HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Center Party. The party for the white person who is not xenophobic, is new money, quite a lot of new money, has 2-3 employee's they'd like to fire, owns a tenement that is just not seeing a good enough profit %.
Right now Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat) seemingly has the votes to become PM again. I think this mostly depended on the Center Party saying they'd vote present again. There was the question of a rogue parliamentary member who can technically vote whatever way she wants. She said she was leaning against Löfven. But they came to an agreement?
The vote hasn't happened so I guess things can do.
If I were to dunk on the Center Party again, and I do. I'm going to interpret everything uncharitable here because I vastly dislike them. They came to this agreement contingent on getting three things through:
* One is relating to LAS which is a protection for employees. I believe this the same suggestion that has been pending for a while and from what I gathered then it's to make it slightly easier to fire people. It doesn't seem major but just a little less protection for employees. Sounds nice for people running companies.
* Second one I forget. Sorry.
* Third one is relating to "beach/coast protection". Basically land that is close to bodies of water are incredibly protected and hard to get permission to build anything on. This is to protect the coastal nature, nature around lakes etc. I haven't read the suggestion but I assume it's to make it easier to build on the coast. This would have proponents in the elite who are able to afford beachfront properties and build summer homes on them.
With this and the rent-law thing that brought down government I wonder what's actually Center about this party. I will forever give them credit for their staunch refusal to ever talk to the nazi party. But like what's their policy for? Is it a party that exists for all of the people who own a $5M business? They used to be called the Farmer's Party, may I suggest another name change?
The names of the parties are not necessarily indicative of their position.
The Norwegian party Venstre ("Left") is a center party (they're classical liberals) and currently in a coalition government with Høyre ("Right") a classical conservative party. Fremskrittspartiet ("The Progress Party") sees itself as the protector of "true Norwegianness" and the traditional social order (but with no taxes). Senterpartiet ("The Central Party") is the party for the geographical periphery. Arbeiderpartiet ("The Labor Party") is popular with academics and its current leader is quite wealthy (and certainly not a normal worker).
Yeah, Centern is the most classic liberal party I’d say.
You’d think it was Liberalerna but they’ve become less and less liberal since they changed their name from Folkpartiet.
With this and the rent-law thing that brought down government I wonder what's actually Center about this party. I will forever give them credit for their staunch refusal to ever talk to the nazi party. But like what's their policy for? Is it a party that exists for all of the people who own a $5M business? They used to be called the Farmer's Party, may I suggest another name change?
Yeah, when it comes to the economy in particular, C is very very far to the right.
Talking about falsely named parties, in The Netherlands we've got: PVV (Freedom Party) who are very enthusiastic about closing our borders Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) who are very enthusiastic about Hitler and Trump Socialist Party who just broke ties with their youth wing for being too close to communism, but SP is simultaneously selling Marx merch on their website.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
The rent thing is at least fairly self-explanatory. It's a pretty standard free market position that rent control is bad. It's also a "basically all the evidence we have from economics says rent control is bad" thing, but I doubt that's why the Centre Party is doing it.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Sounds like you guys would benefit from having a party threshold for seats.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Sounds like you guys would benefit from having a party threshold for seats.
Usually there are a few big parties and two or 3 tiny parties (usually one issue, like a farmer's party), the last time we had this many parties was in the years leading up to WWII and if that doesn't sound worrying I don't know what will.
We do not a have formal threshold, but we have a threshold based on a simple total votes/150: a party needed 70,107 votes per seat. For the record: that's an insanely high amount of votes per seat, our House of Commons (Tweede Kamer) is absolutely tiny with only 150 members for the 17 million people they have to represent. It results in all kinds of problems, because all those tiny parties do not have enough people to actually read the legislation they need to vote on. Nor do they have enough hours in a day to actually discuss issues.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Sounds like you guys would benefit from having a party threshold for seats.
Usually there are a few big parties and two or 3 tiny parties (usually one issue, like a farmer's party), the last time we had this many parties was in the years leading up to WWII and if that doesn't sound worrying I don't know what will.
We do not a have formal threshold, but we have a threshold based on a simple total votes/150: a party needed 70,107 votes per seat. For the record: that's an insanely high amount of votes per seat, our House of Commons (Tweede Kamer) is absolutely tiny with only 150 members for the 17 million people they have to represent. It results in all kinds of problems, because all those tiny parties do not have enough people to actually read the legislation they need to vote on. Nor do they have enough hours in a day to actually discuss issues.
All of the Netherlands is one giant electoral district with proportional allocation of seats?
Socialist Party who just broke ties with their youth wing for being too close to communism, but SP is simultaneously selling Marx merch on their website.
It's a Socialist Party, not a Communist Party. All Communists are socialists but not all socialists are Communists. Marx also has numerous ideological children, they don't get along in a single group.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Sounds like you guys would benefit from having a party threshold for seats.
Usually there are a few big parties and two or 3 tiny parties (usually one issue, like a farmer's party), the last time we had this many parties was in the years leading up to WWII and if that doesn't sound worrying I don't know what will.
We do not a have formal threshold, but we have a threshold based on a simple total votes/150: a party needed 70,107 votes per seat. For the record: that's an insanely high amount of votes per seat, our House of Commons (Tweede Kamer) is absolutely tiny with only 150 members for the 17 million people they have to represent. It results in all kinds of problems, because all those tiny parties do not have enough people to actually read the legislation they need to vote on. Nor do they have enough hours in a day to actually discuss issues.
So the threshold is basically 0.7%? I'm not completely sure how it works differently compared to a normal percentage threshold? Like Germany has 5% (unless a party wins three direct mandates which can help candidates/parties that are popular in a certain region but not in the whole country)
Also 150 members for 17 million doesn't seem that bad? That's roughly the same percentage as here in germany? Although I guess the amount of work doesn't scale 1 to 1 with population.
I'm sorry, my jab at the Socialist Party was too lame. I need to explain that the youth wing of the SP are not literal communists, they are just young kids who look at theoretical communism as an interesting way to think about our capitalist society. SP just wants to stay as far away from the C-word as they possibly can and did not feel bad about alienating every <18 member of their party. In my mind it is rather hypocritical to sell Marx-merch while being this hardcore about censoring the C-word.
So the threshold is basically 0.7%? I'm not completely sure how it works differently compared to a normal percentage threshold? Like Germany has 5% (unless a party wins three direct mandates which can help candidates/parties that are popular in a certain region but not in the whole country)
Also 150 members for 17 million doesn't seem that bad? That's roughly the same percentage as here in germany? Although I guess the amount of work doesn't scale 1 to 1 with population.
The difference between an official threshold and one that depends on the total amount of voters is minimal. It's just that with Germany's 5% rule even the smallest parties will have more than 1 member in the Reichstag, which makes it a lot easier for them to divide the amount of work and assign areas of expertise between the members of a faction. Small one-issue parties have no seat at the table, which means certain voices have a harder time being heard, but it also reduces the amount of parties that will only have something sensible to say about a very limited range of topics.
Germany is a federation, the folks in the Bundestag only deal with a limited range of topics, whereas the separate Länder do most of the day-to-day stuff pertaining to internal affairs etc etc... For instance, the Landtag of my favorite Land Baden-Württemberg has 154 members, governing a population of 11 million inhabitants. The Bundestag has 709 seats governing a population of 83 million Germans.
The Netherlands is a weirdo in the region and the quality of our politics is suffering as a consequence. I'd argue we need to double the size of the Tweede Kamer.
All of the Netherlands is one giant electoral district with proportional allocation of seats?
We have 20 Kieskringen (that only partly overlap with the borders of our 12 provinces, because lol borders are arbitrary), a party needs to sign up at the Kieskring for every area of the Netherlands they want to appear on the ballot for. To be allowed they need to either already be in the Tweede Kamer, or to have 30 signatures of a number of people living in that area. All votes are added together across the country and the Kieskringen play no part in that. So for all intents and purposes we are just one electoral district, we just like to be weird.
So the kiegringen act like more of an unofficial hurdle as they make it a bit harder to get on the ballot or at least limit small parties visibility as they might not appear on every ballot in the country in the first place.
So the kiegringen act like more of an unofficial hurdle as they make it a bit harder to get on the ballot or at least limit small parties visibility as they might not appear on every ballot in the country in the first place.
It's a bit of a relic from bygone eras when there was more local representation. Those 30 signatures are super easy to get when you're remotely serious about joining national politics.
On one hand, I'm kinda happy that smaller parties can rise to the national levels and we're not locked in a two party system, but 30 signatures is an insanely low amount (or 10 signatures if you're in kieskring 20).
On one hand, I'm kinda happy that smaller parties can rise to the national levels and we're not locked in a two party system, but 30 signatures is an insanely low amount (or 10 signatures if you're in kieskring 20).
That's the colonies! uh I mean special overseas municipalities. By far the smallest kieskring, so those 20 signatures as a percentage of population is actually harder to get, but also less votes left on the table.
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
So hey exactly this just happened and tl;dr Stefan Löfven, our old PM, is our new PM.
I haven't bothered reading up on the negotiations, but apparently C voted present.
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
So hey exactly this just happened and tl;dr Stefan Löfven, our old PM, is our new PM.
I haven't bothered reading up on the negotiations, but apparently C voted present.
Were C in Government before this? Sorry, easy to lose track of who's who.
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
So hey exactly this just happened and tl;dr Stefan Löfven, our old PM, is our new PM.
I haven't bothered reading up on the negotiations, but apparently C voted present.
Were C in Government before this? Sorry, easy to lose track of who's who.
C were in the opposition, but struck a deal to abstain from the vote (allowing Löfven and the Social Democrats to form a government) as long as that government wouldn't work together with the left party.
Not sure how (or if) that old deal differs from this new deal.
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
So hey exactly this just happened and tl;dr Stefan Löfven, our old PM, is our new PM.
I haven't bothered reading up on the negotiations, but apparently C voted present.
Were C in Government before this? Sorry, easy to lose track of who's who.
The old government was Socialdemokraterna (S) and Miljöpartiet (MP, the environment party), with support in the riksdag from Centerpartiet (C) and Liberalerna (L) as well as Vänsterpartiet (V, the left party).
In exchange for their support C and L got a bunch of their politics through + guarantees that V didn't get any of their politics through. V were basically expected to support S anyway because that's what they've always done.
Now L have decided to throw liberal values out the window and support some sort of rightwing government with the Moderates (M) and Kristdemokraterna (KD) with support from the fascist Sweden Democrats (SD), so the new S government doesn't actually have enough votes to get their budget through. If this happens Löfven has said that he'll step down again, which could mean we get an extra election three months before the regular election.
The European Union’s top court has ruled that employers may forbid the wearing of visible symbols of religious or political belief, such as headscarves.
But the Luxembourg-based tribunal said in its ruling on Thursday that courts in the bloc’s 27 member states should weigh up whether the ban corresponded to a “genuine need” on the part of the employer. They must also consider the rights and interests of the employee, including by taking into account national legislation on freedom of religion, it said.
“A prohibition on wearing any visible form of expression of political, philosophical or religious beliefs in the workplace may be justified by the employer’s need to present a neutral image towards customers or to prevent social disputes,” the court said.
“However, that justification must correspond to a genuine need on the part of the employer and, in reconciling the rights and interests at issue, the national courts may take into account the specific context of their Member State and, in particular, more favourable national provisions on the protection of freedom of religion.”
"prevent social disputes" is broad enough to run through a ton of stuff
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
My initial impressions is that this is a bad ruling
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I treat it mostly as a ruling that the EU court does not want to meddle in these particular national affairs. Which.. I can kinda get. Pick your battles and all that. I am of the opinion that state and religion should be kept far apart from each other, but t I don't see hijabs as particularly religious in their current context. I'd be more interested to read the arguments of employers on what they want to treat as a "genuine need" and have them do the mental gymnastics of what that means for half their office sporting a crucifix around their neck. ... And the mental gymnastics of why the "social dispute" of some racist dipshit does not warrant a "genuine need" for their employees to try to appear less non-native.
It doesn't seem strange to me that an employer wants to present a neutral image to customers, so long as the prohibition on ideological symbols is applied uniformly and crucifixes and the like are also clearly banned.
Today (22 July) is the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attack in Norway where 77 people were killed by right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.
It was a deliberate attack on the Labor Party, targeting the governmental HQ in Oslo (Labor was in power at the time) with a car bomb (killing 8), and the island summer camp of the Labor youth organization where 67 people, mostly teenagers, were shot to death (2 people died trying to escape the island). The youngest victim was 14, the oldest 61.
The terrorist was captured alive and is currently serving the maximum sentence allowed under the law: 21 years in prison, to be released only if he is no longer deemed a threat to society.
Today, the government buildings have still not been rebuilt (they have decided to build an entirely new complex instead, but are not finished), and the memorial at the summer camp is still under construction (neighbours did not want the memorial and the court case dragged on).
Lately, survivors and other Labor party members have said that they felt silenced after the attacks, and being accused of trying to profit politically on the attack any time they tried to bring it up. Many Labor party members feel that for years the attack was treated as an attack on Norway instead of what it was: a deliberate attempt at exterminating the Labor party.
Today, many surivors still get death threats and messages from people wishing they had been killed in the attack, but also support.
Survivors have lately been saying that Norway never took proper action against right-wing extremism. Domestic intelligence agencies are saying right-wing extremism has gotten worse since the attack, and that a new attack is as likely as not.
Current Labor party leader said, in his speech at the memorial services yesterday, that the political right had a responsibility to speak up against right-wing extremism and make sure that dangerous ideas were normalized.
Shortly afterwards, the former Mayor of Oslo and member of classically conservative Høyre ("Right") said he felt personally attacked and that the Labor party leader in practice accused the right of being partially responsible for terror. He furthermore accused the Labor party of using the attack for political benefit. (Thus, in my opinion, confirming the terror survivors' low opinion of public discourse after the attacks.)
On the positive side, Høyre's party leader and PM (halfheartedly), the leader of Høyre's youth organization (forcefully), and several prominent party members (fairly forcefully) spoke out against the former mayor, saying he grossly micaracterized the Labor party speech. They furthermore pointed out that the attack was againt the Labor party, and that saying they could not talk about what they felt were the motivation of the attacks was grossly unfair.
The former mayor then doubled down on his original statement.
(Incidentally, strong voices on the right have previously demanded that all muslims condemn islamist terror, but at least some of them balk at turnabout, apparently.)
Current Labor party leader said, in his speech at the memorial services yesterday, that the political right had a responsibility to speak up against right-wing extremism and make sure that dangerous ideas were normalized.
Shortly afterwards, the former Mayor of Oslo and member of classically conservative Høyre ("Right") said he felt personally attacked and that the Labor party leader in practice accused the right of being partially responsible for terror. He furthermore accused the Labor party of using the attack for political benefit. (Thus, in my opinion, confirming the terror survivors' low opinion of public discourse after the attacks.)
Yeah, we pretty much have the same "debate" here in Sweden. Ali Esbati, member of the Swedish parliament for the Left party, was on Utöya and survived.
Several people on the left have been pointing out that some phrases from Breivik's manifesto are now standard arguments from the right-most parties re: immigrants and muslims, and oh boy did the pearl-clutching and high-pitched finger pointing from said parties begin instantly.
Powell, meantime, appeared to gently deride Thatcher for wanting to redraw the border between the North and South into a straight line to make it easier to defend. “She said, `Couldn’t we redraw the border to at least make it more defensible?’ She thought that if we had a straight line border, not one with all those kinks and wiggles in it, it would be easier to defend.”
But... but... that is the opposite of true when it comes to borders!
She just wanted to apply Britain's proud tradition of drawing new borders with a ruler like the Empire was used to. Worked our really well in the middle east and India, right? To bad Radcliffe was already dead by then. he could've done it eazy peazy.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I just noticed that article was published in 2002 but I saw that same quote on Twitter yesterday.
What brought it back around?
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
German federal election is in two months and the Greens managed a real blunder trying putting together a candidate list for Saarland, the second smallest state in Germany. Result is that they don't have a party list there in the election, meaning that while their candidates can get elected directly in their districts the party won't receive any second votes from Saarland that determine the total percentage for their seats in parliament.
The only "silver line" for them is that they were doing pretty badly there anyway in the last state elections, not managing to get into the state parliament so the loss might be negligible. Still, so dumb.
German federal election is in two months and the Greens managed a real blunder trying putting together a candidate list for Saarland, the second smallest state in Germany. Result is that they don't have a party list there in the election, meaning that while their candidates can get elected directly in their districts the party won't receive any second votes from Saarland that determine the total percentage for their seats in parliament.
The only "silver line" for them is that they were doing pretty badly there anyway in the last state elections, not managing to get into the state parliament so the loss might be negligible. Still, so dumb.
It's bonkers how arcane these processes are, but Die Grünen are serious enough about politics that these kinds of mistake shouldn't be happening.
Stefan Löfven, Swedish PM that just survived forming a new-same-as-the-old government after a vote of no confidence, announced he'll resign as PM and party leader of the Social Democrats this autumn - the party conference in November will elect a new party leader. Since he's resigning as PM at the same time this means we're in for another round of herding cats to form a new government. Yay!
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i just want to make a joke about him being a löv on the vind
Marvel at the exciting diversity of the candidates for German Chancellor
You've got centrist slightly corrupt macho patriarchist candidate in blue, conservative more corrupt and incompetent macho patriach candidate in blue, and not a chance to become chancellor slightly incompetent green candidate in blue.
This race is so frustrating. There are no visions, no interest for sweeping change. Just alot of talk about mostly innane things. At least the conservatives continue to crater in the polls.
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The names of the parties are not necessarily indicative of their position.
The Norwegian party Venstre ("Left") is a center party (they're classical liberals) and currently in a coalition government with Høyre ("Right") a classical conservative party. Fremskrittspartiet ("The Progress Party") sees itself as the protector of "true Norwegianness" and the traditional social order (but with no taxes). Senterpartiet ("The Central Party") is the party for the geographical periphery. Arbeiderpartiet ("The Labor Party") is popular with academics and its current leader is quite wealthy (and certainly not a normal worker).
Etc.
Yeah, Centern is the most classic liberal party I’d say.
You’d think it was Liberalerna but they’ve become less and less liberal since they changed their name from Folkpartiet.
Yeah, when it comes to the economy in particular, C is very very far to the right.
PVV (Freedom Party) who are very enthusiastic about closing our borders
Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) who are very enthusiastic about Hitler and Trump
Socialist Party who just broke ties with their youth wing for being too close to communism, but SP is simultaneously selling Marx merch on their website.
Also: we had elections and ended up with 18 parties in total splitting 150 seats between them. There is absolutely no end in sight for forming a new coalition.
Sounds like you guys would benefit from having a party threshold for seats.
Usually there are a few big parties and two or 3 tiny parties (usually one issue, like a farmer's party), the last time we had this many parties was in the years leading up to WWII and if that doesn't sound worrying I don't know what will.
We do not a have formal threshold, but we have a threshold based on a simple total votes/150: a party needed 70,107 votes per seat. For the record: that's an insanely high amount of votes per seat, our House of Commons (Tweede Kamer) is absolutely tiny with only 150 members for the 17 million people they have to represent. It results in all kinds of problems, because all those tiny parties do not have enough people to actually read the legislation they need to vote on. Nor do they have enough hours in a day to actually discuss issues.
All of the Netherlands is one giant electoral district with proportional allocation of seats?
It's a Socialist Party, not a Communist Party. All Communists are socialists but not all socialists are Communists. Marx also has numerous ideological children, they don't get along in a single group.
Ugh.
So the threshold is basically 0.7%? I'm not completely sure how it works differently compared to a normal percentage threshold? Like Germany has 5% (unless a party wins three direct mandates which can help candidates/parties that are popular in a certain region but not in the whole country)
Also 150 members for 17 million doesn't seem that bad? That's roughly the same percentage as here in germany? Although I guess the amount of work doesn't scale 1 to 1 with population.
The difference between an official threshold and one that depends on the total amount of voters is minimal. It's just that with Germany's 5% rule even the smallest parties will have more than 1 member in the Reichstag, which makes it a lot easier for them to divide the amount of work and assign areas of expertise between the members of a faction. Small one-issue parties have no seat at the table, which means certain voices have a harder time being heard, but it also reduces the amount of parties that will only have something sensible to say about a very limited range of topics.
Germany is a federation, the folks in the Bundestag only deal with a limited range of topics, whereas the separate Länder do most of the day-to-day stuff pertaining to internal affairs etc etc... For instance, the Landtag of my favorite Land Baden-Württemberg has 154 members, governing a population of 11 million inhabitants. The Bundestag has 709 seats governing a population of 83 million Germans.
Then look at Sweden (for instance: 10 million inhabitants and a Riksdag with 349 members.
The Netherlands is a weirdo in the region and the quality of our politics is suffering as a consequence. I'd argue we need to double the size of the Tweede Kamer.
Overview:
Germany (federal): 83.000.000/709=117.066
The Netherlands: 17.000.000/150=113.333
Baden-Württemberg: 11.000.000/154=71.428
Sweden: 10.000.000/349=28.653
We have 20 Kieskringen (that only partly overlap with the borders of our 12 provinces, because lol borders are arbitrary), a party needs to sign up at the Kieskring for every area of the Netherlands they want to appear on the ballot for. To be allowed they need to either already be in the Tweede Kamer, or to have 30 signatures of a number of people living in that area. All votes are added together across the country and the Kieskringen play no part in that. So for all intents and purposes we are just one electoral district, we just like to be weird.
It's a bit of a relic from bygone eras when there was more local representation. Those 30 signatures are super easy to get when you're remotely serious about joining national politics.
That's the colonies! uh I mean special overseas municipalities. By far the smallest kieskring, so those 20 signatures as a percentage of population is actually harder to get, but also less votes left on the table.
So hey exactly this just happened and tl;dr Stefan Löfven, our old PM, is our new PM.
I haven't bothered reading up on the negotiations, but apparently C voted present.
Were C in Government before this? Sorry, easy to lose track of who's who.
C were in the opposition, but struck a deal to abstain from the vote (allowing Löfven and the Social Democrats to form a government) as long as that government wouldn't work together with the left party.
Not sure how (or if) that old deal differs from this new deal.
The old government was Socialdemokraterna (S) and Miljöpartiet (MP, the environment party), with support in the riksdag from Centerpartiet (C) and Liberalerna (L) as well as Vänsterpartiet (V, the left party).
In exchange for their support C and L got a bunch of their politics through + guarantees that V didn't get any of their politics through. V were basically expected to support S anyway because that's what they've always done.
Now L have decided to throw liberal values out the window and support some sort of rightwing government with the Moderates (M) and Kristdemokraterna (KD) with support from the fascist Sweden Democrats (SD), so the new S government doesn't actually have enough votes to get their budget through. If this happens Löfven has said that he'll step down again, which could mean we get an extra election three months before the regular election.
Things are great.
It was a deliberate attack on the Labor Party, targeting the governmental HQ in Oslo (Labor was in power at the time) with a car bomb (killing 8), and the island summer camp of the Labor youth organization where 67 people, mostly teenagers, were shot to death (2 people died trying to escape the island). The youngest victim was 14, the oldest 61.
The terrorist was captured alive and is currently serving the maximum sentence allowed under the law: 21 years in prison, to be released only if he is no longer deemed a threat to society.
Today, the government buildings have still not been rebuilt (they have decided to build an entirely new complex instead, but are not finished), and the memorial at the summer camp is still under construction (neighbours did not want the memorial and the court case dragged on).
Lately, survivors and other Labor party members have said that they felt silenced after the attacks, and being accused of trying to profit politically on the attack any time they tried to bring it up. Many Labor party members feel that for years the attack was treated as an attack on Norway instead of what it was: a deliberate attempt at exterminating the Labor party.
Today, many surivors still get death threats and messages from people wishing they had been killed in the attack, but also support.
Survivors have lately been saying that Norway never took proper action against right-wing extremism. Domestic intelligence agencies are saying right-wing extremism has gotten worse since the attack, and that a new attack is as likely as not.
Shortly afterwards, the former Mayor of Oslo and member of classically conservative Høyre ("Right") said he felt personally attacked and that the Labor party leader in practice accused the right of being partially responsible for terror. He furthermore accused the Labor party of using the attack for political benefit. (Thus, in my opinion, confirming the terror survivors' low opinion of public discourse after the attacks.)
On the positive side, Høyre's party leader and PM (halfheartedly), the leader of Høyre's youth organization (forcefully), and several prominent party members (fairly forcefully) spoke out against the former mayor, saying he grossly micaracterized the Labor party speech. They furthermore pointed out that the attack was againt the Labor party, and that saying they could not talk about what they felt were the motivation of the attacks was grossly unfair.
The former mayor then doubled down on his original statement.
(Incidentally, strong voices on the right have previously demanded that all muslims condemn islamist terror, but at least some of them balk at turnabout, apparently.)
Yeah, we pretty much have the same "debate" here in Sweden. Ali Esbati, member of the Swedish parliament for the Left party, was on Utöya and survived.
Several people on the left have been pointing out that some phrases from Breivik's manifesto are now standard arguments from the right-most parties re: immigrants and muslims, and oh boy did the pearl-clutching and high-pitched finger pointing from said parties begin instantly.
Vitaly Shishov: Head of Belarus exiles group found dead in Ukraine
This just after Krystina Timanovskaya refused to get on a plane to be taken back to Belarus from the Olympics.
What brought it back around?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The only "silver line" for them is that they were doing pretty badly there anyway in the last state elections, not managing to get into the state parliament so the loss might be negligible. Still, so dumb.
You've got centrist slightly corrupt macho patriarchist candidate in blue, conservative more corrupt and incompetent macho patriach candidate in blue, and not a chance to become chancellor slightly incompetent green candidate in blue.
This race is so frustrating. There are no visions, no interest for sweeping change. Just alot of talk about mostly innane things. At least the conservatives continue to crater in the polls.