Denmark’s been in the news lately and not just because of Borgen.
The Danish TV series about a fictional female Prime Minister was a surprise hit on BBC4 this winter inspiring and tear-jerking in equal measure.
Why? Because Scots glimpsed a genuinely progressive society many of us would give our eye teeth to share.
Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg works full-time in the top job despite being a single mum. That’s not just Danish fiction. Childcare costs £500 for two
toddlers full time in Copenhagen compared with a whopping £1,400 in Edinburgh. So 74% of women in Denmark work (65% here) and more have well-paid, full-time
positions rather than badly-paid, part-time jobs. Danish children are at kindergarten until they start school at six so vital early years are spent learning to talk, play and share with other bairns. All
education is free so well-educated mums can keep working, paying taxes and helping to fund the Danish “welfairytale”.
As a result Denmark was named the happiest country on earth in 2012. Meanwhile, Scots are about to witness a bedroom tax that will bring misery to families with disabled adults and children. Childcare is unaffordable so experts calculate a million women are “missing” from the UK workforce. So are their taxes. Our system does put cash into family support via the incomprehensible tax credit system but Danes put roughly the same amount into
subsided childcare to much better effect. Copenhagen aims to have the best urban environment in the world by 2015 so it formed a contract with voters public transport investment in exchange for less car use and publishes regular progress updates.
Could an independent Scotland be like this? Will the new Scottish Welfare Panel recommend raising income tax to almost 57% for high earners? So far no one’s used the Holyrood tax-raising powers that already exist. A big tax hike would need Scots to believe that everyone will raise their game and contribute more if they have an equal chance, a good start in life and help to stay in work.
But do Scots have that level of belief in one another after decades of penny-pinching on public services and blaming benefit “scroungers” for every social problem?
And do we believe in the capacity of government to run excellent services even if we cough up more tax? Nordic nations have strong state systems, but it’s not superannuated high-heid yins or brilliant boffins that make things work it’s dynamic people at the grassroots.
Community-sized municipal councils and not-for-profit cooperatives run everything from schools, hospitals and housing to banks, hotels, ferry services and the massive paper pulp industry. Scots have the largest units of local government in Europe where a few well-meaning (and well-paid) bureaucrats take decisions for everyone else. That produces a “wait till the folk who know best turn up” sort of society where all the best jobs are somewhere else.
The Nordics harness people-power and encourage able, active folk in each community to run their own lives. We don’t.
They have a do-it-yourself society with well-paid jobs in powerful, local communities. Who has happier folk? No contest.
Over the last three years I’ve run a think-tank called Nordic Horizons which helps Scots understand what makes the Nordics tick. The answer is not hard to see but it is tough to copy. It’s trust. Trust in government and trust in one another.
So Borgen works because in Denmark Borgen is real. Sadly Scots can still only watch . . . and dream.
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