The Swedish Politics Thread
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Swedes are living longer these days, so in order to get the same pension as our parents did, we now have to work much longer than they did.
The extra tax incomes from this very nearly covers the added costs for parents staying home to tend their kids when they are ill.
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The VAT on my computer is twice the VAT on fish.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Swedes are living longer these days, so in order to get the same pension as our parents did, we now have to work much longer than they did.
Out of interest, what are those numbers? I believe they are 67 and 65 here for men and women respectively, IIRC. Dunno, it changes all the fucking time and it's not something I'll be a subject to any time soon so I'm not really following...
@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
The VAT on my computer is twice the VAT on fish.
25% all around, baby!
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@Mikael_Svahnberg Work hard, die young, have a bunch of kids. That's the ticket. It has always been.
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A while back the government wanted to increase the quality of the swedish shcools.
So they assessed all teacher education programmes at universities and revoked the examination rights for most of them. At the same time they set up a certification programme so that all teachers should certify that they have a proper education.
Now they need up to 10000 teachers to meet the current needs. By the year 2020 some sources argue that we will need 55000 new teachers.
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@Onyx said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Out of interest, what are those numbers? I believe they are 67 and 65 here for men and women respectively, IIRC. Dunno, it changes all the fucking time and it's not something I'll be a subject to any time soon so I'm not really following...
We get a forecast on our pension papers every year. Currently it is slightly more than 67 years for me and 69 years for my wife.
... which reminds me:
Women get lower pensions than men because they are expected to live longer.
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There's a teacher at the local kindergarten that has been on sick-leave for a couple of years. Because she is employed and refuses to resign (why should she?), the county cannot hire anyone new to fill the vacancy. Instead they hire temps for up to six months at the time.
The kids have given up learning the names of the temps.
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It should not be easier to open a bottle of liquor than a carton of milk. But it is.
(ok, not politics, but nevertheless something that bothers me).
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If the swedish navy pretends to find a russian sub in October they get a higher budget for the next year.
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It took until about post 8 before I read the username and realised it wasn't @Polygeekery doing some fake trolling shit.
Well played, @Mikael_Svahnberg
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@Jaloopa said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
It took until about post 8 before I read the username and realised it wasn't @Polygeekery doing some fake trolling shit.
/me quickly counts down the thread for post eight.
Yeah, I realize now that the the milk vs booze was out of character. :D
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"We can't have monopolies", the state moaned. "We need to sell out our infrastructure companies!"
So now I pay two bills for my electricity. One to the company that delivers it to my house (which is still a monopoly since I can't change it), and one to the company that produces an amount of electricity equivalent to my consumption and pushes it out on the grid.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
It should not be easier to open a bottle of liquor than a carton of milk.
You're in Sweden. Getting the bottle of liquor is harder than the carton of milk as there aren't nearly as many Systembolagets about as grocery stores.
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If I become a micro-producer of electricity I have the option of selling my surplus back to the power company. ... at a price they dictate.
If I buy it back later, I have to pay tax for it.
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@dkf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
It should not be easier to open a bottle of liquor than a carton of milk.
You're in Sweden. Getting the bottle of liquor is harder than the carton of milk as there aren't nearly as many Systembolagets about as grocery stores.
Thanks for reminding me:
To limit the availability of liquor, Systembolaget used to not be open on saturdays. Their reasoning was that if you know you can go and buy more booze on saturday you may drink everything you have available already on friday night.
So people started taking some hours off on friday afternoons to buy liquor. To beat the queues thus formed, they started taking the whole afternoon off. While they were at it, they might as well do some shopping for the weekend.
End result: the swedish industry stood still on fridays due to lack of manpower.
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Because I live closer to Germany and Denmark, I pay more tax on my electricity than if I had lived in the north of Sweden.
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The congestion charges in Stockholm have made it much easier for the rich to find a parking space.
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Perhaps not purely politics: but if you plan to move to one of the bigger cities in sweden, and plan to rent an apartment, you better plan ~1-2 years ahead. If you sign up for the housing queue that early, you might be able to get an apartment in one of the run down places outside of the city within a month or five.
The average queue time is apparently approaching 5 years.
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Your avatar is sooo misleading.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
It should not be easier to open a bottle of liquor than a carton of milk. But it is.
(ok, not politics, but nevertheless something that bothers me).
Says who??
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"We musn't own monopolies" cried the counties and sold out many of their retirement homes to private companies -- sometimes for as low as 1kr.
"This is better," the counties said, "because private companies are much better at being cost effective. This will lower the costs." And so they paid the companies per patient.
The companies indeed lowered the cost, and lined their pockets with the profit.
"Nonononono!" Cried the counties. "You must not turn too much of a profit. It will look bad for us if we pay tax money to your owners."
The companies, of course, said nothing.
Meanwhile, I am wondering what this magic is that the companies are able to do only if they own the retirement home, that a good consultant can't advice the county to do on their own -- without selling their assets.
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@cvi Jesus tittyfucking Christ, what? That's like pre-1990 Czechoslovakia.
Are you talking only about city-owned houses and apartments, or privately owned ones too?
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@blek said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
@cvi Jesus tittyfucking Christ, what? That's like pre-1990 Czechoslovakia.
Are you talking only about city-owned houses and apartments, or privately owned ones too?
It is primarily the county-owned housing company. But yes, there is a lot of work to find private landlords too.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
If the swedish navy pretends to find a russian sub in October they get a higher budget for the next year.
They call it... the hunt for Reds, in October!
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@cvi said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Perhaps not purely politics: but if you plan to move to one of the bigger cities in sweden, and plan to rent an apartment, you better plan ~1-2 years ahead. If you sign up for the housing queue that early, you might be able to get an apartment in one of the run down places outside of the city within a month or five.
The average queue time is apparently approaching 5 years.
Back when I moved to this city, I bought a house. Partially because I prefer it. Partially because renting commercially requires your income to be 4-5 times the rent, and my salary wasn't high enough for that, and renting socially has a waiting list of around 10 years.
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@blek As @Mikael_Svahnberg said, it's mostly the county-owned company (which is fairly large). Some of the larger private ones opt in to that system as well, even though they are not required to do so.
AFAIK the way it works is that they first check if you're eligible (sufficient salary, etc), and then amongst the eligible people, the one with the most accumulated queuing time gets first dibs. IMO it's a bit easy to apply for an apartment, you basically click on a button on a webpage saying that you're interested. The low effort of doing so probably contributes to the fact that it's not uncommon to see several hundred applications for a single apartment (the wepage helpfully lists the number of applications so far, and your position in the queue according to the accumulated days.).
So, yeah, it's pretty fucking terrible.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg Public sector organizations generally have a contingent of managers who measure their worth by budget. They combine with another contingent who believe in providing the best service at any cost, and there is literally no pressure to optimize.
Private sector, you still have middle management that measures their worth by budget size, but you also introduce senior management who is measured by the opposite and are empowered to overrule middle management. The service at any cost folks get slaughtered.
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@Weng Result: shitty service at low cost being marketed as premium service at high prices.
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@Yamikuronue Yes.
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@PleegWat Yeah, buying apartments is also an option (I'm not the house kind of person, plus it's a bit overkill when you're living by yourself). It sucks, though, if you're not sure if you're going to stay for more than a year or two. Plus, decently located ones are seriously expensive.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
"We need to sell out our infrastructure companies!"
Infrastructure is the one thing that should be kept in the hands on the government instead of private companies.
@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
"This is better," the counties said, "because private companies are much better at being cost effective. This will lower the costs."
I read a study a while ago about German privatization projects. In almost all cases, the costs have risen significantly since the infrastructure had been sold.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
It should not be easier to open a bottle of liquor than a carton of milk. But it is.
(ok, not politics, but nevertheless something that bothers me).
O...
IMO these are less finicky than those paper cartons:
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
increase the quality of the swedish shcools
Someone implemented a shell in Cool?
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@bb36e said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
O...
IMO these are less finicky than those paper cartons:BAD IDEAS thread is
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@boomzilla Both paper cartons and plastic tubes are wrong. All hail the glass bottle!
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@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
@boomzilla Both paper cartons and plastic tubes are wrong. All hail the glass bottle!
What the hell?
These are weird but sometimes more convenient in how they fit in a fridge:
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@boomzilla Those pretty much don't exist in Germany.
This is the standard milk bottle here:
Paper cartons have become more popular than bottles, though.
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@asdf I'm pretty sure the SOP for any privatization is: company comes in, makes drastic cuts to vital ongoing maintenance costs to maximize their short-term profits, lines their pockets with the profits for as long as they can, and then right about when the extended neglect starts to become a serious problem they hand it back to the government and say they're done with it and it's your problem again now.
Sometimes you even get that without the privatization.
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@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Paper cartons have become more popular than bottles, though.
Glass is heavy and breaks. This is especially important if you have young children.
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Glass is heavy and breaks. This is especially important if you have young children.
It's still the best material for storing beverages, though. All kinds of plastic alter the taste of the beverage over time, and emit very small amounts of potentially harmful substances into the liquid.
Also, reusable plastic bottles are a great place for bacteria, while reusable glass bottles can easily be cleaned and don't have that problem.
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@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Also, reusable plastic bottles are a great place for bacteria, while reusable glass bottles can easily be cleaned and don't have that problem.
Reusing bottles generally sucks. Just throw that shit out! My town collects recycling one day, so it's just a special snowflake trash collection.
Actually, I reuse 2 liter soda bottles all the time as water bottles.
@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
and emit very small amounts of potentially harmful substances into the liquid.
I'm more worried about chemtrails.
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Reusing bottles generally sucks.
I'm not talking about reusing them myself. You usually bring them back to the shop here, and they get shipped back to the bottling company, who cleans and re-uses them a few times.
Besides, glass is generally easier to recycle than plastic.
@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
I'm more worried about chemtrails.
Fair enough. The point is that plastic interacts with the liquid (emitting traces of plasticizers, potentially changing the flavor over time) while glass doesn't.
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@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
I'm not talking about reusing them myself. You usually bring them back to the shop here, and they get shipped back to the bottling company, who cleans and re-uses them a few times.
Yes, that's what sucks. Who needs that hassle?
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
I'm more worried about chemtrails.
With a haircut like that you're probably right to.
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Yes, that's what sucks. Who needs that hassle?
When I was a kid, they still did the glass bottle delivery thing in my town. IIRC you would put your empties out on the porch or whatever and the milkman would pick them up when he delivered your new milk.
@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
potentially changing the flavor over time)
While this is true, in my experience, the week or so a jug of milk lasts before it's finished isn't really enough time to notice any such.
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@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
@boomzilla Both paper cartons and plastic tubes are wrong. All hail the glass bottle!
The most healthy and convenient to use choice!
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
@asdf said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Paper cartons have become more popular than bottles, though.
Glass is heavy and breaks. This is especially important if you have young children.
It's great then! They can cut themselves and die and you have one problem less!
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@boomzilla said in The Swedish Politics Thread:
Who needs that hassle?
It's not much of a hassle, especially if you buy most of your beverages in crates. Just load the crate back into your car when its full and drop it off at the supermarket the next time you go shopping. It's also expensive not to bring crates back (you get around 6€ back per full crate).
