Whistleblowing in Hamlet’s old haunt
Belated #MeToo, Big Brother Google in the schools, and other abberations are unfolding in the northeast corner of the Kingdom
As the so-called dronningerunde (“queen’s round”) negotiations on a new parliamentary coalition drag on, we will take a break from the election, back off the national stage, and check out a few quirky local stories from my own town of Elsinore.
My wife and I moved to Helsingør (as it’s called in Danish) only a year ago. It’s a pleasant little city just beyond the affluent suburbs on the coast north of Copenhagen, best known of course for Kronborg Castle, where Shakespeare’s Hamlet takes place. It’s also Denmark’s closest point to Sweden, only 20 minutes away by ferry for much commercial traffic and for Swedes stocking up on cheaper alcohol than they can get at their state-run stores. In the past couple of months, the post-tourist-season lull has been livened up by three minor scandals.
The first case is a posthumous #MeToo revelation involving Simon Spies, who was born and raised in Elsinore. Spies founded a travel agency in the 1950s and, after acquiring a bankrupt airline, sold affordable package vacations to Danes for the first time. The business was a roaring success, and Spies, an eccentric, entertaining, extravagant character, became a sort of folk hero.
Last month DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, aired a documentary about the dark side (DK) of Spies’s idiosyncrasies. It was entitled Spies og morgenbolledamerne (“Spies and the morning bun ladies,” with a pun on bolle, which means both “buns”—the edible sort—and “to fuck”). The “ladies” included underage girls as young as 14 whom Spies employed as baker’s assistants. He paid them not only for sex but also for the pleasure of beating them, sometimes even breaking their arms. If they refused to play along, they were often dismissed. The series focused on a girl who was fired after refusing to marry Spies and went on to a brief career as a prostitute and a heroin overdose.
Cancel that flight to the entrepreneurial hall of fame
Spies died in 1984. In 1993, the Spies Foundation financed the renovation of a small square at one end of Elsinore’s main pedestrian street. It was renamed Simon Spies Square (DK) and decorated with a sort of mural of the travel king with his trademark full beard. After the documentary aired, a clamor arose about removing Spies’s name and likeness from the square. Most officials seem to favor the change, but there was a surprising amount of opposition and indifference on the part of both municipal council members and the public. “It was a different time,” they shrug. A council member from the Social Liberal party proposed (repeatedly) that the sign at the square be “expanded with an explanatory text (DK) stating that Simon Spies changed the Danes’ travel habits but also exploited young women.”
Others proposed choosing between the square’s current name and its former name, Svingelport Square, which many people still use and which Conservative Mayor Benedicte Kiær was said to prefer. After some bickering, the council voted to submit the issue to the standard committee process for assigning and changing street names after first asking citizens to submit their opinions. The polling period has just ended, and the results are striking.
For such name changes, Elsinore Municipality Museums usually receives about 50 suggestions. This time there were 1,398, and more than 1,000 favored retaining the pedophile’s name (DK), with Svingelport Square receiving about 250 votes. The municipal council members interviewed were mostly surprised at the large response and wished people would also take an interest in more serious matters such as better treatment for the mentally ill. The council will reach a decision on the name at its January 30 meeting.
Elementary rudeness leads to discovery
The second Elsinore story concerns an infinitely more powerful company (also founded by persons assigned to the male sex at birth) exploiting even younger children, although in a less sordid manner. Google supplies Chromebooks and software to many Danish schools. In 2019, a parent in Elsinore learned that a publicly accessible YouTube account had been set up in his 8-year-old son’s name and a classmate had used it to post a “rude” comment.
The parent, Jesper Graugaard, complained to Datatilsynet, the Danish data supervisory authority, about the breach of privacy. Google referred the problem to the school’s IT staff. Datatilsynet found that the school hadn’t conducted an adequate risk assessment of Google products in compliance with Europe’s GDPR privacy law. In the summer, Google was banned from Elsinore schools. When classes resumed in September, many kids were disoriented (DK) and demoralized without their Chromebooks. They struggled to write in paper notebooks or resorted to doing assignments on their phones.
Addicted to screens as Spies had been to kink
Because of these difficulties, the ban was suspended for two months while Google worked with Elsinore to adjust its privacy settings. Around half of the municipalities in Denmark use Google products, and they are following the case closely. Graugaard remains skeptical that Google can be prevented with certainty from exploiting users’ data. The issue of European users’ data being used by US companies for advertising and being accessible to US security agencies has arisen many times in the EU, with Microsoft and Facebook also waging contentious negotiations about protocol.
A decision on Chromebooks in Elsinore was due on November 5. But just before then, Elsinore, with assistance from the national association of municipalities and IT organizations, filed a second hefty batch of documentation. The ban was suspended further while Datatilsynet reviews it.
“The mayor should take a leave of absence.”
—Peter Poulsen, Elsinore Municipal Council Member (Social Democrat)
Those are minor problems that will be resolved soon enough. They must have seemed pleasant distractions to Mayor Kiær after she was subjected to two legal investigations (DK). An anonymous whistleblower accused her of creating a poor working environment and asking staff to ignore rules. Then two prominent trade unions complained that she had exhibited “transgressive behavior” toward three managerial staff and threatened them through a third party.
Who’s whistling dixie?
The two cases were related. The three employees constituted the municipality’s whistleblower office, and according to the unions, their interviews regarding the whistleblower’s accusations were what elicited Kiær’s aggressive behavior. They have all gone on sick leave. The external investigations were conducted separately by two law firms. In each case, they found the charges groundless.
Kiær thus averted official censure and can now get transgressive about Google’s eavesdropping and Spies’s smug mug. (Svingelport is a fine historical name (DK). It refers to the “removable barrier,” or gate, at one of the town’s two land portals dating from 1645.) But the unions want to see the law firm’s basis for rejecting their members’ complaints because, after all, a whistleblower function must function. No word on whether the three whistle-listeners will return to their post.
Note: Four weeks after moving to Substack, The Happiest People has been selected as No. 7 on Feedspot’s Top 70 Denmark Blogs. Thank you, readers, and thank you, Feedspot!