Word: glistrup
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1973-1973
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Showing their contempt for the politicians who had been running Denmark for the past 28 years, many Danes voted for a party that literally hopes to dismantle the government. Headed by Mogens Glistrup, a maverick millionaire lawyer who boasts that he has paid no income tax for the past six years (TIME, April 9), the Progress Party wants to get rid of large numbers of Denmark's 600,000 civil servants until the country is freed from their "paper fiddling...
Abolish Taxes. Somewhat lightheartedly, Glistrup has suggested that his country could live without its Foreign and Defense ministries. "Denmark cannot defend itself," he says. "Instead of an army, we should substitute an automatic telephone-answering service that, in case of invasion, replies in Russian: 'We surrender.' " He wants to abolish all income taxes for those who make $10,000 or less. "Only fools pay income tax," Glistrup once said. "There is no bigger crime against society than paying income...
...Glistrup does not even like the idea of having a Prime Minister, and thinks that any Danish government could get by with eight instead of the present 20 ministries. What post would he like? Minister for the Abolition of Bureaucracy, of course. Simplistic and nonsensical as his platform sounds, almost 500,000 of Denmark's 3 million voters chose it, making the Progress Party, with 28 of the Folketing's 179 seats, the country's second largest...
Shattered by the election, in which the Social Democrats lost 24 seats, Prime Minister Anker Jorgensen announced that he would resign. With characteristic brashness, Glistrup suggested to Queen Margrethe II that she appoint him to head a new government, even though none of the "other nine parties had pledged him enough support to form anything close to a majority coalition. In fact, Glistrup is so disliked by other politicians that he was given the silent treatment when he entered the Folketing for the first time last week...
Despite his irreverent views, Glistrup himself is a very serious worker. He gets up at 2:30 every morning at his home north of Copenhagen, takes a swim in his indoor pool, studies papers for a couple of hours, then catches the 5:18 train to town, where he labors on, undisturbed, until his 76 associates and secretaries arrive. His law firm is, in fact, Denmark's largest...