Danish extreme right politicians’ financial scandal

This video says about itself:

Meatball war: Danish town makes pork compulsory in move hailed by anti-Islamists – TomoNews

21 January 2016

RANDERS, DENMARK — A town in central Denmark made it mandatory on Monday for public institutions to serve pork, reigniting the country’s so-called “meatball war.”

‘Eat pork or go hungry’: France’s National Front leader tells school canteens to stop offering religious alternatives to Muslim children: here.

French pupils to be denied non-pork meals. Where far-right National Front party won local elections, Jewish, Muslim kids won’t get halal, kosher food: here.

Pork or nothing: how school dinners are dividing France. The battle over national identity is being played out on children’s lunch plates. Is scrapping a pork-free option a victory for secularism – or just an example of religious intolerance? Here.

In a move welcomed by the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DPP), Randers town council said pork was an essential part of Danish food culture, according to an Agence-France Presse report published in the Guardian.

The council added that pork should be served on an equal footing with other foods.

In agreeing by 16 votes to 15 to make pork products mandatory, the council had picked at an old wound, the Local reported.

Denmark’s “meatball war” hit its height in 2013 when the country debated if public institutions should ban pork in deference to Muslims, according to the Local.

Then-prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt hit out at nurseries that took pork off their menus, but a survey by the Ekstra Bladet tabloid at the time found just 30 of more than 1,700 daycare centers had stopped serving pork or switched to halal meat, AFP reported.

The meatball war restarted last week, when Integration Minister Inger Stoberg falsely claimed a family in the city of Aalborg had pulled their child from a public daycare centre because it banned pork, according to the Local.

In 2013, the DPP quit a mayoral campaign in a Copenhagen suburb in exchange for more pork meatballs in public canteens and the return of the town’s Christmas tree, AFP reported.

On Tuesday, DPP spokesman Martin Henriksen welcomed compulsory pork in a Facebook post. He added the party would continue to “fight against Islamic rules and misguided considerations dictating what Danish children eat.”

Compulsory pork is not just anti-Muslim. It is anti-Jewish, anti-vegetarian, anti-vegan and anti-Ethiopian Orthodox Christian as well. Buddhists and Hindus will not be very happy with it either.

But Randers councillor Mogens Nyholm of the Social Liberals, who voted against the proposal, said it was ridiculous and there was no Danish institution where you couldn’t eat a hot dog if you wanted to, the Local reported.

Fewer than 300,000 Muslims are part of Denmark’s 5.6 million population — which is vastly outnumbered by more than 13 million pigs.

Live pigs and pork products account for around 5 percent of Denmark’s exports, AFP reported.

Unfortunately, in Denmark there are not only buses and musicians poking fun at Donald Trump.

There is also a right-wing government stealing refugees’ jewelry.

And there is the extreme right Danish People’s Party (DPP). Often called ‘populist’ by journalists too cowardly to use words like ‘racist’ or ‘neofascist’. Populism was a leftist farmers’ movement in the nineteenth century USA. The word should not be used incorrectly.

Anyway, from The Local in Denmark:

Danish populists hammered by EU expense scandal

Published: 19 Oct 2016 22:47 GMT+02:00

Denmark’s anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DPP) was reeling on Wednesday from a string of EU expenses scandals, including a trip to Brussels when European institutions were closed.

Morten Messerschmidt, a European lawmaker and one of the country’s most ardent eurosceptics, was kicked off the populist party’s top leadership late on Tuesday after the DPP agreed to pay back 500,000 kroner (67,000 euros, $74,000) of EU funds.

“It’s sloppiness at a very high level,” party leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl told public broadcaster DR.

The money had been used to cover expenses for two EU conferences that appeared to be indistinguishable from the party’s regular summer meetings, as well as an educational trip to Brussels for campaign workers during a public holiday when EU institutions were closed.

Cash had also been spent on media training and an advertising campaign. …

The expenses scandal is a sharp blow to the outspoken politician, who helped the eurosceptic DPP become Denmark’s largest party in the European Parliament election of 2014.

The liberal Politiken daily responded by publishing a list of DPP expense quotes, accusing the EU of wasting taxpayers’ money.

“If Europeans knew the full extent of the shameless waste of money, I am convinced that there would be a revolution,” Messerschmidt wrote in 2012.

The European parliament had previously asked the DPP to pay back 2.9 million kroner that it spent on political campaigning. The party repaid 1.6 million kroner in June, saying it did not administer the rest of the money.

Messerschmidt previously sat on the board of the Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy, a now defunct conservative European alliance.

Last year, the DPP paid back 120,700 kroner to Brussels after using the money to tour Danish harbours on a sailing ship a few months before local elections in 2013.