Conservative’s belief in himself
COMMENTS: Meeting oneself at the door without blinking is a kind of art. Right-wingers are good at it.
The Conservatives have had a national meeting this weekend, and the Conservatives want to release the municipalities. Let them decide for themselves. Run kindergartens, schools and elderly care as they want, without interference from the state. They want to be inspired by Denmark, which has done just that. It’s quite vibrant. For several reasons.
All over again
The municipal release means that they still want fewer and stronger municipalities, and that they want to close down the county municipalities. As they have just had to merge and get bigger. Sour, merged counties now operate and divide again. Altogether both quite expensive and quite sour.
No, the Solberg government’s municipal reform and regional reform did not turn out to be very beautiful and successful on the other hand, exactly. The first has ours halfway, the second smaller than that. Therefore, it is healthy to pick up the thread again. Try again, take a walk around the house, find another entrance. So do not meet yourself at the door, at least not face to face.
On a trip
So before the national meeting, where this was to be discussed, selected Solberg with him VG to a kindergarten in Lier to show what would work better if the Conservatives are allowed to set the municipalities free. As it is now, the kindergartens themselves can not decide how many children they think they can have, no, they must govern according to how many children the state has decided it can be per adult and per kindergarten teacher. Three of the smallest children per adult, six of the largest. In the school, the state has a teacher norm. There they have decided that a teacher can not be responsible for more than fifteen children in a class at the youngest stage, twenty at the oldest. That, says mayor Gunn Cecilie Ringdal (H) in Lier, means that the municipality can not put the most teachers in the schools that need it most. Ringdal has hired Høgre’s work with the municipal release.
The rare, and the reason why it is necessary for the Conservatives to see a fresh trip around the house, a detour to Denmark and a trip to Lier, is that they are the ones who have our state. It is the Solberg government. They were the ones who introduced both the teacher norm and the kindergarten norm. Three-four-five years ago. The last one in particular was a riot. It was introduced without any extra money. The Conservatives thought the municipalities had enough money. There were many municipalities that did not mean. They shouted loudly. KS, the municipality of Norway’s organization, calls it a scandal, a detailed management without funding that would give municipalities less room for maneuver.
Poenget
Last year, Henrik Asheim, who this weekend will be elected new deputy leader in Høgre, would that the schools should try level division again. In other words, the students could be divided into groups according to level in the various subjects, and especially in subjects it is important to perform well in. In Høgre it means math, English and Norwegian. We have tried this before, but that is not the point here.
The point is that the Conservatives in practice, ie in government for the last eight years, have not been very good at keeping their fingers crossed and letting the municipalities govern themselves. In kindergartens and schools and such. And in elderly care, they have also tried their hand at a state-owned hand. It was the FRP that got through, that with the teacher norm and kindergarten norm was something KrF wanted to have its stamp on, the Liberal Party got the regional reform. All so that the Solberg government could continue to govern. And if right now they are the largest party in Norway in the opinion polls, they will probably have to bring another party or two with them, also next time.
Minister of Local Government Bjørn Arild Gram (Sp) thinks Solberg and the Conservatives have slept through the eight years in the government. They do not really have that, on the contrary, they have been quite eager to decide for themselves, as the state, far into a quarter of classrooms, in every school, and in every municipality.
Motet
It is the exercise that becomes a little difficult: How to sell that you come as a kind of liberating angel to the municipalities, when it is to release them from the grip you yourself introduced?
You take a trip out. To Denmark. And come in fresh again from another door.
The Conservatives have the confidence to do so without blinking an eye. And to pull on the smiley face when you remind them of such things. Or ask them how easy it will be to get people to believe the sentence they also have in all this, that the Conservatives should contribute to making it as attractive to live in the village as in the city. They will have to struggle a bit with it, I think, even though Trygve Slagsvold Vedum has become Minister of Finance and stopped laughing.
The Conservatives do not worry about that. It’s on again. It is political work, discussions, moving argument, meter by meter. I opened the loan. They just need to make it even better, towards the next election, why their solutions are actually best. Even though they have not always followed suit while they had the power to do so.