22 April 2003

Fire hazard in southern Norway (Dagsavisen)

Large parts of the countryside in southern Norway are a potential fire hazard. A 56-year-old man died on Monday when a fire he had lit to dispose of waste timber ignited the surrounding heather, which is currently tinder-dry, and blazed out of control. Even Skredsvig, a senior engineer with the Directorate for Fire and Explosion Prevention (DBE), warned there was a serious risk of brush fires in large parts of southern Norway now that the snow has melted. “More or less everywhere in southern Norway where the snow has gone and the grass is not yet green is a fire trap,” he said. According to Mr Skredsvig, the current situation is very much out of the ordinary, with the dry weather and high winds in the west country being the worst possible combination of risk factors.

Norway is one of the countries in western Europe that loses most working days as a result of strike action. Denmark tops the league table when it comes to strikes, with Spain in second place. In third place and climbing is Norway. The main reason for this is that strike action has fallen significantly in a number of EU countries, such as Italy, Spain, the UK, Ireland and Greece, since the 1980s and early 1990s. The Norwegian strike figures fluctuate wildly, and confirm the ‘truth’ that Norwegian business life is hit by industrial disputes every second year. The major disputes in 1998 and 2000 are what have pushed Norway into third place in Europe. In 2000 almost a half a million working days were lost, mainly because the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions’ private sector members refused to accept the wage settlement the union leadership had negotiated on their behalf.

The Centre Party is one of the signatories to the opposition’s pre-school day-care reform agreement, but its new leader Åslaug Haga has now come out and said the deal must be changed. Ms Haga wants to drop the controversial provision giving tax exemption for nursery places paid for by parents’ employers. The united front between the Labour Party, Progress Party, Socialist Left Party and Centre Party has therefore started to crack. “The Centre Party stands behind the agreement, we can be trusted. But we now need to get some movement on the issue. Given that all the parties agree on the overall objectives, it must be possible to arrive at a compromise. What must not happen is that families with young children end up the losers,” said Ms Haga. She has spent the Easter holiday going through the Government’s pre-school day-care report, and admits that a number of the expert opinions it includes make thought-provoking reading. Ms Haga believes that all parties must reduce their level of posturing and get down to real negotiations.

Norwegian war correspondent Åsne Seierstad came home for a two-day break in the mountains this Easter. “I desperately needed to come home. Simply did not have the energy to embark on the next phase after the war: regime change and reconstruction,” said Ms Seierstad. Early on Good Friday, she left Baghdad together with a number of other journalists. She said that she had difficulty in sorting out her many impressions. During the past few days not only journalists, but also an increasing number of Iraqis have heard what really went on during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Some of them believed Saddam. Now they have suddenly found out that for decades they have been living a lie. According to Ms Seierstad, the truth has been brutal for many. Some people have reacted with such shock that they have fallen into a coma.

“It has been a fantastic Easter, not only for those who have spent the holiday in the mountains. But when you climb high into the mountains, and experience the snow-covered plateaux and peaks, it is just exceptional. We could not have asked for any better weather than we have had this Easter,” said Anne Mari Aamelfot Hjelle, deputy general secretary of the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (DNT). The association has reported a record number of visitors at its many cabins in southern Norway.
(Dagsavisen)




Unregistered labour, fraud and child neglect in the private childminding sector have prompted the Commissioner for Children to demand that the state take over responsibility for checking up on childminders. During its investigations of the childminding industry in Oslo, the television documentary programme Brennpunkt discovered 11 children under the age of three packed into one apartment. 12 per cent of childminders take in so many children that they are in breach of the Day Care Institutions Act. Trond Waage, the Commissioner for Children, has called on the authorities to take action and put an end to what, in some cases, are appalling conditions.
(Aftenposten)




Young Norwegians are high spenders, but have a ‘come day, go day’ attitude to their own financial situation. Many simply do not bother to pay their bills. “The attitude of young people to money is changing. The number of people under the age of 25 who default on their credit card bills is rising sharply, and we see that an increasing number are choosing not to pay their bills,” said Ellen Dokk Holm, chief economist at Postbanken. According to a poll carried out by MMI, almost half of those questioned between the ages of 25 and 30 had received notification that a bill they owed had been sent to debt collectors for recovery.
(Dagsavisen)

The Easter holiday is over, spring is in the air and the juices are starting to flow again in the Norwegian political flora. If we are to believe the predictions, we could be in for a lively time in the Storting. The phrase “government crisis” hangs in the air. The Bondevik government has received plenty of political storm warnings. And the storm is partly of its own creation. The situation is strange. Have we ever seen the like before? Have we ever seen a situation in which the ruling coalition parties, the Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Liberals, and the largest opposition party, Labour, have been given such a hammering in the polls – at the same time? With the Progress Party and the Socialist Left Party, untrammelled by the responsibility of political reality, soaring to the heavens like a lark in spring?

The answer is no, for Norwegian politics is not what it was. It has become a free-for-all, with constantly shifting political alliances crossing and re-crossing the old ideological dividing lines, with issues whose life expectancy is no longer than that of a mayfly’s, and with voters who, not without cause, are also scuttling hither and thither. And in the middle of all this, the coalition government, led by Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, has to convince the voters, and itself, that it can actually run the country. It is no easy task, since everyone keeps saying that the Government is as much run over as it is in the driving seat. As such, the agreement on pre-school day-care between the Labour Party, Socialist Left Party, Progress Party and Centre Party is a shining example.

The wear and tear of holding office has aged the Bondevik government in the past year. The battle to push through a national budget was messily handled. There have been humiliating defeats in the Storting, internal frictions within the coalition itself and, of course, the eternal dilemma of what to do about the Progress Party. The result has been a excruciating downward slide for the parties that make up the coalition government.

During the course of the winter, it has become clear that this situation cannot continue. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik will have to grasp the nettle and “do something”. Both out of consideration for the three ruling coalition parties, and for the sake of his own authority within the Government.