Auditor slams public building directorate (Dagsavisen)

The Directorate of Public Construction and Property has once again come under fire for poor financial management. The Office of the Auditor General considers the situation to be so serious that it is threatening to report the matter to the Storting. "The general impression is that the Directorate’s accounting practices are extremely sloppy," said Berit Mørk of the Auditor General’s office. However, according to Øyvind Christoffersen, chief executive of the Directorate of Public Construction and Property, "We are working non-stop to get things put in place, and by the end of the autumn we will have introduced new routines at all levels of our organization."

Record number of welfare claimants (Aftenposten)

Almost 288,000 people of working age receive incapacity benefit. Ten per cent of the labour force will this year receive a record NOK 35.2 billion in welfare payments. In Europe, only the Netherlands has a higher proportion of people claiming incapacity benefit than Norway. "It is worrying that one in ten people is classified as unfit for work," said Arild Sundberg, head of the National Insurance Administration. "If we include those who are on sick leave and those undergoing rehabilitation, we are talking about some 500,000 people. This is a significant proportion of the labour force, and represents a problem both for society and the individuals concerned," he added.

More and more asylum seekers (Nationen)

According to figures from the National Bureau of Crime Investigation, the number of people seeking asylum in Norway has risen by over 700 per cent in the past six years. So far this year the police have investigated 39 cases of organized, illegal people trafficking, compared with 38 cases in the whole of 2001. The Bureau maintains that there is a clear link between the growing number of asylum seekers and the growth in organized people trafficking. It is a crime with a low rate of detection, and those convicted receive lower penalties than drug or gun smugglers. According to the Bureau, this type of criminal activity is on the rise.

Oslo is Europe’s no. 1 drug city (Dagbladet/Sunday)

Earlier this week Norway was declared the world’s best country in which to live. Now Oslo has been revealed as Europe’s worst drug city. Oslo has more drug-related deaths than 42 comparable European cities. Last year there were 338 drug overdose deaths in the country as a whole, compared with 75 in 1999. The majority of Norwegian drug addicts inject rather than smoking their drugs and take Rohypnol and alcohol at the same time. The combination can be deadly.

Strong krone threatens 80,000 jobs (Dagens Næringsliv)

The strong Norwegian krone is putting 80,000 jobs at risk in sectors exposed to international competition, such as the metal and process industries, and the wood processing and chemicals industries. More and more industries are contracting under Central Bank Governor Svein Gjedrem’s strong krone and his uncompromising efforts to keep inflation under 2.5 per cent. "Export industries which are not labour intensive would do better if the inflation target was eased somewhat," said Roger Bjørnstad of Statistics Norway.

Tomorrow’s elderly will be fit and healthy (Dagsavisen/Sunday)

Despite the fact that more and more of us will live on into extreme old age, the health service will not collapse under the strain. It seems more than likely that tomorrow’s elderly will be healthier than today’s, according to a recent analysis carried out by the Health Economics Research Programme at the University of Oslo (HERO). Today’s forty and fifty-year-olds are more health conscious and have a higher standard of living than their parents, with the result that they will require less medical treatment as they grow older.

Police give holiday home owners free hand (Aftenposten)

Holiday home owners up and down the coast have been setting up illegal fences and no-entry signs, and violating the Open-Air Recreation Act to their hearts’ content. The police take no action. According to Senior State Advocate Rune B. Hansen, open violation of the legislation must be prosecuted, or it will look as though there is one law for the rich and one for the poor.

Don’t repay your mortgage – buy shares instead (Dagsavisen/Saturday)

Den norske Bank Investor is advising its customers to keep their mortgages, even though they have the money to pay them off. The cash then made available should be invested in unit trust funds. DnB Investor’s funds have lost money for the past five years. Anders Stalheim, head of the Consumer Council, does not think that telling people to borrow money on their houses to invest in the stock market is particularly good advice.

Enormous losses on the Stock Exchange (Verdens Gang/Saturday)

Heavens above, what a stock market crash! The Church of Norway has lost at least a quarter of a billion kroner on shares and unit trusts in the past eighteen months. Tens of millions have evaporated in the past few months alone. "This is not good. We have to do something," said Tone Århelle, deputy head of the Church Property Endowment Fund, which manages the Church’s assets.

Worth Noting

• At any one time 1,000 children have a mother or father in prison. Half of those children are told lies about daddy being away on business, working on a North Sea oil rig or being on a Mediterranean holiday. The Norwegian Red Cross hopes that parents will become better at telling the truth. (Aftenposten/Sunday)
• Private investors are queuing up to reduce the backlog of over 2,000 people who have been sentenced to prison, but are waiting for a prison cell to become available. The Justice Ministry confirms that it has received several approaches from people about the establishment of private prisons in, among other places, Bergen and Mo i Rana. (Aftenposten)
• The Defence Ministry has promised that from now on Norwegian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan will keep a score of how many people they have killed. Neither the Norwegian authorities nor our allies know how many civilians have been killed in the war in Afghanistan, nor do they have any idea how many enemy fighters or allies have been killed. (Klassekampen/Saturday/Monday)
• Lawyer Heidi Ysen has said she believes it would be impossible for a rape victim to make an objective judgment as a jury member or a lay judge in a rape case. She is calling for lawyers to be given wider powers to question potential jurors. (Dagbladet)
• The Office of the Auditor General has criticized the Norwegian Defence Estates Agency for underestimating the contracts it awards to consultants. The scope of two of the consulting contracts has been significantly increased after the work had commenced. (Verdens Gang)
• Justice Minister Odd Einar Dørum (Lib) has warned he will be introducing a wide-ranging package of measures to combat passport fraud and people trafficking. "I am not making any decision about individual measures at this time, but will systematically review all the possible measures which can be implemented to combat people trafficking. We will be making an announcement as soon as we have completed our review," he said. (NTB)
• The National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime receives as least 20 complaints a day from people who have been contacted by Nigerian conmen. This is more than twice the number of complaints received a few months ago. (Dagsavisen)
• Investor Øystein Stray Spetalen has slammed what he describes as the crazy waste of public money that was spent to persuade small investors to buy shares in Statoil and Telenor. He is particularly critical of the then prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg. "Mr Stoltenberg should take a look at himself in the mirror before he points the finger at the unit trust salesmen," said Mr Spetalen. (Verdens Gang/Saturday)
• 52,000 small investors bought shares in Telenor, and have seen the value of their investments evaporate. "Telenor does not deserve to be called a ‘people’s share’. The company is not interested in its shareholders," said Knut Traaseth, chief executive of the Norwegian Shareholders’ Association. (Dagbladet/Saturday)
• Over the past few years the number of sheep lost while grazing unsupervised in the hills and forests has risen to almost six per cent. It is the large predators who get all the blame, but they are responsible for only a minority of the losses. 100,000 sheep are injured or simply disappear from their summer grazing land every year. Last year wolves killed just 788 sheep. (Aftenposten)

Today’s comment from Dagsavisen

The debate about who should become the Labour Party’s deputy leader is in danger of running into a dead end. It is gradually becoming apparent that certain people are using the issue of gender quotas and a return to the system of having just one deputy leader as a cover for their real motives. We believe the Labour Party would be wise to stand firmly behind the annual conference’s decision that the 40 per cent rule applies to elections for such governing bodies as the national executive and central committee. The party’s leadership team – its leader, deputy leaders and secretary – are not a ‘body’ in that sense of the word. And it would require a conference decision to return to a system with just one deputy leader. The Labour Party became an important party because it managed to create a coalition of different people from different backgrounds, genders and ages, and with different opinions. Labour has always had a left wing and a right wing. The party has included opponents and supporters of EU membership. We are not taking sides either for or against Trond Giske’s candidacy. But Labour would be making a great mistake to reduce the opportunity for differing shades of opinion within the party.