Swedish Politics

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Ananda, I would like to invite you to weigh in on the subject of politics and society in Sweden. I think we give the good ol' USA far too much attention as it is, besides my study of Sweden in the past few days has raised some interesting issues that may pertain to the West generally. I have a couple of questions that might help bring the issues into focus:

1. What is your opinion of the Sweden Democrats (a nationalist, some would say ultra-right party), both their agenda and the way the government, political opposition, and society in general have reacted to it? Do you think that the government has gone too far to suppress their ability to be heard?

2. What do you think about the way the Sami people are treated in Sweden?

3. Do you think the family is in danger in Sweden, or do you think it has been strengthened by government policies?

4. What is your opinion about the future of Sweden, given current trend of immigration and politics generally? Do you think Sweden will be recognizable in 50 or 100 years?

Ananda, I apologize for all past satire and any lingering hard feelings. Please don't feel confined by my questions, please share any thoughts about Sweden that you feel would be informative or topical for a US audience. I think this might be a good way for everyone to study the background and point of view of an interesting country that some may see as a model for the US of the future.

[finn]

Why is Sweden doing the bidding of the US with regard to Julian Assange?

[Avatar]

I'm curious about the "strengthening the family" question...why does this seem to be an issue for governments / people? Why do people think it needs strengthening, or that things are bad if it isn't strengthened?

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

It appears to be a hot button issue in Swedish politics, Av, hence the interest. But your point is taken.

[Ananda]

Ananda, I would like to invite you to weigh in on the subject of politics and society in Sweden. I think we give the good ol' USA far too much attention as it is, besides my study of Sweden in the past few days has raised some interesting issues that may pertain to the West generally. I have a couple of questions that might help bring the issues into focus:

1. What is your opinion of the Sweden Democrats (a nationalist, some would say ultra-right party), both their agenda and the way the government, political opposition, and society in general have reacted to it? Do you think that the government has gone too far to suppress their ability to be heard?

2. What do you think about the way the Sami people are treated in Sweden?

3. Do you think the family is in danger in Sweden, or do you think it has been strengthened by government policies?

4. What is your opinion about the future of Sweden, given current trend of immigration and politics generally? Do you think Sweden will be recognizable in 50 or 100 years?

Ananda, I apologize for all past satire and any lingering hard feelings. Please don't feel confined by my questions, please share any thoughts about Sweden that you feel would be informative or topical for a US audience. I think this might be a good way for everyone to study the background and point of view of an interesting country that some may see as a model for the US of the future.

Hi Ron. I don't have any hard feelings and I'll take your post at face value. I appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I have about 20 minutes free time before I have to go start dinner and then it is the weekend and I doubt I will have time to sit in front of my computer and be a book nerd, as my husband calls it. So, I will just answer your first question and probably come back to it monday when I can do more than make silly comments with my mobile.

Sweden democrats... how to begin... I think they represent a failure of ours. A failure of immigration, integration and really poor housing policies for the last decades that has finally manifest itself as a reaction to the consequences of the failures. Would that we could go back and change things or that the current politicians had some courage even as little as 6 or 7 years ago...

They are a hateful group. Repulsive leader. Disgusting and stupid ideas. And they are elected to our parliament. Not many seats, but more than none as they should have had if we had done things better.

Why are they elected? Because they are the only ones saying anything about the very real issues and consequences of our immigration, integration and housing policies. The parties are scared to touch it because they don't want to seem racist. And now no one wants to stand behind the sweden democrats because they are racist.

I'm running out of time here. I'll mention to your other question about if it is right that they are shut out. Yes. I think it is. But, it is not right that these issues aren't address. So, then my answer is also no. I've talked about this party before here in a few threads and maybe you missed it because you didn't know who they are. Right now, they are very unfortunately filling a needed role. I just hope that the main coalitions pick up some of this stuff and take it in a more humane and non-racist way and address the issues that have led these people to get any seats at all. I don't know if it is too late to get rid of them if the main parties stand up, but I hope it is not.

They really are racist and don't pretend they aren't. So, if you wonder why other politicians don't want to work with them, you don't have to go further than that. No one has stopped them from being that, but the parties also don't want to work with them as is their right.

Oh well. This wasn't a very good answer maybe, but I am out of time. Must go make dinner now.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Thanks for your thoughtful response Ananda, though I can sense that you are grieved by this issue quite personally. I wish we took political problems this seriously in the US, so that in a way they are seen as a personal failure. It might make us more accountable.

[Avatar]

It appears to be a hot button issue in Swedish politics, Av, hence the interest. But your point is taken.

Yeah, I wasn't talking specifically about Sweden there of course. It's something I see in politics all over the place. (Didn't know the Swedes were worried about it too. )

--A

[ussusimiel]

It's something I see in politics all over the place.

The 'family values' issue is always present in politics because it is centred on that ever-present social concern, fertility. (If rus was around he'd be able to provide an appropriate Chesterton quote )

This concern is valid because uncontrolled fertility always has the potential to negatively affect society. In traditional societies tight marriage laws and strict punishment for activities seen as breaching fertility taboos keep fears about social breakdown under control.

In secular societies, education and policies that support single mothers are probably the most effective way to deal with, otherwise uncontrolled, fertility. However, as single mothers are some of the poorest-resourced people in society, their voices and concerns are usually not well-enough represented. Consequently, when budget cuts are made they are often one of the first groups hit (with predictable results in relation to crime and other negative social factors).

A number of factors conspire to reinforce this cycle (short-sighted housing policies, politically-influenced allocation of resources, short-term political concerns (i.e. elections)) and sap the political will necessary to effect the long-term policies needed to address uncontrolled fertility as an on-going (not temporary) issue (pardon the pun ).

u.

[Avatar]

That's certainly an interesting take on it...fertility control. I'd think that government was in favour of more kids...more citizens...more taxes...whatever.

I certainly agree it's about playing on peoples fear of social breakdown though. The more people fear, the more likely they are to let you "protect" them.

Government is, after all, just a big protection racket. "Pay us or we'll come after you."

--A

[Ananda]

Sorry Im so quiet on this but demanding new client wants his project done in unreasonable amount of time. But to the family thing, I'm not sure what you mean. I never heard this hot button issue and I asked my husband if he heard about it and he said no. Granted that we dont look at much tv, but we read the news sites and I can't think what you mean on this. But just out of hand we get 480 days maternity/paternity leave paid if that helps give a picture.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Perhaps we should be emulating Sweden.

www.spectator.co.uk/essays/7779228/swed ... cipe.thtml

When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

All this has taken Borg from curiosity to celebrity. The Financial Times recently declared him the most effective finance minister in Europe. When we meet in his Stockholm office on a Friday afternoon (he and his aide seem to be the only two left in the building) he says he is just carrying on 20 years of reform. ‘Sweden was a textbook case of European economic sclerosis. Very high taxes and huge regulatory burden.’ An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Sweden on the road to balanced budgets, and Borg was determined the 2007 crash would not stop him cutting the size of government.

‘Everybody was told “stimulus, stimulus, stimulus”,’ he says — referring to the EU, IMF and the alphabet soup of agencies urging a global, debt-fuelled spending splurge. Borg, an economist, couldn’t work out how this would help. ‘It was surprising that Europe, given what we experienced in the 1970s and 80s with structural unemployment, believed that short-term Keynesianism could solve the problem.’ Non-economists, he says, ‘might have a tendency to fall for those kinds of messages’.

He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. The last bit was the most unpopular, but for Borg, economic recovery starts with entrepreneurs. If cutting taxes for the rich encouraged risk-taking, then it had to be done. ‘In most cases, the company would not have been created without the owner,’ he says. ‘There would be no Ikea without [Ingvar] Kamprad. We would not have Tetra-Pak without [Ruben] Rausing. They are probably the foremost entrepreneurs we have had in the last few decades, and both moved out of Sweden.’

But they were not rich, I say, when they were starting out. ‘No, but they were becoming rich. If you have a high wealth tax and an inheritance tax, people emigrate because it becomes too costly to own a company. Ownership is a production factor. Entrepreneurs are a production factor. Yes, these people are rich and you can obviously argue that we want to encourage social cohesion. But it is also problematic if you drive out entrepreneurs from your country, because they are the source of job creation.’

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Sorry Im so quiet on this but demanding new client wants his project done in unreasonable amount of time. But to the family thing, I'm not sure what you mean. I never heard this hot button issue and I asked my husband if he heard about it and he said no. Granted that we dont look at much tv, but we read the news sites and I can't think what you mean on this. But just out of hand we get 480 days maternity/paternity leave paid if that helps give a picture.

It was from the Sweden Democrats wikipedia, I guess they are worried about it. Do you know what they are worried about, and is there any cause for concern in your opinion?

[Ananda]

Sorry Im so quiet on this but demanding new client wants his project done in unreasonable amount of time. But to the family thing, I'm not sure what you mean. I never heard this hot button issue and I asked my husband if he heard about it and he said no. Granted that we dont look at much tv, but we read the news sites and I can't think what you mean on this. But just out of hand we get 480 days maternity/paternity leave paid if that helps give a picture.

It was from the Sweden Democrats wikipedia, I guess they are worried about it. Do you know what they are worried about, and is there any cause for concern in your opinion?

If it is the sweden democrats, then they are probably complaining about foreigners and gays ruining the country. They make some points about immigration that are legitimate. But, the things they say are usually based in hate and go way too far and come from a nasty place. Sorry I didn't read about them more, but they don't interest me except that, as I said before, I hope the non hateful groups pick up the need to address some vital issues that only the sweden democrats are raising. Remember, this party is a very small group. The reason that people vote for them is they want some issues addressed, not that they share their racism (though, I guess some do). They only got legitimacy because other parties failed to act which gave them a platform and an in.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Swedish Politicians Want Men To Pee Sitting Down

Men who work for the Sörmland County Council in central Sweden should sit down rather than stand up when urinating in office toilets, according to a motion put forward by the local Left Party chapter.
Surgery patient vanishes from Swedish ward (11 Jun 12)
Swedish mum owns up to forest sex bunker (10 Jun 12)
Sweaty Swedes seek help overseas (10 Jun 12)
The Left Party in Sörmland is taking a stand to ensure men take a seat when emptying their bladders in the county council's own toilets.

According to the party, there are two very important reasons for the proposal encouraging men to sit instead of stand when they urinate.

One reason has to do with hygiene and a desire to ensure that no one who uses the toilets at the county council's offices will be required to walk through puddles or residue left by stray urine which happens to splash out of the bowl and onto the floor when male employees pee standing up.

The Left Party also cites medical research it claims shows that men empty their bladders more efficiently when they are seated.

The improved bladder evacuation not only reduces the risk for prostate problems, according to the party, but also helps men who sit rather than stand achieve a longer and healthier sex life, the local Folket newspaper reported.

As a first step in its quest to get men to take a seat, the Left Party proposes labeling toilets which are designated for men who absolutely want to remain standing when they pee.

The Left Party's Viggo Hansen, a substitute member of the county council and the man responsible for the proposal, wants the office toilets to be genderless and as a result, is pushing for the "sit-down only" requirement.

He insisted, however, that the move doesn't represent political meddling in people's bathroom habits.

"That's not what we're doing. We want to give men the option of going into a clean toilet," he told Sveriges Television (SVT).

[Ananda]

hihi that is funny. But Nihil, you should know we share bathrooms- even public ones with both men and women. So add that context to it. It is probably some women sick of having pee all over the floor and started some stupid thingie over it.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

That's interesting. If they tried that in the US there would be civil war within 8 hours.

[Avatar]

Why?

--A

[sgt.null]

the religious right would argue that is is the sissyfication of America.

really.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Why?

--A

Women vs. men

[Avatar]

--A