No bike-stealing
If you had a big van in Copenhagen you could probably fill it with other people’s bikes in about three minutes. They’re everywhere and they’re not locked to anything. For some reason, nobody’s stealing them. Admittedly this one would be hard to implement without a hard reset on the entire society here.
Bilingualism
It might be a far-fetched, romantic idea at this point to wish Dublin had turned into a city where staff in shops, bars and restaurants could say ‘hi’ and then seamlessly continue the interaction in Irish or English depending on the response, but the perfect English of the Scandic countries at best shows up our terrible track record with second languages. 58% of Danes can speak conversational German – their third language – while we make toilet jokes in Irish and let our basic French slip away.
Buying better
Danes look good. Part of that is genetic, but part of it is to do with the fact that they dress well, whether in winter or summer. It’s not just the cool crowd – everyone’s looking smart. It could just be the omnipresence of Swedish giant H&M, but simple, stylish presentation is everywhere in the city, even on children, and that’s before we even get into the omnipresent and iconic Fjallraven Kanken bags. Buy well, not often, and look better.
Buying butter
Ireland produces excellent butter, cheese, ham and bread. It should be everywhere, not ghettoised to fancy southside specialist shops and farmer’s markets. Supporting producers in a vaguely nationalistic-economic way is one thing, but that’s not why we should be doing it. This stuff is good to eat.
Relax the drinking laws
There is something depressing about the widespread belief that we need strict drinking laws or we’d just ruin ourselves and everything around us. A culture of alcohol abuse is a social thing, not something we’re all individually cursed with, and a summer’s day with takeaway beer to bring with you as you stroll down the canal or to the park would, should or could be something we could enjoy responsibly. Also, remove off-licence restrictions so everyone doesn’t feel the need to drink as much they might conceivably want for the night in the two hours before they go out.
