During last nights televised debate between Arbeiderpartiet's (Labour party) Jens Stoltenberg and Fremskrittspartiet's Siv Jensen, the two parties dragged along mayoral poster children from cities where the respective parties are doing a bang-up job of creating wealth, prosperity, brotherly love and what have you. Fremskrittspartiet picked the mayor of Stranda, a quite wealthy community where there is about zero joblessness and thriving businesses (furniture, Pizza Grandiosa) - quite an obvious choice to sugarcoat the results of their politics.
Arbeiderpartiet chose Trondheim................
One of the things mayor Rita Ottervik bragged about, was how fantastic the elderly are treated in Trondheim. Only a couple of days ago, there was a widely publicized debate in Trondheim, in which many children of elderly people at public retirement homes lamented the sorry state of affairs for this age bracket, and even stated that after seeing how elderly are treated in Trondheim, they were now in favor of euthanasia. Quite the statement, and nice choice of poster city. Kudos. If this is the best example of a well-run Arbeiderparti-town, things are grim indeed. Or maybe someone didn't do their homework with respect to timing......
Seeing as how we moved to Trondheim in 2003, I got to see the changes from a conservative (Høyre) ruling body to a socialist (Labour/Arbeiderpartiet) reign. The first thing Arbeiderpartiet did, was terminate the use of private enterprises and actual bidding wars for public services such as renovation. 'Cause private enterprises are evil entities which *gasp* try to operate at a profit. After stealing the pensions from li'l old ladies and taking lo-carb candy away from children, the evil private corporations apparently proceed to lurk back to Mordor and sacrifice baby unicorns - or so the socialist parties claim. Also, the newly elected officials in Trondheim signed a contract with the unions (LO) stating that all public services of this kind should go to the union members without the need for pesky bidding rounds and the like, in exchange for LO demonizing any conservative parties prior to the election. They even invented a spiffy name for it - "recommunalization" (rekommunalisering). There was much mirth and bonus copies of Chairman Mao's li'l red pamphlet all around.
So how did it work out? Beside the less-than-satisfactory situation for the elderly (which in all fairness is probably no different from what it's like in other cities run by other parties), we noticed something first-hand right away. Like I mentioned, under the "old" local government, the renovation was taken care of by private enterprises. After the recommunistification, however, the private enterprises were promptly given the boot, and replaced by trusty teamsters. Was the effect noticeable? Oh hell yeah. Before the new administration took over, "regular" trash was picked up every week, paper and cardboard was collected every other week, and plastic was picked up once every four weeks. Now, regular trash is picked up every other week, paper is collected every four weeks, and plastic is picked up once every eight weeks.
Those math-savvy among you might have figured out that this constitutes half the frequency of what the situation was before the new administration. So you might ask yourself; so did we get twice as big trash cans? Nope. But since they reduced their service by 50%, surely they reduced the cost accordingly? Nope again - the cost stayed at exactly the same level, which - again for you math buffs - constitutes doubling the price for a service in going from a private to a public provider. Splendid. Chalk one up for the red team....
So in conclusion, choosing Trondheim as the showcase for Arbeiderparti-politics - was that really the best they could do, or was it old-fashioned incompetance at work?
Arbeiderpartiet chose Trondheim................
One of the things mayor Rita Ottervik bragged about, was how fantastic the elderly are treated in Trondheim. Only a couple of days ago, there was a widely publicized debate in Trondheim, in which many children of elderly people at public retirement homes lamented the sorry state of affairs for this age bracket, and even stated that after seeing how elderly are treated in Trondheim, they were now in favor of euthanasia. Quite the statement, and nice choice of poster city. Kudos. If this is the best example of a well-run Arbeiderparti-town, things are grim indeed. Or maybe someone didn't do their homework with respect to timing......
Seeing as how we moved to Trondheim in 2003, I got to see the changes from a conservative (Høyre) ruling body to a socialist (Labour/Arbeiderpartiet) reign. The first thing Arbeiderpartiet did, was terminate the use of private enterprises and actual bidding wars for public services such as renovation. 'Cause private enterprises are evil entities which *gasp* try to operate at a profit. After stealing the pensions from li'l old ladies and taking lo-carb candy away from children, the evil private corporations apparently proceed to lurk back to Mordor and sacrifice baby unicorns - or so the socialist parties claim. Also, the newly elected officials in Trondheim signed a contract with the unions (LO) stating that all public services of this kind should go to the union members without the need for pesky bidding rounds and the like, in exchange for LO demonizing any conservative parties prior to the election. They even invented a spiffy name for it - "recommunalization" (rekommunalisering). There was much mirth and bonus copies of Chairman Mao's li'l red pamphlet all around.
So how did it work out? Beside the less-than-satisfactory situation for the elderly (which in all fairness is probably no different from what it's like in other cities run by other parties), we noticed something first-hand right away. Like I mentioned, under the "old" local government, the renovation was taken care of by private enterprises. After the recommunistification, however, the private enterprises were promptly given the boot, and replaced by trusty teamsters. Was the effect noticeable? Oh hell yeah. Before the new administration took over, "regular" trash was picked up every week, paper and cardboard was collected every other week, and plastic was picked up once every four weeks. Now, regular trash is picked up every other week, paper is collected every four weeks, and plastic is picked up once every eight weeks.
Those math-savvy among you might have figured out that this constitutes half the frequency of what the situation was before the new administration. So you might ask yourself; so did we get twice as big trash cans? Nope. But since they reduced their service by 50%, surely they reduced the cost accordingly? Nope again - the cost stayed at exactly the same level, which - again for you math buffs - constitutes doubling the price for a service in going from a private to a public provider. Splendid. Chalk one up for the red team....
So in conclusion, choosing Trondheim as the showcase for Arbeiderparti-politics - was that really the best they could do, or was it old-fashioned incompetance at work?
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4 comments:
For the sake of the enviroment, it's important to decrease the huge amount of garbage. And here Ap has found a way of reducing the household waste to the half, without increasing the cost, and you still complain? More often then not, to eco-friendly comes with a cost, but not this time. So what do you got against the enviroment, W?
Seriously, since I didn't see the debate, I won't comment on why Trondheim was used as a poster boy for Ap. But I won't be very surprised if incompetence was a contributing factor...
Yeah; if every citize in Trondheim magically only produced half the garbage as a result, this would be a great thing.
What happens, though, is that people don't recycle e.g. plastic, since this bin is the smallest and fills up quickly if you recycle everything you should.
Well, you shouldn't buy things with plastic wrapping or containers, you know. It's not enviromental friendly. :-D
But Trondheim should have kudos for recyceling plastic. Neither Oslo nor Bergen does that.
Dude; if I could find most of these products without five layers of plastic packaging, I'd buy them. Even paprikas are individually wrapped in plastic, for god's sakes.
Really? No plastic recycling in Bergen or Oslo? Raleigh, North Carolina has recycling of plastic, so that says something........
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