Norway’s opposition Conservatives, promising tax cuts and better healthcare, won elections in a landslide on Monday but faced tough coalition talks with a populist party that wants to spend more of the accumulated oil riches and curb immigration.
Led by Erna Solberg, a former girl scout leader who has overcome dyslexia, the Conservatives promise to diversify the economy away from oil, privatize state firms, and reduce some of the world’s highest taxes rates to give the private sector more breathing room.
Solberg, 52, will become Norway’s second female prime minister, as well as its first Conservative prime minister since 1990. At least the top two cabinet posts – and possibly the top three – are likely to be filled by women.
…”promising tax cuts and better healthcare”
Now, I can’t completely dismiss this out of hand – perhaps they’re promising better health care by reducing government involvement and encouraging private competition. I doubt it, but it’s possible. On its face, though, that sentence comes across like “promising unicorns and fairy dust for all”.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about Norwegian politics, health care, or their Conservative party.
New government may split oil fund
July 30, 2013
Norway’s enormous sovereign wealth fund, known as the “oil fund,” looks set to be split up into several different funds if a new, non-socialist government takes over after the September 9 national election. All of its potential members think some fund spin-offs can boost earnings and competition. […]
The oil fund now amounts to around NOK 4,450 billion, [712B US or 143th US per person] and thus has become a major player in international stock markets and, more recently, real estate. Norway has gained clout as an international investor and the fund is managed through a unit of the country’s central bank, with investments subject to ethical guidelines set though the finance ministry, in turn part of the current left-center government coalition.
“a former girl scout leader who has overcome dyslexia”
well now, who ever wrote the article didn’t have a clue about dyslexia, so I won’t bother reading the rest
Hopefully Ms. Solberg will do better than Norway’s firt female Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. Red/green socialist leader starting in the late 1980s, Brundland was chair of the notorious UN commission on sustainable development that led directly to the 1992 Rio conference and Agenda 21, the key input to the Kyoto Protocol.
It says she overcame dyslexia…..not cured of it. It means she has adapted to the challenges of dyslexia.
Well, this is from her wiki bio which cites three articles. My translate tool seems to have gone missing so I cannot verify… but…
“In 2003, Solberg proposed introducing Islamic Sharia Councils in Norway after being informed of the existence of such councils in the United Kingdom,[4][5] and, in 2004, said that she wished to increase immigration to Norway.[6]
Yes, yes, yes – so-called conservative governments were elected in Oz and some Scandinavian backwater,- but are they really “conservative” as we wish it? (Civil libertarian, pro free market, pro private property) And does this really show a trend to the values we hope for? (small govt.,low taxation, freedom-based social policy).
It bears repeating, just to keep our focus, that true representative democracies driven by public will and free civil societies which catered to the needs of the common people, have only been momentary blips on a historic landscape filled with tyranny, imperialism and despotism – once for a short period in classic Athens, and Rome, a couple hundred years in Switzerland, less than a decade in France and less than a century in the US, – the rest of the world has never really known true free democratic constitutional rule and inherent civil liberty – particularly Canadians. So cheerleading for changes in foreign governments which vaguely represent the values we hold as “conservative” is somewhat of an exercise in wishful thinking.
If you study the historic record leading to the few small glimmers of democratic rule of the common majority, you see that aside from Athens, it was achieved with a great deal of popular uprising against repressive tyranny and kept by resolute defence of this precious commodity called freedom (individual and civil)
I see neither the resolve, intellect nor fortitude in the populous of the so-called democracies these days to defend/demand freedom and uncorrupted democratic representation – and so the loss of freedom and democracy continues to edge toward the new global authoritarianism.
Whether these two changes of governments in foreign nations that were being scourged by authoritarian kleptocrats will return them to classic free democracies is a matter of how vigilant the people of those nations are after they leave the polls. The same goes for us.
Jus sayin.
Sporty….read it again..she “overCOME” ?? Great editing there.
Hey, Ozzy Osborne is dyslexic!
Dislecxics ROCK.
SDA could sell that T-shirt.
Hopefully the Progress Party will pull the anti-immigration pole out of its a$$ and stick with privatization and tax cuts. This could herald a revolution…if they stay out of the Euro.
LAS >
“Hopefully the Progress Party will pull the anti-immigration pole out of its a$$…”
Oh yea, they were elected to INCREASE the car-b-ques and gang rapes.
They wanted to emulate the cultural enrichment of travelling to the ME where the Norwegians go to prison for being gang raped.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/20/world/meast/uae-norway-rape-controversy/index.html
In your wet dreams LASS.
Oh yea, they were elected to INCREASE the car-b-ques and gang rapes.
False linkage is false.
Ah yes, the Breivik bounce.