Just back from a run round still dark but very clean and pretty Oslo. My hotel is opposite the government buildings where on July 22 a bomb ripped through the heart of the city, in part as a decoy for the even bigger massacre to come at the Labour Party summer camp in Utoya.
You don’t have to be here long, or indeed to be long into any conversation, before the subject comes up. And I cannot help wondering, as I wondered at the time, whether we Brits would have been quite so calm, stoical and non-blame-gaming as the Norwegians appear to be.
The sense of shock is still there, and people still want to say where they were when they heard, what they felt, what they did, what connections they have with the people who died. But even though the official reports into the massacre may have things to say about the police response, people seem to give them the benefit of the doubt, and point out just how hard it is to guard in a free country against the acts of a madman.
The very nice lady who collected me from the airport volunteered that she was ‘not of your political persuasion’ but then proceeded to tell me how well she thought Labour PM Jens Stoltenberg had handled the crisis. I said the impression I had in the UK was not just that the politicians handled it well, but the people too.
Then as I ran past the news-stands this morning, I wondered if the difference between the two countries was the nature of the media. Norway does have a lively tabloid press, but it is less driven by the desire to blame than ours is.
Whenever there is a horrible event in the UK, the authorities seem to get the benefit of the doubt for a day or so. Then the blame game begins. Here, several months on, it seems it is still not being played. That may be about differences between us as people. But I doubt it.
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre made a big defence of a free press last week. But it is papers like his, and attitudes like his, that Norway lacks, to its great credit and to its benefit too.
Welcome to Scandinavia.
We have a different kind of press here, indeed. Much less intrusive.
In Finland all the news are neutral. Political allegiances are shown only in the editorials.
I have been to Norway once, and it is a nice country. Norway is not a member of the EU.
It has its own currency: krone. Contrary to common belief, Norway has public debt (60.2% of GDP, 2009 est.).
The government has a large stake in Statoil. Had Britain followed the same route as Norway when it comes to oil, things in the UK would be different now.
Inflation in Britain is now, by the way, 5.2%. The target is 2%.
This is one of the reasons why there is no growth. The other is, of course, “plan” A.
Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the NYT that a new paper from IMF shows that results purporting to show economic expansion following spending cuts/or tax rises were based on statistical illusion.
According to Mr Krugman plan A has now definitely been proved to be wrong.
But Osborne´s plan has been political from the day one. The aim of plan A was to start cutting eary in order to win in 2015. Its aim was to eliminate the welfare state not to create growth or recovery which it cannot do.
Vince Cable has now warned of double dip recession.
Mr Osborne will, of course, blame the eurozone but the current problems of the UK economy started a year ago long before the euro crisis got worse.
The EU leaders are barking the wrong tree: sovereign debt and the banks. It will be the lack of growth due to lack of demand due to neoliberal austerity demanded by banks that will finally cause the collapse of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy etc.
What will happen when whole countries go bust and descend into chaos as Immanuel Wallerstein has predicted. Who will take over?
The United Nations is my guess…
Ps. I was about to post a comment on Obama to your earlier post, so I post it now here. These are the top contributors to Obama´s campaign in 2008 election cycle:
University of California $1,648,000
Goldman Sachs 1,013,000
Harvard University 878,000
Microsoft 852,000
Google 814,000
JPMorgan Chase 808,000
Citigroup 736,000
Time Warner 624,000
IBM, General Electric and Morgan Stanley also contributed.
As an expat who has lived here 4 years now I would say it is a mix of the lack of sensationalist press too, but there are differences between us as people, to the Norwegians credit. Everyone here is treated as an equal, and everyone is expected to contribute to society. It’s an unwritten rule. The absence of any kind of class system is also clearly evident. It’s not about what you do for a living, it’s about who you are. A Norwegian friend once described society here as being 5% upper class, 5% lower class and 90% middle class. I suppose it helps to have a little spare cash in your pocket.
this should be printed in all the papers that say they wish to defend free speech – some will not have any trouble with it I think…..
Couldn’t agree more. The ‘someone must be blamed’ media culture we have is extremely damaging both to our public services and to public morale. It engenders cynicism and pessimism far in excess of what most situations warrant, and has led to a ‘no one can be trusted’ mentality.
It also means that when someone really is to blame, and there really is personal or corporate culpability, this doesn’t stand out from all the rest.
Most of the media is unbalanced and totally opportunistic (social worker to blame for child dying / social worker taking too many children into care), not allowing the realities of difficult judgements to be heard.
I do agree that the press must be free to investigate and publish, but I also think the press has a responsibility to play fair.
Pie in the sky, I guess.
Wonder no longer, the people of Manchester were just as calm and stoical when the heart of the city was blasted by the IRA.
As for linking a bomb blast in Oslo to Mr Dacre; well only you could do that.
That is a very fine line to Walk on. Some People say there is a correlation between the number of critical journalists and the number of corruption and fraud cases in government and companies. So who defines what is good critical jounalism and what becomes a sort of Nihilism that destroys trust in institutions?
I’m afraid the Wail isn’t the only blamer in the game.
Last night on TV we were treated to all sorts of people being indignant about an undercover Police Officer having given evidence under his ‘cover’ name (some years ago).
I’m sure I read somewhere a while ago that there is no legal requirement on someone giving evidence in open court to give their real one there, in public, so long as relevant authorities know both.
This makes perfect sense to me, regardless of the fact that the specific example quoted and mocked last night was ‘only’ about undercover operations in a transport protest group ….. hindsight being exploited by blamers.
I think that at the time of the nutcase shootist there was plenty of Norwegian criticism about the Police. I’d imagine for us to have come to know of it it must have been expressed in their media.
Over the first weekend there were also all sorts of complaints about Police having been occupied with the car bomb in Oslo and the non-availability of timely helicopters to the island.
I’m also wondering what drove the shootist to his behaviour although I suppose it could all have been internet contacts, many of them here and wound up by the likes of ….. oh, better not upset ‘Mr Dacre’s fanship.
We can only conclude that our police system, sadly, is becoming a law to themselves. Remind you of any political system, which through the World we thought was becoming rarer? It is as if the police system is becoming a world of itself, self-driving itself away from general society. Frightening signs.
There is a peculiarly unhealthy attitude within the British media, which to me only started with the thatcherite environment in the early 1980’s. Before then, even though it started playing games with winter of discontent times with the Labour government before, was then more apparently rational. But the Mail was a bit shock-horror-wail then though, but maybe not so as hysterical as now. But The Guardian these days is impressive in stable-thought reporting, giving it straight, and covering a subject as it is plainly seen to the eye and mind.
The rise of racism and especially extreme anti-semitism in Scandinavia concerns me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Sweden). It’s not hard to see why it exists. What has happened to Palestine’s request for UN recognition? Why won’t the UK recognise Palestine?
There is reason to be optimistic do to the massive protests in Israel this summer which, although they were about housing shortages, clearly showed the general Israeli public were becoming aware that the Arabs were not their enemies – their own ruling class are. Why was this not covered in the UK?
Here’s just a tiny bit of the evidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Israeli_social_justice_protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccsa9YMmjx4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEXzmO5HkH4
So you think that if someone is working undercover, at some risk to hi/herself (and I think mentally as well as physically) they should have to out themselves when giving evidence?
I happen to know of someone that was at school with my kid, who worked for a while in plain clothes, which by default means without even a stab vest.
He worked specifically in finding drug dealers, you really think that when he gave the evidence he did in open court he should do so under his real name? I’ve already explained above that when they give evidence under their ‘cover’ name in public their RL name is known to those with the need to know.
Perhaps he should have had to give his shoulder number too and that cops should all travel to and from work in uniform and on public transport?
There but for eh?
Furthermore, coppers wring their hands in glee when trouble is on the cards and on the streets, because of the extra over-time wealth for it creates for them in their bank account. Did someone mention self-perpetuation? That is just my simple observation. Burning cars – get a copter to follow this 16 year old twonk, copter costing thousand quid an hour in fuel, or something, Give me strength. Anyone think coppers should be approaching it from the other end? That is making young people feel that coppers is their friend, and giving them slack when they start going off the rails? Rather than building up arrest patheticpoints for themselves? The most hysterical people I have seen is young coppers on probation, arrest this that or the other – the system for copper early life seriously needs to change. it is a school for fascists at the moment.
John Foxx, give us a song from the early 1980’s when it changed from the Heartbeat generation of coppers, dysfunctionaly, to knocking striking miners blocks off and playing MI5 games with the common people on the streets. We are just simple observers of life, and can only advise, as we sit on our fence, as life goes by.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZfL_As4Oo
Sorry if my last sounds a tad ratty Ehtch but I think the lines between who the real cynics are (with the suspicions / accusations about the motives of others) are blurred.
Hi Ehtch, I don’t know if either you or Michele ever visit Inspector Gadget’s (Police Inspector) blog site. I visit it only occasionally, more often when things are going down e.g. the riots at the beginning of August this year.
The message that comes across on that site comes across loud and clear, i.e. that they are mightily fed-up with being used by successive governments to “police” their dirty work and that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Whilst they are expected to still do their jobs even though their resources and man-power are being cut to the bone.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the predicament our police force find themselves in. It was never supposed or meant to be this way. The Police are there to uphold law and order. They were never meant to be used as tools for enforcing unpopular government social policies.
Governments in this country since Thatcher in the 1980’s have been far exceeding their particular mandates and have become far to controlling in every aspect of our lives. We the people are being taken in the wrong direction. Loosing more of our rights along the way. imho, nothing short of a revolution is going to sort this current mess out. Not that I am encouraging or inciting anyone to revolt or riot. It needs to be more sophisticated than that.
You have to get past the idea that because you missed something (or hadn’t yet become interested in the topic to be curious about a headline or it hadn’t yet been put on youtube with a title that would be found by your keywords) things were ‘not covered in the UK’ at the time (and for years before).
One example of what you apparently missed :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/09/new-israelis-protest-social-justice
I’m always up for being contradicted Michele – but that article only waffles a bit about ‘New Zionism’ without hitting on any of the key elements of the emerging awarenesses of the Israeli people the international reports show.
Did you watch the videos carefully? For example did you hear the booing when a member of the crowd suggested that the solution to the housing shortage was settlements? Did you notice the arrests as attempts at ‘agenda management’ kicked in and the unprecedented extent to which they failed.
Could you show me, for example, where the UK press have clearly hammered home the message that Netanyahu’s days of claiming he needs to build settlements in the West Bank to satisfy his protesting people are over – or at least they should be if we were listening to the Israeli people.
– that the Israeli people have become aware that their leaders have been preventing building where it’s been needed for years in order to get them to protest about housing for propaganda reasons?
– that their views have been seriously misrepresented and manipulated through ‘police state’ actions just as have the people of Egypt, Syria and Libya
and that they’ve been living in tents together (Arabs and Jews) for months talking about this.
Could you show me where this was covered in our press please? I’d like to see. I think we just missed it because our correspondents were in Libya, Syria, Oslo and so on.
Hi Gbc nope, I don’t visit that blog but then I’ve long been aware about how the Police are vilified whatever happens.
It’s usually an easy way to get agreement – certainly in blogland!
The rozzers were always round at our place after my cute brother when I was little and that, along with things like the Blair Peach shooting and IRA fit-ups of the 80s my opinions used to be very different to how they are now.
I get sick of cynicism (written cynically LOL), it’s rather like parts of the world where bribery is rife so sophisticated apologetic locals warn that it’s near-total. If people anywhere are badly presumed-about even when they’re clean, it’s just another form of ugly prejudice.
Been a looooong day, g’night.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/06/israel-army-religion
You talk as if you think all this has only just started to happen RH. How can you think that because you have not seen something it hasn’t happened? The very fact that certain blogger leaders have disappeared from the Toxigraph is the invisible proof that it has < yes I know that's convoluted. You yatter about your notion that TB is 'out of his depth' as if you think there's a depth that we (or wow! even you) actually know the extent of. It's a massively convoluted issue and the conficting ownerships of much of the international Press is one reason why. Covert anti-Semitism is another (and I am aware that my line above could be described as such by someone cynical enough, someone willing to exploit ignorance, including my own, about the intricacies of Judaism vs Zionism ). One version of the BNP's constitution up till mid-'09 stated its ambition was for Britain to attain a bloodstock that was 'pure' Celt/Anglo-Saxon and the spin on that was the pretence that it was meant to appeal to Islamophobes ( a popular feeling among some types at the time) and 'normal' racists. I posted on one particular forum (a lot like the Toxigraph's, with many EDL-types), posting about this 'pure' bloodline ambition being anti-Jew as well as anti-Muslim/anti-immigration, something that was denied by most until one poster fessed up with 'Nothing wrong with that, it's why we gave them Israel isn't it?' and by reading between the lines of a lot of public statements there's a tangible stinking undercurrent of some people's support for Israel actually being more about there being an alternative to us having Jewish people living in the West. BNP's constitution was amended, it doesn't mean the feelings have gone away. It's people screaming about what they've scratched on the surface of an issue that misunderstand depth.
but the coppers surely don’t mind in overtime new wealth, do they?
It is self-propelling, for bad policing.
Some hors d’oevre :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/06/israel-army-religion
http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/15194/idf-astonishing-co-operation-pa
Most of us don’t even understand the lack of unity between the discrete communities of Palestinians RH; your stance as Miss admonishing people as if it’s a really simple matter is a tad Hyacinth-ish imhoo.
Small bites ….
…….. it’s occurring to me RH that your surprise about these incidents is giving an answer to your own Q of a couple of weeks ago re why TB hoped the Palestinians wouldn’t ask then, at that particular time, about statehood.
Some of my links have been from 2009, during ’09 itself I was posting similar stuff from ’07 when posting on the Beeb’s R&E boards that are now closed. I’m not claiming credit for them or for knowing about them, merely pointing out that lots of types of people have been looking out for this stuff for years. Maybe for over 60 :-s A Jewish boss of 30+yrs ago told me his family and many of his friends regretted that Israel had been (re-?)established (while yet another was siphoning profits to an IDF ‘charity’).
Some of your links have been from the past few months but have been about the ’09 and earlier activities.
Maybe UN delegates / Middle East envoys decided that ground needs to be prepared. More of the general population need to become aware of the empathy there is for Palestinians (and ‘even’ among Israelis and the Jewish diaspora).
Who knows, perhaps it’s even they that are uploading the material, using the momentum of the internet to create a better reception for when Palestinians do insist more empahatically?
After all, there is no logic at all in people being of a nationality that has no nationhood.
I took a look Gbc …. LOL
I’ve previously only read one bloke’s online diary about his hours during the G20 protests.
:-s
Give the kiddies something to do, is my simple message. On the whole, lost kiddies are just that, lost, in society. Inclusiveness excluded is surely a terrible thing to experience, especially when young, and such policing of them just concentrates such feelings within.
And as for undercover – has anyone involved got a simple and rational brain? Drugs and bicycles are two ends of the scale.
I bow to your knowledge Ehtch, for surely there must be some (?) to underpin all those dismissive sim ….ooops xxx
single-minded opinions (that come from simple prejudice that there’s no legislation possible for).
As I said before, there but for………..
Catch the blame for Hillsborough even though all the measures that have prevented a repeat were to do with stadia structure.
Catch the blame for people that can’t have a piddle when kettled, even though kettling, if nothing else, is THE preventative activity that is usually demanded (and despite not being able to go for a piddle themselves, or a break, or a stroll, or a personal commitment).
Catch the blame in a few days time for what is bound to go wrong outside St Paul’s, even though they were in the middle of dispersing the protesters on that first day and were asked not to do so by a St Paul’s worthy-type ….. yep, they’re bound to catch the blame for whatever happens there too.
Yep Ehtch, I can even anticipate your predictable ‘well they need to catch something’.
🙂 It doesn’t wash Ehtch, you either do or do not believe in equal rights for ALL.
All I have got to say, MicheleB, is that tinkers have got to have somewhere to live, ever since the enclosure of common land has given them nowhere to go. The media has been on a pathetic feeding frenzy on that, haven’t they? So an acre of extra land has been taken up, so fecking what, isn’t it? It is not as if they are planning to take over half of Essex? Bigotry promoted by the media this has all been. And the scenes there beggars belief in establishment hysteria. Quite laughable it has been.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/19/undercover-police-law-men-there
I daresay this is the case we are both talking about and it’s a case of whose specs one reads it with.
Mine make me conclude that hindsight is a wunnerful thing (undercover cop concludes no sinister exloitation of legitimate protesters was happening).
Reclaim the Streets was a quite different-feeling movement to Reclaim the Night (women feeling safe when ‘daring’ to go out in the dark).
If you had been a central London worker trying to get home on Friday evenings but having your bus held up for hours every week by wide ranks of cyclists pedalling at about 2mph slowing everyone down (public as well as private transport users) you might feel less well-disposed to the methods of the protests.
If you were a driver trying to get to work across London but being impeded deliberately by cyclists blocking the road ahead at every traffic light you might have felt differently.
Good for KL that he made the far far better and safer change (by introducing the Congestion Zone which has improved so much of life and safety in central London).
I don’t find it strange that an undercover person could really, truly, actually, find themselves with a dilemma when familiarising themselves with a movement and sometimes finding themselves in empathy with it.
I also would not find it at all surprising to hear that Guardian employees have on occasions strayed across lines of strict propriety, just as their much-championed Assange has.
‘tinkers’?
Oh, you’re moving on to Dale Farm now?
Stow it Ehtch. You’ve had quite a bit to say about the unspoiled beauty of your own area and I’m happy for you.
I can’t bear users. It was not about ‘ethnic cleansing’ and it was horribly exploitative of the non-travellers to use that term, it devalues the actual examples of it; there is still plenty of anti-Roma discrimination in Europe.
I’m half-Oirish so do bitterly resent the non-travellers exploiting that little facet of their ‘case’.
The Police attend such occasions in heavy numbers as it actually reduces injuries to the’opposition’ when they do so. When you see 4/5 cops holding down a drunk on a Thursday night it’s to prevent injury by restricting flailing and self-harm, it’s not beastly bullying.
Grow up fgs, you’re kidding nobody.
You’ve been to third world countries as I have, you’ve been to European airports as I have and seen armed cops strutting their stuff like it’s a fillum set.
Were you in London for any of the weeks post 7th July to feel how sad life would be if we had armed Police on our streets as a matter of course? I was.
Read my lips 😉
Great saying my maternal grandmother used to come out with now and again, and just sums up most arguements daily met;
If ifs and ands,
were pots and pans,
there’d be no trade,
for tinkers.
Quite succinct methinks. Have always had respect to our traditional travelling community, always. They were the national newspapers of the day once, to tell us what was going on in other areas, when they visited.
MicheleB, my family has traditionally been close to tinkers and travellers, for many farming generations, and it gets me how the english don’t get them anymore. They are still got in Wales. and me and my Ennis mates make sure they are not fucked over here. Song,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDN5QiLP3LQ
Tinkers are welcomed in Wales/Cymru.
I don’t wish to patronise anybody with labels such as ‘tinkers’ and reminiscences about their having been the carriers of ‘news’ Ehtch, that’s self-serving imhoo.
There are plenty of places where semi-permanent structures would be welcome and it would be lovely for travellers’ children to be more aware of what could come from assimilating, have chances to make their own decisions about their futures.
I empathise with those feelings of inadequacy, not knowing the formalities and how to challenge the establishment but hoping for the best and just ignoring the rules, living in hope that they’d get away with it has probably cost a lot of those people all they have.
They’re not the only victims though, I also find myself feeling sorry for the councillors, nobody wants to feel like a persecutor. Life’s tough eh? Eeeny meeny miney mo 🙁
We have moved into a sharp end capitalist world in the last two hundred years or so, and the treament, especially of tinkers (who gladly allow themselves to be termed as such, even with modern-day disparaging), who as a group of people have become a symptom in treatment of such, and not a cause some might devert us to as thinking. As I said MicheleB, between the lines, they should have let this extra acre of land go, as a mark of respect of their great traditional history that goes back thousands of years.
Educate yourself in it MicheleB, and you might agree with me. They have more right to some enclosed lands of the Enclosure Act of 1803 than others. I hope I have got that date right – it’s give or take a year or two, amendments later aside.
Smile to the camera! What I remember about a traditional travellers camp when you visit it – you have just got to get past the teeth-armed guards first, before some woman shouts out, “get by”, when she spots we are not council officials, and regonise us from the previous year,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuHtyDbyEaA
I guess nobody will read this comment now but I agree somewhat with your view of the Daily Mail.
In my view though, the big difference with papers today is they increasingly want to be the news, not just report it. And often, its is not the story itself which is important, but the reaction to it that everyone gets excited about. Again, making newspapers central to the story.
Further to stuff of earlier :
http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/10/31/palestine-granted-full-unesco-membership-in-divisive-vote/
Has your MP signed this?
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/2135
Absolutely shocking that given the disgusting unjustifiable imbalance / seats-majority created/nicked by the partnership that Nick Clegg was bought by ….. inhale …… so few of the coalition have signed yet.
I don’t think the same would be the case had the coalition been a combined 315 against the 306 : :
Conservative 306
Labour 258
58
Liberal Democrat 57
I also hadn’t realised till recently how heavily weighted England is now with Tories, no wonder Scotland and Wales, want out!
Relevant to something else further back here; we were treated yesterday to an interview with an apparently charming girl called Lucy.
She was foreseeing herself being ‘dragged along the ground by my hair in the middle of the night and beaten with truncheons’. If a person is truly altruistic how do they justify that sort of prejudice?
Over the first weekend the British media were there and desperately trying to find someone to blame. When the response was bafflement that they didn’t understand it was Breivik, they got bored and came home. Questions have been asked but there have been no witchhunts and no suggestion that if only the all-knowing journalists had been in charge things would have been different.
Over the first weekend the British media were there and desperately trying to find someone to blame. When the response was bafflement that they didn’t understand it was Breivik, they got bored and came home. Questions have been asked but there have been no witchhunts and no suggestion that if only the all-knowing journalists had been in charge things would have been different.