Well the writing as I blogged last is on the wall for this year an d the season is going to be short and mild probably with a lot of wet snow and icing. Steel edges beckon.A set of vikafjells from Aasnes appeal at 990 kr on offer, less than half price but realistically it is a bad investment and I really want steel lights from Fischer next year.
What goals for this year then,./<>??? Well it is all coloured by last years big year for me when I actaully discovered how bad I was at some basic things yet also but behind me masses of experience in control and technique and a wadding huge amount of confidence and determination to improve and get into training skis rather than my hlaf training, half tour Fischer Power Wax planks.
I managed to get around a heck of a lot of bone hard courses last year, especially drivsnesheia (Naespobovarden) when it had a big thaw back and froze of course in the next round of arctic air. I did a regular 4 to 5 hours a week as soon as conditions were okay in mid january right through to easter when i took the clister off and packed it all away, super satisfied and a bit thinner and a lot fitter.
This year things are going to be short and sweet then with more tours further a field . Located two new 600m high areas with driven tracks within a couple of hours. Hopefully we can gett some cheap way of doing the winter holiday or have a new decent job to start just after that.
Anyway goals>
1) longer tours straight away> I need to be building up to four hour motion in tours such that I get my real effect on my body which needs sustained base training.
2( shorter warm up high intensity blasts. When conditions are right and I have even just an hour to drive up the local ski track, ski and get home> peaking my intervals with real blood in the back of the throat in the new one minute three times 'switch' to increase VO2 max
3) step turning> the pros make it look hard because they are doing it way on the edge of what can be done on very narrow and light , straight skis. Some amateur videos reveal a more powerful, condifent approach which is actually a skating technique and the USA youtube exerts usually refer to both styles when presenting the essential technique. I can skate and I can do simple step turns but I need to be able to do the powerful kind on the flat to get past other skiers and of course on the downhills where plowing is either slow or for my weight a little ineffective.
4) Weight transfer in the kick> this still needs some work. I was kicking too early , unloading the leg pretty much on or even before the kick. This partly explains why I got lapped by most norwegians my age! I was getting a good work out anyway but messing up bigtime in terms of efficiency. I will maybe need to go back a step and do shorter strides and less pronounced kicks. I will need now to youtube for half an hour !!
5) be more determined to stay upright and to get through those turns. I still have a tendency to get heavy in the leg and freeze up in terms of weight transfer down hill. I need to loosen up and practice >
a) heeling into corners in the tracks. Braking before. Half plow in the corner
b) more confidence in plow in harder conditions
c) step turning as above
d) stopping worrying. it is usually a soft landing and I can afford new skipoles
e) warm up technique mentally/ take a four hour tour to include some backwards and forwards on tracks which are ideal for repeating the above, not just AB or a given set of kilometers.
The last point in five ee, is just like @bingo@ because that is where I need to be at!!! I need to stop thundering on before I have mapped into my mind a couple of basics on easy stretches and corners
I should think that this year I will get my 40km tour done somewhere with Iain my mate - it may be that this is just seven times round our local run.
One aside for those of you planning on visiting Norway to XC ski is that the southern end south of Telemark is typified by real roller coaster runs and mountain summit tours (several of our local runs include a small mountain top/hill summitt with tracks graciously driven over them !! ) because there are not the high plateaus and valley space is all used up by arable farmers or is below a the 'good snow line'. This is great fun for kids but it is challenging for a learner or for someone more serious who is looking at putting serious miles in their legs on a Norwegian stint. I recommend heading inland to Vinje in Telemark, the Geilo and Hemsedal area or given good conditions there are some excellent runs in Nordmarka and the other woods around Oslo, with a choice of taking the train for a classic 40-55km tour back to the outskirts of the city 10 mins then on the tram to your hotel or friends house down town!
For fitness training purposes you really want long undulating runs where you can diagonal kick on the downhills and are on the one had fish boning little and tucking and gliding little of the time, but these are a bit difficult to come by in the South to say it mildly. Most of the prepared runs and nearly all the floodlight courses in the whole of southland are little roller coaster runs with some being purely herring bone and glide which as I say is fun for kids but pretty rubbish for training other than cardio intervals and just as it is, up and down technique. Our local club run tracks up a little forrest road which is perfect and even has parking laybys near its start. It is undulating but has a couple of long drag, kicking up hills with only minor herring bone on the second hill, which you can avoid in a decent session by turning at the top of said summit to repeat the 3km or so each way until a final descent is made which is a blast actaully, short and scary enough for me at the bend.
Next year will be a time for tours to the high chaparal with its rolling silkefoere as they call it- silky snow conditions. This year will be using time effectively and not getting round a course for the sake of getting round and all sweaty, but as a training for the mind and neural connections as much as for the body. As always it will be training for the soul though.
tirsdag 7. januar 2014
Winter That NeVer Was...a most Un Norwegian Winter
We have had no less than seven winters in Oslo and Southland where XC skiing was a mere wander out the door, blue wax for the most and then wonderful mountain experiences on hills nearby decked with the fantastic white stuff. Okay you did get some nasty thawbacks with freezing but last year even we got a top up of snow in time for the very late and coolish easter. But not his year. Even inland Hamar, south of its little sister of Olympic 1994 fame, had its first grey christmas in 32 years. Wet. windy and relatively mild being around 10 degrees higher on average I reckon compared to the preceeding 5 years.
Frustration noj doubt abounds as people in the east and south east get a feel for what a Bergen winter is typically like, with skitours demanding at least an hour and a half in the car and then being blowy messsy affairs.
We can ski as close as that right now, but effectively using 4 hours for a couple of on skis is not worth it with the weather being cloudy and windy.
Global warming has probably caused ironically enough the last five very hard winters in the south and mid norway, with a week arctic vortex allowing high pressure areas to spill down across the moderate climes and probably shutting down the nasty north atlantic gradient. This year there was more sea ice in the arctic and the opposite happened with an unusually wild vortex powering the jet stream storms over the atlantic and also eventually spilling down in a great bow of cold misery over the mid west and eastern states of the USA.
This time last year I remember walking to work in -13C in the dark, walking to my job in a drilling company and meeting the electric car users in the garage as they plugged in to recharge due to the cold weather making it marginal for 90 km round tour or not with the heater actually on- the irony of 99% of our contracts being oil and gas, just one or two in geothermal, wasd a bit lost on me then.
onsdag 11. desember 2013
Min Beste Kokos Vanilje Langepannekake
for en stor langepanne c 40cm x 33cm , kake 3cm tjukk.
Ingredienser:
8stk store egg
250 g smør , smeltet
50ml melk
250 g kokosmasse
400 g hvetemel
550 g sukker (melis er best)
6 ts bakepulver
8 ts malt kanel
Vanilje stang eller smakvæske 6 dråper
4 ts citronsaft
Smørkrem:
250 g smør
450 g melis
2 ts vanilje smak
2-3 ss melk
1x egg plomme
2 xegg hvit
2 ts citronsaft
kakepynt etter smak: Skotske / Norske Favourite er rosa kokos
ca 8 dråpe rød konditorfarge
2 dl kokosmasse
Fremgangsmåte kake: oven på 180´C vanleg oven, 170 ´c vifte ovn.
Smelt smør og la det kjøle ned litt slikt det ikke kokker eggene når de blandes. Pisk egene, og så tilsetter flytttende lunken smør, melken og vanlije dråper og pisk blandingen opp in en mellomstor skål. Tilsetter 200g av sukkeren (best med melis) og pisk det inn 30 sekunder med elekrtisk pisk.
Så måler ut mel og resten av sukkeren i en større skål og hel in våte ingrediensene du har pisket. Pisk i 2 minutter electrisk og så tilsetter bakepulver og pisk 30 sekunder, så tilsetter kokosmasse pisk på lav fart til og med alt err blandet.
Når ovnen er på temperaturen, pisk inn citronsaften jevnt gjennom blanding og hel ut på bakerpapir lagt inn på langepanne. Sprer ut jevnt og legg opp i ovnen for 25-35 minutter, til og med det er hevet opp mye og er brun og halbv sprøtt på toppen. Prøv med en trepinne for å se at ingen av kaken klister på pinnen.
og stek kaken midt i ovnen, anbefales uten vift på hvis mulig ellers blir kakeskorp for tørt og sprøtt før kaken er bakte..
Krem:
Skil egg plommene fra hvitene. Smelt smøren over lavt varme. Bland lunken smør med egg plommene og tilsetter melisen gradvis under pisking. Tilsetter melk til og med det har litt tjukkhet men ikke fjelltopp. Da pisk inn egghvitene og smaksdråper og pisk hard på 1-2 minutter
Ta opp i kjøleskapet til og med kaken er kjølet ned sjøl og da smør over jevnt og tilsetter pynen.
Langpanne: 25 x 35 cm
mandag 11. november 2013
The New Blue-Blue Money Shuffle...Taking from The Poor and how NAV will end up with the Bill.
Now we see the true colours of the blue-blue government, who like in the UK are trying to appease the small business owners and blue meanies in Norway.
On the other hand they have a largely socialist agenda- opening up the state pension fund to pay for infrastructure and allowing more money per head to those most vunerable in society.
However the first thing to note is that they are open for more temporary workers and they have now removed a subsidy which allowed people on lower incomes to own their own home. These will both lead to more people being dependent on state money and a culture where working is less attractive than being on social benefits.
The national "house bank" is a state initiative to underwrite higher risk, lower interest loans for people like us in fact, who want to get on the property market but are exposed to temporary contracts and a lack of capital. Removing the low interest will directly lead to repossessions and will make borderline people with health issues see that work does not lend itself and going on social security sickness benefits is more attractive. It is laughably easy in norway to get onto "trygd" benefits and that I have not heard one ioata on in the new budget: originally the Frp party campaigned that these people should be out shovelling snow, but of course that takes beaurocracy. In fact that is an area for immediate cut- support for getting people into work.
Allegedly to counter balance getting people into work, the pale-blue-rinse-quite-socialist-spender government now will allow employers to have more freedom to employ people on (endless) temporary contracts. The finance minister claims that this will allow people who have been out of working life to get a foot hold. In effect it will mean that more people join the queue at NAV, the health, social security and work agency, when it suits all employers.
Excluding layabouts who have "social angst" and the type of bad backs which allows them to go mysteriously on holiday to Tenerife each year, but not work a day in ten years, then Norway has extrememly low unemployment despite having the highest unemployment benefits in Europe. The fact is there is a working culture here and it is relatively easy to both get work and to get a permanent contract, which leads to consumer-confidence and personal security and home ownership.
Opening up for more temporary employment will mean a much bigger bill for NAV within four years, and a grey area like in the UK where people are fully dependent on state income to top up uncertain and part time work. It will not affect the types of jobs where there is a large element of training or a prerequiste for education - on the one hand employers will want longer term contracts and committment from employees, while on the other employees will seek out companies with permanent contracts and avoid temping once they have enough experience.
By in large the benefits of this new loosening up will be in the service industry, and for some business cultural reason, most ironically, in the same financial industry which now denies mortgages to people on temporary contracts. I already experience the customer service level in private shops and restaurants to be on a par with the former eastern europe, and having people on temporary, seasonal contracts will lead to these positions being more social dumping with surly, untrained and unmotivated staff turning up with the lights on but no interest.
On the other hand it will also lead to more criminality as those in the border line areas of in and out of work begin to see that there is a more steady income to be attained from selling drugs, smuggling, VAT evasion , and fencing dubious sourced items.
My last employer had a policy of trying to have 20% of staff on contract. This prove completely impractical at every level in the organisation- in those positions requiring engineering skills, they got mediocre engineers or those who abused the job as a temporary short term income for a couple of months- hardly time to settle into the job. On the side of administration too, they could get qualified people, but when the temporary position was a required head count and desired to be permanent, they had found that they could not retain staff- they had spent time and effort looking for permanent positions elsewhere and did not even bother to negotiate, they just left.
For me I was more used to contracts and a fair deal of job insecurity and the poor employment protection in the UK. However with the cost of living here I have found that now I am only interested in permanent positions and I am prepared to come down in pay to be able to work within a short commute to reduce costs and increase time with the family. A temporary job now, as I ended a contract which I made into a contract from a permanent job actually, would be that for me too- zero loyalty although I would use a job offer externally to squeeze a permanent position out of the employer!
Another effect is that when a couple have children, it is the partner in temporary employment who is most likely to take sick leave on behalf of the children.
It is already quite easy to employ people temporarily, but there is a border where you must give them a "permanent " contract which gives workers here as good employment rights as workers who are members of unions in Germany for example. So what this means is being able to employ people on successive temp contracts and lay them off when you have a hole in your cash flow or want to pay more profits out. There has been a counter balance in the employer paying some more redundancy but I have not looked into the details of this, and it may be that when a contract ends then there is of course no need for them to pay up: it is the state who will, as in the UK, end up giving out massive hidden subsidies to the type of industries who should stand on their own feet and develop quality service. This will go over into public health provision of course, where private companies and cash restricted departments will do the same to try and save in money when they can stretch a lower level of resources over a period with financial motivation in front of patient need. The state will pick up the tab.
The Frp and Høyre parties (progress party and right of the house pale blue tory party) have many members who are the bourgeois - they own or manage SME sector businesses. An expansion of temporary employment will actually hurt the SME sector in Norway because it will make it easier for people to get into the larger companies in Norway in the oil, petrochemical and service industries where training abounds and also they are then in-the-door for permanent positions or when their position becomes a necessary one. Larger employers see employees as valued resources here, not a commodity of which a large percent can be brushed away easily to improve the free-cash-flow for a quarter. Being able to offer temporary contracts is far more attractive to the SME sector because they have less cash reserves and more obvious peaks and troughs in their turn-over to cost gearing. However they will find that they will struggle more to recruit properly qualified and experienced people who are not attracted to the insecurity of temping.
In trying then to "solve" a small problem of low level unemployment in general - and this being here the actual issues of disaffected youth and immigrants of a non western back ground - the new government will introduce more of a dynamic to place more otherwise productive people into state dependency on an on-off basis, while also presenting the SME sector with fewer good candidates. In reducing the investment in getting these two groups above into training and higher value work, they just create an administrative merry-go-round for NAV for them and for other non qualified staff who previously enjoyed job security and payed taxes year-in-year out, rather than collecting benefits on a frequent periodic basis.
The longer term damage of a temp-contract-society is clear in the UK: more people dependent on the state in hidden figures, less people having access to owning their own homes, more being made homeless because they do not have a steady income, more choosing sick benefits over trying to work, and people staying longer on unemployment benefits while waiting for a permanent job.
Capitalism doesn't care: the blue-blue like to be able to say that they are getting more people into work, as they do in the uk, but they are shifting subsidy and public spending away from improving quality and efficiency through loyal, motivated and highly trained staff over to paying for all the down time and insecurity which follows an expanded part time and temp sector in the economy. That the bill on this social insecurity shifts from other forms of state investment in people, and most likely goes up within this government's first term, capital will just call for cut backs and these will once again affect the non unionised, poorest section of society worst.
The danger is , as with the retail finance sector in oslo, that the level playing field becomes unbalanced and more sectors see the balance sheet short term benefits of employing larger proportions of their staff on temporary contracts. Also with a potential raft of privatistaions, this may lead to as in the UK, an erosion of quality of provision at the point of delivery where on the ground workers are no longer qualified, experienced or motivated in those areas. A culture where people grab temporary work from better paid temp jobs when they end, and misuse the lower end job for temp income with little or no motivation.
It becomes an anti-culture for business and particularly those involved in annual state contracts in newly privatised services- they will never want to employ people permanently until they have a virtual monopoly on provision.
In the UK we have a bigger service sector and on the one hand that soaks up unqualified school leavers, while on the other hand it becomes a kind of soft landing for many graduates and University drop outs who were under achievers and worked part time during their study.
The Scandinavian model of good wages, home ownership, medium high taxes and high permanent employment has been eroded in Sweden and Denmark, where unemployment is far higher than in Norway or Finland.
On the other hand they have a largely socialist agenda- opening up the state pension fund to pay for infrastructure and allowing more money per head to those most vunerable in society.
However the first thing to note is that they are open for more temporary workers and they have now removed a subsidy which allowed people on lower incomes to own their own home. These will both lead to more people being dependent on state money and a culture where working is less attractive than being on social benefits.
The national "house bank" is a state initiative to underwrite higher risk, lower interest loans for people like us in fact, who want to get on the property market but are exposed to temporary contracts and a lack of capital. Removing the low interest will directly lead to repossessions and will make borderline people with health issues see that work does not lend itself and going on social security sickness benefits is more attractive. It is laughably easy in norway to get onto "trygd" benefits and that I have not heard one ioata on in the new budget: originally the Frp party campaigned that these people should be out shovelling snow, but of course that takes beaurocracy. In fact that is an area for immediate cut- support for getting people into work.
Allegedly to counter balance getting people into work, the pale-blue-rinse-quite-socialist-spender government now will allow employers to have more freedom to employ people on (endless) temporary contracts. The finance minister claims that this will allow people who have been out of working life to get a foot hold. In effect it will mean that more people join the queue at NAV, the health, social security and work agency, when it suits all employers.
Excluding layabouts who have "social angst" and the type of bad backs which allows them to go mysteriously on holiday to Tenerife each year, but not work a day in ten years, then Norway has extrememly low unemployment despite having the highest unemployment benefits in Europe. The fact is there is a working culture here and it is relatively easy to both get work and to get a permanent contract, which leads to consumer-confidence and personal security and home ownership.
Opening up for more temporary employment will mean a much bigger bill for NAV within four years, and a grey area like in the UK where people are fully dependent on state income to top up uncertain and part time work. It will not affect the types of jobs where there is a large element of training or a prerequiste for education - on the one hand employers will want longer term contracts and committment from employees, while on the other employees will seek out companies with permanent contracts and avoid temping once they have enough experience.
By in large the benefits of this new loosening up will be in the service industry, and for some business cultural reason, most ironically, in the same financial industry which now denies mortgages to people on temporary contracts. I already experience the customer service level in private shops and restaurants to be on a par with the former eastern europe, and having people on temporary, seasonal contracts will lead to these positions being more social dumping with surly, untrained and unmotivated staff turning up with the lights on but no interest.
On the other hand it will also lead to more criminality as those in the border line areas of in and out of work begin to see that there is a more steady income to be attained from selling drugs, smuggling, VAT evasion , and fencing dubious sourced items.
My last employer had a policy of trying to have 20% of staff on contract. This prove completely impractical at every level in the organisation- in those positions requiring engineering skills, they got mediocre engineers or those who abused the job as a temporary short term income for a couple of months- hardly time to settle into the job. On the side of administration too, they could get qualified people, but when the temporary position was a required head count and desired to be permanent, they had found that they could not retain staff- they had spent time and effort looking for permanent positions elsewhere and did not even bother to negotiate, they just left.
For me I was more used to contracts and a fair deal of job insecurity and the poor employment protection in the UK. However with the cost of living here I have found that now I am only interested in permanent positions and I am prepared to come down in pay to be able to work within a short commute to reduce costs and increase time with the family. A temporary job now, as I ended a contract which I made into a contract from a permanent job actually, would be that for me too- zero loyalty although I would use a job offer externally to squeeze a permanent position out of the employer!
Another effect is that when a couple have children, it is the partner in temporary employment who is most likely to take sick leave on behalf of the children.
It is already quite easy to employ people temporarily, but there is a border where you must give them a "permanent " contract which gives workers here as good employment rights as workers who are members of unions in Germany for example. So what this means is being able to employ people on successive temp contracts and lay them off when you have a hole in your cash flow or want to pay more profits out. There has been a counter balance in the employer paying some more redundancy but I have not looked into the details of this, and it may be that when a contract ends then there is of course no need for them to pay up: it is the state who will, as in the UK, end up giving out massive hidden subsidies to the type of industries who should stand on their own feet and develop quality service. This will go over into public health provision of course, where private companies and cash restricted departments will do the same to try and save in money when they can stretch a lower level of resources over a period with financial motivation in front of patient need. The state will pick up the tab.
The Frp and Høyre parties (progress party and right of the house pale blue tory party) have many members who are the bourgeois - they own or manage SME sector businesses. An expansion of temporary employment will actually hurt the SME sector in Norway because it will make it easier for people to get into the larger companies in Norway in the oil, petrochemical and service industries where training abounds and also they are then in-the-door for permanent positions or when their position becomes a necessary one. Larger employers see employees as valued resources here, not a commodity of which a large percent can be brushed away easily to improve the free-cash-flow for a quarter. Being able to offer temporary contracts is far more attractive to the SME sector because they have less cash reserves and more obvious peaks and troughs in their turn-over to cost gearing. However they will find that they will struggle more to recruit properly qualified and experienced people who are not attracted to the insecurity of temping.
In trying then to "solve" a small problem of low level unemployment in general - and this being here the actual issues of disaffected youth and immigrants of a non western back ground - the new government will introduce more of a dynamic to place more otherwise productive people into state dependency on an on-off basis, while also presenting the SME sector with fewer good candidates. In reducing the investment in getting these two groups above into training and higher value work, they just create an administrative merry-go-round for NAV for them and for other non qualified staff who previously enjoyed job security and payed taxes year-in-year out, rather than collecting benefits on a frequent periodic basis.
The longer term damage of a temp-contract-society is clear in the UK: more people dependent on the state in hidden figures, less people having access to owning their own homes, more being made homeless because they do not have a steady income, more choosing sick benefits over trying to work, and people staying longer on unemployment benefits while waiting for a permanent job.
Capitalism doesn't care: the blue-blue like to be able to say that they are getting more people into work, as they do in the uk, but they are shifting subsidy and public spending away from improving quality and efficiency through loyal, motivated and highly trained staff over to paying for all the down time and insecurity which follows an expanded part time and temp sector in the economy. That the bill on this social insecurity shifts from other forms of state investment in people, and most likely goes up within this government's first term, capital will just call for cut backs and these will once again affect the non unionised, poorest section of society worst.
The danger is , as with the retail finance sector in oslo, that the level playing field becomes unbalanced and more sectors see the balance sheet short term benefits of employing larger proportions of their staff on temporary contracts. Also with a potential raft of privatistaions, this may lead to as in the UK, an erosion of quality of provision at the point of delivery where on the ground workers are no longer qualified, experienced or motivated in those areas. A culture where people grab temporary work from better paid temp jobs when they end, and misuse the lower end job for temp income with little or no motivation.
It becomes an anti-culture for business and particularly those involved in annual state contracts in newly privatised services- they will never want to employ people permanently until they have a virtual monopoly on provision.
In the UK we have a bigger service sector and on the one hand that soaks up unqualified school leavers, while on the other hand it becomes a kind of soft landing for many graduates and University drop outs who were under achievers and worked part time during their study.
The Scandinavian model of good wages, home ownership, medium high taxes and high permanent employment has been eroded in Sweden and Denmark, where unemployment is far higher than in Norway or Finland.
fredag 11. oktober 2013
Living in Norway and Mid Life Early ?
While in a conversation with a GP actually, I was confronted with a fact of life- we get older, we get 2.4 kids and we get antisocial. Don't blame it on Norway.
You have to take a balanced view: you , like me are probably an ex-pat and statistics would say that you moved to Norway due to your better half and started a family.
So here you have to take that big change in life, parenthood, against emigration.
On the other side though, Norway is a bet special- Norwegians are good, polite hosts but they are not on average at all out going and sociable to strangers. If you can imagine moving to Fife, Aberdeenshire or some English county where people are inverted snobs, xenophobes and well-to-do snobs then that is the kind of atmosphere.
As I blogged before, Norway has never been big on immigrants: they had no empire and they were more used to sending their people out to the USA or to sea. So they just aren't used to it, and have all these displaced peoples, generally Muslim to cope with, which when young Somali males are in the picture, are viewed with more than a pinch of skepticism and outright "send them back".
However let us not play the racist card for you and I from developed countries with a native spouse. Here we fall into that which many Norwegians encounter- big city anonymity and non chalence, and small town clanism. If you throw into that the quite healthy extended family orientation of most people here, then you start to see that social lives plus the old 2.4, have fallen into ever-decreasing-circles for the natives.
On the other hand to come back into the imbalance that you can feel about your new social life and lack of it, then as an immigrant you have a few more barriers: you have the language and it subtleties and the different forms of conversation.
Generally I find conversations to be pretty banal round my kids parents and I feel antipathy from several other parents towards me and partly my whole family unfortunately. I just can't get into the rythm of them down here because I don't get the point: I understand the words, but I dont get the tone and the whole point. To be frank I was never any good at small talk and prefer waffeling on and debating bigger topics or interesting stuff, which outside hobbies, have fallen away.
So when you are approaching those parent gatherings or any social event, your new ways into a social life may well be people who are a lot more shy than you are used to, but at least they are not little snobs who can be quite intent and even a little aggressive at blocking you as an immigrant out of the social circle. You are looking to glide in very slowly often or grasp the chance when you meet someone nice and welcoming.
How do you address all this and build a social life?
Well you have to target your energies - decide who in the family and parents - circle at school / barnehage you like and have something in common with, or just feel comfortable with their conversation. Don't rush things, but don't refuse invitations ever!
Your other source of new friends will be through hobbies: your own and your children's. This is my source of chums and chat. Even there it is a little strained.
Take up new hobbies or join clubs which your previous individual efforts fit into, like photography.
Hobby clubs have a kind of commonality of objective conversation which has its own natural ice breakers and ways to get into the chat circle. Clubs and especially hobby clubs are very collective in nature here, they often talk of "we" and there is a natural belonging if you share interests. Sports clubs and activities are also good, golf and 5-a-side being two big in-ways for 30 something males at least. I have a personal reference from the helm of a 8 man boat I raced on, who says I came in very comfortably and was not flashy despite my longer experience.
It is important not to be flashy. Also one sport in particular is problematic- male football. Our local team had a first to third level team. A couple of outsiders, one half english, the other from the next district, played in what they presumed was the main team as there were always enough at training to have at least five a side and turn out a full team if they needed to. These two guys were pretty good at football- and they saw a group of about 5 or 6 players training together with the best coach and asked who they were? Oh, they are the first team. The next time they turned up they asked the firsts coach if they could come up to the team, to which the blunt reply from a trainer with 6 to 8 players was, "No, the team is full". That my friends is typical small town Norway! It may have taken them years to get invited to train a little and sit on the bench for the first team, who then drew on their favoured mates in the second to make up the first 11.
It is all a very painful boring catch a monkey with some people and some social circles you then come into: the best advice is that Norwegians do not like expectations (apart from North Norway folk who are virtually in another universe and often super sociable and welcoming) - the usual expectations you may have from North America or the EU in general must be forgotten- do not expect dinner party invitations and trips to their cabins as an opening gambit with the vast majority. Expect to take some time to come even into the circle of conversation!
The very big plus side is that it is very true that once you make a friend in Norway, you make a very good friend - mi casa, su casa. Then it can be a bit too much and difficult to reciprocate! Cabins, boats, hunting.....
This is though a culture clash to some extent: I think average UK, US, Canada, Antipodean, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italiens are far more used to having a wider circle of friends, and having a more fluent relationship to new acquaintances and how new friendships develop and old fall away. Also for better or for worst, our circle of friends have become more important than our extended family and we spend more time with them outside work than we do with our parents.
As a Londoner said to me he misses "the banter...they have no banter!" and this is the other down side for most of Norway- it is hard to strike up a friendly conversation with a stranger in a bar or cafe, and often hard at the school / sports / barnehage events it can be a bit frustrating. I once turned up in a kilt at an Oslo barnehage coffee party and not one person bothered to comment on me being Scottish or struck up a conversation.
More on this: you will find that Norwegians like Jews, are exclusive- they are not evangelical about themselves, their country, their opinions like many more extravert national temperaments are. They will quickly form little social circles at these social parents gatherings based on old school alliances or some connection, and then physically fill an area or a table and exclude other people. They do this to their own!
In Oslo and the other big cities, it is worth just trying to break in with a firm introduction and a smile. I am very much a once-bitten, twice-shy person on this but I shouldn't be really. I am the type of person who visually some people take an instant dislike to, and I cannot get along with very domineering personalities, or on the other end of the scale, shy types who cannot make or carry on conversation.
However I recommend sticking your neck in when you live in a big city, and just seeing how it goes- who takes up on you. Apply this to all social circles you come into, even family, and then if you find a circle is very closed then think about exiting stage left and working on just one or two individuals slowly to come in.
Summary:
It is very frustrating for many of us in this stage of life, to move in your late twenties to early forties to Norway because it is not a very sociable country on average. Patience then, and a huge dose of humility are your greatest tools, plus having sensitive, tuned social antenna to pick up on the queues- the buying signals and the flow of the conversation into an acquaintancy and then into a new friendship.
Find people who do not block you socially - they may be a lot more shy than you are used to, and don't seek to convert enemies! In Oslo you will come upon a lot of outright snobs in any middle class area, who are often pretty right wing and anti immigration entirely!
Join clubs and try to find the pace of conversation and ask pertinent questions or make nice observations. Make these, wait for a response- qualifying things is bad because it takes Norwegians a while to think- hey an immigrant is talking, did we understand them right, should we be friendly to them or skeptical?
Most of all grasp invitations while not building up your own expectations. I would recommend keeping the conversation objective on common ground rather than presenting your own personal dilemas and political view on the world, but you know yourself best.
Remember once you have a good friend, or a family you mesh with, nurture things and be a little imaginative with your counter invitations. Don't overload them though, keep it a couple of times a month.
This all sounds like bending your outgoing personality to fit into a bloody convent, but in fact the new positive friends and acquaintances could be pleasantly surprised by an open door policy, or a couple of invitations per month or chances to do other things together as a family or sports training etc for the spouses.
You have to take a balanced view: you , like me are probably an ex-pat and statistics would say that you moved to Norway due to your better half and started a family.
So here you have to take that big change in life, parenthood, against emigration.
On the other side though, Norway is a bet special- Norwegians are good, polite hosts but they are not on average at all out going and sociable to strangers. If you can imagine moving to Fife, Aberdeenshire or some English county where people are inverted snobs, xenophobes and well-to-do snobs then that is the kind of atmosphere.
As I blogged before, Norway has never been big on immigrants: they had no empire and they were more used to sending their people out to the USA or to sea. So they just aren't used to it, and have all these displaced peoples, generally Muslim to cope with, which when young Somali males are in the picture, are viewed with more than a pinch of skepticism and outright "send them back".
However let us not play the racist card for you and I from developed countries with a native spouse. Here we fall into that which many Norwegians encounter- big city anonymity and non chalence, and small town clanism. If you throw into that the quite healthy extended family orientation of most people here, then you start to see that social lives plus the old 2.4, have fallen into ever-decreasing-circles for the natives.
On the other hand to come back into the imbalance that you can feel about your new social life and lack of it, then as an immigrant you have a few more barriers: you have the language and it subtleties and the different forms of conversation.
Generally I find conversations to be pretty banal round my kids parents and I feel antipathy from several other parents towards me and partly my whole family unfortunately. I just can't get into the rythm of them down here because I don't get the point: I understand the words, but I dont get the tone and the whole point. To be frank I was never any good at small talk and prefer waffeling on and debating bigger topics or interesting stuff, which outside hobbies, have fallen away.
So when you are approaching those parent gatherings or any social event, your new ways into a social life may well be people who are a lot more shy than you are used to, but at least they are not little snobs who can be quite intent and even a little aggressive at blocking you as an immigrant out of the social circle. You are looking to glide in very slowly often or grasp the chance when you meet someone nice and welcoming.
How do you address all this and build a social life?
Well you have to target your energies - decide who in the family and parents - circle at school / barnehage you like and have something in common with, or just feel comfortable with their conversation. Don't rush things, but don't refuse invitations ever!
Your other source of new friends will be through hobbies: your own and your children's. This is my source of chums and chat. Even there it is a little strained.
Take up new hobbies or join clubs which your previous individual efforts fit into, like photography.
Hobby clubs have a kind of commonality of objective conversation which has its own natural ice breakers and ways to get into the chat circle. Clubs and especially hobby clubs are very collective in nature here, they often talk of "we" and there is a natural belonging if you share interests. Sports clubs and activities are also good, golf and 5-a-side being two big in-ways for 30 something males at least. I have a personal reference from the helm of a 8 man boat I raced on, who says I came in very comfortably and was not flashy despite my longer experience.
It is important not to be flashy. Also one sport in particular is problematic- male football. Our local team had a first to third level team. A couple of outsiders, one half english, the other from the next district, played in what they presumed was the main team as there were always enough at training to have at least five a side and turn out a full team if they needed to. These two guys were pretty good at football- and they saw a group of about 5 or 6 players training together with the best coach and asked who they were? Oh, they are the first team. The next time they turned up they asked the firsts coach if they could come up to the team, to which the blunt reply from a trainer with 6 to 8 players was, "No, the team is full". That my friends is typical small town Norway! It may have taken them years to get invited to train a little and sit on the bench for the first team, who then drew on their favoured mates in the second to make up the first 11.
It is all a very painful boring catch a monkey with some people and some social circles you then come into: the best advice is that Norwegians do not like expectations (apart from North Norway folk who are virtually in another universe and often super sociable and welcoming) - the usual expectations you may have from North America or the EU in general must be forgotten- do not expect dinner party invitations and trips to their cabins as an opening gambit with the vast majority. Expect to take some time to come even into the circle of conversation!
The very big plus side is that it is very true that once you make a friend in Norway, you make a very good friend - mi casa, su casa. Then it can be a bit too much and difficult to reciprocate! Cabins, boats, hunting.....
This is though a culture clash to some extent: I think average UK, US, Canada, Antipodean, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italiens are far more used to having a wider circle of friends, and having a more fluent relationship to new acquaintances and how new friendships develop and old fall away. Also for better or for worst, our circle of friends have become more important than our extended family and we spend more time with them outside work than we do with our parents.
As a Londoner said to me he misses "the banter...they have no banter!" and this is the other down side for most of Norway- it is hard to strike up a friendly conversation with a stranger in a bar or cafe, and often hard at the school / sports / barnehage events it can be a bit frustrating. I once turned up in a kilt at an Oslo barnehage coffee party and not one person bothered to comment on me being Scottish or struck up a conversation.
More on this: you will find that Norwegians like Jews, are exclusive- they are not evangelical about themselves, their country, their opinions like many more extravert national temperaments are. They will quickly form little social circles at these social parents gatherings based on old school alliances or some connection, and then physically fill an area or a table and exclude other people. They do this to their own!
In Oslo and the other big cities, it is worth just trying to break in with a firm introduction and a smile. I am very much a once-bitten, twice-shy person on this but I shouldn't be really. I am the type of person who visually some people take an instant dislike to, and I cannot get along with very domineering personalities, or on the other end of the scale, shy types who cannot make or carry on conversation.
However I recommend sticking your neck in when you live in a big city, and just seeing how it goes- who takes up on you. Apply this to all social circles you come into, even family, and then if you find a circle is very closed then think about exiting stage left and working on just one or two individuals slowly to come in.
Summary:
It is very frustrating for many of us in this stage of life, to move in your late twenties to early forties to Norway because it is not a very sociable country on average. Patience then, and a huge dose of humility are your greatest tools, plus having sensitive, tuned social antenna to pick up on the queues- the buying signals and the flow of the conversation into an acquaintancy and then into a new friendship.
Find people who do not block you socially - they may be a lot more shy than you are used to, and don't seek to convert enemies! In Oslo you will come upon a lot of outright snobs in any middle class area, who are often pretty right wing and anti immigration entirely!
Join clubs and try to find the pace of conversation and ask pertinent questions or make nice observations. Make these, wait for a response- qualifying things is bad because it takes Norwegians a while to think- hey an immigrant is talking, did we understand them right, should we be friendly to them or skeptical?
Most of all grasp invitations while not building up your own expectations. I would recommend keeping the conversation objective on common ground rather than presenting your own personal dilemas and political view on the world, but you know yourself best.
Remember once you have a good friend, or a family you mesh with, nurture things and be a little imaginative with your counter invitations. Don't overload them though, keep it a couple of times a month.
This all sounds like bending your outgoing personality to fit into a bloody convent, but in fact the new positive friends and acquaintances could be pleasantly surprised by an open door policy, or a couple of invitations per month or chances to do other things together as a family or sports training etc for the spouses.
mandag 30. september 2013
Getting Into the Larger Companies in Norway as an Immigrant
I am just ending a contact at a medium sized company and am in the process of interviews and so on to get into hopefull a larger company.
As a foreigner the large employers usually offer most international opportunities where your native language could be of use, especially English, or if you are otherwise very proficient in English this is a large plus point. However these large employers seem to present barriers by their size and beaurocratic registration and application processes.
Norway is quite peculiar in the EU for having a few huge employers and then having many small companies- a kind of biploar national spread of companies. On the one hand you have of course then Statoil (including Hyrdo's oil production), Aker, El Chem and of course the NHS and otherwise the state here. Under this is a layer of fast growing companies, like National Oil Well-Varco (NOV), who established in Norway to supply these large drilling and production firms with equipment and services and have been able to grow internationally as Norwegian entities, based on advanced engineering that by in large, the Texans couldn't be bothered investing in before.
On the otherside of the coin are a myriad of small companies, biased by one-man-bands who often take early pension and then hire themselves into the self same very large employers at a high hourly rate. Outside retail there are very few medium sized businesses, but they are there to be found and the best source is the Gazelle listings for your local area. ( gaseller as norsk key word).
SME's Versus Larger Employees
Working for sub 20 employee companies has its' charms in terms of team and family feel, or the reverse in being established and possibly sceptical on average to immigration. You are most of all though at the mercy of the owner-director and often foriegners are seen as a resource to be exploited in terms of overtime, holiday allocation, scope of tasks and most of all, economic expendability. I have worked in small companies below 20-30 employees and I do not personally recommend planning your career around them, unless you see a very good fit where your skills are worth more to them than their company are to you.
Large employers on the other hand, offer larger opportunities to you as a foreigner, in terms of getting a foot in the door for other jobs, promotion, training and financial or project responsibility. Norwegians know this only too well, and many graduates will only apply to the top handful of companies in their skill area.
Applying to the Mega Companies In Norway
How do you then apply to these megalyths ? They seem to be very impersonal. They often advertise in English, but then at some point the communication goes over to Norwegian- have you made a mistake?
Firstly there is a very big difference between being an experienced international project manager, a qualified engineer, a global sales person, or a hot IT worker and being a general administration worker or at first job trainee level. In the latter, the daily language will have to be Norwegian and that means written and oral.
For non technical jobs, my advice is to always apply in Norwegian unless it states expressly that you should apply in English. Further to this get your CV and letter checked by a native speaker, and also get some practice in interview conversation and follow up communications.
Getting in the door though even with good Norwegian seems an issue, a great big brick wall infront of you: My advice is to not think of these companies as huge megalyths, but see the people: you are being recruited most often to a specific team which works pretty much like an SME. As a foreigner it always makes the difference if you contact the person named in the advert. If they are personnel it is best to be positive and speak generally about your intereset, breifly about your suitability and then ask if it is possible to speak to the manager for the position. This shows positivity and it is the way Norwegians often make open applications or network their way to jobs. You have to practice at this or be very comfortable with your language.
I would say that in general e-mail communications outside the actual application are interpreted negatively: that is just my opinion based on my experiences. It can though be worth using e-mail to request a telephone conversation.
This approach, using the phone, has secured me nearly all my jobs here and was completely necessary.Why? Because they want to work with people who can speak Norwegian in those positions! Also it shows interest and motivation, and actually very few people bother to phone up at all. I have also been down to the last few at 2nd interview level, at both Statoil and Aker for positions with more than 60 applicants.
Another thing is to keep on applying and apply for related positions in these larger employers. As long as you are qualified a and /or experienced for the positions, apply and keep on applying. My application for three or four positions at one company actually lead to me getting the best possible one!
Open applications are worth while but only in the right context: you need to use networking to establish who may be a manager to talk to. "On File" as an immigrant outside engineering and IT, means in the bin in my opinion. You need to make a targetted approach, kind of a courting and sniffing out if they are recruiting in your area. The key here is to define need, and strike before they contact the recruitment companies or advertise the job.
Bemanning and Rectuitment Companies as A Route In
One way into large companies is through rectuiters and bemanners. Beware though, because large companies often want to have a percentage of temp staff who can be cut back given a bad quarterly result. Companies I have worked in recently had a policy of having 10-20% of their pay roll hired in. The new laws make it harder to avoid permanency, but they dont care especially with immigrants. You can like a freind of mine who was very competent in document control, be locked in actually to being a temp, by the mutual interest of personnel dept and bemanner with monthly fee, and held out from the permanent position whereas they actually recruit a poorer candidate! Here she was in a position of stregnth and should have moved to direct, but actually she sought a new education which she got a place in suddenly in the summer.
How do you address the bemanning situation? Well it is a win-win if you get training and experience which makes you more attractive in the job market or internally a valuable resource. You may be a temp for someone with quite a lot of responsibility or be able to develope the role and get recognised in the company and therefore rectuited. There are positive here if you also are still learning the language and need to use it daily in the workplace, or are just trying to get a first foothold into semi skilled work.
However to continue at your own level or go down, I would try and turn a bemmaning opportunity into a direct hire with a recruitment consultancy fee. Another way is to avoid the middle man altogether, identifying the employer from a short conversation with the recruiter, and contacting them directly with an "open" application as a pure coincidence.
Your Local Job Market
I still haven't been able to crack my local job market, large or small. I even did a work-fair / work-experience for 9 months to get in to the right type of job in a local company, which did me a world of good, but in fact this is a typical issue for government funding - it should have been a temporary position! If I had not come with a state cheque book they would have hired me. I then am faced with a nasty winter commute of often over an hour when it is snowing on twisty roads, in fact the worst section of the trunk road in this region!
'
What i do hear works with SMEs in your local market is shoe leather: turning up at the door with your CV is seen as a very positive thing and quite often you will be in a conversation with the manager in a position to employ you.
Be Dynamic? Speaking to your Hosts....
These type of dynamic go getter job skills are necessary to get employed, this may seem a bit unfortunate for the shy type. On the other hand, the shy type may get a kinder reception at a company and be right for the position in the long term, you never know!
I see what ever that language skills are often a must, yet you should resort to English if you are strong in that when you are out of your water, always. One issue I have is that I have polished my CV and application letters and take the application process with a lot of fore thought and concentration, and in fact my Norsk language on a day to day basis is not as good as it is under the recruitment phase.
Modesty in norway is a good thing an part of the culture, to a frustrating extent, but know that you will quite likely never be even 90% as comprehendable as a norwegian and also that some are a little strange and "fall off" in conversations when the grammar wains. You have to be aware of this, This is a bad habit I find here anyway between norwegians- in presentations and talks I think I often have a bigger take out that the average norwegian because I am so focused on understanding!
As a foreigner the large employers usually offer most international opportunities where your native language could be of use, especially English, or if you are otherwise very proficient in English this is a large plus point. However these large employers seem to present barriers by their size and beaurocratic registration and application processes.
Norway is quite peculiar in the EU for having a few huge employers and then having many small companies- a kind of biploar national spread of companies. On the one hand you have of course then Statoil (including Hyrdo's oil production), Aker, El Chem and of course the NHS and otherwise the state here. Under this is a layer of fast growing companies, like National Oil Well-Varco (NOV), who established in Norway to supply these large drilling and production firms with equipment and services and have been able to grow internationally as Norwegian entities, based on advanced engineering that by in large, the Texans couldn't be bothered investing in before.
On the otherside of the coin are a myriad of small companies, biased by one-man-bands who often take early pension and then hire themselves into the self same very large employers at a high hourly rate. Outside retail there are very few medium sized businesses, but they are there to be found and the best source is the Gazelle listings for your local area. ( gaseller as norsk key word).
SME's Versus Larger Employees
Working for sub 20 employee companies has its' charms in terms of team and family feel, or the reverse in being established and possibly sceptical on average to immigration. You are most of all though at the mercy of the owner-director and often foriegners are seen as a resource to be exploited in terms of overtime, holiday allocation, scope of tasks and most of all, economic expendability. I have worked in small companies below 20-30 employees and I do not personally recommend planning your career around them, unless you see a very good fit where your skills are worth more to them than their company are to you.
Large employers on the other hand, offer larger opportunities to you as a foreigner, in terms of getting a foot in the door for other jobs, promotion, training and financial or project responsibility. Norwegians know this only too well, and many graduates will only apply to the top handful of companies in their skill area.
Applying to the Mega Companies In Norway
How do you then apply to these megalyths ? They seem to be very impersonal. They often advertise in English, but then at some point the communication goes over to Norwegian- have you made a mistake?
Firstly there is a very big difference between being an experienced international project manager, a qualified engineer, a global sales person, or a hot IT worker and being a general administration worker or at first job trainee level. In the latter, the daily language will have to be Norwegian and that means written and oral.
For non technical jobs, my advice is to always apply in Norwegian unless it states expressly that you should apply in English. Further to this get your CV and letter checked by a native speaker, and also get some practice in interview conversation and follow up communications.
Getting in the door though even with good Norwegian seems an issue, a great big brick wall infront of you: My advice is to not think of these companies as huge megalyths, but see the people: you are being recruited most often to a specific team which works pretty much like an SME. As a foreigner it always makes the difference if you contact the person named in the advert. If they are personnel it is best to be positive and speak generally about your intereset, breifly about your suitability and then ask if it is possible to speak to the manager for the position. This shows positivity and it is the way Norwegians often make open applications or network their way to jobs. You have to practice at this or be very comfortable with your language.
I would say that in general e-mail communications outside the actual application are interpreted negatively: that is just my opinion based on my experiences. It can though be worth using e-mail to request a telephone conversation.
This approach, using the phone, has secured me nearly all my jobs here and was completely necessary.Why? Because they want to work with people who can speak Norwegian in those positions! Also it shows interest and motivation, and actually very few people bother to phone up at all. I have also been down to the last few at 2nd interview level, at both Statoil and Aker for positions with more than 60 applicants.
Another thing is to keep on applying and apply for related positions in these larger employers. As long as you are qualified a and /or experienced for the positions, apply and keep on applying. My application for three or four positions at one company actually lead to me getting the best possible one!
Open applications are worth while but only in the right context: you need to use networking to establish who may be a manager to talk to. "On File" as an immigrant outside engineering and IT, means in the bin in my opinion. You need to make a targetted approach, kind of a courting and sniffing out if they are recruiting in your area. The key here is to define need, and strike before they contact the recruitment companies or advertise the job.
Bemanning and Rectuitment Companies as A Route In
One way into large companies is through rectuiters and bemanners. Beware though, because large companies often want to have a percentage of temp staff who can be cut back given a bad quarterly result. Companies I have worked in recently had a policy of having 10-20% of their pay roll hired in. The new laws make it harder to avoid permanency, but they dont care especially with immigrants. You can like a freind of mine who was very competent in document control, be locked in actually to being a temp, by the mutual interest of personnel dept and bemanner with monthly fee, and held out from the permanent position whereas they actually recruit a poorer candidate! Here she was in a position of stregnth and should have moved to direct, but actually she sought a new education which she got a place in suddenly in the summer.
How do you address the bemanning situation? Well it is a win-win if you get training and experience which makes you more attractive in the job market or internally a valuable resource. You may be a temp for someone with quite a lot of responsibility or be able to develope the role and get recognised in the company and therefore rectuited. There are positive here if you also are still learning the language and need to use it daily in the workplace, or are just trying to get a first foothold into semi skilled work.
However to continue at your own level or go down, I would try and turn a bemmaning opportunity into a direct hire with a recruitment consultancy fee. Another way is to avoid the middle man altogether, identifying the employer from a short conversation with the recruiter, and contacting them directly with an "open" application as a pure coincidence.
Your Local Job Market
I still haven't been able to crack my local job market, large or small. I even did a work-fair / work-experience for 9 months to get in to the right type of job in a local company, which did me a world of good, but in fact this is a typical issue for government funding - it should have been a temporary position! If I had not come with a state cheque book they would have hired me. I then am faced with a nasty winter commute of often over an hour when it is snowing on twisty roads, in fact the worst section of the trunk road in this region!
'
What i do hear works with SMEs in your local market is shoe leather: turning up at the door with your CV is seen as a very positive thing and quite often you will be in a conversation with the manager in a position to employ you.
Be Dynamic? Speaking to your Hosts....
These type of dynamic go getter job skills are necessary to get employed, this may seem a bit unfortunate for the shy type. On the other hand, the shy type may get a kinder reception at a company and be right for the position in the long term, you never know!
I see what ever that language skills are often a must, yet you should resort to English if you are strong in that when you are out of your water, always. One issue I have is that I have polished my CV and application letters and take the application process with a lot of fore thought and concentration, and in fact my Norsk language on a day to day basis is not as good as it is under the recruitment phase.
Modesty in norway is a good thing an part of the culture, to a frustrating extent, but know that you will quite likely never be even 90% as comprehendable as a norwegian and also that some are a little strange and "fall off" in conversations when the grammar wains. You have to be aware of this, This is a bad habit I find here anyway between norwegians- in presentations and talks I think I often have a bigger take out that the average norwegian because I am so focused on understanding!
torsdag 5. september 2013
British Perspective on Norwegian Election 2014 (Storting , Valget 2014)
Rather than going straight to the recycling bin with the election magazine from FrP (progress party, "far " right here in Norway) I decided to read it.
I have met quite a lot of Frp members here and they are a little split into two camps: small business bourgeois types and generally anyone who doesn't like taxes and tolls on roads as a way of financing an egalitarian society.
In Britain then they correspond to a far earlier epoch, the post war middle middle class who were fed up with rationing and high taxation. That is where the 'Grocer's Daughter' and her hand bag home economics came from, Magaret Thatcher, the witch whose policies allowed British industry to close down or move to China.
In the last election FrP had an aggressive agenda and both them and the conservative Høyre rattled sabres about working conditions being unsustainable and damaging business. Oil barell prives went up and we got guaranteed summer holiday of three weeks. The right were pandering to their pay masters in business and the population returned the red-greens with a sustained majority.
Now the blue side of the house have not just tamed their message, they have returned with a liberal and largely socialist agenda. Spend more money! Build infrastructure!
This is a bit of an ananthema for uk conservatives. We had almost twenty years of save and cut back, which was a bit illusionary because public spending shifted to infrastructure mostly in tory counties, metrics beaurocracy in the nhs and education and paying the dole for people trapped in industrial ghost towns.
The norsk labour party has rendered the old style blue rinse parties, with the strings pulled only by the bourgieos, unelectable because the economy can support the liberal labour laws. People here know there is no excuse for lower pay, short term contracts and the bosses determining your workng hours. There is little need to pander to businesses in the uk either but that is where the balance of power lies. Now enter new whiter than white blue parties with a personal liberalising message of road building, choice of school and legal jet ski driving.
They will face legal and interrnational resistance to forcing the oil fund, the state pension investment fund, into investing in road projects which will be motorist toll free. They will have resistance to privatisation in the nhs here. They will face large problems with free school choice and the general grading of primary school kids, mainly because the two a large new beaurocratic load and benefit only a minority while actually threatening average quality of schooling by being devisive, leading to dump schools and stigmatisation for pupils and teaching staff. With norwegians hate of commuting, it is only the few right wing parents who will choose this to begin
Now they open the door for a wider working class support as people percieve they have more money in their pockets and team leader and lower management start to be lured into the benefits for them of privatisation. So it really isnt the first blue governemnet anyone has to worry about, apart from the economists. It is the second possible term which would really make negative changes to the workers lot .
I have met quite a lot of Frp members here and they are a little split into two camps: small business bourgeois types and generally anyone who doesn't like taxes and tolls on roads as a way of financing an egalitarian society.
In Britain then they correspond to a far earlier epoch, the post war middle middle class who were fed up with rationing and high taxation. That is where the 'Grocer's Daughter' and her hand bag home economics came from, Magaret Thatcher, the witch whose policies allowed British industry to close down or move to China.
In the last election FrP had an aggressive agenda and both them and the conservative Høyre rattled sabres about working conditions being unsustainable and damaging business. Oil barell prives went up and we got guaranteed summer holiday of three weeks. The right were pandering to their pay masters in business and the population returned the red-greens with a sustained majority.
Now the blue side of the house have not just tamed their message, they have returned with a liberal and largely socialist agenda. Spend more money! Build infrastructure!
This is a bit of an ananthema for uk conservatives. We had almost twenty years of save and cut back, which was a bit illusionary because public spending shifted to infrastructure mostly in tory counties, metrics beaurocracy in the nhs and education and paying the dole for people trapped in industrial ghost towns.
The norsk labour party has rendered the old style blue rinse parties, with the strings pulled only by the bourgieos, unelectable because the economy can support the liberal labour laws. People here know there is no excuse for lower pay, short term contracts and the bosses determining your workng hours. There is little need to pander to businesses in the uk either but that is where the balance of power lies. Now enter new whiter than white blue parties with a personal liberalising message of road building, choice of school and legal jet ski driving.
They will face legal and interrnational resistance to forcing the oil fund, the state pension investment fund, into investing in road projects which will be motorist toll free. They will have resistance to privatisation in the nhs here. They will face large problems with free school choice and the general grading of primary school kids, mainly because the two a large new beaurocratic load and benefit only a minority while actually threatening average quality of schooling by being devisive, leading to dump schools and stigmatisation for pupils and teaching staff. With norwegians hate of commuting, it is only the few right wing parents who will choose this to begin
Now they open the door for a wider working class support as people percieve they have more money in their pockets and team leader and lower management start to be lured into the benefits for them of privatisation. So it really isnt the first blue governemnet anyone has to worry about, apart from the economists. It is the second possible term which would really make negative changes to the workers lot .
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