Hazardous chemicals being used in commercial enterprises (Aftenposten)

On Friday the Office of the Auditor General released a report which concludes that the authorities have limited knowledge of how chemicals that are particularly hazardous to health and the environment are being used and abused. According to senior medical officer Aksel Wannag at the Directorate of Labour Inspection, "Recent estimates we have made indicate that from 200 to 400 people die each year as a result of chemicals. In addition, chemicals lead to 1600 hospital stays and 1.2 million days of sick leave." In an earlier report the Directorate of Labour Inspection estimated that there were 1300 chemical-related deaths annually. The most common complaints are respiratory dysfunction. "We are constantly using both familiar and new chemicals that cause lung damage. I wish that the commercial sector were more aware of this problem," said Dr. Wannag. Minister of the Environment Børge Brende said, "I take the report made by the Office of the Auditor General very seriously. We need a thorough investigation of our policies with regard to the use of chemicals. Increased controls would be an important element to concentrate on. We will submit plans for a more pro-active policy to the Storting this autumn. I will also examine the distribution of responsibility," promised Mr. Brende.

Hagen wins 91 000 voters from Conservatives (Aftenposten)

Progress Party chairman Carl I. Hagen has some agreeable holiday reading to keep him occupied under the palm trees: according to an Opinion survey, 1.3 million Norwegian voters are in the process of changing their political allegiance, and Progress is winning voters from all parties. Progress has taken over 25 000 voters from the Christian Democratic Party, 23 000 from the Coastal Party and 28 000 from Labour. The remainder are from other parties and previously unaffiliated voters. But no party has lost as much support to Progress as the Conservative Party with Jan Petersen at the helm: 91 000 voters. Although former Conservative voters are moving to Progress in droves, other parties are losing voters to the Conservatives. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s Christian Democratic Party has lost a third of its voters since the last general election. The Labour Party is also in a bad way. The loss of 110 000 voters, 53 000 of whom have switched to the Socialist Left Party within the past nine months, is indicative of the crisis Labour has been facing since the last election.

On the wing (Dagsavisen)

Yesterday Minister of Labour and Government Administration Victor D. Norman announced that in future, government employees would be flying with the discount-priced airline Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) when travelling between the major urban centres in Norway. SAS is thus losing an extremely lucrative arrangement. Last year government employees took 170 000 trips between the largest cities. The value of the agreement is estimated at between NOK 250 and 300 million.

Conservatives open for cooperation with Progress (Dagsavisen)

The Conservative Party is re-evaluating its attitude towards the Progress Party. Conservative county chairmen are not entirely averse to cooperating with the Progress Party. "From my point of view it would be acceptable to give Progress a place in the Government. This would only be relevant if Progress learned how to adjust its views to those of other parties," said Terje Olsen, Conservative Party branch chairman in Troms County. And he is not alone. There are few Conservative branch chairmen who have misgivings in principle about participating in a Government in which Progress has been given a seat. The views of the Conservative branch chairmen are in line with those of a majority of the respondents in a survey published in Dagsavisen yesterday. Half of those who had an opinion said that Progress should be part of the current coalition government. So it seems that the voters are satisfied with the clean-up effort Mr. Hagen has made within his own party in order to prepare for its entry into the corridors of power. But in the course of the past week both Prime Minister Bondevik and Liberal Party chairman Lars Sponheim have rejected the Progress bid. They feel that Mr. Hagen is still too irresponsible. Conservative chairman Jan Petersen has also rejected any government cooperation with the Progress Party. In this, however, he may be on a collision course with his own party’s representatives.

Stoltenberg is setting the terms (Dagsavisen)

The Labour Party would like to cooperate with the Bondevik Government on the budget this autumn. But Jens Stoltenberg is setting clear terms: drop the proposed tax reductions and give more to the municipalities. In addition, Labour cooperation is dependent on giving priority to schools, care for the elderly and measures designed to help the unemployed in the next budget. Nevertheless, Labour’s upcoming chairman believes that the most natural solution would be for Bondevik to cooperate with the Progress Party on next year’s annual budget. "Before the last general election, some parties felt that Norway needed to stake out a new political course. These same parties should now be in a position to give the Government a feasible fiscal budget," said Mr. Stoltenberg yesterday when he summed up the Storting’s spring session before the summer holiday. The former Labour Prime Minister did not mince words when he described the policies pursued by the Bondevik Government since it took power almost a year ago. "The Government is following irresponsible and passive policies. Of particular concern is the fact that it is underrating the signs warning of increasing problems for Norwegian jobs and companies," said Mr. Stoltenberg.

Røkke is strapped for cash (Dagens Næringsliv)

Kjell Inge Røkke’s empire is having trouble paying its bills. On 23 June a loan of NOK 544 million made to Aker RGI Holding will fall due. This spring Aker Maritime had to borrow NOK 1.5 billion at astronomical interest rates. Mr. Røkke is famous for balancing on the brink before landing on his feet. This autumn’s Kværner drama ended with a yet another victory for him. But there are dark clouds on the horizon. In a market characterized by falling share prices, fearful banks and a deteriorating securities market, the Røkke empire is having trouble finding the money to pay off the loans that are falling due. The value of Kjell Inge Røkke’s most important holding, his 49.9 per cent share of Kværner, has dropped by NOK 1.8 billion since 14 March this year.

Worth noting:

• The municipal rebellion has not stopped at Vardø. Nine more municipalities have now rejected control and supervision by the central government, refused to accept additional refugees and have stopped paying payroll taxes. (Nationen)
• Norwegian women and men are living longer and longer. Newborn boys have a life expectancy of 76.2 years, and newborn girls 81.5 years. In the course of the past 30 years men’s life expectancy has increased by five years and women’s by over four years. (NTB)
• Power based on natural gas is not profitable when current prices for gas and electricity are taken into account. Statoil has put its foot down in Skogn, and plans to build other planned gas-fired power plants have been put on ice. The Bellona Foundation, an environmental protection organization, is pleased. (Nationen)
• Norwegian Air Shuttle is in the process of gaining major new customers. Six county administrations in northern and central Norway are negotiating contracts with the airlines. On Thursday the Government announced that it was signing contracts with the airline for travel between Oslo and the other main cities of Norway. Now the counties of Møre og Romsdal, Sør-Trøndelag, Nord-Trøndelag, Nordland, Troms and Finnmark are involved in negotiating agreements that could be a good deal cheaper than current agreements with SAS and Braathens. (Nationen)
• Carsten Smith is stepping down as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was instrumental in giving the Supreme Court its position as an independent branch of government of equal status with the executive and the legislative. In line with his view of the role of the judiciary in government, he has not hesitated to let the court make rulings with clear political implications. In this respect he has supported historian Jens Arup Seip’s assertion that the Supreme Court is "to an extreme degree" a political organ. (Dagbladet)
• Åshild Mathisen, Pål Arne Aukan and Lars Salvesen, all former leaders of the Christian Democratic youth organization, left the organization after a far more conservative board than usual was elected at the national convention last weekend. They reacted strongly to the statement made by the newly-elected chairman, Per Steinar Osmundnes, to Dagbladet that homosexuality can be cured. (Vårt Land)
• Tord Björk, a Swedish environmental activist, described the protest activities in connection with the World Bank’s ABCDE conference in Oslo on Monday as good clean fun compared with the events in Gothenburg a year ago. "What was radically new here in Oslo was that the police kept a low profile throughout the arrangement, and chose to maintain this low profile during both the Reclaim the Streets party and the house occupation later that night," said Mr. Björk. (Klassekampen)

Today’s comment from VG:

"Greed is good," said Gordon Gekko, the power broker in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film "Wall Street". This was his way of speaking directly to the shareholders who wanted to glean the largest possible profit, and how he expressed his criticism of the board chairmen and company CEOs who reaped enormous salaries regardless of their companies’ performances. This week we have seen yet another disastrous example of how the Gekko model works. The leaders of American super-companies have huge options agreements as an incentive to increase profits as much as possible. As a result, the CEOs and board chairmen have presided over a gigantic, artificial inflation of stock market values in order to enrich themselves. This is how greed works. At Enron the accountants fudged their figures and ended up exaggerating the company’s value by over USD 600 million. This week the news broke that the telecommunications giant Worldcom had built a castle in the air that was six times larger than Enron’s. This will have a major impact not only on the company’s 17 000 employees, but also on stock exchanges all over the world, including here in Norway, which are shaking in their shoes. The company’s deception was amazingly simple in its execution. By booking almost USD four billion in ongoing maintenance costs as investments in 2001 and 2002, profits have looked much higher. And the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen is again at the heart of the scandal. Both Enron and Worldcom used this company to audit their accounts. We are now witnessing the death throes of the so-called new economy that showered wealth on so many companies and individuals just a few years ago. Naive analysts and greedy stock market brokers managed to convince too great a portion of a gullible market that the ordinary laws of economics were not relevant to the knowledge-based technology industry, and that the tree would grow into the skies and generate unlimited profits without having created any real value at its roots. Some of the giants, such as AOL Time Warner, have taken the consequences, swallowed hard, written down their value and written off their losses. But the fate of Enron and Worldcom shows that there is still something rotten in the state of neo-capitalism and that greed is the worst possible solution to the problem.