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[Kagus]

So, my area in Norway has recently had a pretty heated debate for a while about a planned toll network being set up across the city. Yes, as in making all inner-city streets into toll roads (which would, in the predicted practice, mean that if you drove your car to work and then back each day, you'd be spending approximately $250 every month on tolls. That's without factoring in shopping trips, or any other usages of the car outside of the 1-hour slot where you drive to work and the 1-hour slot where you drive home). Lots of people got pretty upset about the idea, especially every single food place that delivers.

As is appropriate in such times, a new political party rose from the rabble and dubbed themselves the "No to Toll Network Party", and they've been working hard ever since to get their spot so they can put a stop to this madness!


...except that the current majority parties have already seen the outcry, and (amid a lot of partisan squabbling) nixed the toll network plan.

The "No to Toll Network Party" is now trying to convince people that "just because the deal we were created to oppose no longer exists, doesn't mean that there's no reason to vote for us anymore!", and they're still trying to get their seats on the council.


Also the bus transit is threatening to explode into pieces because it's not getting the multi-million-dollar payoff it was expecting to have earmarked from the toll money.

[JoshuaFH]

Sounds like the Norwegian city planners played Cities: Skylines.

[Loud Whispers]

Sounds like the Norwegian city planners played Cities: Skylines.

It is inevitable, given their proximity to Swedish DLC cartels

[scriver]

City: Skyline is Finnish

[Kagus]

City: Skyline is Finnish

Finland is Swedish DLC

[hector13]

Finland is just made up so the Japanese can flout fishing rules.

[Pwnzerfaust]

And how is things looking overall for the democratic/left parties?

As I heard it summed up in the news, not having looked much beyond that myself: Left wing takes a huge hit and goes back all over Europe. Big winners are nationalist and greens.

In Sweden the left wing stood mostly still, a few percentages up and down but no change in mandates.. The nationalistic Sweden Democrats gained the most percentage-wise but only one mandage, and the traditional right wing parties shuffled their percentages around a little, gaining one mandate each except for (Folkpartiet) Liberalerna (In English: (the People's Party) the Liberals - they recently shortened their name to just the latter and made their symbol a huge dick), nearly got bumped out. Theirs was probably the biggest loss in relation to how established they are, but they only lost one mandate. All in all the traditional right wing gained (+3-1=) +2 mandates.

Other big Swedish losers where Miljöpartiet (The Environment Party), who pathetically tried to pass their 4% fall off as a win because it wasn't as big of a defeat as pre-election surveys showed they might face (and while 4% might not sound like much, it effectively means 50% of their mandates), and Feministisk Initiativ (Feministic Iniative) who lost nearly all their percentages, taking them down from 5% to 0.8 and bumping them out of the readings.

Happy to see SD is doing well, still.

[Kagus]

There's a political convention coming in August up where a bunch of political parties will put up stands and have speeches and basically just try to puff themselves up and get some more voters.

Two minority parties were trying to get stands set up, and they'd received initial confirmation that they'd be allowed to do so, but some of the majority party leaders balked at having to share a convention center with these loons and said that they'd boycott the whole affair if they were allowed to present themselves alongside everyone else. So the stands got repealed.

The two parties in question were The Alliance (who have no intentions of allying with anyone, ever), and SIAN (an acronym, for "Stop the Islamification Of Norway").


To give you an idea of what the political mettle of these parties is like, the leader of The Alliance has previously taken to labeling the Holocaust "A propaganda maneuver", and has spoken out about this goddamn liberal-progressive (((modern science))) and (((studies show that))), and how these people are just lost causes that can't be argued out of their fake meta-narratives.

SIAN, meanwhile, riled up a social media outrage about empty bus seats.

Spoiler: The wheels on the bus go Allahu akbar (click to show/hide)

Yes, they thought that picture was of... Something else. And they were fucking angry about it.

The Alliance was allowed to attend this convention last year, and I guess people have decided that they didn't want a repeat of him ranting about how stealthy Ninjews have infiltrated all levels of society in order to secretly advance the kosher agenda. SIAN just... Fuck, dude, SIAN is really just that dumb.

[Loud Whispers]

The fabled Ninjewtsu. Where can I learn this power?

[ChairmanPoo]

The fabled Ninjewtsu. Where can I learn this power?

Not from a jedi

[smjjames]

I thought only the King/Queen could suspend Parliament like that? Though obviously, since the British civil war, it’s probably not solely under the jurdicision of the monarchy anymore.

I don’t think the US Congress has that ability. I mean, they do have their scheduled breaks, but if they actually had the ability to shut down Congress in the way I’m imagining the Parliamentary proroguing works, I bet the Republicans would have tried to do it during Obama’s term.

Then again, it’s only the British who seem to think doing this is a viable idea, despite the possibility of critical work that’d need to be done that wouldn’t get done if it were shut down.

[Kagus]

I thought only the King/Queen could suspend Parliament like that?

Dom's a bit of a queen though, innit?

[smjjames]

I thought only the King/Queen could suspend Parliament like that?

Dom's a bit of a drama queen though, innit?

FIFY

[Vattic]

I thought only the King/Queen could suspend Parliament like that? Though obviously, since the British civil war, it’s probably not solely under the jurdicision of the monarchy anymore.

Technically she suspends it under the advise of her privy council. Really though the PM decides when the current session is finished (not that the Brexit legislation this session was started for is done). It would be a tricky situation as the Queen is meant to be publicly apolitical and this decision would be anything but. The bloke has proven himself pretty clueless (Dover is important?) so perhaps a repeat.

[smjjames]

I thought only the King/Queen could suspend Parliament like that? Though obviously, since the British civil war, it’s probably not solely under the jurdicision of the monarchy anymore.

Technically she suspends it under the advise of her privy council. Really though the PM decides when the current session is finished (not that the Brexit legislation this session was started for is done). It would be a tricky situation as the Queen is meant to be publicly apolitical and this decision would be anything but. The bloke has proven himself pretty clueless (Dover is important?) so perhaps a repeat.

A repeat of what? Anyhow, I suspect that she has faced plenty of politically tricky situations and knows how to deal with them. If it came to it, she'd certainly be dealing with it in a discreet way.