The Progressive Party is currently the laughing stock in Icelandic politics, a title for which there is hard competition.
Then again, a bunch of clowns is bound to tickle the funny bone once in a while.
Party chairman Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and MP Hoskuldur Thorhallsson rode like knights in shining armour into an audience with the government and the accompanying rounds of talk shows with the news that the Norwegian government was prepared to lend the Icelandic nation just over 2. 000 billion ISK eliminating the need for the IMF.
Hoskuldur had been in Norway meeting with the Progressive Party’s “sister party” (my word, there are more of them?), where Per Olav Lundteigen, MP for the Centre Party had told him that his party would support this idea, and that the Norwegian parliament and government were very positive.
Except, Lundteigen really had nothing behind him in this “promise”. And Hoskuldur (who even misnamed his source as Lundsteigen) and Sigmundur were left with a royal egg on their face when the government leaders in Norway laughed the idea away. Kristin Halvorsen, Norway’s finance minister restated her stance that Iceland should receive assistance through the IMF. Marianne Aasen MP for the Worker’s Party was quoted as saying that Iceland’s problems were the results of a libertarian excess which Norway should not be helping to wipe out.
This whole affair makes one just feel warm and fuzzy that the Progressives aren’t in government.
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Bert Pachetta
2 years ago
Well at least we don’t have to send in the clowns as they have arrived in spades. Sigmundur has one thing going for him, he is impervious to brain damage!
Vilhjalm A.
2 years ago
Yet another disappointment for Iceland, although of course there never was much chance of getting money from Norway outside the IMF, and certainly not from the current coalition government.
Today’s “bad news” is much more troubling – apparently Iceland’s most valuable audlindar, its energy, is not much more than enough to power the existing few aluminum plants (or their expansions) that already exist, and certainly not limitless or enough to increase energy production 5-10 times as some have supposed.
http://www.smugan.is/pistlar/adsendar-greinar/nr/2327
Ouch.
Dadi
2 years ago
Vilhjalm A. I need to get in touch with you. Can you send me an email?