In Julian Cole's absence, his column this week is written by Stephen Lewis...

IT'S nice to feel proud of the place you live. I always have felt proud of living in York. Friends from the south who come to stay rave about the riverside walk from Fulford; the beauty of the city walls; the grandeur of the Minster. To top it all, there's the breathtaking scenery of the Yorkshire Dales right on our doorstep.

One of the best places in the UK to live, I always say. One of the most beautiful cities in western Europe, they agree.

And then I had to go and have a holiday in Scandinavia. And suddenly I realised what a grubby little dump the whole of Britain (not just York) really is.

It was just a few days in Copenhagen.

It's not known as one of Europe's great capitals, but this wonderful Danish city can certainly teach us Brits a thing or two about cleanliness and decency.

It has all you would expect of a great capital city. The magnificent public buildings, the picturesque harbour area, the crowds of shoppers, the wealth of restaurants, cafes and bars.

But where, I wondered, was all the traffic that should have been choking up the roads?

Where was the litter?

Where were the drunks, and the beggars, and the run-down housing of the poor?

Why were the public conveniences so clean? And, most mystifying of all, how come the trains and buses were so efficient, so regular and so on time?

It was enough to put any self-respecting Briton to shame. York claims to be an environmentally-friendly city.

Copenhagen actually is one.

It is a city where, for those who choose not to make use of the excellent public transport, the bicycle is king - where there are special routes for cyclists, separated from the road by a raised kerb, and where cars give way at junctions to bikes.

The result? A city of relatively few cars that flows and moves freely, and where the air you breathe is noticeably cleaner than over here.

After five days, we returned to Manchester Airport. The airport station was drab, the waiting room unwelcoming. With no litter bins, the platforms were strewn with rubbish. The hour hadn't been put forward on the station clocks, so they were out of kilter with the displayed arrival times - and to cap it all, we had to wait nearly an hour for our train to York.

We arrived home to the revelations about how disgusting York's public conveniences had been allowed to become over the Bank Holiday. Somehow it didn't surprise me.

Denmark is a tiny nation on the northern edge of Europe. The UK is the fourth largest economy in the world.

If the Danes can manage to keep their environment and their public services so clean and efficient so, surely, can we?

It's not rocket science, after all. The Danes achieve their first-rate public services and clean environment through taxation. Danish workers are taxed almost 50 per cent of their earnings, a friend who works there told me.

Their individual living standard is not in any noticeable way lower than ours, at least that I could see - and the money is used to make theirs a society of which to be proud.

Ours, instead, is a society distorted by individual greed - where the size of your wallet is a symbol of your status and every pound in your fist is worth two for the public purse.

It is a society of individual wealth - and public, miserable, grinding poverty.

Just look at the state of our old folks' homes, our railways and our public loos if you don't believe me.

Then feel the shame, the way I did.

Updated: 12:21 Thursday, April 04, 2002