Having written enthusiastically about democracy – Norwegian style – I remembered Democracy Kills
the title of Humphrey Hawksley’s book. You will know Humphrey as a long-serving foreign correspondent for the BBC and this book draws on his experience to analyse the fraught transition from dictatorship to democracy, to analyse why it usually goes so awfully wrong and to draw some conclusions for a more successful transition. Norway, as an established democracy since 1814 does not feature. He holds up Taiwan as an example of a democracy that works. Since this was published in 2009 there have been more examples bearing out his gloomy analysis and none that I can think of emulating the Taiwanese model. Maybe Cuba will succeed; it looks to me as if a gradual transition to a market economy may work there.
Two readers, Richard and Caroline, with great acuity have pointed out that some of the pictures I have posted have been sideways or upside down. It can be no coincidence that they are siblings. They are all photographs taken on my iPhone. I have found that they sometimes “flip” when posted on WordPress and viewed on a computer. I hope I have fixed this for future pictures – but wait and see.
I admit to having been slightly miffed to have my initial complaint about your upside down photos dismissed as a problem at my end, however I am quite used to my sister being taken more seriously and it will be such a blessing no longer to have to try and hold my heavy desk top computer screen up side down in order to admire your photography!
After at least 50 visits to Oslo I have never been inside the Storting – fascinating.
I could not address your initial remark while travelling. I needed to see which pictures were affected and on what sort of computer. I am not sure that the “plug-in” Robert has installed will fix the problem so tell me if it persists.
Visiting the Norwegian parliament was enormously interesting and as a bonus I brushed shoulders with the oil minister.