Last Week in Denmark

DF remigration plan, Rising obesity rates, Dinner parties fade, LWID S4E14

• Narcis George Matache, Katie Burns, Fionn O'Toole, Kalpita Bhosale, Golda Fania & Dominika Handzlik • Season 4 • Episode 14

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Deportations, obesity, and dinner party decline. This week, Dom and Fionn, internationals living in Denmark, explore how Denmark debates who belongs, and how we live together. From the Danish People’s Party’s proposal to deport up to 100,000 internationals, to a warning that obesity may surge across municipalities, and a new study showing social life is moving out of the home, these stories reveal deeper questions about inclusion, inequality, and connection in Danish society. 

Topics:

(01:42) DF remigration plan

(18:39) Rising obesity rates

(26:15) Dinner parties fade

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Narcis:

[Dynamic Announcement] Hi, it's Narcis, and we're back with VoteHome season 2.  

Derek:

And I'm Derek, this time we're getting real about how elections actually work here in Denmark. From "can I really vote in Denmark?" to "who actually runs this city?"

Narcis: 

We've got the mayor of Aalborg, original chairperson, or president, and even three international candidates sharing how you can run too. 

Derek:

Because this is your Denmark too, and your voice counts. 

Narcis: 

VoteHome season 2. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. 

Dom:

Welcome to the Last Week in Denmark podcast. Each week, two of our community members talk through Danish news stories and developments and how they impact internationals living here. I'm Dom and I'm here with Fionn. This week's topics are: number one, the Danish Folkeparti plans to deport 100,000 internationals, number two, severe obesity to potentially become a challenge in Denmark, and number three, social life is moving out of the home. Before we get going, though, we'd like to ask one thing. If what we're talking about resonates with you, please screenshot this episode and share it on social media. We're here to help internationals in Denmark stay informed and feel connected. Thanks for helping us reach more people like you. Well, hello, Fionn. Good afternoon. How are you doing and are you excited for the topics ahead?

Fionn:

Hey, Dom. I am good. Yeah, I'm definitely good. I'm always looking forward to recording, I have to say. Yeah. This week I feel like the first topic we're going to dive into is a bit more of a spicy one, one we can sink our teeth into and probably have some opinions on, so I'm really much looking forward to record. It's not the most fun topic, I think—

Dom: 

No.

Fionn:

—but, I mean, maybe we can have fun, I don't know, bashing it, tearing it apart. I don't know. Depends on what your opinions are on it.

Dom:

Yeah, I think we can bond in the misery, potentially. [laughs] All right, should we just jump straight into it, then, and?

Fionn:

I think so. I don't think we can intro that and then just leave people waiting for too long.

Dom:

No, exactly. [laughs] Exactly. So, around a week ago, Martin Messerschmitt from the Dansk Folkeparti shared his thoughts in Weekend Avisen about a new idea he has for a Danish immigration policy where all foreigners receiving public benefits would be sent out of the country. And I have a quote from him. He said: "a good 40,000 foreigners live on early retirement pensions in Denmark. I find that quite outrageous. Then there are a number of other benefits. Cash assistance, integration benefits and so on. I can't give an exact figure, but somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000." I feel like that's a pretty big two figures he's giving here so.

Fionn:

It's a range, yeah.

Dom:

Yeah, but it's a pretty big range.

Fionn:

Let's hear him out.

Dom:

He doesn't want to answer a lot of questions about this. DR has tried to reach out to him and neither do the other party leaders in the Blue Opposition. They're also unwilling to give answers to questions whether they can imagine a coalition like this with him leading it, where the plans of this re-migration would become reality. And I think just as a context, as a reminder, the Blue Opposition consists of the Danish Democrats of Liberal Alliance, Conservative People's Party and the Danish People's Party. And they actually had a meeting on 6th September in Fredericia. There was a Conservative convention to discuss potentially where a conservative Denmark could behead it. And I think this was probably the place where this idea sprung up. So what are your initial thoughts?

Fionn:

I can actually take this back a few days because I first encountered this story actually, when my fiancée, who's Danish, sent me on Instagram a post from the Radical Fenster politician Samira Nawa, who was basically just posting her thoughts about this interview. And I hadn't seen the interview at that point. She kind of laid out just exactly, pretty much as what you had laid out what Morten Messerschmidt had been talking about here. And there's a bit more to it as well, actually. But I was really shocked. I have been with my partner for over 10 years at this point, and I worked for a Danish company for a long time, so I had a lot of Danish colleagues. So for more than the last decade I've been at least somehow aware of Danish politics and certainly aware of the Dansk Folk Party. And I remember actually the election back in 2015 where they did very, very well. That caused a lot of, not necessarily consternation, but there was a lot of opinions one way or the other, I think within the Danish colleagues that I had strong feelings, let's put it that way. I always knew that this is a party that is, you know, anti immigration, does exactly what it says on the tin. To quote the old ad, they call themselves the Danish People's Party, and the Danish people is who they're looking after, number one, or that's kind of the idea. And I was really shocked to see this because just a few days beforehand I had seen a poll in which they were the largest of that blue bloc party. They're probably on 12%, and that puts them at the third most popular party, as per the poll, right? In the entire country. So you would think that, you know, if an election was held tomorrow and you are forming a government somehow out of a red bloc or a blue bloc. Well, if it was to be a blue bloc government, that is likely the ones that would be kind of leading that charge, leading those negotiations. And I thought that was a really extreme point of view for the leader of, you know, the most popular party on one wing, you could say, to be coming out with. I'd always known, right. That this is not an immigrant friendly or immigration friendly party, it's not an international friendly party. But I was really shocked that, you know, there is effectively calls to round people up into camps and prison like conditions. And that is quoting Mr. Messerschmidt, that is not my own take or hyperbole on it and deport them. And if you couldn't deport them, to just keep them indefinitely. And I think that's extremely worrying also, just in the sense that, you know, they are doing very well in the polls. And if you look back a few years ago, they were on like 2.9% and people were kind of sounding the death of Dansk Folkeparti. A lot of other smaller parties of the right wing or far right had kind of come and eaten their lunch. The Social Democrats had adopted a lot of the further right immigration policies. And that had kind of been said to, you know, the far right has been disarmed. This question has kind of been settled. And I think that's very much not the case, right? If you look at this discussion, I've obviously since then kind of read this interview with Christian Beneke in Weekend of Easton. And I don't know, very often you hear something through the grapevine and it sounds worse than it is. And I have to say, reading through this article in its entirety, I mean, it's by no means worse than it sounds. It's, I think, the more I read of it, the more shocked I was.

Dom:

Yeah, yeah, it's very scary. And a lot of the things, in my opinion, they're also just, I mean, none of it has a good purpose. But a lot of the things, they really just seem to be done to pander to certain people because another idea that they had was if you've obtained a citizenship in the past few years, that every eight years or something.

Fionn:

Eight years. It was the last eight years, yeah.

Dom:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You would have to retake the Danish language test and the citizenship test test to kind of prove that you're worthy of that again. Which I think is... I don't think a lot of people who were born here could do that. Like, I don't think I could take a Polish citizenship test without studying for it.

Fionn:

Oh, I know for a fact, I mean, it's a fun thing that I do with a lot of my Danish friends each year. For disclosure, I'm not a Danish citizen, I haven't taken the Danish citizenship test. But we always, you know, when they publish the test in the papers, we all challenge each other to do it. This is my little humble brag. I tend to do quite well. And that's probably because I like history and I like politics. So a lot of those questions are kind of like, when did the Reformation happen? I'm like, I know what's entry, that's easy peasy. There are of course more specific stuff in there. But a lot of my Danish friends fail it every year, every six months and laugh about that. And I think that is, to me, one of the key things in here is that very often parties on the right have criticized internationals or international communities or like specific nationality communities, potentially, or religious communities coming into to Denmark and not integrating. Personally, my view is, I think there are great strengths to having diversity of people and cultures and I think the sum of our differences are greater than the whole of our parts, to put it that way, in a positive sense. But of course we should try to integrate as well. But I think if your view is that, no, everybody should just integrate and become Danish and that's it, leave what you wear behind, now you are Danish and this is what that means. Well, you can never do that if you are being told that, yes, you have done everything you are meant to, you have become a citizen, and now actually, well, maybe you're not.

Dom:

Yeah, you're still not enough, basically.

Fionn:

Yeah, the term second class citizen gets thrown around a lot, but that's exactly what this would be, right? When does somebody actually become Danish? You know, and I think it's really telling that when he looks at it or when he talks about it, there would be a personal interview to clarify that are these people Danish at heart? And for example, if the applicant is a devout Muslim, prays five times a day, fasts, wears a headscarf, this should weigh down the assessment. The same should apply if, for example, they've written on Facebook that the state of Israel should not exist. Again, I think the purpose of this article, and actually the headline at the start of the article was that Morten Messerschmidt has come to talk about an innovation in the Danish right wing. And if the innovation in the Danish right wing, and I'm casting a wide brush there, right, there are more parties than the Dansk Folkeparti and the right wing. But if the most popular party in the right wing here is, here's our great innovation: "get the foreigners out" to put their words rather than their own, maybe, I mean, that doesn't sound very much like new thinking to me. One of the cruxes of this issue or one of the kind of stated reasons he talks about there are too many people on benefits or too many international people on benefits. In this instance, when you actually break that down, I mean there are currently 153,000 internationals or descendants of internationals who receive social benefits. That could be maternity benefits, it could be flexible work, it could be disability pensions. 47% of those are Danish citizens, right. So that gives you about 81,000 who are non citizens. When you look at the actual total of the number of people in Denmark who are receiving social benefits, it's around 750,000. So that's about 20% of the total are from an international background themselves or by descent, right? And 47% of those are citizens as well. So this is, it's a very small portion. Of course there are probably people who game the system of international backgrounds and non international backgrounds. And I don't think anybody would argue that that's wrong. But it's such a dog whistle, right? When you see that this is the logical reason, the economic reason, the reason for fairness, if you want to term it that way. But then we're going to really focus in on less than 10% of the overall not problem, but the overall people receiving benefits? I think that's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous and it's so blatant, in I think it's racism and xenophobia and sectarianism that I hope that is so obvious for everyone to see.

Dom:

Yeah, I totally agree. And also going back to what you said about people being Muslim, I think this party has always been so blatantly Islamophobic and anti Muslim and they also kind of group people in those groups. So I think it's just exactly like you said. I hope it's just obvious to everybody. 

Fionn:

Yeah.

Dom:

And I was also trying to find some statistics about like, oh, how many internationals are there in Denmark and how much do they contribute to the GDP? And I did find those statistics and we contribute ton to the GDP. I think last year internationals contributed 12%. But yeah, I also don't think that's the point of it. It's not about how much monetary value can people bring to a country, right? 

Fionn:

Exactly.

Dom:

Because it's so much more beyond that. I mean, personally, I have been in Denmark for five years now. I've been working, of course, paying my taxes, but in my free time I've been volunteering for the past five years. And that's not a monetary thing that you can just see in the statistics. So there's so much more that we bring. And I think bringing it down to this one thing is a very dangerous thing to do.

Fionn:

100%, and even, I mean, I completely agree with you that, you know, people are so much more than their economic benefit. But even if we take the maybe say like fiscally conservative argument that people who are receiving social benefits, particularly if they're not working, are draining more resources than they're contributing at that moment. If you take that mindset, I'd love to highlight some research that was done by Kelly Draper Rasmussen, who is data consultant and she's a writer and contributor to The International as well that publication. And she actually looked at publicly available data and found basically on demographic shifts within Denmark. And she found that the most kind of striking finding within that is that there's a large group of kommune in Denmark and I counted it up, it's around 20 where the total working age population is growing, but the Danish working age population is shrinking. And so the economic growth of those kommune is 100% reliant, right? On international workers arriving and staying. It's not necessarily only the poor kommune, you could say, where there's farm workers or things like that. It is places like Fredericia, it's places like, I think Gladsaxe is on the list as well. It's really all over the country. It is much more than just people filling critical roles. It's more than the fact that this is fueling prosperity and future prosperity of these regions. But it's also like a demographic foundation, right?

Dom:

Yeah.

Fionn:

And I just think this is to do this if, if you think about what Morten Messerschmidt is talking about, and it's not only the people who are on benefits, it's anybody who commits a crime and you know, people who, as we kind of see that, you know, express a view about Israel or I think it would just be economic suicide, right? [laughs] So one thing is the demographic shifts, but then how is every tech company that works in or with Denmark going to react when they can't hire the developers they need or they can't attract the international talent they need? How is every nursing home in the country going to react when they don't have the care staff to care for an aging Danish population? And I just think there's one thing about being able to disagree on moral level or on a political or on a... Yeah, you could say just on a values level on something. But at the end of the day, politics is the art of being able to count, whether that's being able to count how many votes you need, how many people you need to get to support your motion. But I also think being able to look at something and say, well, would we just tank the economy? And if this is such a drain on our economy, if internationals are so bad and that drain the economy, well, this would do so much more damage. Even if you accept the premise that internationals are bad, which obviously I don't, this would do so much more damage than that. So to me this is, and you know, we try to stay relatively unbiased on this show, but there is a level of, I think, idiocy to this, which is really worrying as well as the, you know, moral issues. And maybe one of the things that worries me most, and you touched on it before, is the silence of the other blue parties.

Dom:

Yeah, exactly.

Fionn:

Because if there is an election and there is going to be negotiations here, I think if you are somebody who maybe doesn't vote for a Dansk Folkeparti, but would be considering voting for Conservatives or Liberal alliance, you are of course well able to, right? But I think the leaders of those parties also owe you, as an international, an answer. And they've been silent so far, but they owe you an answer on what's your future going to be in the country?

Dom:

Exactly. Totally agree. So I think this is a good time to also do a little segue and say, please go vote, listeners.

Fionn:

Absolutely, 100%.

Dom:

It is so important because this is another thing. I actually haven't read much about that recently, but I know that the Dansk Folkeparti, they also want to take the regional vote right away from internationals. I'm not sure how far that has gone.

Fionn:

I mean, it hasn't gone far. It's something I talked about actually with Tenarsis in season three. I remember it very well. And yeah, they did want to remove the rights to vote for internationals in, I think, municipal and regional elections. Obviously the EU elections, EU citizens would still be entitled, but again, I mean, just in terms of quality of policy, that would be in breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. That's Article 40, Chapter 5 for Morten Messerschmidt, if he wants to read up on that. 

Dom:

In case he's listening. 

Fionn:

In case he's actually a huge fan. No, but like these things, some of them aren't only against EU law, they're also unconstitutional for Denmark itself. And I do think, you know, this idea of we maybe thought that the Social Democrats had taken the far right ground when it came to immigration policy, or that has at least been discussed previously. But there's 50,000 voters who have already crossed from the Social Democrats to the Dansk Folkeparti. Now increasingly some of their own party candidates or mayors. Actually the mayor of Ishøj Municipality, Merete Amdisen, believes that the Social Democrats own rhetoric has become too harsh and that she struggles to talk with her own constituents, many of whom are internationals, and actually justify the party policies. And so I think, yeah, even the sort of Democrats immigration spokesman Frederik Vad came out and clearly distanced themselves from DF in this. But I do wonder if there was a tactic to make this the centre ground and disarm the far right in that way. How much of it has now just left space for a more extreme version of the policies before. 

Dom:

Yeah, well, I think, honestly, I think we could keep on talking about this topic forever.

Fionn:

Absolutely.

Dom:

I had so many more notes, but I think just to be mindful of the time—

Narcis:

[Dynamic Announcement] Hey, enjoying the Last Week in Denmark podcast? Then tell the world about us. In less than 30 seconds you can nominate this podcast for the Discover Pods 2025 Podcast Awards. You have until the 14th of November to wisely spend 30 seconds glowing, nay, gushing over this podcast. But why wait? Go to discoverpods.com/2025-podcast-awards now and nominate us. And don't worry if you didn't get all that. The link and info you'll need to nominate us will be in the show notes as well for this episode. We'll be back after the November deadline to let you know how to vote once all those nominations are in. So thank you so much for helping us spread the word about the Last Week in Denmark podcasts cast. Now let's get back to the episode.

Dom:

—we should move on. And yeah, one more small reminder that voting is very important, but I think time to move on to the next topic, which is about severe obesity, which is to potentially become a challenge for Denmark over the next 10 years. There's a projection from the Prevention Alliance, Danica, and it shows that by the year 2035, 58 of the total of 98 municipalities will have a population where at least 30% are severely overweight. Severely overweight, that is defined as a BMI of over 30. And I think I would just like to add a small note here that for the conversation that BMI is not also always a good indicator of health on its own because it doesn't distinguish between muscle and fat, doesn't account for body fat distribution, and it was also invented in 1930 based on only men, white men. So yeah, that's, that's not all there is to health, but it does, it does give some kind of image of what people's weight is. So are you surprised to hear about this severe obesity becoming a danger in Denmark?

Fionn:

I am, in a sense, because two things that I've often held in my mind is that Denmark tends to be like when I walk down the street, it tends to be a far fitter looking country, both in terms of just, I don't feel like you see as many people who are severely obese. And also I feel like you tend to see a lot more people being a lot more active than in many other countries that I've lived in or visited. And I also think just with all of the— I feel like every story related to health and obesity that we've almost discussed on this podcast for the last year or so has related to Ozempic or Mounjaro, you know, obesity drugs being more and more used. Yeah, I mean, maybe this report is Novo Nordisk strategy to get people to buy a lot more. Who knows? [laughs] But we're going to save the company that way. But no, I was quite surprised by it. I completely agree on the BMI and being an imperfect measurement. I actually remember many, many, many years ago being in some trial for the army, essentially. And one of the tests was a fitness and BMI test and a guy being kind of pulled out because his results were like way off the scale. And of course he was a bodybuilder. He was quite short, huge muscles, and he was taken into an office and then they all went out again laughing, going, okay, well, yes, that makes sense. Heavy for your size. But there's a reason for that. So clearly an imperfect thing. But I do think what is maybe more interesting with this for me at least is looking at, well, some of the reasons that are given behind this. And I think social inequality is probably the takeaway that I would see. It is the poor municipalities or peripheral municipalities that are the hardest hit by this development or predicted to be. And the richest municipalities have the least. This report came out during the week. Another report also came out by the provincial alliance that was actually talking about life expectancy. And I thought that was very very interesting because reading the two of them, there were very clear correlations. A child, for example, who's born in Odder in 2035 can expect to live six years longer than a child born on Lolland. And some of the kommunes on Lolland were those that had the highest or some of the highest predictions of obesity in the future. And what I thought was really stark was one of those kommunes is Guldborgsund, where the life expectancy for a man born in 2035 was 78 and a half years. That was with the 39% projected obesity rate. Whereas in Gentofte which had a 13% projected obesity rate, a woman for example, would live that was the highest scale but up to 88 years. So like a 10 year age difference. And of course, you know, there's always a difference between men and women in that regard. But I think that's very, very stark. Right. When you think that's say 12% of somebody's life. 

Dom:

Yeah, that's pretty important. And I think what's for me one of the most surprising things is that worldwide, Denmark as a country is a country with one of the lowest rates of inequality between people. So if it's like this here, I can only imagine how much worse it can be in other places.

Fionn:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the key things was the price of food. Of course we all know, and we've all talked about that as gone up, but the unhealthy options may be not going up as much as the healthier options. So it is easier and cheaper to eat in a less healthy way. And then of course we have become much more sedentary in our daily lives. And that's definitely something that I have felt in a big way, that's my excuse anyway. But I can certainly feel right, if I'm not moving my body that it's... Yeah, I feel that at the end of the day or at the end of the week versus a week where I have been a lot more active. And I think that really ties in with the three kind of overall things that they thought were tying in with the lifespan and mortality rate, which were alcohol, exercise, and smoking. Right. So I think there was some really clear correlations within there. Personally, what I found most interesting was a recommendation from one of the mayors actually of, of that kommune in question, Guldborgsund, who said that they've seen that huge amount comes down to early intervention. So very often obesity is linked with kids starting in elementary school and actually calling for school lunches to be rolled out. And I think again that ties in with that intervene early, save a lot later on. So that was certainly a good takeaway for me.

Dom:

Yeah, agree. And I think that also ties back to nicely to the last conversation you and I had, which was also about mental health, where we were saying that Denmark in general, when it comes to health and mental health, we don't have a lot of prevention here. I also thought it was quite interesting about the schools and what I always found interesting. I have been vegetarian for like 10 years now and that was kind of a shock for me that I, when I came here, that for a very wealthy society, we are very meat based here. I mean, I know that meat is oftentimes associated with wealth, but I think a lot of wealthy societies, they maybe now move a little bit away from that, at least not having meat every day, where I think that is still a thing here. And that probably also ties back to the schools, where I can imagine the lunches are maybe not that healthy.

Fionn:

Yeah. And I also think there's a real- for a country that is by any standard a very wealthy country, I think there is also a social pushback in terms of grocery stores are almost entirely discount grocery stores, whether their prices reflect that or not. But I think, you know, as an international, you probably recognize this as well. The variety and the quality of food in the supermarkets is, I think particularly the variety is so much more limited compared to so many other countries that I've been to or have lived in. It is very often dominated by cheap pork and some like key products. But actually being able to, you know, I'm not vegetarian, but I probably eat meat maybe like twice a week. And I think one of the challenges as a meat eater is, you know, exploring new things with like plant based diets because you can't rely on just meat, fat and meat for all the flavor there. And I think that's much harder to do when the actual selection in a supermarket is quite boring. It's four types of coal and carrots. [laughs]

Dom:

Exactly. And that's in Copenhagen. Right? Because you're also in Copenhagen. So, yeah, going back to that, I can imagine it's even worse in other parts of Denmark.

Fionn:

Well, maybe that ties us a little bit in with our final topic.

Dom:

Probably does, yeah. And I think the final topic is finally something a little bit lighter to talk about, I hope. But we'll see because there's been a new survey that shows that one in four people never or less than once in every six months have guests for dinner without it being a special occasion, like a birthday or Christmas. And according to researchers, one of the reasons for that is that our social lives have changed and they've moved outside of our home and our home just has a different function that it used to have. When was the last time you had guests over for dinner?

Fionn:

I mean, last weekend. 

Dom: 

Okay, outlier. [laughs]

Fionn:

But I will preface that it was my son's birthday. So, you know, that falls down on that. But actually we do it relatively commonly. Not in the sense, I think that some of the people talking about in the article meant, you know, the real dinner party. But, for example, we have neighbors whose kids also go to the same school as ours. And then kids are very good friends. So fairly regularly they might come over to us and we'll make some pizzas or something like that. And, you know, it's easier to watch kids who will play with each other than watch kids who need your own attention. But, yeah, I mean, the last time we threw a dinner party, I couldn't tell you. It's been a while. This idea I think of, yeah, our social lives have kind of gone external. And also talking about social media in that regard, that very often, I think when we show off our homes now, or the tool to show off our homes is not come in and, you know, get the tour and look how wonderful we are keeping up with the Joneses. But it is more this curated image, right, of snippets of our homes. And I thought that was maybe a bit interesting in the sense that that's very much something that's rooted in control, right? This idea of we want to put the best version of our lives out there on social media, even though maybe now there's a bit more of a pushback into authenticity, but it's still curated authenticity. And that's easier to do when the light is just right and you can take a nice picture of, I don't know, a nice lamp that you have, or the posters on your wall versus people coming in and, I don't know, stumbling into the room where you've shoved all the furniture that doesn't match anything else.

Dom:

[laughs] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's also what they said in that survey, right? That years ago, before social media was so big, having people over for dinner was also just about showing how well you live. And now you can see all those things online. So it's not really that necessary. I personally think it also comes down to the cost of living, which also ties back to the previous topic we had where it's just, if you're going to invite five people for dinner, it's also just very expensive to do.

Fionn:

That's very true. Yeah.

Dom:

So that is one of my theories. I personally do have people over for dinner. Well, maybe not that often, but also because I'm not Danish, so I don't have family here. But what I do quite a lot is we just have a potluck with friends and I think that works quite well. Yeah, that would be my recommendation, I guess. Just have a potluck. [laughs]

Fionn:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's always very nice. I think, I mean, reflecting on it as well. A lot of the times I would have people over for dinner are probably more rooted in family or kids and it's often a convenience thing, like I was saying. Right. Like, oh yeah, somebody's partner's away, just come on over, we'll all eat dinner together and the kids can watch a movie, we can have a glass of wine. It's nice and easy. 

Dom: 

Yeah.

Fionn:

But I think otherwise it's probably things like, you know, I have a book club. And so there is almost another activity. Activity that's rooted in that and it is a more casual setting then even though it's in someone's home, but no one has an expectation that they're going to put out a full roast and three course meal for everyone. It's much more social focused rather than show off focused, if that makes sense.

Dom:

Yeah, for sure. I think there's always some other underlying activity you're going to do other than, oh, come have a three course meal at my home.

Fionn:

100%. Although I would just like to point it out here. If anybody would like me to invite— no, I was going to say if anybody would like me to invite them— no, if anybody would like me— no, I can't. Oh, if anybody would like to invite me. There we go, to a three course meal. Clearly I'm not even used to saying that, so I would absolutely love it. But I won't set my expectations high, particularly not after I've fumbled over that three times.

Dom:

Well, I'm also very open to it. [laughs] I don't know if any of my friends are watching this, but please do, please do.

Fionn:

I mean, I have seen increasingly actually ads for like social eating—

Dom: 

Yeah I've seen that too.

—typically happening in restaurants where, yeah, you come and dine with strangers and I think that's a wonderful idea. I know there is kind of a loneliness epidemic that's been talked about a lot. Yeah. So maybe again, it just happens outside the house. And in our houses we're, we're more focused on ourselves or the digital world maybe. Who knows?

Dom:

For sure. I've also been to a communal dinner at Absalon a while back. That's in Copenhagen. I assume most cities have something similar to that and it was very nice. So I would also definitely very much recommend. 

Fionn:

100%. 

Dom:

Great. Well, just to reiterate, if anybody wants to invite us for dinner, we're open, but I think that's all there is to say about this topic. Yeah. Well, do you have any final thoughts about dining at home or Morten Messerschmitt?

Fionn:

You know, I have one. There was one thing, a quote actually, which came to mind when I was reading this article titled the Great Expulsion, you know, with Morten Messerschmidt, which sounds like the worst album I've ever heard of. But it was a quote from a woman called Constance Markievicz, who was a suffragette and a socialist and a revolutionary. And she said her advice to women in the 1910s was dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank and buy a revolver. Now, I don't want anyone to take that literally. I for one, probably won't be wearing a short skirt and I won't be buying a revolver. But I think the message is to think practically and use the tools that you can. And I think in that case we are like a broken record on it, but that is using your vote and not being afraid to use your voice in that instance. So that would definitely be my takeaway message or giveaway message to our audience this week.

Dom:

Totally agree. And I think that's a very important message. Even if we are a broken record, I think it's a good message to keep on repeating. So, yes, remember that you can vote before the 18th of November in your local library and you can take the online test on DR.D.K. to see who you match with the most. I did not match with Morten Messerschmitt. I don't know about you.

Fionn:

I didn't. I was surprised that I matched with two different parties on left centre left, who I think there was both like 88%. 88% and then someone from the Conservative Party, which was 87%. But I guess, you know, by and large, I think Denmark agrees on a lot more than it differs on. And this was of course a local election which is quite different from national politics sometimes. But that was certainly a little surprise to me. But I would definitely encourage anybody to take that test because it is very helpful, I think, particularly if you're not familiar with local candidates. A lot of people don't tune in until the week of an election. So it's good to be informed and go into the polling booth with more than an idea of I don't know what color the party's flags are.

Dom:

For sure. So let's end on that note, go voting and be kind to each other and maybe do a dinner at home.

Fionn:

Yeah, absolutely. Invite us to dinner.

Dom:

Exactly. And as always, thank you so much for listening and we'll speak again soon.

Fionn:

Talk to you soon. Bye Bye bye. 

Dom:

Bye.

Fionn:

Did you know that the Last Week in Denmark newsletter is available in 8 languages? Hey there, this is Fionn from the last Week in Denmark podcast, and every week you guys are tuning in to hear me and my fellow co-hosts talk about the top news of the week in English. But let's be real, we're all internationals, so not only are you speaking English every day, you're probably also speaking a bit of Danish, but you've probably also got your own native language as well, like the multilingual master you are. So why not treat yourself to the luxury of being able to read Danish news each week in your own native language? So head on over to last weekdk.substack.com that's last weekdk.substock.com and sign up for our newsletter, delivered to you every single Sunday.



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LWID

Host
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Dominika Handzlik

Guest
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Fionn O'Toole

Guest