Friday 11 February 2000

Pic of the day: Another Norway picture! Collect them all ... limited time only! :)

This does not directly concern me, yet. But it is a good bet it will. Because the potentially most powerful man in Norway just took one step forward. Jens Stoltenberg, a handsome and sympathetic young politician, was yesterday chosen as shadow Prime Minister, and he is not likely to stay in the shadow for long.

The Labor party (social democrats) is still the largest political party in Norway, and has powerful ties with most of the power structure largely built up during the party's earlier long runs in power. Lately, however, the party has been in steep decline. There are mainly two reasons for this. One, socialism is on the side track of history. Two, Torbjørn Jagland is a nerd. And a socialist nerd to boot. And the leader of Labor, and until now its PM candidate.

In striking contrast, Jens Stoltenberg looks and acts young and dynamic, humble and versatile, an idealist with realism. In short, he is a dangerous man. The women in particular love him. He is commonly referred as just Jens, to separate him from the elder Stoltenberg, also a man of good repute. The business lobby sees him as a friend. The feminists see him as a New Man. Foreigners compare him to Tony Blair. Political opponents see him as a moderate.

A song from one of my favorites, Chris de Burgh, vividly comes to mind: "Keep away, keep away! They are making the perfect man!"

There is no guessing when he will take his next step. The current centre government is an uneasy coalition of the agrarian Center Party, the conservative Christian People's Party (with the theology educated Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik) and the tiny liberal party confusingly called the Left. The government does not have a majority in the Storting, our national elected assembly. Then again, no one has. A major reason why the conservatives have supported the coalition is to keep Jagland out of power. But such is the popularity of Jens in the people, that even his opponents may get credit for bringing him into power.

That may not be necessary, though. If he waits for the next general election, he may not need the support of other parties, or even all of his own. Opinion research shows that with Jens, Labor might get close to half of the votes. Since our multi-party system favors larger parties over smaller ones (giving more representation per vote), this could pretty near pull a Blair. With two thirds of the seats in the Storting, he could do anything except change the Constitution.

It scares me that people will put so much faith in one person. It is, after all, the same barely reformed socialists; they are just fronted by Superman instead of Clark Kent. Oh well; at least we are a monarchy, so we can't elect a cowboy movie hero for president, much as we might want to... ;)
(Actually I doubt we even have a cowboy movie hero. But we have lots of cowboy song stars - country music is pretty big in the rural provinces.)

In utterly unrelated news, the PC connected to our job's time recorder system was breaking down. The fan was making lots of noise and seemed to be ready to stop as soon as we were gone for the weekend. Staffman, who usually cares for that particular PC, doesn't work on Fridays. And anyway, the machine is from 1993. So I switched it with one from 1996 or thereabouts. :)

In even less related news, I hope, I ate pot noodles for the first time today. The name is utterly misleading, it seems. It is simple noodles and some entirely harmless veggies + spices and synthetic taste, in a heat-resistant plastic container. I just added the boiling water from my water boiler, waited 2 minutes, mixed thoroughly, and waited for a while more and then it was ready to eat. A bit sharp in the taste for me (I got thirsty) but otherwise quite allright. I had expected that it might upset my somewhat sensitive digestion, but the opposite seems to be the case. Of course, this distribution of food is not the cheapest, and definitely not the most ecological. Even though plastics these days are a lot more environment-friendly than they used to be.