Hardly half way through its 4 year term, the swedish right-liberal government is in deep trouble. At least in the opinion polls. As of this monday, Demoskop gave the ruling four parties a mere 38.6 percent and the opposition a staggering near 20 percentage point lead at 57.6. Not bad for a social democratic party that only 14 months ago was thoroughly trounced at the ballot boxes.
Therefore, todays debate in Parliament was little more than close to predictably boring. The social democrat's Mona Sahlin lambasted the administration for stealing from the poor and throwing tax reform at the rich. Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (conservative) in his turn asked her for some tangible proof of proactive or constructive opposition policy.
In other words, things were as they should, and nothing more exiting than that will transpire in Swedish domestic policy before the election season starts sometimes after New Year 2010.
Until then, we political junkies will have to make do on the thin fare of petty scandal and infighting this government has made us expect.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
High Voltage Hypocrisy
Riksdagen, the Swedish Parliament, continues to march out of step with it's constituency. In the Old Days, it was the Temperance movement that traditionally was the most over-represented of all lobby groups when a vast majority of the MPs were Teetotallers, far more than in the population in general.
Today anti nuclear sentiments are chronically overrepresented. A recent poll verifies again that Swedish MP:s are more negative than the common Swede, something that pollster and professor Sören Holmberg at the University of Gothenburg has been able to show through more than two decades now.
Energy policy and energy politics in this country have been gridlocked ever since the misfortunate referendum in 1980. It's inconclusive result (you could either vote no, yes or maybe, to nuclear power, yours truly voted yes, of course)have ever since held swedish political system ransom to their own dated standpoints, hastily made a quarter of a century ago.
Meanwhile in reality, power demand have soared, not diminished. "Deregulation" (of demand, not sypply) and "CO2-tax" (for virtually emission free nuclear and hydroelectric power!) have quadrupled electricity prices. At the same time the ten remaining reactors (two are shut down) are trimmed to produce much more energy than they were designed for, resulting in a wave of incidents and reports of criminal sloppiness the last couple of years.
So, after 30 years of trying to rid us of nuclear energy, it still produces close to 50 percent om the nations needs. Hydroelectric power supplies the other half – with the exception of a measly 3-4 pct of politically correct and vastly more expensive "renewable" sources.
In spite of all this, Parliament still sounds like if people would only dim their lights and powercompanies only would invest in one or two more windmill parks out at sea and in the wilderness up north, things would be just fine. Like drinking so many glasses of ginger ale while people are getting sloshed on moonshine, to complete the analogy of sobriety above.
The solution? Well, six out of four Swedes are for more nuclear energy. There are still four great rivers up north (no-one lives there anyway) to explore for hydroelectric power. Either won't add a single molecule of CO2 to the atmosphere . . .
Today anti nuclear sentiments are chronically overrepresented. A recent poll verifies again that Swedish MP:s are more negative than the common Swede, something that pollster and professor Sören Holmberg at the University of Gothenburg has been able to show through more than two decades now.
Energy policy and energy politics in this country have been gridlocked ever since the misfortunate referendum in 1980. It's inconclusive result (you could either vote no, yes or maybe, to nuclear power, yours truly voted yes, of course)have ever since held swedish political system ransom to their own dated standpoints, hastily made a quarter of a century ago.
Meanwhile in reality, power demand have soared, not diminished. "Deregulation" (of demand, not sypply) and "CO2-tax" (for virtually emission free nuclear and hydroelectric power!) have quadrupled electricity prices. At the same time the ten remaining reactors (two are shut down) are trimmed to produce much more energy than they were designed for, resulting in a wave of incidents and reports of criminal sloppiness the last couple of years.
So, after 30 years of trying to rid us of nuclear energy, it still produces close to 50 percent om the nations needs. Hydroelectric power supplies the other half – with the exception of a measly 3-4 pct of politically correct and vastly more expensive "renewable" sources.
In spite of all this, Parliament still sounds like if people would only dim their lights and powercompanies only would invest in one or two more windmill parks out at sea and in the wilderness up north, things would be just fine. Like drinking so many glasses of ginger ale while people are getting sloshed on moonshine, to complete the analogy of sobriety above.
The solution? Well, six out of four Swedes are for more nuclear energy. There are still four great rivers up north (no-one lives there anyway) to explore for hydroelectric power. Either won't add a single molecule of CO2 to the atmosphere . . .
Monday, 14 January 2008
I'm back, finally!
It took six months, but I have finally succeeded to recover my lost password for this blog. (ah, well, to be honest - I first went on vacation, then digressed another month and THEN discovered I had forgotten the pw)
Anyway, hopefully I'll get up the steam to make a few entries a week also in this forum. At least htat'll be a bit easier between feb 1 and 13, when I plan to visit California to cover the primaries for my newspaper.
Anyway, hopefully I'll get up the steam to make a few entries a week also in this forum. At least htat'll be a bit easier between feb 1 and 13, when I plan to visit California to cover the primaries for my newspaper.
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
Summer sailing
Summer is here and yours truly really does not feel like blogging too much.
Sailing in the Baltic is so much more fun.(the young whippersnapper with the camera in the foreground is my son Hannes)
Monday, 25 June 2007
What's your name and number?
License tags in Sweden are boring. My Ford Ranger has OTJ 353, and I can tolerate it only because the two first letters correspond with my initials. My new (used) Chevvy pickup has an even worse one: LEC 436 – total nonsense. On top of that, our authorities removed all the interesting four-letter-word-combinations (in the language of heroes and great deeds many are spelled with only three) from the start back in -72.
But the system has it's limits. New tags now begin with X. And even if old combinations from scrapped autos are habitually recycled, only y and z remain.
(Readers of Swedish might be aware of that our alphabet does indeed not end at z, but has the additional å, ä and ö, but htat won't help. Å Ä and Ö was excluded from the start, along with capital i and those three-letter four letter words mentioned earlier suchs as KUK, BÖG, MUS, BUS, DÖD, RÖV, LÖK, CIA, IRS, FBI, NFA, NHL, and so on.)
oh, I'm digressing...
What I was aiming at was the fact that someone told me the other day that Chinese authorities – and regular people – are facing a tremendous name problem. Chinese name-laws are strict and in fact only about 1500 surnames are allowed to be used in the Commie State.
Considering that there are 1 300 000 MILLION chinese these days my less than accurate arithmetic tells me there are on average close to one million chinese to each alloted surname.
And that's a LOT of Andersons, if you ask me. . . .
Getting someone's name in the whitepages in Bejing must be a real drag . . . .
But the system has it's limits. New tags now begin with X. And even if old combinations from scrapped autos are habitually recycled, only y and z remain.
(Readers of Swedish might be aware of that our alphabet does indeed not end at z, but has the additional å, ä and ö, but htat won't help. Å Ä and Ö was excluded from the start, along with capital i and those three-letter four letter words mentioned earlier suchs as KUK, BÖG, MUS, BUS, DÖD, RÖV, LÖK, CIA, IRS, FBI, NFA, NHL, and so on.)
oh, I'm digressing...
What I was aiming at was the fact that someone told me the other day that Chinese authorities – and regular people – are facing a tremendous name problem. Chinese name-laws are strict and in fact only about 1500 surnames are allowed to be used in the Commie State.
Considering that there are 1 300 000 MILLION chinese these days my less than accurate arithmetic tells me there are on average close to one million chinese to each alloted surname.
And that's a LOT of Andersons, if you ask me. . . .
Getting someone's name in the whitepages in Bejing must be a real drag . . . .
Sunday, 24 June 2007
What? Not our fault!?
Swedish media is right now reporting the astounding news that global warming has not caused the melting of the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro. It is a pending article in Scientific American that has caused the commotion.
This blogger, who since long have been frustrated by the sycophantic and less-than-critical reporting on the theoretical impact of human CO2 emissions on world climate, feel a little relieved.
Kilimanjaro's rapid glacial decline has, among other, been featured by Al Gore in his film as a Grand Proof of modern society's evil impact on the climate. Now, we learn, it might just be natural processes. Kilimanjaro (and Europes and the Andean) glaciers have been steadily melting since around 1900. One reason is that the so called "little ice age" ended after roughly 250 years in about 1850.
Sadly, it probably will not do very much about the hegemony of the ruling CO2-dogma.
For that to happen we'll have to await a change of the current paradigm, the one that strongly biases research directed at human caused global warming before other theories.
And remember, as long as governments can use the idea of reducing carbon emissions to tax energy, they will not give a hoot about if it's true or not!
This blogger, who since long have been frustrated by the sycophantic and less-than-critical reporting on the theoretical impact of human CO2 emissions on world climate, feel a little relieved.
Kilimanjaro's rapid glacial decline has, among other, been featured by Al Gore in his film as a Grand Proof of modern society's evil impact on the climate. Now, we learn, it might just be natural processes. Kilimanjaro (and Europes and the Andean) glaciers have been steadily melting since around 1900. One reason is that the so called "little ice age" ended after roughly 250 years in about 1850.
Sadly, it probably will not do very much about the hegemony of the ruling CO2-dogma.
For that to happen we'll have to await a change of the current paradigm, the one that strongly biases research directed at human caused global warming before other theories.
And remember, as long as governments can use the idea of reducing carbon emissions to tax energy, they will not give a hoot about if it's true or not!
EU without a free market?
The near-disastrous top EU meeting in Bruxelles is over. Politicians and commentators rejoice over the fact that the Union in the nick of time managed to get the outline for a new treaty on it's way.
In the end Poland gave up its ridiculous claim that Polands population (and thus voting strength within the organisation) should be added with another 20 million people in compensation for the loss the country suffered in WWII. (Needless to say, other european countries refrained from similar contra-factual claims, even if few but Sweden have gotten through that period of history without major loss of life)
But one wonders if not the french addition to the treaty's preamble is not worse – and sadly by now, even a fact.
By actually having the references to an open and unimpeded market struck from the preamble, France have opened a totally unnessecary ambiguity. And guess what president promised only months ago in the election that he'd "defend" french jobs against the effects of globalisation and foreign competition?
It really does not makes one worry less that an additional protocol was created that states that the free market shall prevail. Why this unnessessary ambiguity?
Well, National self Interest, of course. And the french know that game well. A fact that the CAP (EU:s common agricultural policy) proves tim and again.
In the end Poland gave up its ridiculous claim that Polands population (and thus voting strength within the organisation) should be added with another 20 million people in compensation for the loss the country suffered in WWII. (Needless to say, other european countries refrained from similar contra-factual claims, even if few but Sweden have gotten through that period of history without major loss of life)
But one wonders if not the french addition to the treaty's preamble is not worse – and sadly by now, even a fact.
By actually having the references to an open and unimpeded market struck from the preamble, France have opened a totally unnessecary ambiguity. And guess what president promised only months ago in the election that he'd "defend" french jobs against the effects of globalisation and foreign competition?
It really does not makes one worry less that an additional protocol was created that states that the free market shall prevail. Why this unnessessary ambiguity?
Well, National self Interest, of course. And the french know that game well. A fact that the CAP (EU:s common agricultural policy) proves tim and again.
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