Norway's Slow Descent?

Gosh, to hear Helmut talk about it, you'd think Norway was the most with-it place on earth, what with all its healthy folks committed to a sensible kind of socialism. But the new finance minister was tricked, yesterday, into a cake-pelting. Cake! Can just anybody buy it in Norway? Any crazy fool can walk into a patisserie and buy himself a double-layer spice cake, say, and walk away the same day? Norway really needs to follow our lead and consider a waiting period of some kind, before somebody really gets sticky. I mean, we have something like that, right?

As if that weren't bad enough, Norwegians and Russians have for days been following the slowly-unfolding drama of the pursuit of a Russian trawler from Norwegian territorial waters. Not only are the fishermen accused of using an "illegal sock-like mesh" inside their net, but they had, um, two Norwegian coast guard officials on board when they fled. And they made it successfully back into Russian waters. Oh, Norway. This looks bad. The cake and the fishing both, I mean.

And to think I was dusting off my parka.