Can teenagers be interested in politics?

   I think a lot of adults see children as these people who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, without worrying about 'adult life'. Although when they do - it takes people in a shock, both good and bad.
  My parents both support me with my interest in politics. My dad can always find a stupid topic to have a debate about (he's a Tory, just saying) while my mum kind of just rants about whatever Putin is doing and taxes in Denmark. They found it funny in a cheerful way when I would ask about how the government works and whether or not we can trust politicians. Although now they're the ones asking me questions, most of the time.
  
Just because one can't vote doesn't mean one can't have an interest or an opinion for something to do with politics. There are several different topics which adults take an interest in that doesn't concern them - if you look at the teenage life. Ultimately, a teenagers opinion is one of the most important. Politicians are shaping our future, in some way or other, and we ought to have a say in what we think about it.
  I am not saying we should put the voting age down to thirteen or fourteen, that would be absurd! You would end up with clueless boys and girls who vote for that guy they saw on the news the other day, because he said one good thing which sounded reasonable but you had no idea what it meant. But lets stick it down to 16, at least in some votes. 
  
Just like adults - teenagers are different aswell. Some have dark hair, some have blonde, others play football and a few watch the news and check up on politics. I'm the last one. I've gotten used to the common remarks on people telling me to educate myself, and "anything Victoria likes is boring." My reason for having such a wide interest in the Globe is simply because there are so many problems which no one is willing to fix. When will the West face up to Russia properly instead of sanctioning them and putting them on hold? When will people actually start taking Global Warming seriously? Those are only some of my problems. And the racial discrimination people see everyday. Aswell as USA's hideous gunlaws - oh the list goes on forever!
  We are the ones who aren't just listening to the same words coming out of politicians mouths, but the ones who are inventing new ones. Don't get me wrong - some politicians are hope. They are the ones who have inspired me. 

There are also the ones who claim children are too interested in politics, and since when did they start caring about taxes. We see problems aswell, whether it is at school, on the news or on the bus. We are aware of what is happening around us - some more than others. If the General Election taught me something, it's that everyone I'm friends with on Facebook apparently has a degree in Politics. Typing salty statuses explaining how we shouldn't be involved in what's going on and continue playing with toys. As far as I am concerned, before the flow of political teenagers (sorry - best name I could think of) adults would complain about how we waste our time on stuff that wouldn't help us in our future. Now that a lot of us have come over that barrier, we apparently aren't welcome. Why? Because they're scared of our ideas.

Next time you tell Abby Tomlinson that she can't vote, so why does she write for the Guardian and appears on Sky News - or you tell a fourteen year old like me that I shouldn't care, please consider that we have every right to be part of the moving act towards fairness and equality, we have a brain which is capable of brining new ideas.

Denmark does have politics!

I hope that the title was already obvious. Yes, we do!! And although Denmark is probably the worlds least problematic country (okay... maybe not) we still need to make sure to maintain a stable economy and happy society.
       I am not sure where you come from, but wherever you live your government and country is unique and there is no denying that. That is why politics can be difficult. We haven't got easy solutions and we need to keep trying, hoping that we won't harm or disappoint too many. 
       As I was saying - Denmark is a happy country. If Denmark was a student, she would be the one who gets A*'s in every exam, is friends with everybody and is kind and generous, but yet still makes mistakes.
       At the moment Denmark is the country with most burglars and house break-in's in the EU. And we have quite a lot of ghetto's aswell. But we are very environmentally friendly, we have more windmills per head than any other country, and we have been prized as the Worlds happiest and best country several times. We were one of the first to make gay marriage legal, we have zero debt (yes, you heard me right, the government owes zero money to any country) and we have spectacular health care. I think that's all you need to know... now lets cut to the chase!

Nine parties, two blocks. The blocks are like coalitions. We have:
Blå Blok (blue block) and Rød blok (red block.) You'll be reading those words a lot.
Yes, they are named after colours, I am not sure why but at least it's easier to remember than long and despicable words.
The blue block is a centrist and right winged coalition with five parties, and the red block is left winged with five parties aswell.

The parties: 
Blue block: (in order of popularity)
- Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People's party)
- Venstre (it literally means left but they are a liberal and right wing party)
- Liberal Alliance (liberal party)
- Konservative (Conservatives)
- Kristen Demokraterne* (Christian Democrats)
*currently not in Government
Red Block:
- Social Demokraterne (Social Democrats)
- Enhedslisten (The red-green party)
- Alternativet (the Green party)
- Radikale Venstre (Danish Social Liberal Party)
- SF (Socialist People's Party)

Lot's of names to remember, even I get confused!

Just to be clear, these coalitions are not 'official'. Yes, the news do refer to them, and the coalitions work closely together between their parties but this is something they created themselves and at any time they want, a party can move to the opposite block if they wish to.
Let's take a deeper look into the different blocks, focusing on the parties.

The Social Democrats (British equivalent would be Labour) is the largest party in Denmark, scoring 26.3% of the population at the General Election in June. But yet they are still not the leading party and Helle Thorning Schmidt (former Prime Minister and leader) was not re-elected. The basic reason is because the blue block scored a majority in the population, between the two blocks with their two very popular parties. Denmark has been switching on and off from having a Social Democratic to Liberal party for many years. 
After her loss in June, Helle Thorning Schmidt resigned as leader and was replaced with Mette Frederiksen. Mette is a huge opposer of prostitution, and is also known for placing her children in a private school after stating parents should not be afraid of enrolling their children to public schools.
     
 The second largest party - and the fourth largest in total - is Enhedslisten. Enhedslisten is about as left wing as you can get before turning communist. Right, maybe not quite but shortly said they are very left wing. Aswell as that they are also a green party, which is why they are called the Red - Green party in English. They are anti-private education, anti-discrimination and pro-welfare. They also want to see private ownership transferred to the working class. 
       
Alternativet (which literally means the Alternative) is a green party, that stays true to their roots. I hope you laughed at that joke. There is not much more to explain about them.. Apart from the party was created by a politician who left Radikale Venstre because he got into a row with the leader and decided to make his own party. Amazingly it is the 6th largest party while his old party stands on a 7th place. Very impressive as the party was only created about a year ago.
      Radikale Venstre (literally means the radical left) is a mix between the red and blue block, although they have decided they are a member of the red block. We could see them switch over to the blue block though, if they want to gain a bit more popularity or if they fall into a disagreement. 
      They have the same opinions on tax as the blue block, but they are in agreement with the Green Party in relation to the environment and how we should get energy. They believe we should stop using coal and oil and revert to only using wind power and other electronical ways to produce energy and electricity which won't harm our society. 
      And for the last red party, it's the Socialist People's Party. The one I always forget about. They are strong supporters of human rights and a quite green aswell.

Enough about socialism for now, let's move on to the blue block. 

If it wasn't for all the immigrants flooding into Denmark, I wouldn't be typing that the Danish People's Party is the biggest blue party and the second largest one in general. But it is. It has always been on the sideline, in 2011 it came third but still far from coming second. British people, you may not be happy to read this but Dansk Folkeparti, as we call it, is the exact equivalent to UKIP. Yes. Nigel Farage. United Kingdom Independence Party. Danish People's Party. Pia Kjærsgård (the founder). They mirror each other. 
    I saw a very interesting diagram that showed the majority of their votes came from the southern-mainland of Denmark - far away from Copenhagen! 
    But thanks to the fact that the leader of the party - Kristian Thulesen Dahl - did not want to become Prime Minister we do not have them leading our government. Thank God. 
    It was founded in 1995 by Pia Kjærsgård who is now a comedy figure in the Danish youth. She wanted better care for the elderly, better restrictions of immigrants and no more EU. After Pia Kjærsgård's resignation as the leader, she still continues as a Member of Parliament and was elected as the Speaker a few months ago. Kristian Thulesen Dahl has carried out well what she wanted, but he is a bit of a hypocrite. He calls himself a supporter of freedom of religions and has also said Denmark does not need more Muslims. When will he decide?
But we could see them winning in 2019 if Denmark doesn't control their borders properly.

Now we have Venstre. A Liberal centrist party. They are basically the Liberal Democrats from the UK, and now they really are since they have lost seats. They lost a staggering 13 seats out of a total of 175 in our Parliament. Yet their leader (Lars Løkke Rasmussen) is still Prime Minister. This is actually the second time he is Prime Minister without being elected, is this a new form of democracy? 
   Everytime I say that my dad says "wow you're such a social democrat".. he doesn't like the Social Democrats. I'm not complaining though! I like Lars Rasmussen! He has clear and fair ways to run Denmark. 
The first time he became Prime Minister was in 2009-2011. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (I'm just going to point out that Rasmussen is a very popular surname here, our Prime Minister before Anders was also a Rasmussen) was given the role of the leader of Nato. It's really a once in a lifetime opportunity to be offered that, so he said yes! And decided to make Lars Løkke the Prime Minister. This only lasted a short two years, but he is back.

Liberal Alliance is the next party. This is actually also fairly new, founded in 2007. They are the only party which supports nuclear power - which thankfully Denmark has none of. They also want to scrap high tax and want people to pay for healthcare. They are supported by the world popular investment bank Saxo Bank, who gave them 500,000 kroner (around 50,000 pounds.)
      Also on the list are the Tories. Conservatives, sorry. They're the smallest party in government with only 6 seats. Denmark did once have a Conservative Prime Minister - Poul Schülter - serving from 1982 to 1993. I'm sure Dansk Folkeparti were very happy about having a Prime Minister with a German surname. Fun fact, my town is one of the only ones that has a Conservative town council and mayor. For some reason they really seem to like David Cameron. 
    And I thought I would mention The Christian Democrats even though they failed to get enough votes to get into government. They've never really been a big or popular party, and it is certainly not the first time they've been excluded from the rest of their coalition. But they are a religious bunch of people who stick with Christian conservative rights, although that is a bit tricky in Denmark after we made gay marriage legal. 

Wow, that was a lot to go through and I hope I mentioned everything I wanted to about the parties. You might be wondering why Kristian Thulesen Dahl is not Prime Minister, because after all, he is the leader of the largest party in the largest coalition. His ambition to make the Danish People's Party grow and not to run Denmark. But let's see what he thinks in 2019...
Unlike the UK we have our General Elections every four years, which I think is fine and reasonably fair.
41,073 people chose to show up to the vote but failed to write an X on a party or candidate. A very large number I believe, especially if we think about how many parties you can choose from. 
Denmark is not only that small, awkward country close to Sweden and Germany. We also have the Faroe Islands, who have two seats in our Parliament. Around 23,000 people voted at our General Election on the Islands, and most of them voted Red.
Greenland, another part of Denmark, as far as I know, voted a majority of Red aswell. Even with four seats represented by the Faroe Islands and Greenland, the red block still could not win.

I find it quite astonishing how 85% of our mainland population voted, it is a 2% drop from our last Election. Still a 15% missing, these are mostly immigrants waiting to get approval and people who simply don't find that politics affects their lives.

Well. That was it. I very much hope that you found this just the slightest bit interesting, if you do have any questions/clarifications do comment and I'll be sure to respond.

In other news I start school tomorrow. Fantastic.

I will make sure to write a bit more about Denmark another time, as this is actually a very good place to write it. 

Well, see you soon I hope?

Victoria.

Let's start from the beginning...

Well I guess it all begins today when I'm starting this blog. I have tried several times to create one - but failed after a week or so due to lack of motivation and other obscure reasons. 

But I'm back!

I presume most of you are here because of my Instagram account.. or maybe you're reading this in 2025 which is ten years from now because I have finally become a politician or done something to change the way this world thinks. Hopefully. 

The purpose of this blog is for me to simply vent out my thoughts about current global affairs and just anything else I find worth talking about. I hope that I will inspire several people to think in a new way and learn to learn new things. 

That's some information about my blog.. but what about me? I don't wish to dedicate my first blogpost to me-me-me but it won't hurt to explain who I am. 

Victoria. 14. Live in Denmark. Have an absolutely non-understandable background. Interests include politics (main purpose of this blog in case you haven't guessed), history, British television, figure skating, maths (unless we're doing linear equations), photography and what Einsteins last words were. 

His last words were to his nurse who didn't understand or speak German, and are lost forever which annoys me incredibly! 

I've just scrolled through the page and realised I've written way too much for my first post, but I'll be back tomorrow! I'm thinking about explaining how the Danish political system works or telling who I'm voting for, for the Labour Leadership election. 

I'll sleep on that choice.

Goodnight!

Victoria.