Right Wing Winners In Municipality Elections In Iceland + AMOC + Summer

The Reykjavík Grapevine's Iceland Roundup brings you the top news with a healthy dash of local views. In this episode, Grapevine publisher Jón Trausti Sigurðarson is joined by Heimildin journalist Aðalsteinn Kjartansson, and Grapevine friend and contributor Sindri Eldon to roundup the stories making headlines in recent weeks. On the docket this week are: 

Iceland’s Municipality Elections

Elections were held in Iceland’s municipalities on Saturday. These elections take place every four years and unlike parliamentary elections have a wider voting base, since people who don’t have an Icelandic citizenship can vote in them. In Reykjavík, the ruling coalition in the city lost its majority. While no single party gained a pure majority, the Independence Party was the winner of the election landing 9 municipality seats, out of the 23 available with 32,9% of the vote. We discuss the election, and what it may mean for the current government and the upcoming referendum on continuing negotiations with the EU.

Summer Vibes

Today’s forecast expects up to 14 degrees celsius, meaning that today, Monday, may feel like summer in Iceland has begun, finally.

AMOC Doomsday Prophecies May Effect Government Policy

Halldór Þorgeirsson, the chairman of Loftslagsráð, or “The Climate Council” which is a council set up by Icelandic law to provide advice to Iceland’s government on the climate, has sent the government a memo, warning that the likelihood of the collapse of the so called AMOC in the North Atlantic, calls for immediate action by the Icelandic government. he AMOC is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic that moves warm, salty water northward near the surface and cold, denser water southward at depth. The Gulf Stream is part of it. According to reporting on the AMOC the mean temperature in Iceland may drop by 9 degrees Celsius if the AMOC collapses, and that the odds of that happening by the end of this century are now so high, that something needs to be done — globally — if Iceland is not to become uninhabitable. The Council recommends that Iceland adopt the official position that the potential collapse of the AMOC is a national security issue, and start applying pressure internationally to reduce carbon emissions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:09

Hello and welcome to Iceland Round Top. Gunden. Uh with me on Thursday, Sinterelton and Alastaid. Kafanson? Yes, that sounded correct. Good good morning.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Good morning. It's been like a month since I've been here.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Yeah, it's been a while. We missed you. Do you think we would attract more listeners if Gundain was in English or if I should be saying it like I think it's it's uh highly Good morning people would like to have this as a ringtone or like a like a notification. I certainly I never get tired of hearing it. I would like to have it constantly.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Every time someone messages you on WhatsApp, it's like Gundai!

SPEAKER_04 0:51

Yeah, I would like to point out, because we're gonna be talking about the municipality elections in in Iceland, which happened on Saturday. Oh, sweet Jesus that there was one of those uh smaller things running for the seats here in Reiki. It was a party called Gundai!

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Were they the ones drumming up like the fucking swimming pools as some sort of wedge issue?

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Or who is responsible for the swimming pool hype? The swimming pool hype.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Why was I asked on the the fucking questionnaire how I feel about the opening times for swimming pools? Yeah, I think it's just like who gives a fucking shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

What? I I would like them to open longer.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I think this is what we're basing the elections on?

SPEAKER_03 1:33

I don't wonder the results were like a political thing. Do you want to have the swimming pools open longer and it costs taxpayer money to do because they're they're not run for profit?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Right, this is a left-right issue. I get that, but it's just like I'm about as lefty as you can get, and I don't give a rat's ass. Like I don't want to stallion or well uh no, I'm too lefty for friends. I just have comrades.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Okay, today we're gonna be talking about uh, like I said, ISLIS municipality elections, which took place last Saturday.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

We're gonna talk about what a magical time.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

The AMOC, the uh Atlantic meriting circulation.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Atlantic what?

SPEAKER_04 2:27

The Atlantic the bolt.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, I wanna it's uh AMOC is so catchy, I've never actually uh wondered what it stoods for. Uh Atlantic yeah, what the fuck? Meridianal? Merid meridional? Meridianal overturning circulation?

SPEAKER_04 2:42

Yeah, it sounds funny.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

I'm not even gonna try.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Sounds funny, but it's dead. It's basically gold stream. Uh ghost the ghost team is a part of the Atlantic meridianal uh then the uh the United States new ambassador, Billy Long, has been confirmed and he'll probably be arriving some at some point.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah, and like we have invited him for what?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

So we're holding him up to kind of a high standard, assuming he will eventually arrive.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

So I think we have I think it was hamburgers or was it hot dogs? Or both.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

What's the difference? So we have to Isn't a hamburger a hot dog? Yeah, it it it's the casing. Yeah. They we had this discussion on Twitter like ten years ago. Uh a hamburger is a hot dog. I feel like we settled it.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

Uh I th I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

And dog is a beep wellington from a different uh socio economic uh background.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah. Where does like a ch uh where does like a cheesesteak fit into that?

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Depends on if you're in Philly or somewhere else.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:49

Right. So so that's one of the things we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah. So if I if I have a cheese if I have a cheesesteak here, what would that be? It would just be like a sandwich, right? Yeah, it's a cheesesteak is a sandwich.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

You know, they showed that was a hot dog on roof the other day. And do you know the Icelandic title of the film?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Uh vardur Skyhunty? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

That's almost as good as like Dude, where's my car? Melurfar krummen.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Legendary. Legendary title.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Yeah, now we're now we're referring to the uh Is this where it comes from?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

The the Melur. There was like a brief sort of surge of of referring to men as Melur.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

Yes, it comes from this, and there is like I guess it's the peak of Iceland's cultural anything, which is the 90s, where we were all the 20th century, when we actually somebody actually put work into translating the titles of the Yeah, and video rentals were a thing still.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Like you would rent something and it would, you know, there were subtitles in there whether you fucking wanted them or not.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

And these were often magnificent.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

Yeah, I I think I mean Roof still does this. It isn't a thing from the past. It's just like it's not shared as culturally because of this sort of the this dissolution of there being like a central we have uh like streaming services that are all in English, and there's no Icelandic there.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

No, but it's a it's a beautiful thing when it's done well. Well, I mean the whole translation of Star Wars is great.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

Yeah. I mean it is great.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

I had a friend who was sort of doing this peripherally on the side, and I was like uh asking if there was any way, like, you know, is there any work to be had in there? Like, can you get me in there? And he was like, no, it's fucking impossible. Like it it took me years and just like blind luck to be handed this. Like it's a very exclusive club, these subtitle writers and sometimes they like took it too far.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

I remember uh from the TV guide that they used to print in Frichtables, like uh Is this the criminal intent one?

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Is that where this is going? Oh wait, wait, what do they call that in Icelandic? It's like criminal intent. Yeah, that's that's kind of like translating Kwerakir as as who are didn't think.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, this is like entering we're starving here, we're gonna eat your car territory. At a certain point, it just kind of devolves into grandpa humor. Yeah. And it's it's a there's a very thin line between innovation and just you know, we're gonna eat your car, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

We're gonna eat it.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

There should be a name for that guy, but I mean you know the guy I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

You know, it's sort of like I enjoyed like the range in the translations of the names of the characters in Star Wars. You had like like on the most basic level, you had Han Solo being turned into something that sounded like it, Hans. And on the other hand, you had Darth Vader being turned into the Svartade, or which is basically the the black hat.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

But it's blackhead. But but it's the name of the like of the musul villain musul from the Icelandic uh thirteenth century civil war.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

And it just meant like he has black hair and like a black beard. Yeah, I could be a Svartov.

SPEAKER_04 7:21

Yeah, you could be, but uh that particular man is like he's like the big uh what is the name of that big muscle guy in in not the mountain, but the other guy in the Are you talking about the Arlsted? No, in in Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

You're talking about the the the girlfriend beater.

SPEAKER_04 7:36

The the dog or whatever the hell it's called?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

The the hound. I'm disgusted that I even know this. Yeah, but he's kind of like that kind of a guy.

SPEAKER_04 7:43

So sort of I'm completely lost.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

It's like you're asking me to What are you lost about?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

What do you what do you not know this time? Game of Thrones. Oh god, I envy your ignorance. What about Stuttlunka's? I genuinely do.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

I'm a bit more familiar with that.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, me too. If if only because I translated uh Einar Carlson's Viking books.

SPEAKER_04 8:05

Yeah. I actually really like those books, I enjoyed very much.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, they could guess.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

They're kinda Which is basically it's so it's the They're trying to make they're still trying to make those into a show, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

They've been trying for years and years too.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

I think they would work as a show. So he's basically mo he did like a modern um thrillerslash novel versions.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

It's basically fanfic. It's like Icelandic saga fanfic as well. Yeah, like a modern kind of historical drama writer.

SPEAKER_04 8:40

Yeah, it's four four whole books. It's it's uh I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

Or eight half books.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

Yeah, depending on how you like to cut up your books before you read them.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I like to Which ha which half of books do you usually read? Do you just do you just read the first half and give up, or do you start in the middle? I've heard of people who do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

If you read things on the book. Can you imagine like how fucking baked you have to be? Like you're brain brain fried to start a book in the middle, just read like the second half?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And if you're if you're sufficiently interested, go back and read the first half. I've heard of people who do this. I have to. Yeah, it's just like a real thing.

SPEAKER_04 9:17

I am one of those people.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah? You my own.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

You are the the one percent approach to thrillers, right? Like you know, Nordic Noir or whatever they call these things, is that I read such a copious amount of these when I was a kid in the 90s, because I didn't have a television, that I they were so formulatic that I would start usually by reading the last two pages to make a decision on whether or not to read it. Then I would jump into the middle and go like, it's okay, and then I would start at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, because a book should be more than the big twist at the end, right? There should be more to it than that.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

Otherwise, you know.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Yeah, but these books that you're referring to, I mean, you really don't have to read the first part. No, often basically all the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

One thing about starting in the middle is that I've learned that statistically, it seems the that the if if the book has one sex scene, that will be right about in the middle.

SPEAKER_04 10:14

Yeah. I guess you can use that also as a marker of whether or not you're gonna read the rest of this book.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah. I mean it's a very telling thing about a writer, how they handle that. And uh you know. I I am of the somewhat controversial opinion that all sex in literature is gratuitous. Okay. It doesn't really have any place in there. Oh if a writer's feeling a little horny, there's way there's like other outlets for that. I No, I I think I think of uh uh the thing about putting a sex scene in your book is for a writer, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

SPEAKER_04 10:51

The only time I've seen sex in literature kind of work is where it's not very well, like it's there's no deep description of it, and it is usually about something else, and then it kind of makes sense. But if it's like a Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

I mean I I would argue whether that's even a sex scene. I mean, I think that's kind of when it becomes like an elusive sort of part of the character building.

SPEAKER_04 11:15

Yeah, they're like there is a sexual thing happening, but it's not really a focus point. It's just some yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And I'm I'm not yeah, I'm like I'm not decrying the genre of erotic literature, but that's like that's sort of where that shit belongs.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Have we started talking about Billy Long? Are we talking about Billy Long now?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

You're just dying to talk about Billy Long. Like, fuck this sex and novels shit. Like, let's hear more about Billy Long. Okay, I'm into it.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Billy Long's view on sex in novels.

SPEAKER_04 11:46

Yeah, we can ask him about that over hamburgers. So I was gonna start with summer vibes. If this is the first day I was I I felt like, oh, there's there's point to living another day when I woke up and looked out the window. Oh. So can Thank you for that. So that killed my mood immediately.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

So wait, the the hotter it gets, the less hot water we have?

SPEAKER_03 12:12

No, no, no, I'm just talking about in general because uh it happened the first time like ever last year or or the year. Two years ago, two years ago that they had to close down the swimming pools because of lack of hot water. It was during the winter time.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah, but they were hook they were you know they were repairing a lot of old pipe work, which should be fine now, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:32

It it was related to the uh uh infrastructure problem uh regarding to like gathering the hot water, not distributing it.

SPEAKER_04 12:43

Oh god. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I mean we're just here podcasting about it.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Cheap energy that isn't really cheap anymore, and hot water and these like five days of summer is the entire reason for living on this godforsaking island.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

Yes. We've talked about how this is like a massive deal breaker. Yeah, like the like and I've I've talked about this frequently, like you know, because I I had just moved back the year before this happened, yeah. And I was like, we had one thing. Like I could just use all the hot water I liked, I could just bathe in it randomly in massive swimming pools, yeah. And that was the deal.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

But it was taken away from you for like a few days. I mean that is still basically true.

SPEAKER_04 13:30

And then and then we just they just say there is not enough of it. I can't believe it.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

It's wild how often I end up being like the optimistic one in here. It's like not a position that I usually occupy in life.

SPEAKER_04 13:42

No, but uh let's get to it. Uh Saturday, Iceland's municipality elections. Yes, uh amazing, amazing stuff, huge right wing swing, a massive right-wing swing all over the country. Kind of enough on you too, I guess, because there's a bit of a center-left uh majority.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

Uh yeah, but I mean we don't really have the I can't say this. The statistics. The statistics to say that this is a trend because we've only had two left-wing governments uh since we gained independence.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

And both have resulted in a right-wing swing.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah, but then this wasn't even a government, so it's 100%.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

This is like city, this is like municipalities. No, no, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

We're talking about if the government is left wing, yeah, then the municipalities right. But they swing right like even if there's a right-wing going.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Swing right by fucking default, like there's a fucking lead weight in their fucking right hand. Like you gotta drag these people away from their You're the optimistic one. When it comes to I mean, is it is it optimism to think that the right wing is gonna save the day? That like the Independence Party and you know Flochuren are good things for this country? Is that is that optimistic? I mean, in the I guess it is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 15:00

It's like uh, you know, I mean it is optimism that you try and vote something different uh to hope for change. Yeah, Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

You know there's a there's a sign outside City Hall, right, that it points at like a voting booth, yeah. Booth voting point and it's still there. But except some smart ass like turned it around so it's actually pointing like into the pond. That's where my fucking vote went. That's like that's a very apt description of what happened with my fucking vote.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

So you would sort of peer at that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

It's like and I was talking to Yonte about this before the show, which is a great reference for listeners, like, oh yeah, listen to the shit we didn't record.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

But yeah, like uh amazing, like well-thought discussion.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Oh yeah, so much more than that.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

Instead of this particular show, we're having extremely deep and thoughtful conversations.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, you'll just have to imagine it. This is like the This is like the the shitty, incoherent tip of the iceberg. This is the part of the iceberg that consists entirely of frozen methane and frozen frozen polar shit.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Yeah. Um so I was gonna say, just to clarify, every every four years like clockwork, Iceland in general has a municipality election. We have in and around 70 municipalities. In most of them there will there are elections. Uh not all of them, because some of them are so sparsely populated that you just have I think everybody can vote for anybody who lives there.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah, they all just vote for themselves. Yeah. They all get together and just vote each other off.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

You write the name down. Yeah. And if someone like especially wants to be on the I don't know what's it called there, it's not Trapsteart. Yeah. Like Sweeter Stewart. Yeah. They can say that and have their name written down on a piece of paper that's like on the table in the voting pool.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

This is how it used to be done, I think.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Uh but you can basically write any name down and you cannot uh be excluded unless you are finishing a term or have like so this this comes back to like how these small m small municipality municipalities are kind of like a housing committee, or like uh what do you what do you call like who's feeling?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

I guess so, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

If you live in a an apartment building with eight departments and you end up as the chairman of that building, it's usually not by choice.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

Yeah, like a co-op board.

SPEAKER_04 17:26

And you have to be responsible for the maintenance of the building or something. Nobody really wants that job, but you can if someone wants it, they usually shouldn't have it. Yeah. Which is true for a lot of different things. But yeah. This is why you were here, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Yeah, I feel like those people who end up to have two podcasts.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

But uh so just to give so basically the smaller municipalities are run like housing committees in this sense, and you often have people who end up in charge of these things that probably didn't want to do it, but that's probably a good thing. Uh in the bigger ones, uh you know, there would be like in many of them the known national political parties participated, in others they didn't. So you kind of have a mixed pack of Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Do you have like a few municipalities that uh have these uh it's like uh list the running lists or something? Yeah candidate lists. Candidate list that's like consistent of of just people in the area that have like shared goals regarding schools or but the but stuff. But the bigger haven't really any political like classic political connections. Don't go left, right, or anything like that. It's just like we have like a list of things that we want to fix. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

And everything everything just comes becomes like this niche thing that's controlled by like big fish, you know, it's like rural anywhere, really.

SPEAKER_04 18:58

It's like somebody sets up and in a sense you can argue that running those municipalities is in many ways an apolitical thing to an extent because they are limited by um you know what how much they can charge in taxes is limited by law. Yep. Uh what they're supposed to be doing from day to day is is decided by law. So it's kind of a hammed in uh thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

You can't really it's only here in the Reykjavik area where they turn it into this piece of ridiculous political theatre and it's it's all just like you know, warm-ups for parliament and that used to be kind of what you did.

SPEAKER_04 19:37

You would would go through like the municipality thing and then you would try to go into parliament after that.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

But um that that that has changed in the recent like decade or so. Yeah. Because we have like these politicians who are really focused on the city, and they're like some of them have like uh gone to university uh to study city planning and how to run a city and imagine that properly educated people running for office. Yeah, but those are usually the people who are like uh embedsmen or just bureaucrats. Not uh politicians, yeah, they're not running for anything, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

No, I mean it did it did like you know, our we had some you know, quote unquote celebrity mayors in the city. Like, do you think that sort of changed things that that like looking to pick like city politics became a career in and of itself?

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Yeah, and the city has like grown like fast. I mean, there are like two-thirds of people living in Iceland live in the capital area, yeah. And pretty much half of uh Icelandic population live in Reykjavik. Yeah. So I mean this is uh a huge thing, and you can like really influence uh everyday life if you are in majority in the city council.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

And it also it feels like also like uh you know, in parliament eventually you will become Satan. Eventually you will become the very thing that you maybe entered parliament to prevent, or people will turn on you and it becomes this like mud fight between the parties. Whereas like there's people who have pretty successful careers in city politics without really pissing off like an insane amount of people. Like they kind of come out of it on top and sort of well liked.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

And it's also like uh the difference is as Jonte was saying, like most of the tasks that you have to figure out a way to perform is is decided by law.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

So I mean there's not a lot of room or wickle room for like making massive policy changes.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

And also you cannot like uh in the parliament, you can like uh call a snap election. You can't do that on the They just run like clockwork.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

Every four years they have an election. There are no snap elections. You are you if you're just uh you just have to figure things out. You just have to figure things out if you can't form Or not figure them out as as Fehlnar. Yeah, yeah, or or if you Uh you know whatever people whatever people have been voted in are in for the remaining four years. So that's how it works.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

And uh I mean there have been troubles in this paradise uh before. Uh you've had like let's just say difficult personalities on board uh that had have made it difficult to uh uh work together minority with majority. But I I think this might change now if you're talking about Reykjavik.

SPEAKER_04 22:35

I mean of course things will change in Cobor because there's a the yeah, Cobor so another thing to explain uh the general capital area of Reykjavik has what is it, seven municipalities somehow?

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Uh six. Six? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:50

Which is kind of a legacy thing because Reykjavik used to be smaller. And these just used to be Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

Celta Denes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Six. Mosul? Yeah, Mosul. Seven? No, six. Oh, you okay. So you have these uh uh which seem from like if you look at it now, it seems kind of ridiculous because they're often just almost surrounded by another municipality.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

I mean you you can't see where you exit one and enter another.

SPEAKER_04 23:14

No, you can't see, you can't tell.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Celta Denesse is like the Vatican city of Iceland. Yeah, in a sense.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

Um and then you have Kopovor kind of hemmed in by Reykjavik on all sides and Karapar on the other side.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Yeah, but also Kopor is a very simple thing.

SPEAKER_04 23:28

Yeah, well, yeah. It extends into weird places.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

The weird part is that there are parts of Reykjavik that could easily be their own municipalities in any other part of the country but are not, like Kravavur and Breithols.

SPEAKER_04 23:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Where also like the the realities of running those places are quite different than from the realities of running like downtown Reykjavik.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

But the thing with it like Kravur, sorry, uh uh this is like one of the few things I'm actually interested in. Krauwur. Uh no, it's like uh how the city It's an interesting place. Yeah, I mean if you go to Kraur, which is like they decided in 1983 or something, like oh, we need a new neighborhood, we're gonna build Kraur. Uh and it I mean it's built in the same idea that the new majority that is forming in Reykjavik now after this uh last seven days election wants to like they want to head into that direction where you're building a lot of of single family homes, row houses and new new neighborhoods because you can't fit them anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, but but that'll be good for the hot water, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah, but the thing is like it's really really difficult to maintain and maintain in uh the infrastructure, uh just things like uh when it snows, when you're like clearing the snow from the streets. It's it's a lot more effort in Krawar than pretty much any other neighborhood. And they are always complaining that there's no services, you cannot there's no work, you you you don't work in Kraur. No.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, I mean I think even the people live there kind of agree that it was a it was a poor it was poorly conceived from the get-go.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

Yeah, but but now they're saying like, oh, we don't want to be like people it's like a car-centric.

SPEAKER_04 25:15

Before we get into that, I would kind of like to just dream to kind of like to talk about what happened Saturday and how the how the whole thing got went down. And I think like, yeah, sure, there were a few things that happened, like the he likes to talk about it. The Cobor became like an independence party majority. First time ever. Uh the Hapnerfitter, famous for being kind of uh center-left, kind of went more into the right, didn't they? Some thinking in the social terms kind of lost out.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Social times lost out, but uh the center gained. The center gained.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

And then in Reykjavik, which I think we should focus on now because we can't talk about all of them, and we are in Reykjavik, and Reykjavik is the biggest municipality.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yes, our our sister podcasts in Cobor and Habner will cover those events. Kobor Gravine?

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Yeah, we're gonna franchise out now and the Moswell's spy or something. And uh those took place on Saturday, and we had what, was it eleven parties running or something like that? Yes. And some of them were got 300 votes or less, and nobody had ever heard of them before. One of them was called Goan Tyn?

SPEAKER_03 26:25

They weren't allowed to be named Goan Tyn. So they are uh the candidate list of the good day.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So who who owns the trademark for Goan Dain then, if not m you know yours truly?

SPEAKER_04 26:37

And their their loco is uh uh uh like a mid-century, last century alarm clock.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah. And do do you know that because I had to because it's my job, I get paid to do this, I had to read through everything these uh like people like put out there.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

You had to pour over the the brain fart nonsense that was it written by AI.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

No, I don't think it was written by but I uh the only thing in their entire agenda or platform that they described as an emergency that something was in a state of emergency was regarding golf courses. It's like of everything that I mean Iceland is has more Reykjavik has more golf courses per capita than Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I'm gonna give these people the benefit of the doubt that they almost certainly do not deserve and hope that they were calling for the elimination of all golf courses, because I do think that would probably help things, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that this was not their own.

SPEAKER_03 27:46

No, they they were saying that it desperately needed a new 38 whole golf course, is it called whole something like that.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

See, this is what's always so insane about elections here is it makes you realize like how profoundly dumb But surprisingly. Like how dissimilar we are for such a tiny, tiny place. Like how much we can actually disagree on fundamental shit.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

No, but uh but but but people didn't really disagree on this because they got like 150 votes. Yeah, nobody gives a shit. No, but the very I think the department building in Braith does have more residents.

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Yeah, than 150. Yeah, I think I think if you had if you were gonna run on gold courses kind of thing, you should have gone for like, you know, at the 19th hole or something. That would have been funny. Maybe you would have gonna be a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Once I get over how appalled I am that this party exists at all, I will no doubt fight find comfort in the fact that only 150 of their crazy ass fucking cousins or whoever voted for them. Yeah, I will get it. Don't worry, I'll get there eventually, but I'm gonna just spend a few weeks hating these people first.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

So in Reykjavik, Reykjavik traditionally was run major like the municipality was run by the independence party until the nineties.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah, for decades.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Decades.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Everything here was run. That's default. That's just like Iceland's default setting was the independence party.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

Yeah, but sometimes they needed the Progressive Party to join uh to make a majority, but in Reykjavik they were. No, they were like at 60% party majority.

SPEAKER_04 29:19

Yeah. And then in 1994 that changed with uh Reykjavik Listin, where all other parties joined forces to like and they won a majority and they then the so like that what then became the social democratic. And what then became the social democrats um in 1999 has then been kind of like in and around the majority, with some exceptions in the early 2000s, where uh it was more uh of a right wing majority. But since 2010, it's been the Social Democrats or some sort of a left coalition has been in power, that is, for 16 years now, and I think to an extent that explains why there was a bit of a right wing swing for these elections.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

It's really interesting that the right wing swing, there there is definitely a right wing swing, but the left isn't like uh losing out because the like the left and the far left they actually maintained ground, they keep their three uh representatives. Uh it used to be the Socialist Party had two, now they have one, and the former leader of the Socialist Party joined forces with the left Green movement, yeah. And they like grew from one candidate to three. So, I mean the left isn't really losing out. Who are it's the social temps who are losing out, but only like a few per seat or something? No, they they maintain the number of seats. Yeah, yeah, but their uh portion of the vote like lowered from twenty-one percent to nineteen percent or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

You're not gonna be telling me that this is all the Progressive Party's fault.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Basically it is. Yes. Because Vidres, which is also it's like a centre-right, it's like the social damage centre left, Widres is like centre-right. They gained, they doubled their uh both vote, uh zero votes and seats uh in the city council. Progressive party went from three to one.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

So it really is just the center party's kind of eating each other.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

It's centre party, and then we have Flocher Volksins, the People's Party, uh they just like disappeared. Disappeared and Piratar, which is like most people view them as a left-wing party. They really refuse to be labelled as a left-wing party. So I don't know what they are, maybe uh centre something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Uh they lost three LARPing pirates. LARPing pirates. And they're basically fucking dead now. Like they gotta really rethink their shit at this point. I mean, I think it was like their this is like their last yeah, they're not.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

They're gone. They've disappeared. I think they're just uh gonna merge with someone else now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah, I it's about fucking time. I just yeah, I'm so sick of my vote not being counted. It's just like the the this is the fucking glitch in the system that that needs to be expunged somehow. But I understand will it will never happen because it's like it benefits the parties in power to have this.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

So Reg Diaback has twenty-three uh municipality seats, yeah, and out of those twenty-three, the Independence Party got nine. And you've basically gone through the rest. Uh Social Dems got five. Oh sorry, right? Yeah, they got five. The Socialist got one, and the Centre Party got three. Yeah. I think that's it, right? So what we're looking at now is uh I mean for the Independence Party that's almost thirty-three, it's almost a third of the vote which they got.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

And there's basically no way anyone can form an alliance without them, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:12

It's uh yeah, it's it's never gonna happen. It can happen, but it would never happen. No, it I I mean it can only happen by working with uh the Center Party, and I don't see the left ever doing that.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

And uh the rest of the Reform Party has said that w they will never be in a majority of the yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:31

I mean it was a pretty clear so the Great Party.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

No.

SPEAKER_04 33:36

The Grape and went out uh and interviewed candidates at their um post-election parties last on Saturday night.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Drunk candidates.

SPEAKER_04 33:45

Well, some of them. Uh well, a few of them, one of them, I think. Uh and I can tell you that the it was pretty clear that uh Vedist or the Reform Party are never gonna work with uh the Centre Party.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Why? What is their basis for this?

SPEAKER_04 34:02

Do they say fucking racist twats?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, but is that what the center party said?

SPEAKER_04 34:07

I mean I know that's why nobody wants to work with, but I wanna yeah, really I mean, I did not in those exact I'm paraphrasing obviously, but but uh we can't work with people who you know who are racist who say these things about minorities.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

Yeah, but the thing is Ari, their leader, hasn't really said anything.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

And then we talked to uh what's his name, Gislifred? No. Runar Fred Gislason? Yeah. Who's like the fourth seat for the fifth, yeah. And he said exactly what you're saying here, like we were asking like, so you know, we've been talking about people, they've been saying they can't work with the centre party because of so and so racism. And and his thing was like, yeah, well, I mean, at least Are hadn't hasn't said any of those things.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:50

So that's what they've been saying. But at the same time, and if you think about the other things, which is kind of my view of this, is that most of the political parties who ran for the city, aside from the Fogarin, kind of agree on most pol like most things in general.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah, but there's this thing about like Ari not having technically said anything. This is exactly how racism is normalized.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

But let's go through what he said. I mean, we have like him on TikTok talking about violence uh in the city and people aren't safe. And in the same video, which is like 60 seconds long, he talks about uh the failed uh government policy on on on uh infiltrated what they have. Immigration, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

And of course, running for mayor is an excellent place to combat immigration. Okay, so so that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

So I mean I mean he doesn't say uh we have violent immigrants, but he says like we have a problem with violence in the city uh and then he talks about the immigration policy.

SPEAKER_04 35:55

So so what you're saying is that the only difference between Arya and the other people running for the Centre Party is he just dog whistles and they're Yeah, it's like oh if I play this dog whistle and then this dog whistle, that then then it's not raised.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah, they they sort of form their own. So that's fake Yeah so that's you've seen those people who can play two saxophones at once? That's sort of that's sort of him with his two dog whistles.

SPEAKER_03 36:19

Someone can do that? Yeah, some people have two mouths. Wow, that's amazing. But and also because we talked a lot about uh the rainbow flag, the the LGBTQ plus the flag that nobody really likes, but people agree stands for a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

Yeah, and and he taught he I mean Snorri Mauson, the vice chairman of Horse Party, the Centre Party, uh like talked about that we shouldn't be having flags of ideology in our schools, we should uh have the Icelandic flag, and like okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Like that's not an ideology. I mean, waving your own country's flag is an ideology at this point, like it is a state.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Yeah, it's dumb as fuck. But uh Okay, let's just like pause there. And uh Ari was repeatedly asked about this, yeah. Uh and he said, Yeah, I mean Snorri didn't really say anything. You're talking about the things that he like really didn't say, and I find nothing wrong with the pride flag. I mean, my daughter is a lesbian, and it's like it's fine, but w what I'm against is this new flag. It's like not the classical rainbow flag, and nobody and myself included, it's a fuck up on my part. Nobody asked the question so the the trans symbols on the rainbow flag, that's your that's your problem. Yeah. So I mean he says things about violence and immigrants. He says that uh representation of trans people is like not good and shouldn't be in schools or something. Like so he he he is saying a lot of things. But in contrast to the rest of hisogy.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

Yeah, the funny thing is that in contrast to the rest of the party's candidates, yeah, he is a little more ambiguous. Yeah, and which none of the other ones are.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

But nothing happens in a vacuum anymore. It's just like these talking points are all and again, like we we always want to import the worst shit from America, don't we? It's like all all the worst uh sort of thing. Are you talking about Teslas? Yeah, for one. This is a an expert. Have you driven a Tesla? Yes, I've driven a full test. It's not a nice experience. I mean no, it's not.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

It's always telling me like I'm I'm not doing things.

SPEAKER_04 38:42

Yeah, that's the thing about you. You get this American car, supposedly from the from the country of like freedom. Yeah. And it's just it's just like a Scandinavian left-wing government telling you you're doing things wrong.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

It's like driving a sap.

SPEAKER_04 38:55

Yeah, it's like a sap. It's like if a sap had a voice. It's like no no, you're going too fast. No, this is not good. This is not good. Oh, you should draw. You should not have eaten that last shatpula.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

See, uh, yeah, I mean I got I got a lot of issues with fucking Teslas, but this was not kind of one of them. I sort of I kind of want cars that tell you what to do even more. Really?

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Yeah, like I I test drove a car the other day. It was like Korean, hopefully South Korean car. Uh and it like made comments that my eyes weren't like in the right place. And it's like my my eyes are are really in the right place. They're in my head, and I need to like see other things around me. I can't just like stare at the road.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

What's it? So I didn't buy that car. What's annoying is that you can't you know alter the settings as easily. Because there are some things that I kind of would like, because uh like the car has like a GPS that tells me the speed limit, right? But it doesn't have this it fe like I would love this feature where like I could just set it so that no matter how hard I push down, it can only go the speed limit. Uh-uh. My car has that. Yeah, see this I find cool, but there's other shit that I wish would it would stop doing, like beep at me and slam on the brakes when there's like a car coming when I'm going in reverse. Yeah. It's like but you don't know. But you don't really have to choose.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

You you know I love this thing about my car. It's like it reads the science and limits the speed, but the people around me really hate when I use this function.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

Yeah. Yeah, nobody really likes to be on the number there.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

But this is sort of what we're you know, this is sort of what we're voting for when we vote for fucking municipal elections, right? Like we're we're voting for you know having to think about certain things but not other things. And there's just all these ambitious assholes that are just turning it into some like platform. I wouldn't say egotistically.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

I want to like you talk to a lot of these candidates. I want to do like two things here before we let the whole election thing go. I want to talk about Let it go. I kind of want to talk about my experience of going with uh the Great Man's editor to interview all these people, which is kind of an interesting thing. And the other thing I want to talk about is like what do these what do these elections now potentially tell us about the status of the ruling government in the country, which is center left? Yeah. And what do they tell us about the referendum on rejoining the discussions with joining the EU this fall?

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Thanks for this very interesting question, Yonti. I I don't think this says anything about the EU election because the election we're gonna have on the 29th of August is a question of do you want to finish the accession talks and then vote again? Uh and I know that it does that doesn't go like party lines don't apply here.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

But people immediately leapt ahead to the final discussion like it was, you know, like we're all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

The the pundits did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Yeah, and I mean they're the one driving the opinion. And I mean they had no uh influence on this election?

SPEAKER_03 42:05

I have I think uh there are a lot more people who are just yeah, let's finish this and find out. Because as we did before, we didn't have to go through the like adaptation, the accession part of the talks, because we are in the EEA. We have basically all the laws and things uh already. So the EU sat last time, and I think everyone just really expects that to be like valuable this time.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

We're not a profoundly complicated country. I think you can people already know everything there is to know about we already have the right plugins and everything.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Yeah, so I mean that's not gonna be an issue, and we just finish these talks. And I I think there are like it's gonna be beneficial for the fisheries industry, the farmers, if we just like get uh clear roadmap of what's the same thing. I mean, this is what uh uh being a part of the EU means and this.

SPEAKER_04 43:05

Because I think these things tend to like very much also uh hinge on vibe rather than logic. Yeah. My feeling after these elections is the vibe is kind of moving away from agreeing with anything that the government here suggests, these elections included.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yeah, there is there is a little bit of a knee-jerk thing going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

And then it's not a logical thing.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

But I I think uh we're still like months away.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

Yeah, and and and that's the thing. You know, we're months away, the vibe in August is gonna determine this election, and we have no idea what that vibe is gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Yeah. Uh but regarding to the how how the government is like what you can read from this municipality elections about how the government is functioning or their popularity, I mean I think that's uh a bit more Because these uh municipality elections they were uh in the capital area they were revolved around like uh uh who's naswer what's uh house housing prices, uh the traffic jams and uh stuff that's actually it's like it's connected to what the government is doing. Uh the government is uh supposedly gonna fund uh some Kunkus Autmollin, which is like this the new uh transit agreement in regular? Yeah, that they like originally uh agreed on in 2019 then updated 2024 and and things are like moving really slowly. And that's basically a government effort.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

And did the you know uh were did all did all the parties back this agreement?

SPEAKER_03 44:51

No, it's like fifty-fifty, and uh those who didn't back it uh have a single seat majority. Uh and also the price of housing. Who didn't back it? Uh Shellstein Flock and the Midflocker?

SPEAKER_01 45:04

So people decided that they like housing prices and and the traffic change. No, no, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

They said it's like uh this uh this agreement from twenty nineteen isn't working and we need to build more missed like Atna mode.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

So it's just more road. I think private cars just have this city by the balls, man. It's pathetic by watching this sycophantic relationship.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

And also, I mean we have uh inflation hasn't gone down, uh interest rates have gone up and housing market is frozen.

SPEAKER_04 45:37

Housing market is frozen, and things are just not looking really great in many aspects.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Yeah, and even if you like go now and like the Independence Party promised to make new neighborhoods and like uh finish zoning stuff so so you're gonna be able to build. No contractor wants to take a loan on eight percent interest.

SPEAKER_04 46:01

No, you won't get anybody to build anything.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

It's not really fixing the problem. I've said this before. I just I'm I know I have a very simplified view of this, but I just genuinely don't think you are. Yeah, I thank you. I don't think that building new housing is gonna help. There's a there's a a problem, like a systemic problem with the way old houses. Well, they used to be better, huh? Uh no, no, I mean shit. Yeah, I mean, for all the good it'll do, we might as well just like take old houses and put them somewhere else. It'll it'll change just as much. Like they're not attacking the systemic nature of the problem in any way by building new houses that'll just enter into the same vicious cycle that we're in running.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

I mean, there was there were numbers about like, you know, building a new neighborhood is just gonna create more traffic, which will create more delays. We know that uh I think the numbers that you know the traffic jam in Reykjavik increases by 10% every year.

SPEAKER_03 46:51

Yeah, 92 hours lost.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

How can you not attribute this to the party that's been in power like in city and national politics for 50 fucking years? How would people keep voting for them? How are they not part of the problem?

SPEAKER_04 47:04

Because in between, we had the like a left more or less for the last 30 years, and they've fucked it up equally bad.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Yeah, I mean how can how can the Independence Party say to people with a straight face, we can't fix this problem? Look at the power they have, look at the look at the control that they have.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

They are saying that they want to fix this problem by putting the rules.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

If they would have and could have, they would have done it by now. No, people still trust them. Like it's sick.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

This is like social dams have been in majority more or less since 1994. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

That's nothing compared to the independence party.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

Okay, let's cool it. Let's cool it here. You guys are losing your shit, though.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

You're losing your shit. I'm cool.

SPEAKER_04 47:46

I'm just pointing out that across the calmer than you are. Across the board. Calm down, you don't think. Kind of like the safety kind of works. You can kind of spread it thin all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

I mean to as a c to at face value, I think this is a perfectly normal outpost of humanity on the edges of civilization.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Way better than it was when we were growing up.

SPEAKER_04 48:17

Yes, except for the traffic. So uh I mean, I'm I'm never stuck in traffic. Well, you weren't either when you were eight because you didn't drive. But anyway. Um what I was gonna say is like I wanna like stop it here. I'm just gonna go through like the the regular grab and I went and interviewed eight out of the eleven parties on election night.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Why did you only choose eight?

SPEAKER_04 48:36

Uh one of them, Flocker Foxes, was uh in Krabur or sort somewhere, too far away for us. One of them didn't want to disclose where they uh held their party, it was Okapork.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

So our city, uh the party named Our City, didn't want to tell you where in the city they were. And the alarm clock bell gone dying party.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

We just forgot about them. It was a long night. Yeah. So that's the reason. Don't blame me. No. Plus, they got 250 votes or something, so whatever. They were lost in their own giant golf course. And we started out at like eight o'clock and we were finished by like four, I think, or something. But we it was kind of like uh this is the mood check. We checked out the socialist parties party first, because they actually opened earliest. And uh very impressed by their um chair.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

The chair?

SPEAKER_04 49:29

That they were first on the list. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:31

I thought you were talking about how the the chairs were amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:35

The Trotsky chair and the s and the Stalin chairs and the uh I didn't realize those guys made uh their own chairs.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

No, they've made them into chairs now. Oh, okay. They're like trophies. Yeah, yeah. They embalm they embalm their leaders. I remember that.

SPEAKER_03 49:48

But I really want Caraval the chairs.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

You know, I saw Lennon in Lennon's uh tomb.

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Yeah, he's not he's he's been turned into not a chair, but you can you're not supposed to be. You can lie down on him. Okay. He's very soft. He's like a sofa, yeah. He's like a bunk bats.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

Yeah, our tour guide was like the he used to look like a real dead body, but it I think at some point they switched him out. They she thinks it's like a wax thingy.

SPEAKER_04 50:13

And then um so that she was great. What do you remember her name? I forget right now. Who? The the Celia Solibirgis? Silia Solibirgis, yes. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Yeah, I mean she's the breakout star from this.

SPEAKER_04 50:24

Yeah, she is very interesting to talk to. And just very smart.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

And like every other candidate was like saying I wish she was in in my party where we shared views.

SPEAKER_04 50:37

Yes. No, no, she was great. Yeah. Uh then we went up to uh to uh the social dams, and we were so early there that it felt like more of a it didn't feel very I heard you had to pay for your drinks at the social dams.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Um that's very social damage.

SPEAKER_04 50:54

I think you had to do that at a lot of places.

SPEAKER_03 50:56

Not at the Socialist Party.

SPEAKER_04 50:57

No, because they're socialists, yeah. Thank God for socialism. Yeah. Uh I wasn't drinking, so I didn't really check these things.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

No, but your ad editor was no.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

But it's an it's an important metric of what the vibe is. Like if we're you know, this is this was just like a vibe election, you know, basically. I mean that's what these meetings are.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

But yeah, so instead of going through all of them, what I'm gonna say is the highlights is that we went to the Progressive Party Party, which was uh at a place called Ski, which is a bar, uh a hotel bar on the like eighth floor of a hotel downtown. And it was A. Nar Thorsterson there, a couple of old Progressive Party people, and then just a lot of people I'm not sure were old enough to drink for free, but they were drinking for free.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Really?

SPEAKER_04 51:41

There's a lot of them.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

That's like old school, right?

SPEAKER_04 51:45

It was just it was him and them basically, and then a couple of shit I talk about. Hello, fellow kids. Hello, fellow kids. Uh and he he was he was slick and nice to talk to, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Yeah, I mean he's good at this.

SPEAKER_04 52:01

Well, well manicured as usual. Uh yeah, absolutely impeccable. Uh the other uh kind of highlights was uh that the center party party was astonishingly weird. First of all, they did they pulled the old bar trick, they had a line outside of their place to kind of indicate that everything was going really was really full in there. And then when you came in, wait in line? Yeah. I tried to wave the press past, didn't do me any good.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

No, they really aren't fans of the press. No.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Gee, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

It seems like the they report on what they say.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:35

And uh and then you come in there, it's not empty, but it's not that full, so it's like the old trick. Make it look busy. And uh I think uh that's the only interview we had to like read two, three times over because it wasn't going great.

SPEAKER_03 52:50

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 52:50

Yeah. And what was peculiar was when we left the premises, our editor was like, Why were there so many old men with young women there? And I was like, No, no, no, no, they're all the same age, they just look like they're old. It's like a type.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

It's a type.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

Then we were at the Independence Party Party when uh they got the first numbers.

SPEAKER_03 53:08

Yeah, in uh the Independence Hall.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

In the Independence Hall, what I like to refer to as NASA.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

Sorry, but go going back to this, like they look older than they are, like everything about that party is like trying to create this image of like being really old and institutionalized. Like it's like this this artifice, it's this fake it's a very fascist thing, isn't it? Like trying to just the the idea of trying to make something very young, because they are a very young party, really, seem much older than it is.

SPEAKER_04 53:36

It's kind of like Iceland. The horse. Oh, the horse. Oh, I was talking about the independence party. Oh, yeah. But so that was fun because they were like, you know, erupting in cheers and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

The Independence Party is old, but they're like uh disturbingly agelessly old. They're like James Bond. Like you should be like a hundred years old by now, but you know, something's not right here.

SPEAKER_04 53:54

Aaron Powell And then uh Vidres must a little laid back compared to that. But I was like, you can check out these videos at the Grip on site or on our Facebook and I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 54:05

Thank you. Can we wrap this up so I can go watch the videos?

SPEAKER_04 54:09

There's actually a lot of talk about uh you know whom they will or will not work with. Oh, really? Anyway, so it's actually reporting, baby.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Uh last thing we're so proud that you did like real work showing it off to him.

SPEAKER_04 54:21

I'm so tired. It was so hard, I'm so old. I'm not made for this anymore. Yeah, good job, man. Uh the other thing I was gonna say is that we were gonna talk about the amok the collapse.

SPEAKER_03 54:31

I I really don't know anything about that.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Who wants to talk about the total collapse of our society when we're having so much fun talking shit about candidates? It's not a good idea. What are you gonna say about that?

SPEAKER_04 54:42

Look it up. It looks bad, it looks worse now than it did the last year. Yeah, and if it comes to pass, these doomsday things, the average temperature in Iceland will drop by like nine degrees by the end of the century, and we will all have to move to uh Staneriff.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

And it will not matter much which right wing douchebag is running this town.

SPEAKER_04 55:04

We can do nothing about this. We have no agency, it's a question of international uh carbon emissions. So on that positive note, thank you. We're gonna go and admit carbon. Yeah, we're gonna go and emit carbon in the hallway. I'm gonna just watch. The carbon's coming in. Uh next time we'll talk about more stories than more or less one. Uh then.