Brain-side meeting
The politician in question was none other than the leader of the country’s Liberal Party, called the Venstre Party, Trine Skei Grande. On Wednesday in Oslo she was partaking (or rather supposed to be) in a parliamentary defense and foreign affairs committee hearing on various proposals to shut-down some of the country’s military bases.
Instead she was sitting there on her device playing ‘Pokemon Go.’ Wrong thing to do? Not according to Grande, who said she is quite capable of enjoying ‘Pokemon Go’ while at the same time making sense of the various tabled reports and spending estimates that are common fodder for such hearings.
“Some of us have heads that listen better when we can do something brain-dead on the side,” Grande told the Norwegian news service VG. “We’re not all alike. More sensational things came up during the hearing than this.”
Pokemon Stop!
Not surprisingly, members of opposing parties made political hay out of Grande’s “doing something brain-dead on the side” while in the midst of a committee hearing. They appear to have the idea that she should have been giving the hearing her undivided attention and that not to do so showed too cavalier an attitude.
Halvar Ronneberg of the Progress Party told state broadcaster NRK that the Venstre Party leader’s actions showed “a lack of respect for voters and those who are here in the Parliament today on an important mission.”
As it happens Grande has support at the top for her gaming habits as Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party is an ardent ‘Pokemon Go’ player; she recently told reporters there that she’s on the game’s level 14.
Grande has not revealed the level of play she’s managed but may need to join more committees in order to find the time to catch up to her prime minister.
