Snowed In

So I went to work this morning in blowing, crazy, sideways snow. I only made it about a third of the way before I gave up and hopped a bus. the white stuff (oh oh ohhh oh oh!) is piled up in drifts around the school, plastered to the sides of the buildings and busy forming massive icicles on the overflowing eaves.

The news has snowed me in too these days. So much I want to write about, but so little time.

On the good news side, the powers that be have decided to reform the rules surrounding temporary work and residence permits, finally registering the permit with the individual and not the company that applied for the job. This allows the individual to change jobs (though not without the requisite bureaucrazy) or to get fired/laid off without risking deportation, as was once the case. They are also looking into a much needed exemption for foreigners granted residency due to marriage or domestic partnership with Icelanders. As the law stood, if they broke up, or left (even in cases of abuse, although those were usually granted exceptions) they were subject to deportation. Thankfully they are writing the exceptions into law.

Which is all well and good, but still fails to address my main problem with these laws, mainly that they are aimed more or less soley at people from outside the E.U. (and Bulgaria, apparently Bulgarians are "too brown and too poor" to be lumped in with the rest of the E.U.). While E.U. citizens can come and go as they please, without having to somehow land a job before the arrive in the country, and they don't have to take mandatory Icelandic classes (which one usually has to pay for out of ones own pocket).

In the bad news department, the Ministry of Justice (can you say oxymoron?) is lobbying to change the current prison law to allow foriegners convicted of crimes in Iceland to serve thier time "back where they came from". This raises some very interesting points. Iceland has one of the most humane (not to mention leniet) prison systems in the world, meaning that an Icelander sentenced for drug dealing is much less likely to be shived for a pack of smokes than his American or Polish counterparts. So even if the foreigner involved only has to serve his Icelandic sentence (if they had to serve a sentence from one of thier home-country's courts, they'd be in deep shit. I mean, Icelanders get maybe 16 months for first degree rape, whereas a Yank can do 5 years for posession of marijuana) they are still being subject to a more heinus punishent for the same crime.

Ministry of Justice my ass.

Meanwhile, in a stunning display of Democrazy Inaction, Rvk's got its third government since the last election, one that does not enjoy the popular support of the previous usurpers. They had to empty the council chamber yesterday due to disruptive protests, the first time that's happened since the infamous Gúttóslag back in the 40's.

The new mayor is a Libertarian, one of the more unpopular parties in Iceland at the mo', and it looks like the old mayor, ousted in part over his party's involvement in some very complicated but very very shady business deals will then succeed the Libber.

The whole get-a-new-government-without-an-election thing bugs the hell out of me. I mean, how the hell is anything supposed to get done? Its not like governments are all that efficient when it comes to "running a country/city" to begin with, but when your going through mayors or prime ministers like there's no tomorrow, or playing techno-musical chairs with ministers (so that everyone can get a nice fat piece of that pension-fund pie), not much of anything gets done, and what does get done gets all kinds of fucked up because of all the random personnel and policy changes.

I also think that if you're going to have democracy (rule by the people) the people really ought to have a bit of fucking say! How about a recall vote? National or city referendum?

Nope. They've been elected, now all we can do is sit back and watch them fuck it up.

Of course, some people don't just sit back. They storm the council chamber and shout and protest and get kicked out, at which point some pompous fuck at the editorial desk writes an column about how they should be ashamed of themselves and should have spent their time waving picket signs (quietly, a discreet distance away) writing blogs, signing petitions, and writing letters to the editor.

Because that works. Yeah.