'Equal pay now! Equal pay now!", the chant echoed up to my hotel window in Oslo, as strikers and their supporters marched past the Norwegian parliament. How could this be? Are there strikes even in paradise?
By most comparative measures, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/norway" title="<00ad>Norway">Norway is something close to a paradise on Earth. Per head of population, it is one of the world's richest countries. It is also one of the most equal. It has a welfare state that is the envy of social democrats everywhere. Mothers get 10 months' maternity leave on full pay. Last year, the country led the world in the well-respected human development index, which combines measures of life expectancy, literacy and standard of living. Norway is free, rich, peaceful, safe, healthy and, so far as anyone can measure these things, happy. Oh yes, and in these times of fiscal hardship, it has a budget surplus of more than 9%. And it gives more than 1% of its gross national income in overseas aid; so it's virtuous, too.
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