The Great Nordic Thread

[politicus]

Icelandic unemployment was at a post-crash record low in June with only 2,6% of the workforce being out of work.  Of the 4,757 unemployed a disproportionate 979 were foreigners (590 Poles).

In most countries the government would be rewarded for such a low unemployment level, but this is Iceland...

[politicus]

Anders Breivik has been admitted to Oslo University, where he is going to study political science. Despite his studies only taking place in his cell a lot of people are not happy... and it is going to be quite costly with guards having to act as intermediaries.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/uk-norway-breivik-university-idUKKCN0PR1D720150717

[politicus]

Share of foreign born in the Nordic countries:

Sweden 15.9
Norway 13.8
Iceland 10.4
Greenland 10.0
Denmark 9.9
Faroe Islands 7.4
Finland 5.4

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/which-countries-have-the-most-immigrants/

The Icelandic number is interesting. It fell from 8.3% to ca 7% after the crash, but is now well above pre-crash level. Many Icelanders have left for Norway (which is part of the reason their unemployment level is so low), but Poles and Lithuanians that left after the crash have returned and more Eastern Europeans and Asians are coming. Iceland now has the same share of immigrants as Belgium.

Norwegian numbers includes lots of Swedes, Danes and Icelanders attracted to the Emirates of Scandinavia. Greenland and the Faroes is mostly Danes and Greenlanders/Faroese born in Denmark (but a growing number of Asian women filling up the gender gap from young women leaving for Denmark) and Sweden includes a big chunk of Finns that have been there for ages.

[politicus]

I read that the Sweden Democrats are organizing a Gay Pride parade in some of Stockholm's "ghettos", which I think is pretty funny... does this get a lot of media attention in Sweden?

thats hilarious. id join in just for fun. perhaps right-populist parties should do this more often.

Getting stoned is not funny, and that is what happened to our (normal and legitimate) gay pride parade year after year when they passed through Nørrebro, which only has about a third Muslims. This parade is going through majority Muslim areas (70-75%) and is organized by Islamophobes. Violence is inevaitable.

[politicus]

Reactionary values, not quite the same thing.

[politicus]

After a thorough two month linguistic and motivational analysis senior lecturer in political communication and rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen Klaus Kjøller claims that he is now 100% certain that the leader of the right wing Breakfast Club Henrik Sass Larsen is the author of "The Secret Social Democrat", which revealed a number of internal feuds in the party.

The villain in the book is former Minister of Finance Bjarne Corydon and according to Kjøller Sass Larsen wrote the book to prevent his rival on the right wing Corydon from taking over after HTS expected loss. Instead preferring to strike a deal with Mette Frederiksen from the centre-left of the party to keep his control over the right wing.

Sass Larsen of course denies this.

Among Kjøller's more quirky facts is that Sass Larsens hometown Køge is the third most mentioned place name in the book with 22 hits (after Christiansborg and Copenhagen), while the second city of Denmark,Århus is only mentioned 3 times.

"The Secret Social Democrat" sold 30,000+ copies and the author  earned 250 000 dollars, which is very high for a Danish political book.

tl;dr: Danish academics have too much time on their hands.

[politicus]

With less than one year to go it is still wide open who will be the next President of Iceland. A new Gallup poll has 62% undecided and among the 38% with an opinion the poll is topped by two candidates who have both declined any interest in the Presidency, with another polling fourth:

Jón Gnarr 21% (after repeatedly saying he does not want to be President Gnarrs support is now mostly down to youngish male Pirate supporters and some BFs, who are likely old Best Party fans. He has 35% support among under 30s and only 3% of the 60+ segment.

LG chairman Katrín Jakobsdóttir 17%, popular with left wing women and female Pirates.

President forever (well, 20 years) Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson 11% (ironically the old Socialist is only really popular among PP voters with 40% - which is logical given his staunch Euroscepticism)

Grimsson says he may be willing to run for a sixth term, and will then retire after two years after the EU question and the constitutional bill have been handled.

Þóru Arnórsdóttur, TV journalist who ran unsuccessfully against Grimsson in 2012 and says she has no intention of running again gets 8%.

Ragna Árnadóttir, former CEO of energy company Landsvirkjun 6%

Davíð Oddsson, former PM, central bank director and current editor in chief of Morgunblaðið + grey eminence of the Icelandic right wing 3% (Oddsson as President would a nightmare come through for the left, but is completely unrealistic)

Author Þórarinn Eldjárn 2% (son of former President Kristján Eldjárn and translator of Alice in Wonderland, which would be sort of fitting in a quirky way)

Former principal of the University of Iceland Kristín Ingólfsdóttir 2%

25% mention a candidate with less than 2% support and 3% say they will vote for "any woman".

http://www.mbl.is/media/61/9161.pdf

[politicus]

IP leader Bjarni Benediktsson wants to combine the Presidential election with a vote on a new watered down constitutional bill. This will put voters in a dilemma since they approved a more far reaching constitutional proposal in 2012, which was then stalled by the pols, and can now either vote "No" in which case the government can claim the staus quo is OK or approve  a constitution that doesn't really change that much.

Still, IP and PP will in all likelyhood be out of office in 2017 and the centre-left more or less have to implement a direct democracy/public ownership to natural resources constitution if they win. Their failure to do so was one of the main reasons they lost in 2013. Also one of the key factors behind the rise of the Pirates.

[politicus]

Why is Denmark's "ritual slaughter" ban all over the international news? I thought this had been enacted more than a year ago? All news articles say that "Minister Dan Jorgensen" is commenting on it, but he's a social democrat, and (thus) not a minister anymore, right? So what's happening?

And what do the "borgerlige" parties think of this ban? Will it be repealed?

Links?

Anyway, what was banned in 2014 was ritual slaughter without prior stunning, which nobody actually practised in Denmark, so it was more a symbolic decision. All halal-slaughter had been done with prior stunning since 2004 and all kosher meat was imported.

SPP, SD, Radikale, Venstre and DPP supports the ban. So no chance of a repeal.

LA (big gov) and the Red-Greens (minority rights) were against it. Not sure about the Conservatives - they have previously been critical and considered such things government overreach, like LA. No idea about the Alternative.  

DPP is normally pro-Jewish, but animal welfare is a traditional promotion cause for them (+ stick it to the Muslims, but this affects Jews the most), so they supported it - and has campaigned on it earlier. Some of their most pro-Zionist people do not like it.

The average Dane is very pro-animal welfare, so pols generally support it - the Liberals are somewhat woolly about it if it affects their friends in the agricultural sector, but otherwise not.

EDIT: The Mosaic Congregation representing 90%+ of (religious) Danish Jews agreed in 1998 to the certification as kosher of meat from cattle that were stunned with non-penetrative captive bolt pistols. The Mosaic Congregation says that the ban therefore does not change anything. Apparently there is a small amount of meat slaughtered in this way - still most is imported.

There is also a small minority of orthodox Jews with their own little synagogue on Østerbro in Copenhagen, who do not recognize the 1998 compromise, but they already imported their kosher meat.

[politicus]

A Senate was not going to affect anyhing. The government knew it was a symbolic decision - and to block any attempt to use methods without stunning in the future.

Danish pols do not care about "the Muslim vote" (there isn't really such a thing). Ethnic votes can help in a municipal election, but there are relatively few Muslims with citizenship and they do not seem to vote based on social/religious issues - they vote on bread and butter issues. Pro-welfare state (and of course non-DPP). I doubt the Red Greens can go any higher - ethnic minorities seems more to be moving slowly to the right as many of them they get more middle class.

Immigrants to DK has always voted SD. The Eastern European Jews did it, the Poles did it, the Turks do it. 

This has been a much bigger deal abroad than in Denmark and I doubt many Muslims will think about when they vote given that it doesn't affect their access to halal meat.

[politicus]

@David: There was a poll in 2009 showing massive Muslim support for Red Bloc and although that has likely been less prevalent in the last two elections - due to more Muslims entering the home owning middle class - there is no doubt they vote more massively for Red Bloc than most ethnic minorities, but they are a small and divided group (= not easy to target) and Danish pols are not used to playing ethno-politics + they run a very high risk of scaring more Danes than they attract Muslims if they try to cater to them (as the Red Greens found out with Asmaa).

SD also feels certain that if they lose a bit of Muslim votes they will go to other Red Bloc parties. It is a segment that is taken for granted by the left - if they even think about it.

2009 poll (which was weighed using ethnic background and branch of Islam, but not level of devoutness - so includes "cultural Muslims")

89,1 Red Bloc

Left wing  25,0% (unfortunately not specified in my source - Red Greens bigger than SPP)
SD 58,3%
Radikale: 5,8%

10,9% Blue Bloc:

Liberals 5,7%
DPP 4,1% (against the permissive society and wanting a tough approach to crime ...)
Cons 1,1%

[politicus]

Marianne Rosenkvist is a member of SAP (Socialist Workers Party), the small Trotskyist sect that joined the Communists and Left Socialists to found the Red Green Alliance. They are an internal left wing opposition (or "Left Platform") to the pragmatic party leadership. So not necessarily something the Red Greens are behind as a party. Guess they have to pull stunts like this to stay relevant.

[politicus]

First poll after the summer holidays shows that the Pirates are still going strong in Iceland. It also has Bright Future just below the threshold leading to a one seat majority for Pirates + LG, which is interesting because while most observers expect the Pirates to implode before the next election, there is the tricky question who will become Prime Minister if the Pirates actually do poll 30%+.

The Pirates are an anti-politics party attracting people, who do not see themselves as politicians and don't want to govern. Of their three current MPs, two have said they don't want to seek reelection and party leader Birgitta Jonsdttor has repeatedly said she would not consider becoming PM under any circumstances. SDA is still controlled by their Blairite right wing, and they are unlikely to work well with the Pirates and all their direct democracy and transparency stuff. So unless the SDA left wing knife Arnason before the election (likely, but not a done deal) there is really only one Icelandic pol that could lead a government based on Pirate seats:

LG leader Katrin Jakobsdottir

She is a very capable politician and consistently polls at the top of pols Icelanders trust and like, but her popularity never really translates to her party, but with Pirate votes she would have a chance. An LG - Pirate majority sounds more realistic than an SDA led government based on Pirate votes. Still, the SDA left wing may topple Arnason before the election and if they can avoid his fellow Blairite Reykjavik Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson becoming his successor, they may take over whatever is left of the party at that point. But that is a lot of ifs and maybes. As it is going right now SDA could actually just as well sink below the threshold. They are lucky that BF is crashing as well, which gives them some "free" centrist votes.

On a different note, this is actually the best PP poll since February, which may be a coincidence, but still worth noticing.


Opposition:

LG 10.2%
SDA 9.6%
Pirates 35.0%
BF 4.4%

Government:

PP 12.2%
IP  23.1%

Others 5.3%
(of those: Household Party 1,0, Right Greens 0,8)


Just for fun:

Pirates + LG 45,2
IP - PP - SDA 44,9

Minor parties 9,7

Blanks 0,2

NB: Overrepresentation of provincial constituencies could screw this up, but that is far from certain.  

[politicus]

Just saw this one on the electograph blog, and since I hadn't followed this thread or even this board since last October (I tend to only lurk International elections now) I had no clue the Pirates were polling this fukcing high ! Iceland never ceases to amaze. Do you think there is a remote possibility that Iceland are in fact 300,000 comedians just fooling with us all ?

Nah, but the left lost most of its legitimacy when it failed to deliver on the constitutional matter (and a just fishing quota system), when they were in government. So people voted PP in protest and got disappointed. Now they are looking for an alternative and since they distrust the traditional left the Pirates fill that vacuum.

The Pirates are doing well because they are seen as the only credible, straight talking pols, who are prepared to fight for direct democracy, public ownership of natural resources (= no more speculation in privately owned fishing quotas, which was what started the pre-crash casino economy) and because the remaining opposition is in a sorry state.

SDA still has a self image as the big, all encompassing centre-left party, but is seen as a spent force and torn apart by internal fighting between Blairites and leftists. Left Greens got Katrin Jakobsdottir, but not much else. They are, as always, torn between Reds and Greens.

Bright Future is now completely dominated by egomanic Guðmundur Steingrímsson (having both a dad and granddad who were PMs tend to make you feel entitled to power) and disavowed by both Jon Gnarr and co-founder/former co-chairman (and former Best Party policy developer) Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir, who has left the party.

There has been some talk about creating a new united progressive party around Jakobsdottir, but the trouble is the inflated self image of SDA, the EU-question (the Pirates are officially neutral on that, only demanding a referendum, which may be an option - but many SDA and LGs feel strongly about this), and the LG left wing, which would see such a party as selling out. Generally whenever the Icelandic left tries to unite they end up more divided.

There is a growing pressure within SDA to call an extraordinary congress to get rid of Arnason. A lot will depend on who replaces him - and whether the party breaks apart. With the EU-membership issue basically dead (the widespread call for a referendum is mostly a principled direct democracy stance, not a pro-EU sentiment) it is hard to see what keeps Blairites, Scandi style SDs, feminists, left populists and old Peoples Alliance America-hating, public sector union-types in the same party, still fighting 15 old battles, while failing to attract anyone under 40 (and no working class support, but they never had that).

SDA was basically sick from the beginning. If you unite a SocDem party with three parties to its left and then tries to move it rightwards things will go wrong.

A bit of history:

SDA was founded in 1998 as an electoral alliance between the old SDs (called the People's Party); the People's Alliance - anti-American/Keflavik left wingers founded in 1956 by trade union congress chairman (and former SD leader) Hannibal Valdimirsson and therefore with most of the leftists working class support; National Awakening, a left populist fan club for Joanna Sigurdurdottir created when she lost the SD leadership battle in 1994 and filled with academics dreaming of reconnecting with the working class + the feminist Women's List. In 2000 half the Women's List and the trade union militants from the Peoples Alliance broke away and founded LG (an unlikely alliance which has fycked up that party ever since). The former SDs were in control and decided to go New Labour/Third Way, while the remaining feminists and left wingers went into internal opposition determined to take over the party - and being pro-EU preferring to stay away form Eurosceptic LG. In 2009 Joanna Sigurdurdottir is called back from semi-obscurity and takes over. She is then sabotaged by the disgruntled Blairites, who prevents the government from doing much instead pressuring her to make EU-membership the main goal of the government, despite coalition partner LG being against this. As a consequence the government gets thrashed in 2013, Iceland gets a centre-right government and the right wing takes over SDA. SDA is still split into factions originating in the original parties:

Blairites, right wing of the old SD.

Scandi-SDs/centrists, left wing of old SD + young people trying (unsuccessfully) to bridge the old battle lines.

Old People's  Party/old Women's List - academic left wing. Apart from EU indistinguishable from the Green wing of LG.

Left Populists - mostly old National Awakening, still dreaming of reconquering the working class and becoming the big national party.

The two last groups have an OK working relationship, but otherwise the ideological differences within the party are bigger than between the LG right wing and left wing SDA (which apart from EU is mostly the same).

The entire traditional left wing is seen as a spent force by many young Icelanders (and plenty of olds as well) because they are stuck in old battles and because they failed to deliver on the constitution, that was approved by a referendum in 2012. After the crash Icelanders really wanted an element of direct democracy, peoples initiative, a fair allocation of seats etc. to make sure it never happened again. That ordinary people could stop the political and corporate elite if they ever ran amok again. It is crucial in trying to understand Iceland to realize how strong this sentiment was (and is) and how much the left wing disappointed people.

[politicus]

The collapse of the Finnish left is quite unnerving.

The finnish left has never been anything above 45% combined for aa long time.

Strange comment for two reasons a) 45% would be high for the modern left wing almost anywhere in Europe and b) the Finnish left is nowhere near 45% at the moment.

Finnish Greens are Social Liberals with a twist, not water melon Greens, so this is quite low for the actual left.

[politicus]

Former co-chairman (and Best Party policy developer) Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir now says she is ready to take over the leadership of Bright Future if chairman Guðmundur Steingrímsson  leaves "voluntarily", this increases the pressure on him quite a lot. She is also willing to take the seat in the Althing that is vacant while Bjørn Olafsson is on paternity leave if Steingrímsson resigns. Party congress on September 5.

She is a political scientist and not exactly a "vote magnet" (as evidenced by her not being an MP at the moment - finished second in Reykjavik South, despite being co-leader), but she was the main architect behind transforming the Best Party from a joke to a party capable of governing (and doing so quite successfully). I see her as more of a behind the scene operator, but they are so far out now, that she may be the only person with a shot at saving BF).

Her plan is to go back to a grass roots based organization, focus on what the party will do, not how it is positioned compared to others (especially SDA) and ditch the EU-talk. The obvious dilemma is that staying on a positive message and downplaying EU-membership as topic is easier with a disciplined, top-down organization.
Plus it is never easy to reinvigorate (even partially) "the magic" from something like the Best Party and the citizens movement.

[politicus]

And associated autonomous countries like Greenland.

Never stand behind politicus and the correct categorisation of megathreads

Well, there was a reason we divided them. The main thing was that back then we had a lot of active Swedish posters, but the second was that Sweden is - for better or worse - a country with a huge symbolic value; people use it to project personal likes and dislikes more than almost any other European country. Either as some sort of progressive paradise or as an example of the follies of political correctness and naive multiculturalism (lately mostly the latter). All this has little to do with the actual Sweden, but it does make it sensible to contain it in a Sweden thread. Sometimes I think we should have two Sweden threads. A "LOL Sweden"/"Sweden is perfect"-thread and a thread for discussion of real life politics and society in Sweden. But if we only had the last kind of posts it could of course easily be merged into the GNT.

So this thread is only for Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark?

Yeah, the Nordic countries (incl. the three autonomous countries) minus Sweden. Originally it included Sweden as well, but at some point there was a lot of Swedish stuff and it dominated the thread, so Swedish Cheese and I decided to "break the Kalmar Union" and make an independent Sweden thread.

You can normally always see what a GD covers in the OP - and look up which GDs there are in the stickied General Discussion Threads-thread

[politicus]

The county court in Reykjavik has sentenced two Landsbanki bosses to pay back 237,6 mio. Icelandic kronur + interest. Former Landsbanki CEO Sigurjón Þorvaldur Árnason and the head of the banks equity division Yngvi Örn Kristinsson were convicted, but another boss was acquitted and Arnason and Kristinsson were only convicted for one of five deals.

Landsbanki were not allowed to own more than 10% of its own shares (both directly and indirectly) but five times between 7 November 2007 and 25 July 2008 Landsbanki bought shares in the bank itself, the shipping company Eimskip and investment bank Straumur-Burðarás for 1,2 billion kronur in order to prop up their share value and keep the companies floating. The main owners of these companies were billionaire Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson and his dad Björgólfur Guðmundsson, who also owned Landsbanki - partly through these companies. But the management were acquitted for those deals since the court found that is was not prove that they knew the ownership was above 10% at that time. But on 25 July 2008 Landsbanki bought 7 mio. of its own shares for 237,6 mio. kronur, which were all lost in the crash, and that is the sum the two bosses will now have to repay.

The administrator of Landsbanki had demanded the bosses should repay 1,2 billion kronur, but at least they are going to pay something (well, they will appeal and these things takes forever, but I am cautiously optimistic).

[politicus]

The first Utøya summer camp since the massacre was opened this week-end by AUF chairman Mani Hussaini. NATO SG Jens Stoltenberg,  Gro Harlem Brundtland and AP leader Jonas Gahr Støre will be among the speakers.

http://www.norwaypost.no/index.php/news/latest-news/30985

Hussaini is a Syrian born Arab-Norwegian with the stated intent of making Arbeiderpartiet "redder and greener", so he is the embodiment of everything Breivik hates.

[politicus]

Guðmundur Steingrímsson now proposes that both the chairmanship, organizational chairmanship and parliamentary leadership in BF should rotate between several persons.

It is an old idea among "alternative progressives" in Iceland. The old Women's List, the Movement/Citizens Movement and the Pirates have done this for the parliamentary leader, but doing it for all three leadership positions is crazy.

In other news GS old buddy and LG parliamentary leader Róbert Marshall calls Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir "childlish" for believing that leadership affects a party's electoral  performance.. What an idiot.

GS and RM joined BF because they had no chance of being reelected for PP and SDA respectively and having these two clowns on board have basically sunk the party, but the old Best Party people are as guilty for allowing them to assume positions of leadership.

[politicus]

Russia now also claims the North Pole. The Russians have submitted a new claim overlapping with the Danish/Greenlandic and this time it does not only touch the pole, but continues on the Greenlandic side.

http://arcticjournal.com/opinion/1739/three-countries-one-pole

Unfortunately there are now zero chance of the North Pole becoming a nature sanctuary, as former Greenlandic PM Kuupik Kleist wanted (and Greenpeace has been arguing for years).

Well, the idea was already dead with the Siumut government in Nuuk and our current government, but as long as Denmark was the only country claiming the pole it might have been revived with a IA/Centre-Left combo in Nuuk and Copenhagen. Harper has hinted that Canada would also claim it, but so far the Canadians haven't.

[politicus]

With incumbent Olafur Ragnar Grimsson contemplating running for a sixth term a new poll shows 58% of Icelanders backing a constitutional limit on how many terms a President is allowed to sit. 17% against and 25% undecided. Only PP voters are against it. Women and university graduates are most in favour of a term limit.

Of those who want a ban 45% prefer 2 terms max, 37% three terms max, while 18% wants to set the limit higher (4 or 5).

[politicus]

Guðmundur Steingrímsson and Róbert Marshall have both stepped down from their leadership posts in Bright Future, thereby fulfilling the demands of Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir for "considering" taking over. She has now taken her substitute seat in the Althing, but is not an official leader candidate yet - and can wait to the congress on September 5 to declare, if she choose to. Surprising that Steingrimursson went voluntarily, but he was under intense pressure and could probably see the writing on the wall.

[politicus]

The Pirate Party now suggests that all fishing quotes in Iceland should go on auction to be purchased by the highest bidder - Icelandic or foreign. This is the most radical suggestion for a reform of the quota system and a direct challenge to the fishing matadors that finance IP. In addition the Pirates want non-motorized boats to be able to fish as much as they like. They also want all fishing resources recognized as public property, which can never be sold or given away for more than a year.

IP has refused any reform of the fishing quota system, even though all other parties want changes, even their coalition partners in PP. Public ownership of natural resources was one of the key elements n the constitutional proposal agreed on in the 2011 referendum, and it seems the Pirates are the only ones willing to go all the way now.

This defines the Pirates as the most anti-IP party which will in itself attract some voter groups. Also the first time the Pirates have taken a stand on a major socio-economic issue, so a big step towards being a serious party.

It seems Big Fishing is losing influence in IP. A recent attempt to force IP leader Bjarni Benediktsson to block Icelandic support of EU sanctions against Russia in order to prevent a coming Russian boycott of Icelandic fishing exports failed despite support from the IP right wing.

(Icelandic fish exporters has made a fortune on the Russian market after Norway was shut out for supporting the sanctions)

Lots of crazy outbursts from the right wingers on this subject btw Professor in political science and Conservative heavyweight Hannes Holmstein actually claimed that since Iceland has always put exporting fish above anything else it would be a breach of national traditions to do so now. He mentioned they did not boycott Mussolini over Abyssinia and forbid translations of several German books critical of the Nazis in the 30s.

So basically: We didn't boycott Mussolini and we sucked up to Hitler, so why boycott Puttin?

[politicus]

Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir has declined to run for the chairmanship of Bright Future. She has instead thrown her support behind MP Brynhildur Pétursdóttir. MP Óttarr Proppé has also announced his candidature, as well as the Deputy Mayor of Hafnarfjörður (one of the municipalities where BF is allied with IP) Guðlaug Kristjánsdóttir. GK represents the right wing, which is committed to transforming the party into a genuine liberal party. Pétursdóttir is to the left of Óttarr Proppé. So a clear left-centre-right choice.

EDIT: Pétursdóttir has still not announced her candidature, so maybe she won't run at all.
....

Proppe is one the few remaining former punk rockers in BF, so maybe he can reinvigorate that touch of craziness that made the Best Party attractive:





Although he looks almost noble these days: