Disturbing the queen

Photo: Amdi Thorkild, Politiken

Eleven Greenpeace activists have been indicted under an archaic Danish “lèse majesté” law called paragraph 115. It was during the death throes of the COP-15 climate summit that the activists dressed up as gala guests and crashed the queen’s party. Once in, they unfurled a banner calling on world leaders to combat climate change and were immediately ushered away by guards.
Apparently, queen Margrethe is said to have been disturbed by the banner, although her comments are nowhere to be heard. Instead the Danish Public Prosecutor, the Prosecutor General and the Justice Ministry are charging the activists with “disturbing the peace of the monarch”.
But who is she to demand to have her peace undisturbed? The rest of us get ours disturbed now and then. It’s a fact of life. If Margrethe has the fragility of a potato chip and gets disturbed by the unfurling of a banner, she wouldn’t last long in the real world. And what about the peace of the protesters? Wouldn’t that be disturbed by going to court? Not to mention prison?
There hasn’t been a need to use paragraph 115 since the 1920’s, which means no royals were sufficiently disturbed by, say, the Nazi occupation. But now the unfurling of a banner has Margrethe shaking in her stockings?
Please, who believes that? There must be something else going on here.

The 100-year membership

I just got a membership card from The Swedish Society of Crafts and Design that expires February 28, 2111. Good to know that I can get into VIP presentations of their new shows until I’m 145 years old.
Then in yesterday’s mail I got a business proposition from “Arsenalen Projkt”. Call me a word nazi, but if you can’t even be bothered to spell your own company name right, you and I will not be doing business any time soon.
I’m keeping the 100-year membership card, though. It will do them good to have an old demented fart at their pretentious shows around the year 2052. If nothing else, it’s probably as good a place as any to drop dead.

Curiosity kills kids

This one cracks me up. Swedish newspapers reported last week that the police in Jönköping have ceased efforts to raise awareness about drugs in high schools. It turns out that drug use among young people increased after the police started talking about it.
“We got the feeling that all we did was awaken the kids’ curiosity,” say the police.
So now the kids have learned a valuable lesson. Knowledge will not only set you free. It can also get you high.

Crybabies

Swedish television last night played funeral music when breaking the news to viewers that a Swedish cross-country ski team of some sort had failed in the World Championships.
You would think this was a national disaster, and for some people it seems like it is. For me, I wish we would grow up and stop pretending it’s important whether someone born in Sweden or Norway skis the fastest on a given day.
Imagine the inhabitants of Cairo not being able to make it to Tahrir Square because the Arabvision Song Contest was on. Or something similarly trivial.
Revolution will never work in Sweden. We’re too busy sitting in front of the TV listening to funeral tunes because someone we don’t even know skied slower than somebody else we don’t know either.
Can we get some perspective, please?

Photo: Tore Afdal