who in the long run will be unable to pay rent and move out of the cities to the parts of Denmark called "The Rotten Banana" robbing not only themselves of a future but also their children because out there you find no schools beyond elementary levels.

This situation is a result of labor reforms made in the 1990's. Labor reforms, the French president Macron are pushing for in France too. However unlike the Danish trade unions which are good for nothing, the labor movement in France has been able to stop this degrading treatment of ordinary tax-payers.

Did Torben Nielsen have any chance of preventing being a part of a criminal organization?

No. Once ordered by a job-center he had to report to a job appointed to him by his employer. In such a situation, he was not allowed to ask questions. You might ask yourselves if picking something up in Spain is not being guilty because earlier cases have shown that tourists in Spain has been blackmailed to collect drugs in South America based on photos hacked by the smugglers where the criminals claim that they will kill someone at home if they do participate.

Spain is the center of most criminal activities in the drug traffic, so yes - Torben Nielsen should have been suspicious. No Danish truck driver has any business south of Germany. That is something which should be left to drivers from the eastern part of Europe who are willing to take risk without thinking of the consequences of other people who might be on the road that day. But then again: We do not know what connection the case worker in the job-center had with Torben Nielsen's employer. Could it be that the case worker actually was in on it and wanted to frame Torben Nielsen? Or are Torben Nielsen one of those people who is not aware about the world outside Denmark and believe the best in people?

If you are unemployed in Denmark and do not behave

The case-workers have punishment in mind of those of the unemployed who do not accept everything the case worker says.

They can be force people into training sessions. Often firms are hired to punish people. Some people were ordered to sit with their feet in cold water all day "to improve their stamina". It did not matter if they caught a cold or even got pneumonia. If they quit, they could lose their unemployment benefit.

Is Torben Nielsen victim of xenophobia?

A bit. He is a foreigner in France. But he also just doing an ordinary job with no good job-title. Customer care, shop-assistant and truck driver are not considered something you choose as line of business for other than fun. He is a victim and now he has six years to accept that.

Sources (In Danish)

• Fik nedslående besked i fængslet: Brød sammen (Ekstra Bladet)
• Aktivering fik ældre dame til at græde (Ekstra Bladet)

Once again Danish tourists are unfairly targeted in France

Six high school students were unfairly treated by a hotel in Val d'Isère. Complaints who were not documented led to them being thrown out of the hotel where they were staying.

The travel company Nortlander was of no use and it is not recommended to use such a company. More in general purchase of good from France and travel destinations should be considered very carefully as a general dislike of Danes and our values. For the last decade Danish tourists have tried to act more like British tourists who due to size of their once so widespread empires have the experience in visiting foreign cultures.

But there are small communities which are hostile forwards tourists. It is basically xenophobia. France is slowly becoming such a place. It is not clear whether it is the raising retirement age which is the cause but it could very well be the case. The population down there has not known struggling and they have been able to retire almost a full decade before the workers in other European countries. The retirement age in all of Europe is about to be harmonized but they still miss some years before they reach the same retirement age as in Denmark where it is 67 years. It seems that every year they are pushed result in violence and strikes.

The laziness of the people in France is almost a legacy and now they are taking their frustration out against innocent tourists. It would be better to stay out of France until they have been taught to work as hard and as long as people in the rest of Europe.


Source:
Gymnasieelever smidt ud af skiparadis - truet med knipler og tåregas (BT)

Tragic death 3 year in a row

The death of a 19 year old high school student in France last week marks the third year where one of the students did not return home alive.

It seems that the Danish student fell from the fifth floor of a hotel where he wasn't living. He went there to visit some Polish students which would have been odd just a few years ago, but high school students of today are encouraged to establish an international network with peers in order to improve their position in a time with global competition.

Some newspapers have been buzy pointing out that alcohol could be a factor. However the French police have started an investigation where they held back students from a lot of countries. Alcohol doesn't seem to play a key role in this tragedy.

Secondly these trips would not be attended by the students if alcohol would be prohibited. Work in the department of Humane Ressource in Danish firms does often only consist of 2 tasks: Arranging the right environment for the employees so they can enjoy their friday beer and then 5 minutes it takes to conduct the so-called development evaluation every second year.

If the students don't learn how to socialize inside the Friday bar at the high school, they will stand few chances once they start to seek a full-time job.

The death last week is a challenge for parents who have children in high school. Should they recommend their children to stay home from these trips or should they let their children do as generations high school students before them did? It is not a question which are easy to answer.

We are talking foreign police forces in this case. They don't have access to modern forensic like the Danish police has neither do they seem to have the education to conduct a real investigation.

Sending your children abroad while they are in school is a project which includes the risk of letting your child paying the highest price possible.

It is impossible to pass advice about this subject. You as a parent just have to believe your guts.

Sources:

• Mystik om Lauges død (BT)


• Sundhedsstyrelsen kan begrænse landets konkurrenceevne (BT)


• 19-year-old falls to death from balcony(Denmarks Radio)

This must be the last year

Once again people cannot settle by enjoying the good money they earn by having Danes visiting.

They want the Danes to buy a lot of alcohol and then they expect the Danes to throw it out and drink milk instead so they don't have to take the consequences. The people living around Les Arcs are angry because their sales come with a cost. What kind of business doesn't cost connected to the sale.

It has to stop at some point. All the young Danes do are partying while they travel. It is quite normal. In fact the Sun spoke of a cultural difference hitting Brits as xenophobia when they visited countries in the Middle East.

The solution is clear. We need to create a party holliday area where the young people can go and enjoy their holliday. They are working on such a solution down at Falster. Maybe next the youth traveling abroad for holidays or to take a course down in Marienlyst where the new party aread it built.

References:
1.700 danske unge 'larmer som dyr' og raserer skisportssted, by Andreas Lindqvist, Politiken, February 19, 2011 (article in Danish)
»Når man samler 1.700 unge, går det jo ikke stille af sig«>, by Andreas Lindqvist, Politiken, February 20, 2011 (article in Danish)
Boozy Brits go wild in Dubai, by Nick Carter, The Sun, 12. july 2008
Marielyst skal være det nye Sunny Beach, by Marta Gramstrup, Folketidende, 13. februar 2011(article in Danish)