Thursday, October 18, 2007

Credit where credit is due

Today, the reigning government announced that they're gonna deep-six three ministers from their line-up-o'-losers. The Prime Minister might have phrased it differently - like the ministers "decided to resign" - but it's zero doubt that at least two of these ministers have gotten a lot of flack both from the general population and from their own party. In particular, the Minister of Knowledge - Øystein Djupedal - would have to be considered a weak link in any political line-up I can think of. I'd like to challenge anyone to pinpoint one competent thing Djupedal has done during his reign of incompetence.

This wasn't the part where I give credit to the government, though. In case y'all wondered.

The good thing they did - and which is worthy of some praise - was to split the position of "Minister of Knowledge" into two positions: One dealing with education from kindergarten up to and including high school, and one dealing exclusively dealing with higher education and research. I think this is a great idea, and I applaud the government for recognizing the fact that there is a vast gap between high school and colleges/universities.

Of course, there's been an outcry against this from the get-go - I imagine that the time lag was exactly as long as it took certain parties to break out their cell phone after hearing the announcement. Surprisingly, Per Kristian Foss from the Conservatives (Høyre) is one of them. And also, I'm sure that the joy I'm gettin' from this separation of levels will soon be overshadowed by frustration, but for now: Kudos.

2 comments:

Anders said...

Well, you can say a lot of bad things about Djupedal, but one thing did he manage to do: He cut the spendings on reserach by 1%. That's not much, but it is a start. Oh, wait a minut. Cutting spending is only a good thing if you don't cut in productivity. Bugger!

Seriously, I do agree with you. I can't even think of minister with a worse track record. Or who used shorter time to mess things up.

BUt the worse part was his last speech: He said that the fact the his position is now divided into two separate positions, he took as a sign that he had done a good job... Yeah, right!

Wilhelm said...

Funny how just about every single party save for Fremskrittspartiet (Progress party) had "Research contributes 3% of the GNP by 2010" as a parole, but thanks to the last two years, this goal might very well have been pushed back ten years or so.