Borgen season two eipsodes 15 to 18

Episodes 17 and 18 of season two of the Danish political drama Borgen can be considered the two most important of the entire three season series which I have experienced to date, and for the second time late on the evening of November 22^nd, 2013. They can be viewed on a stand alone basis and their significance can still be appreciated as a drama of a high quality in scripting and acting but they become that much more richer when one has experienced all the previous 16 episodes then ideally experienced in a concentrated viewing session as I have done over the past ten days and the viewing marathon is not yet over.

I have decided to write up these two of the last four episodes viewed last night, allowing myself a maximum of three hours to complete the task before lunch and setting off to experience my first live football match since the end of the season three years ago at St James Park as Newcastle now firmly established in the top half of the middle of table, In fact on reflection I need to go earlier to the city in order to obtain a passport size set of photographs, presumably from to city post office if I can remember where it is. I check the computer over a breakfast of two large mushrooms seasoned with white pepper and a porridge with apple and cherry, My first port of call will be boots in the Boots in Eldon square. It is going to prove and engaging weekend. Which merits an immoderate write up but I will postpone until later

Birgitte Nyborg, the first female Prime Minister of Denmark has survived several attempts to topple her Coalition government when she is asked to hold a secret meeting with the head of the country’s biggest industrial concern with world wide interests including the development of oilfields in an African country on the verge of all out civil war. Birgitte first encountered the industrialist who plays bridge regularly with the Queen and also takes afternoon tea, when the coalition introduced legislation to insists that 45% if board members of companies were female. She had persuaded him to take the lead in implanting th initiative and won his respect for so doing. The purpose of his visit was to try and persuade the Prime Minister to attempt to bring about a peace settlement between the two men and their supporters and armies engaged in a struggle over their different views of the country.

We all know that his kind of the behind the scenes influencing clout goes on and although the visits may be recorded it would be surprising if the chat is witnessed and fully recorded. Oh for another Nixon!

The official ruler of the African state in question controlled the capital city and the rest of the north together with the oil pipeline to the coast supplying 7% of the energy required by the 1.5 Billion Chinese economy. The leaders is an Arab speaking middle East Muslim whereas the black leader in the south wanted independence for his largely Christian population and an appropriate share of the oil revenues. As the Prime Minister is subsequently advised the Northern leader speaks perfect English and was educated at Cambridge but will only speak to her in Arabic while the Christian in South is intolerant towards homosexuals boasting there are no homosexuals in my country, apparently having killed anyone known.

Both men are reported to have engaged in atrocities although the Northern Leader has been indicted for war crimes at the Hague. Despite all the concern for the plight of the ordinary citizens caught up in the power struggle the UN is powerless to intervene because the USA is not interested enough to exert pressure on the south or the Chinese on the north. Despite the brave effort of the Norwegians to broker peace between Israel and Palestine interests in the past the request of the industrial for her coalition government to intervene looks no more that a futile attempt to get her to help protect his financial interests,

Meanwhile the extreme right wing party has been playing up the issue of immigration and continuing to demand greater controls and for repatriation and fears the coalition with again open its doors to the plight of the refugees from the African country, Birgitte reminds that as the twelfth richest nation in the world they have a duty to offer assistance to the less fortunate. She begins to think that help to preventing a civil war will have political advantages at home as well as a humanitarian solution for the people of the country in question. The interesting aspect of even this character is that is oft speaks truths about the lack of representation of those who hold the views he espouses and the way the lives of many have been turned upside down and marginalized by the decisions of many world leaders to turn their countries into multi cultural and multinational communities in attempt to break down the nationalistic and tribal tendencies which have caused significant bloodshed although it can be argued that the search for more energy to fuel the industrialization of economies and for cheap labour to create the infrastructure and develop manufacturing has been a as or even a greater cause for the conflicts as race and religion now appears to be.

To say that her Ministers, civil servants and media director Kasper are not enthusiastic about her consideration of intervening as a means of avoid the challenge of another exodus which would create genuine problems in her country as well as political ones is a great understatement. Having decide to make the effort Birgitte persuades the Industrialist to give support at once with helping to bring the parties to the point of discussing a peace process with her and to give public support through his newspaper and TV interests if the venture is not successful. Her approach impresses him even more than previously.

She brings back past foreign Minister and personal friend Bent who with aid of a stick, pills and a respirator is back to his energetic and supportive self to assist in organising and planning the peace process. She also needs an Arabic speaking Muslim and immediately thinks of the former leader of the Green Party Amir, the former environmentalist Minister in her government.

In the 15^th episode and first of the quartet under review his party refuse to compromise over her attempt to pass legislation committing the country to achieving a number of environmental targets including the reduction of emissions in a way which will achieve an across the board consensus so that the objectives of the legislation will be achieved whoever is in power in the future.

This involves her in meetings with all the political parties and she makes progress in relation to the Liberals and the New Right but this involves significant concessions although not with the extreme right who demand more for pensioners and less taxation but also tougher action on crime and immigration. The leader of the Green Party Amir is however adamant they will not compromise and Birgitte comments to Kasper that he is not a team player. I believe it is Kasper who alerts her to the fact that Amir is a classic car enthusiast and has imported a gas guzzling vehicle from the USA. She OK‘s Kasper releasing this to the media as pressure to bring him in line but the situation snowballs out of control when it is learned that he used the vehicle significantly more than he first admitted. His family suffer abuse and when he expresses concern about this aspect of the situation, Birgitte admits she was responsible and offers to call of the pressure if he agrees to the comprise. He does and the legislation is passed but at a high price as the Greens pull out of the coalition and the Prime Minister has to use all her skills to continue as a Minority coalition having to gain sufficient votes for each piece of new legislation at a time. She reminds the leader of the Liberal party the this is how he governed for several years. Amir resigns not only from the leadership of the party and his Ministerial position, but from parliament. The Prime Minister regrets that gaining the kind of agreement she felt was needed has result in the loss of a good man and politician for top level politics.

Now the Prime Minister’s motorcade draws up outside his modest home where he happens to be working in the garden to ask him to help the peace process. He declines but then changes his mind and joins the planning meeting being held in the office of the Prime Minister. They decide to make a three day secret visit to th African country to invite the two leaders to come of Denmark to negotiate a peace settlement. The trip is to be made in secret with Kasper remaining home and helping to field requests for direct contact with the PM or information about here activities and whereabouts. The story giving is that she is having a private meeting with her opposite number in France although Hanne Home comments to Katrine the former TV journalists now working again for the TV 1 Public broadcasting station after their stint at the Express newspaper controlled by the former leader of the Labour Party that it is odd as the French counterpart is also supposed to be out of his country on an official visit.

Hanne as predicted by the former Labour Party leader Michael Laugesen could not get a job anywhere after she and Katrine refused to ahead with a story smearing the former Minister of Justice Hoxenhaven for as she points Laugesen was on the board of the other main TV channel and drank wine with the editors of all other newspapers once a month. Katrine Fonsmark who he admits would find work because of her popularity fronting news programmes from TV 1 where she had also walked out on an issue of principle has been forced to take a job with TV 1 station hosting a show which reunites families together a kind of Surprise Surprise. However her former News department boss visits and invites her to take over her old position for six months because of maternity leave by her replacement. She accepts but on the condition that Hanne returns with her in a reversal of roles on a part time basis. He reluctantly agrees. The job involves her working as a reporter as well as News programme front woman. The two women are approached by a photographer they previously know with photos of the arrival of the Industrialist at the Prime Ministers apartment which is also in the same part of he building in which the Queen also has her official apartment. The photographer points out that there was no meeting listed and suggests this is suspicious.

I cannot remember the precise sequence of events that leads the two women to take an interest in the activities of the front man of the industrialist who has been working in the African country of concern and which directly leads to their positive involvement in the peace process but a photography of the man with one of the butchers involved in village clearance to enable oilfield expansion leads then to confront the man who offers to meet them at th studio to explain further his role but does not turn up and goes into hiding, but is brought out into the limelight with threat of a programme feature. He continues to deny involved in anything illegal and morally indefensible but admits any public allegation would seriously undermine confidence in his role which is essentially a behind the scenes one and he offers to provide them significant information if they are prepared to drop inquiries in relation to his role.

How Katrine gets to know the Prime Minister is visiting the African country is even more of a long story. First she meets Kasper Jual, the Prime Ministers spin doctor one morning when he is with his new partner ordering a smoothie and the two women are introduced to each other, While his partner gets a table he tells his former partner Katrine that he wants to kiss her,

Later he is approached by a junior member of the press corps who works in another government media office with whom he has and a previous encounter and they have sex largely at her instigation twice over a couple of days. However she the contacts Kasper’s latest partner at home on the basis that she is now his new girl friend and this leads to the break up of the relationship with his new partner. He is alone again when he meets Katrine in her role again for the TV station and says that he loves her while she insists there is question of them getting back together while he continues to refuse to keep part of his early life secret from her. This comes out in the 15^th episode when Kasper nearly looses in job after making a number of outbursts at the extreme right wing leader who wants to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 citing the British position of 10 years.

The right wing leader Bernedikte Nedergaard of the Freedom Party begins to get the population on his side as well as members of the Labour Party in the coalition when he is attacked and his arm severely injured by a group of young people. There are those who believe he went looking for trouble but Nyborg in responding to his request for her to be interviewed at the parliament over his bill to lower the age of criminal responsibility and is emotionally outraged when she accuses him of knowing nothing about children when in fact he lost his daughter in a drowning accident when she was 12. She echoes the plea of Kasper that they should not rob children of their childhood and greater long term problems by bringing children into the criminal justice system. She manages to win th vote by the narrowest of margins.

In this episode Kasper does not reveal the reasons for his outburst to the Prime Minister but later to Katrine. He is selling up the property of his mother who has entered into a residential home and wants the task completed as quickly as possible. The agent passes on to him a box which his mother insists he should have. It will also be remembered that the two had passionate sex also over a short period when the seminar on changing social security priorities to devote more resources to education had to be postponed because of the labour party changes in leadership. Katrine had said pointedly that the experience did not change the fundamental difference between the two which i assume is that he did not want to have children, something which he says with great emotion to his most recent partner, after she said she had wanted to have children with him.

Kasper now visit Katrine and gives her the box passed from his mother. This contains a book of press cutting a video of TV reports and a hunting knife one of four that had been displayed on a wall. We share the great emotion experienced by Katrine as she fully understands the secret, a secret which we had begin to be made aware of when Kasper visited his former family home after the death of his father and again on his visited to sell up the home have its contents cleared included the possessions from his childhood bedroom. Not only had his father sexually abused him as a twelve year old but his father’s card playing and drinking men friends when his other was away from the home. Kasper had wanted to play with the hunting knives but had been refused but then allowed to do so as means of getting his son to keep what was happening from his mother.

Now we know that in his distress the boy had stabbed in father and this had led to his father and the other men being charged and presumable convicted and imprisoned. Kasper had not be been charged with the attempted murder because of his age but had spent time in a reform school. Given the character make up of Katrine the disclosures leads them to become partners once more in a great moving scene in which she shows her deepest felt empathy. However this does not prevent her curiosity when Kasper confirms the story of the Prime Minister being out of the country in France and he temporarily leaves the flat with his briefcase of appears available for to look at and she learns of the secret visit being made to the African country.

Through her combination of charm and political wiles Birgitte is able to persuade both leaders to come to Denmark to negotiate a peace settlement, despite the northern leader first sending an emissary and she threatening to leave the country on a fools errand with all the consequently bad publicity for the north and hen he commences to talk in Arabic although he speaks excellent English.

Getting the two men and their political supporters and officials to come to Demark is only the first step which also involves getting the Hague to suspend its European arrest warrant, One of the side aspects of this double episode is the way the programme communicate the intensity abd breath and depth of such a Peace process and as Birgitte principals Bent and Amir deal with the major issues arise while a team of Danish arbitrators and conciliator hold the ring as number teams negotiate their way through a list of issues which are listed on a white board in the operations room at the PM’s HQ.

There are two developments which threaten to undermine and stop the peace process from achieving a settlement. The first and most significant issue is the discovery that that China has sold 40 attack helicopters to the North, a move which means the North has the power to crush the opposition. The North are revealed to have been stalling all the time not wanting to appear to have been against the Peace Process and lose International support which working on the basis that they would be able to defeat the South and regain control of he whole country. The South understandably want to return home to try and protect their people the best way they can. Everyone is pressed not to return home while the Prime Minister sees the Ambassador to China who although sympathetic to what she is trying to do, says it is too late, However at the last moment there is an announcement that China has turned back the ships, rather like Russia and the Cuban Missile crisis, an event being commented on again as the death of former President John Kennedy is being marked. The decision means the North is forced to continue with the process which takes longer than anticipated leaving all those participating exhausted.

The second development involves the research undertaken by Katrine and Hanne into the activities of the front man for the Danish Industrialist in the African Country. He offers to provide the two with significant information if they agree to a contracted undertaking to drop their information and interest in his activities. The detailed information which includes a break down of he oil accounts is that the North has been cheating the south of its due oil revenues by 10%.

The Prime Minister invites the two journalists to a meeting at which they shown the work being undertaken and the implications for the peace process. The two women then persuade the programme director to drop the story altogether if the peace process succeeds. When the North leader attempts further or fabrication in the hope of ending the process so the Chinese will relent and provide the military might for him to achieve all his original objectives she uses the knowledge gained from the Katrine and Hanne to blackmail him into cooperation. The two men are seen to shake hands on the deal at a media conference and the Prime Minister is acclaimed world wide and within Demark for putting the county on the political success map. Things could not appear to be going any better for the Prime Minister, and then her world comes crashing down all over again.

In previous notes I have explained how the relationship between Birgitte and her husband came to break down and her attempts to save the relationship finally accepting the situation, agreeing to the divorce and developing relationship with her husband and his new partner which involve creating an open and friendly atmosphere to enables the children to spend time with both parents, although because of the intensity and nature of her role they come to spend more time with their father and partner than they do with Birgitte although she employs a nanny to help her and the children. The nanny moves in while l she is away from home during the visit to Africa and her involvement in subsequent peace process, given that she has all her other government, Parliamentary and political roles to perform.

The boy Magnus appears to have well adjusted to the situation although earlier he was showing disturbance at the loss of attention from his mother. It is now the older daughter to comes into focus as she refuses to attend the annual holiday camp with other teenagers. Birgitte puts her daughter‘s difficult behaviour due to adolescence. She in effect forces the girl to attend the camp and keep in touch by phone. However as the peace process commences the girl attempts to ring her mother and is rebuffed by the official secretary who has replaced Sanne the young woman Birgitte and wanted to replaced but grew to appreciate despite her lapse had a kind and thoughtful heart and got on well with the children. When the school responsible for the camp are also unable to get into contact with her they attempt to contact the father who is also away and it is left to his partner to collect the young woman who in turn advises Birgitte at the earliest opportunity. The young woman has had an emotional breakdown and attack.

Arrangements are made for the girl to see a psychiatrist and he like the new partner of the former husband recommend a course of anti depressant to enable the talking with the girl to work. Birgitte is not happy about her daughter taking “happy pills” nor is the girl herself and when Birgitte is involved with the peace visit and subsequent negotiations her daughter parents to take the tablet and then spits out, When her brother discovers what she is doing he is bullied into silence with the inevitable consequence that she breaks down into a psychotic state and is rushed to hospital when the occultist explains that often you g women refuse to take the tablets in an attempt to keep some control over their lives but the impact of the sudden withdrawal leaves them ill and in a dangerous situation. He impresses on the parents that their will have to be major changes if their daughter is to get better,

While they reflect on the information and situation a TV in the hospital waiting area reports on the success of the conference and the enhanced standing of the Prime Minister. This segment of programme could be described as the price to be paid.

Borgen season two episodes 1-4

My approach to season two of Borgen will be different that previously attempting to concentrate on the individual personal stories and then adding the personal life information of the Prime Minister Birgitte and her family as well as of Kasper her media Director and Katrine the dedicate journalist with integrity who has moved from the TV station One rather like our BBC One where she and Kasper once worked together for a short time to working for Hanne Holm to the Express scandal sheet directed by the former leader of the labour Party on a mission to destroy the Prime Minister who he has come to hate, after Birgitte rejected his attempt to outwit and force her to accept him as Prime Minister after she had been appointed to try and form a new coalition cabinet.

It will be recalled that on becoming the Prime Minister Birgitte had quickly discovered how much of her time had to be devoted to the job so that even when home she was reading paper or thinking about the latest issues which required her attention. At first her teenage daughter appeared the most well adjusted to the situation and it as her son and then her husband who reacted badly, the son with wetting himself and not wanting to go to school, to an extent that towards the end of the first year there ware days when she had her son at the office with her being cared for by others and even in this instance she brings him in once more to her office as she is taking him for a medical appointment later that morning.

In the second season after the separation with her husband has taken place, the boy makes it plain he wants increasingly to be with his father and situation comes to a head after the husband discloses that he is now in a serious ongoing relationship and wants to introduce the children to his new woman.

Birgitte reacts emotionally to the request for them to meet the woman on a visit to the pictures but then changes her mind, spends time tidying the house and herself only for the husband to agree the time is not right and they should meet casually rather than formally in the first instance

This happens when she is in the midst of unclogging the sink after washing her hair which is still wet. She then agrees to the children staying with him and the woman when he is on a four day visit to see his/her parents before Christmas which they are spending with her this first year. She receives a call from her daughter at one point when in the background she can hear the noise of her son having a great time and it is evident that both children get on very well with the woman who despite having a career has the time for home cooking, something which Birgitte rarely has the time to do, arranging for home delivered meals which son Magnus in particular rejects.

Birgitte is also resistant to signing the divorce papers and admit to her husband that she does not want them to part in such a definite way, but common sense and reality prevails and eventually she signs, signalling acceptance of position and her need to adjust to a new era as a single and desirable comparatively young woman once more. Late one night with the sink still blocked (presumably she has forgotten to stock up with a sink unblocker the young driver calls with an important letter which requires her immediate signature and they end up in bed. Kasper arranges for him to move to another ministry and to keep his mouth shut. However this is not the end of the matter.

In the third of the four episodes the Cabinet is preoccupied with finding greater priority on education and this mean finding the required funds from another budget and the plan is to wind back what had been a policy to introduce early retirement for everyone paying the state pension at an earlier age if individuals wished to retire early. The cabinet are to hold a much published seminar in a residential hotel to working out the policies and details consequential to the plan but at the last moment the leader, a man good man from the trade union movement but not a leader, but who had beaten the ambitious number two and subsequent Minister of Justice insisted on having only a professional relationship because of his machinations in relation to the bugging of another governing Coalition party and the current Minister for equality.

He and other members of the Labour Party demanding that they have time out to hold a Party meeting stopping the Seminar in its tracks just after it commences, They then make the announcement that the leader has resigned with the former Minister of Justice taking over as interim leader which is subsequently confirmed. The seminar is postponed but as it is late in the day a number of participants, including some of the media remain at the hotel.

This includes the new leader of the Labour party who Katrine, attending with Hanne Holm for the Express spots talking to the temporary photographer as an intern attached to the regular man. We the audience appreciate the previous allegations about the Leader being homosexual within his marriage with children, a homosexual with an interest in young men. We the audience see him go to the room of the new Leader and that someone else is taking photos from outside the hotel at the uncovered and lit window.

Katrine is also distracted as Kasper despite having a established a relationship with a beautiful loving young woman is still in love with her and sexually attracted so they have great sex when after a rebuff to his advances he goes to her room and they passionately embrace. They have sex again the following day but Katrine makes it clear that this changes nothing about the impossibility of their relationship.

In part because of this and in part because of the demands from is position as the Director of Communications for the Prime Minister, his partner senses that he is not with her when they are together, in the same way experienced at first and questions if he still wants to move in with her. He confirms his wish and previously he had explained that he had few possession, spinning the tale that he had something with his parents who lived in the South of France despite the death of his father and his mother living in Denmark. I cannot remember the time sequence but at one point Katrine is musing to Hanne about being 31 without a husband and children and having gone backwards in her career compared to that of Hanne. Kasper arrange with his girl friend to celebrate the birthday with Katrine with a meal out, and they are joined by Hanne for he occasion although Kasper still arrives late home.

In the fourth of the four first episodes of the second season, the former Labour Leader tells Brigitte and Hanne to publish the story of the new Labour Leader having sex with a young man on the grounds that being bisexual is something he had denied and kept from his wife and children. The two female journalists are not happy with the story and feel something is not right given that their boss has previously pressed them to smear the politician who had taken his position from him. They notice that the photographs the published are only part of a set and therefore when the boss is occupied in a meeting with Hanne, Katrine uses the password supplied by Hanne to check his computer and gains access to all the photos which reveal that the participant is none other than the intern. They make further investigations and discover that the young man works as a male escort and get him to visit Katrine with Hanne and force him to disclose that he was hired by the former Labour Leader Michael Laugesen on the understanding that his face would not be disclosed.

Having gathered the evidence they confront Laugesen and demand the stops the story. When he refuse they resign and while he admits Katrine will get another job he tells Hanne she will not. He then takes great delight in meeting with Hoxenhausen and advising him that the photos accompanying an article will be released the following morning, Hoxenhausen goes to see the Prime Minister and she recognises the harm this could do to the Party as well as to the man and his family and advises that this does not necessarily mean the end of his career if he breaks the information first and goes immediately to alert his wife and children. He is appreciative of the response of the Prime Minister given the way he has behaved to keep his position and to try and replace her as Prime Minister. However he cannot tell his wife and children or cope with the media attention that will follow, He is found in his car dead having taken an overdose of sleeping pills taken from the private bathroom of the Prime Minister. Birgitte then demands to see Laugesen and warns him to stop the adverse publicity about the dead man or she will reveal that he framed the former politician. However while Laugesen knows he has been beaten he also mentions that he knows about her and the official Chauffer who contrary to his promise to Kasper has told th story to the former Labour Leader.

The second political story in the second season concerns the need to appoint a new Danish Commissioner for Europe and if the person is of the right calibre the allocation of an important Ministerial position. The best person is her former trusted adviser an Financial Minister Bent who early and in the run and at the commencement of the second year had warned that she could not afford political friends and that to gain continuing Labour support she would have to agree with whatever demands they made. Their price was the scalp of Bent which he took hard but still remained powerful the party’s deputy chairperson but now he tended to disagreed with everything Birgitte wanted to do and vice versa. She decides that he is the best person for the European position and where the post pays double that of the Prime Minister. However he angrily rejects the offer saying she wants to get him out of the way, In fact separate his wife comes to visit to plead with her not to appointment him because she now sees more of him and he is a much less stressed person.

She then offers the position to Kruse, the up and coming young minister and a protégée friend of Bent from her party and who is the Europe Minister in the cabinet. He declines saying he wants to play his role at home as Denmark is to chair the European commission for six months coming up shortly. He real motive is wanting to build up his popularity and support base for a leadership bid at the appropriate time. He offers to try and persuade Bent to reconsider and she is delighted when in the last hours before the arranged announcement and presentation of the nomination Bent agrees, However he collapses and is rushed to hospital. It then emerges that Bent’s wife had told Kruse that her husband already had an embolism the previous she which he had kept quiet and why she had pleaded that he should not be offered the position, The Prime Minister then insists that Kruse take the appointment of European Commissioner.

I would also mention that that in the fourth episode there us another power Battle over the position for Prime Minister when a Danish cargo vessel is hijacked and Danish seaman kidnapped. Traditionally the PM take the lead and decisions in such a situation but everything is done to take the initiative away from her but she outwits and arranges for a Danish special forces unit to rescue the kidnapped having established they are board the hijacked vessel as it can be stopped by a Danish Warship before reaching port.

The series opened with a moving story about the involvement of the Danish government in the war on terror in Afghanistan and where the Taliban are having their onslaught on allied forces in order to force an earlier withdrawal than announced and before the Afghans have been adequately prepared to provide for their own security. Birgitte is on a visit with Kasper but they have to quickly leave when a patrol from the Danish base is blown up with more casualties in a day tan previously. Now a short whole beforehand an eighteen year old had been photographed with the Prime Minister.

Also visiting the base is Katrine and a photographer with their paper having arranged for them to be embedded but because of the deteriorating situation they are also forced to leave for the homeland early.

Birgitte and her Party and the Greens had been opposed to Danish military involvement in the conflict supported the earliest possible withdrawal. However now she is getting conflicting pressure with the Military saying they should not appear to be yielding to pressure which would reinforce the position of the Taliban and add more pressure on everyone making the situation even more dangerous, a view which is that of the United State and most other supporting European member states

Katrine wants to do a story about the impact of the death on the families and goes to the father of the young man photographed with the Prime Minister, and who refuses to hand over the letter the young man will have written in the event or to say anything that it senseless and he did not understand or forgive his son for joining up and go to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister appears to be supported by the Liberal Leader Hesselboe but who in fact outsmarts and wants her to send in more men and better equipped. Because her Cabinet is divided it appears she is not to attend a meeting with bereaved parents when it has been arranged for them to meet political Leaders. She sees the local army commander she met on the visit to Afghanistan back with the bodies of the killed young men and asks him what he wants and this has the effect of getting her to go to the meeting with the families where the father of the young boy gives her the photo of the two and says it is senseless, The Prime Minister sees him and her is persuaded to read the letter the by has written, after which he gives to Katrine to publish and her story goes out with the headline 96000 children.

This is a quote from the letter in which he young man says sorry to his father because it means that he has did, he says he remains the happy go lucky young seeking adventurer but he does not regret his actions because there 96000 more children alive than there would have been and because of the schools opened with girls also being able to attend. Birgitte has also met representatives of he NGO’s, Non Government Organisations including a woman who draws attention to the things she can do which were forbidden under Taliban rule. Birgitte then announces that she has decided to send more troops with more and better equipment to the agreement of the majority of those in parliament and in the country at large.

She has com full circle in confronting the challenges of the realities of day to day politics as Prime Minister and Party leader of a coalition with the idealism and principles which brought her into to politic and to join the Moderate party.

Boardwalk Empire season three reminder and episodes i to 4 of season four

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• The third season of the Boardwalk Empire ( see 0038 for Seasons One and Two reprise) commences with everyone recovering from the shocks of the deaths of Jimmy and his wife, and Doyle and with Richard Harrow seeking revenge. The season begins on New Year’s Eve 1922.
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• Gyp Rosetti is introduced as a violent, easily offended Sicilian mobster from New York City. During a meeting with Nucky Thompson, the boss of Atlantic City who has survived a major attempt to dethrone him by the man he once dethroned and who joined forces with War veteran and former right hand man Jimmy Karmody, and Nucky’s brother Eli, former Police Chief, who went to prison to save Nucky and who has a large family which Nucky has envied at a distance.
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• Rosetti receives some bad news regarding his new exclusive partnership with Rothstein from New York who gives the impression of being the sophisticated and aloof from the other mobsters, especially Capone and those from Chicago. In retaliation, Rosetti racially insults everyone in the room and storms out.
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• Nucky attends meetings and deals with his mistress and now wife‘s Margaret's past actions, which made him an involuntary philanthropist when she donated millions of dollars worth of New Jersey landholdings to achieve her social welfare projects.
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• Van Alden former prohibition agent sent to nail Nucky and who slid th slippery slop committing fraud, then murder from his sexual passions, divorcing and living with a former mistress of Nucky, now works as a clothing iron salesman in Chicago when he stumbles into a dispute between Al Capone and Dean O'Banion, the latest mob leader on the scene.
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• Jimmy's death has left Richard Harrow, (the War hero sniper now with half a face and a mask who became hit man for Jimmy) in charge of his son while Jimmy‘s mother Gillian who bore him when 13 years of age, refuses to let the boy learn the truth about his parents.
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• Eli gets out of jail and has trouble accepting his brother's plans for him and the new reality at home. Nucky meets 'special investigator' Gaston Means, acting as Harry Daugherty's bagman in New York. Displeased by Nucky's refusal to sell alcohol to anyone but Rothstein, Gyp takes over the strategically situated small town of Tabor Heights, New Jersey and blockades the alcohol shipments between Atlantic City and New York. Margaret's interest for the sanitary conditions at St. Theresa's hospital is met by resistance from both patients and doctors, and Chalky White, the leader of the black community and who manager a local still, argues with his daughter over their conflicting plans about her future, especially her involvement with a young man from a good family.
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• Owen from Ireland with IRA background and where Nucky has made a visit to gain fresh supplies of whisky has established an increasingly prominent role in the bootlegging operation which is met jealousy from Nucky when they both end up hiding out in the house of a precocious liquor thief. Nucky’s has become suspicious of the friendship between Owen and his wife and their children(by marriage)
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• Capone, whose son is being bullied at school, takes out his frustrations on one of O'Banion's men. Charlie Luciano sits down with Masseria, who muscles a high tax on Lucky's growing business and tells him to be wary of his Jewish partners. Mickey receives a menacing phone call from Rothstein and, over Eli's objections, ignores Nucky's instructions not to transport liquor through Tabor Heights, which leads to “grave” consequences.
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• Van Alden comes clean with his latest wife, but this backfires when they are visited by a Prohibition agent, forcing him to return to O'Banion's place. Margaret suffers setbacks while trying to promote her Women's Health clinic. Gillian seeks Leander's counsel in financing her bordello, for which she must either change her business model or let go of the past. Nucky enlists a reluctant Eddie Cantor to help a Billie Holiday type singer move up in the world. An attempt is made on Gyp Rosetti's life.
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• Nucky manoeuvres to avoid taking a political fall for the Attorney General, getting arrested in the process. Eli and Mickey visit Tabor Heights. Richard Harrow befriends an older veteran and his daughter, Julia. Gillian takes on a young lover, who she names "James". While her grandson longs for a male presence in the house, Margaret rekindles an affair with Owen.
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• Nucky, Eli, and their respective families bond over Easter dinner. Richard takes young Tommy to dine with the Sagorskys, and Julia accepts Richard's invitation to the local Carnival. In danger of reprisal over his actions in Tabor Heights, Gyp brokers a deal with his boss, Joe Masseria. Gillian comes to terms with the death of her son Jimmy.
• Arrangements are made for Nucky to attend a private club, where he makes a proposal to the Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. Torrio, fresh from an Italian vacation, gives Al a larger role in business operations. Van Alden, now indebted to O'Banion, is forced to work for him after hours, while at the same time facing problems in his day job. Nucky and Billie argue about the nature of their relationship. Margaret decides to take a stand on birth control and looks for a birthday pony with Owen's help. Gillian cuts ties with Luciano, giving Gyp a tip in the process. The result is an attempt on Nucky's life in which Billie is killed
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• Taking refuge in the Ritz, a wounded and feverish Nucky struggles to be the man in charge with the help of his family and closest accomplices while they plan his next move. Gyp returns to Tabor Heights and starts his own importing operation with the blessing of Joe Masseria. Richard takes Julia to a dance and Gillian blames him for Tommy's latest misadventure, firing him.
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• Nucky and Owen plan a move against New York, pursuing Masseria first. A middle-man who could expose both Nucky and the Attorney General is targeted. Van Alden’s new sales job gets him into trouble with Capone. Richard and Julia's relationship takes a step forward. After being rejected by Rothstein, Luciano, and Lansky go into business with Masseria. Margaret reveals to Owen that she is pregnant with his baby, but before they can run away together he is killed by Masseria's men.
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• Gyp and his crew move into Atlantic City. Nucky goes on the run while his wife disappears with her children; She has taken a trip to New York previously to meet her family of hard worker brother and sisters who have now idea of her life when coming first to the USA from Ireland.
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• Nucky and wounded Eddie turn to Chalky for help, and Chalky has a standoff with Rosetti. Lansky advises Luciano to be cautious in their new heroin operation. Gillian turns on Richard, evicting him from the house. Eli brings Capone back from Chicago with him as a major ally in Nucky's fight to hold onto his empire.
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• It's a full-scale war in Atlantic City, and bodies are piling up on both sides. Operating out of a lumber yard, Nucky seeks to weaken the Rosetti/Masseria alliance while struggling to keep peace between Capone and Chalky. In New York, Luciano is framed by Masseria and Rothstein with the aid of corrupt police. Gillian makes a failed attempt to woo, drug and presumably kill Rosetti. Nucky strikes a deal with Rothstein to break Rosetti's strength. Chalky and Capone's army massacre Masseria's men as they are retreating to NYC. Richard storms Gillian's house and kills many of Rosetti's men. Rosetti escapes. Nucky then uses his political connections to settle a score with Rothstein.
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• Richard gives Tommy a new home at Julia's, sacrificing his own relationship with her in the process. Rosetti meets with his three remaining henchmen but, on orders from Nucky, Gyp's main assistant stabs him to death while he is urinating on a beach. Nucky tracks down Margaret, who ends their relationship. A depressed Nucky then proceeds to walk the boardwalk where he is recognized by other pedestrians. While he is lonely, he has finally retaken control of Atlantic City bringing to an end Season three,.
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• The latest season, the fourth begins on February 1924 with Nucky in a hotel suite rarely venturing out and cared for his by his now disabled but devoted German background valet who has been with him throughout the series and a great keeper of secrets. The valet has great difficulty in carrying out his role, insisting on pouring tea with a very shaky hand and putting out the daily changes of clothing all with increasing difficulty. Nucky suggests getting a helper which is furiously rejected.
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• As Nucky recovers his zest for life after doing a deal with the New York and other mobsters, at a price to let sleeping dogs lay, he plans a trip to Tampa Florida to do a deal on more bootlegging with an associates who he owes. He plans to travel alone but before he sorts something out with the valet giving him powers and offering him promotion as well as an assistant to undertake the chores. While Nucky is away the valet meets up with the brother of Al Capone to make a payment and then takes the gangster on a night out of a meal and the to get drunk sing with his German cronies.
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• Down in Tampa he befriends a woman bar owner Sally having resisted offers of female entertainment from his hosts and tells her about losing contact with Margaret’s children who he came to regard as his own and who has gone to New York to her family. My impression is that she is not out of the series yet.
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• Nucky’s associate is desperate for the deal to go ahead to pay off debts accrued after custom’s men captures three ships laden with illicit alcohol. He finds out that the man behind the deal has great connections and is in control of the local situation but he declines the deal because of knowing th plans fo the area to be developed which means that it will become difficult to impossible for the ships to bring their illicit cargo offshore and to be unloaded on quite beaches and for the trucks then to head north without being noticed by the new good citizens who have bought holiday homes or moved in the district,
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• After listening to Sally he decided that the best approach is to buy up the investment land and go ahead with the deal because the location enables cargo to be delivered from new areas of the world, thus increasing the volume of alcohol and drugs available. He contacts his associate to give him the good news, but too late as the associate has inserted a meat type cleaver into the head of the local gangsters as th man had attacked him for failing to find a way to meet the debt incurred when customs apprehended three of the whisky laden ships. Nucky does not like the way Rothstein behaved and decides to make Lanksy the other New York boss accompanying Rothstein his partner in the Tampa deal.
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• Talking of customs a new prohibition agent Warren Know is introduced on a special commission from J Edgar Hoover to infiltrate posing as a corrupt official.
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• Rothstein visit Atlantic City to discuss the suggestion that he joins Nucky in the Tampa expansion by making a substantial cash investment. Rothstein’s way of responding is to insist that Nucky’s plays him at poker with increasing stakes and where Nucky proves he has not lost his winning abilities at cards.
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• In New York Van Alden is being used to deliver flowers by his boss and bumps into Capone who is visiting an associate in hospital. Capone then insists on Van Alden assisting him in some strong arm visits as he decided to go debt collecting for the man in the hospital. This involves growing a man through a glass window on the roof of a car below in one instance. Returning they spot one of distribution vehicles of Van Alden’s boss in an deserted street and decided to drive away to a secluded spot to remove the valuable goods only when they hear knocking as the driver who had gone to sleep at the back wants to be let out. While it does not matter to Capone and his companion that the driver recognises them, the drawing attention to Van Alden that his boss O’Banion might be concerned and gives the former prohibition officer a hand gun. Just to make sure that the man is dead after Val Alden has shot him in the back as he rushes away, Capone takes a machine gun and fires a clip at the poor man. Van Alden has not alternative but to accept the offer of Capone to work for him as a hard man. Van Alden had recently been employed by his boss to break heads stopping a political candidate gaining votes in an important election.
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• The first episodes of the fourth series have also features the club the night club that Chalky White has opened as he attempted to move into a “respectable”. The cub is daily managed by an assistant who when a white booking agent, accompanied by his white wife calls bringing two black male tap dancers the wife sets her cap at the manager and who obliges. However when he is the midst of passionate sex the husband enters and wants to watch while he masturbates, having first feigned anger and demanding the manager makes a humiliating acceptance of continuing to serve the white as a superior beings. The manager then beats the agent to death before the horrified wife who runs off an cannot be found after Chalky is called into sort out the mess.
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• Chalky and the manager are then visited by a new character from New York who appears to be in control of Harlem having a financial piece of everything going, while also controlling all entertainment acts and also heading a campaign/movement for black power. The man has the window of the agent with him and demands compensation. Against the wishes of the manager Chalky gives the man ten percent interest in his club after the man has stopped all his entertainers from performing in the club. The man then has some of his assistants killing the widow and dumping her body in an secluded spot on their way back to New York. He also makes overtures to a disgruntled manager, codifying that Chalk had offered to sacrifice the manager as part of the compensation deal.
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• Another regular character also featured is Richard Harrow the World war one veteran, who return to the family home where his pregnant sister is trying to keep the holding going having recently lost her husband and getting into debt. Richard has called in at the family home having obtained a commission to kill dome one in the nearby ton. However when he makes he visit he decides not to kill the individual.
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• Whether he had experienced too many killings or whether something has triggered within him he has lost his appetite for killing. He is continuing to grieve for the deaths of Jimmy’s wife and having to give up the boy leaving the child the care of young women with whom he would have been able to have a meaningful relationship despite his facial disfigurement if he had not become a hired killer. He is also affected when his dog kept at the holding by his sister needs to be put down and he cannot use the hand gun she has found that he has to do so. She kills the dog.
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• The sister has what used be called a Gentleman caller who is willing to make friends with the brother and wants to provide a home for all of them, something the sister begins to warm to. The man who hired Richard then turns up seeking retribution because the contracted killing has not been carried out. He gets the better of Richard when they fight and it is the sister who uses a shot gun to save her brother, This underlines Richard‘s inability to lead a normal life so he moves on.
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• Gillian, (Jimmy‘s mother turned into a whore by the man who wronged her with the help of Nucky and who owned and ran the bordello before the massacre of clients and staff to prevent her gaining control of the boy), survived and is attempting to sell or rent out the property, offering herself to enquiries if they decide the property is not for them. One of the visitors is a chain store owner who wants the property short term and then hires Gillian to show him around and then to pose as his wife when he meets someone and his wife to a dinner which will hopeful seal a deal bringing the two businesses together in a common enterprise. Gillian does so well that that the man takes an interest and is at the point of buying an engagement ring when they run into one of her former former clients.
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• Eli’s widest son is now going to university college and as with younger brother Michael in the Godfather or Soprano and his son and daughter, Eli wants his son to make something legitimate of his life, become a lawyer and keep out of the gangster business. Taking him back to college he tells the boy to stay in the car when he make a call on a whisky storehouse on the way. The son finds himself a social fish out of what among the sophisticated and old money other students and tries to ingratiate himself by offering to find alcohol for a party and eventually gets away with a case after being caught trying to take one with the threat of his father being contacted.
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• At the party his standing rises as he finds himself alone with one of the old money young girls only to be interrupted by the arrival of the main local social leader and his cronies and he feels humiliated. To get his own back he laces the drink of the tormenter in such a way that the young man can not get to the toilet in time and spends the rest of the night there to be discovered in the morning that the substance has proved lethal.
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• That the series so far continues to demonstrate that nothing lasts and that there is a high price to pay for the villainy although a few of the principals live on, at least for the time being.