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#1 duke_Qa

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Posted 15 September 2011 - 08:19 PM

Figured I'd mention that I just got higher up on the political ladder. Just had a local election where i was 11th on the lists for venstre/ the liberal party, and after asking a few friends and familiars to give me a cumulative vote or at least a punted vote from a different party, I managed to come up to second place :good:

party/total votes/percentage/difference since last election/ seats
A (labour) 2158 57.9 +13.3 16 (+4)
SV(socialistic left) 173 4.6 -2.2 1 (-1)
SP(central party/(farmers party)) 289 7.8 -12.3 2 (-3)
KRF(christian people's party) 163 4.4 +0.9 1 (+0)
V(liberal ) 136 3.7 -1.0 1 (+0)
H(right/conservative party) 382 10.3 +4.5 3 (+1)
FRP(progress party/ populist-rightwing phobia-fiddle party) 425 11.4 -3.4 3 (-1)

Now, I didn't actually get into the local parliament, since we did a pretty sucky local election campaign(the liberals did much better on average, and we didn't really make much trouble because we like the current mayor). Not helped by the Labour party being historically very strong around here doing their best election ever, getting 58% of the votes.

But I did run around for a few votes, and I got 12 personal votes and 7 punted votes, which put me on 2nd place. Since we only got one seat I will be a backup in case of sickness. But there will be different sub-groups that have people from outside those that got one of the seats, so its very likely I'll be placed in one of those. Thinking I'll try to go for the school and culture group if i can, it seemed more interesting than the rest, although getting into the planning and economy group would have been cool, it is the most sought after position and is mostly taken by those elected.

Anyway, some national numbers:

from political left to right (might argue that the Christians are more right-wing than the liberal but meh):

  • Rødt/Red(communists) 1.5% (-0.3)
  • SV (Socialistic left) 4.1% (-2.2)
  • Ap (Labour) 31.7% (+2.3)
  • SP (Central party) 6.8% (-1.5)
  • KrF (Christian party) 5.6% (-0.9)
  • V (Liberal) 6.3% (+0.1)
  • H (conservative) 28.0% (+8.9)
  • FrP (populist) 11.4% (-6.8)


Not that these matter much since they are the average over the different counties and not a government election. But they do tell us a few things though. Labour was expected to do extremely well given sympathy votes from the Utøya massacre, but a 2.3% increase is not that much(take that Rush Limbaugh or whatever dissing the victims as a fascist youth-camp).

The progress party got hurt big-time because they couldnt play their fear-fiddle on foreigners and Muslims. There was a common agreement that the campaign was to be nice and not filled with hateful speeches, which neutered them.

The big winner of this election was the conservatives that are not almost just as big as the labour party, a clear sign that people are feeling fatigue from the 6-year old central-left government. Labour's allies, Central and Socialistic left, have been hit with the abandonment-stick.
Another victory is the Liberal party ousting the Christian party in size, may their followers breed slower than ours ^_^



Anyway, this is probably a uninteresting thread for most of you guys out there. But I figured I'd dump some numbers and announce my ascension into local politics. Not that I expect much to come out of it, at least I'm taking some small steps out in that direction.

Edited by duke_Qa, 15 September 2011 - 08:21 PM.

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#2 Pasidon

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Posted 16 September 2011 - 09:07 AM

True to all the above, concerning my interest. I don't get much much out of these weird European political statistics, but that's just because I'm incompetent.

Just had a local election where i was 11th on the lists for venstre/ the liberal party, and after asking a few friends and familiars to give me a cumulative vote or at least a punted vote from a different party, I managed to come up to second place :good:

They that desperate? Heh-heh... Foxy.

But does this mean you're after a rise of power, Duky? Sounds like a good of start for any future politician, but I don't know how good 11th place is over there... yonder land, and such.

#3 duke_Qa

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Posted 16 September 2011 - 09:53 AM

They have what they call accumulation on the lists, where those accumulated get 25% extra votes per vote given to the party. There was only one person on top of our list that got accumulated, so everyone else on the list had equal opportunity to get vote up to second place.

if I was really interested in getting higher up in the local politics I probably could have asked to be given the first spot. But I have neither the experience nor motivation to jump right into local politics like that. Better to have a bit of a warmup over a few years, try to build a social net and learn all the tricks and historical plays and tricks that have played out in the past. Also, being completely new in politics and becoming the only member of your political party is not the best way to learn how things are done.

I dunno if i have the patience to get much higher up in the political system. But I think it's important to have some younger people engage in the politics and look through new eyes now and then. Voting turnout was at 65% here, not very good.
I hope to help figure out why the younger generations feel alienated by politics and try to bring up topics that are important to them. We got one of the more interesting systems in the world, since we actually have multiple parties that get votes, can play the game and fight over topics instead of party politics.

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#4 Pasidon

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Posted 16 September 2011 - 06:26 PM

Interesting. I guess I can't give much prediction why voting isn't getting attention in Norway. But I knew a guy from the Great Northern Hills, like yourself, and he always told me that a good deal of of Norway's people are traditional country-side folk. Like here in the US, people like me who live in the middle of the middle without a Starbucks for a few miles around don't see much politics. Most are simple farmers where I live who fend for themselves and don't vote. Politicians can't get a crowd of people like me since we're spread out so thinly without any towns around, so it is hard to even get a grasp of politics when its barely visible out in the country-side. My best bet is that the same could be said for Norway and its common country folk.

#5 duke_Qa

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Posted 17 September 2011 - 04:31 PM

Norway is about 40% urban now I guess, compared to the population\km^2, that is quite urban. But I do live somewhat out in the rural, although in one of the productive counties that actually produce something and does not just live off oil and welfare(...oil is also a part of the local industry though *cough*, but its not the only one at least).

Politics can be irrelevant if you have enough with your own things and you don't really have anything to gain or lose on leaving it alone. There is usually a minimum amount of knowledge you need about politics before you can use it.

Politicians can't get a crowd of people like me since we're spread out so thinly without any towns around, so it is hard to even get a grasp of politics when its barely visible out in the country-side.


Social coherence has also collapsed since the dawn of TV and even more since the internet. I barely have any contact with my closest neighbor because people rather watch tv and internets than go greet their "boring" neighbors. The only thing you really can do these days that is social like that is sports, but smarter less physical people don't have any alternatives really.

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#6 duke_Qa

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Posted 17 October 2011 - 02:01 PM

Just had my first day at the town hall, them bureaucrats don't know how to make info-graphics to easily explain the different political/administration groups and whatnot. It was basically a training day though, teaching the new ones how the system is connected and what laws we must follow and which we can play with.

At least the head administrator was being blunt about the fact that it's the politician's right to overrule the administration's recommendations, but that they would kill him if they got this municipality blacklisted by the county; by unbalancing the budget or pissing off some higher-level bureaucrat.
Got about 7300 citizens up here, and a income of about $77mill(we're a pretty rich municipality, got aluminium industry and hydro-power that pays property taxes to us, and they have good wages which brings good tax-money in). About $73 of that goes into healthcare(66%, big post), interest on loans, payment on loans, schools, kindergartens, sewage, administration, emergency utilities etc etc. the rest goes into investments like big event maintenance of schools/whatnot.

In the last 4-year period, the municipality took up about $75 mill in loans for a new junior high school, new department for elders with dementia and some other things that were needed. This brought the average loans per citizen up from $2000 to $10000, where county average is about $8000. Most of that went into the new school which really needed an upgrade, and the new school will be used for the next 40-50 years or so(my parents went to the junior high school as me, by then already 10-12 years old).

Beyond that there's not much to say. There was a discussion about delegation of tasks to the administration, so that the politicians don't have to vote over every penny, and the last things the administration was allowed to do in the name of the politicians was to buy and sell property of a certain size, for business purposes.


I hope that you got something out of this little rant about Norwegian local politics, which you probably didn't. But I hope that it gives you motivation to start messing about with politics if you ever get tired of being run by others :grin:

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#7 Námo

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Posted 17 October 2011 - 04:34 PM

Figured I'd mention that I just got higher up on the political ladder ... on the lists for venstre/ the liberal party


So, you are one of those EU-critics, supporter of more power to local authorities (limited central government), and advocate of a Flat Tax system. I would never have guessed that. ;)
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#8 Vortigern

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Posted 17 October 2011 - 06:01 PM

So you're seriously getting involved in politics? I have to say, I admire that. I agree that more young people should get involved, and fully intend to myself at some point in the near future. The only problem is that I want to get straight in at the national level, and that's very difficult to do. Ah well. I'll get there. Best of luck to you in getting some serious stuff done.
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#9 duke_Qa

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Posted 17 October 2011 - 09:22 PM

damn links and non-remembering history system.

So, you are one of those EU-critics[1], supporter of more power to local authorities (limited central government)[2], and advocate of a Flat Tax system[3]. I would never have guessed that. [4];)


1. We do implement most of the bureaucratical directives from the EU to be a part of the EEA, but we don't touch all the constitutional stuff and the super-capitalism requests of reducing all tariff-imports(which these days looks like the right idea). I think EU does a good job at the necessary bureaucratic decisions, but they should not come and spread economic ideologies as a part of that.
2. yup, I hate massive bureaucracies that are there more less just to give a job to you, your wife and your dog too(that might sound nice to some, but you don't always get the job you want). The curse of a social-democratic system left alone is that it will bloat into a bureaucratical hellhole where everything is public and nothing can be overruled by middle-management. Venstre originated with radicalism back in the 1870s, which main ideology was to take the power away from the administration and the rich, before liberalism took on those attributes around 1940-50s.

My main interest as a member of Venstre is it's one of the few parties that cares about small businesses and bureaucracy reduction/optimization. Reducing and optimizing the amount and quality of bureaucracy a fledgling firm has to go through will tremendously help our society in the long run.

3. Not much discussion around flat tax these days I'm afraid. We are more for increasing the max-tax border to reduce tax for the middle-class, optimize the bureaucracy around taxes and change the taxation system in such ways that the rich are encouraged to invest in businesses and industry instead of speculating in property and taxes. One of the big splits in left vs right in Norwegian politics is the question of fortune tax, where the right wants to reduce/remove it while the left wants it as it is. Venstre is more interested in removing the Fortune tax on Working capital, so if you own a business thats worth $10 mill, you don't have to extract money from the firm to pay taxes for those values every year, which should encourage growth.

4. There is a difference on Norwegian politics and European politics. I am pretty sure that Denmark and Sweden are much further to the right than us because of a noble culture that goes further back than anything we ever had as your serfs back in the days. And if you then look at the rest of Europe/the west we are pretty much an aberration for those neo-liberal dogmatists.

So you're seriously getting involved in politics? I have to say, I admire that. I agree that more young people should get involved, and fully intend to myself at some point in the near future. The only problem is that I want to get straight in at the national level, and that's very difficult to do. Ah well. I'll get there. Best of luck to you in getting some serious stuff done.


Well I got an "old shark" in my father that was a part of the local politics for the better part of his youth, he even was 8 years in county politics in the 80s, so he was pretty big for a while. I don't think I would have understood half of what happens if I didn't have his metaphors for the different abstract groups and systems and whatnot.

Also, you can't expect to swim the Atlantic on your first trip, you have to expect spending a few years in some local arena to learn the system and the game. As far as I recall from my father when he was to get elected in the county he had to travel the entire county and gather votes from local party people just to get on the lists, and you can't do that if your name isn't known. Better to start sooner than later ^_^

Edited by duke_Qa, 17 October 2011 - 09:22 PM.

"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" - Assange





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