Sorry, comrades!

As our Prime Minister has just declared that he's into capitulation to Brussels on an important part of the Swedish Model - the restrictive policy on alcohol - I have written a lot in Swedish lately. McGregor has complained about this and I humbly apologise. I will probably continue to write a lot in Swedish the next couple of weeks as the decision on this will be made in a month's time. He wants to cut taxes on spirits with 40 % to avoid people buying it abroad.

I say we didn't have these immense problems with private imports when we had strict regulations on how much you could take into the country, i.e. before we scrapped the exception on this policy area that we got when we joined the EU. Many Social Democrats wants a "revolt" line where we take back hard restrictions on private import of alcohol and take it to the European Court of Justice where we argue that peoples' lives are more important than the profits for the alcohol industry. A recent report says that Persson's decrease in taxes would cost about 300 lives in more alcohol-related crime and medical problems.

Our Social Democratic government has just proposed a large investment program to get more jobs, and are starting to open up for a more expansionary economic policy. Yesterday, Persson proposed to schedule the raise in child benefits earlier, to October 1st this year. People like these movements to the left, but many see it as too little too late.

At the same time, the right-wing parties are debating benefit levels in the social insurances, and at which level their proposal shall be. The Moderates want 65 % of former income, the Liberals want 80 %.

Kommentarer

Anonym sa…
Don't know if you still get our summary comrade but there was an interesting story on Reuters today:

Reuters

You won't be surprised of course that I am in favour of this so-called "slavery" but you might be shocked to know that that survey classed me as a moderate conservative! If only they knew...
Interesting Reuters text. Not much news for a Swede, but it's an OK report accually.

You're a moderate conservative because you're a Brit. The days of the Beveridge/Attlee welfare state are not completely forgotten yet. You need to go to the US for a couple of years to loose the last remnants of your empathy.
Anonym sa…
Matthew McGregor is a nice bloke. But he wo´nt be voting in next years election. From a swedish labour perspective, it would be more progressive to learn Mr. McGregor swedish than for this Peter Pan-blogger to continue writing essays in english.

Yours sincerely
I think Pelle assumes that every single Brit that surfs into my blog is McGregor, even if he calls himself loyal subject and has ridiculously reactionary politics. Everyone who knows Matthew realises that he's a really nice bloke except for that he's misunderstood the crime issue.

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