Posts under "Politics"

Will you work until you are 75?

Posted by jennie 5 Comments
Feb 9 2012

Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has sparked a huge debate the last couple of days due to his new suggestion that Swedes should keep on working until they are 75- instead of 65 as the standard retirement age is today.

“The pension’s scheme isn’t based on magic. It is a welfare ambition based on large-scale re-distribution and citizens’ own work. If people think that we can live longer and shorten our work life, then pensions will get lower,” Reinfeldt said to Dagens Nyheter (Today’s News).

With the risk of being completely and utterly dull here – here’s a quick guide to the Swedish pension system and how it works – for anyone who might be interested:
The Swedish pension system consists of three main components – national retirement pension, occupational pension and voluntary pension. The national retirement pension is made up of three elements, income pension, premium pension and guarantee pension. The income pension and the premium pension are completely independent from the national budget. The income pension is financed by employer contributions representing 16% of an employee’s gross annual income. Premium pension is financed through an additional contribution from the employer equal to approximately 2.5% of the employee’s gross annual income. Occupational pension is the pension coverage provided to employees via their employer, as a component of salary, which is also known as collective agreement pension. Voluntary pension consists of private pension insurance based on voluntary savings.

The retirement age is normally 65, but it’s flexible and some people start to work less when they are 61 while some keep on working until they are 67. Of Swedes over 65 years old, 7.8 percent were employed in 2010, according to Statistics Sweden.

So, what about this new suggestion then? Well, apart from us living longer and the higher standard of living in general, the Prime Minister believes that employers would be more willing to hire people over 55 if they knew they would stay for another 20 years instead of 10. And that we might have to consider more than one career during our working life – a quite challenging view for most of us.

As mentioned before, this has not been greeted with open arms and cheers. Debates has been raging in the media and on the social networks, people have been rather… well let’s put it this way, unkind to the Swedish Prime Minister and his new suggestion.

What’s the retirement age in your country? And could you imagine yourself working until you are 75?

Monopoly, but just not the board game!

Posted by Katja 5 Comments
Nov 15 2011

As many, if not all of you know, Sweden has a strict monopoly on its alcohol sales. It is only “Systembolaget”, the name of the organization, that is allowed to sell alcohol over 3,5% in all of Sweden.

 

There are a total of 416 stores and 508 agents who are allowed to sell alcohol.

 

When talking about alcohol in Sweden many people believe that, were the monopoly to be taken away, the consumption of alcohol would increase enormously and would be a huge cost to society. Others counter and say that the only reason we still have a monopoly on products such as alcohol is for the government to have a big source of income. And that it wouldn’t really matter at all if people were able to buy alcoholic beverages in supermarkets as they do with other products.

 

Many people who have immigrated to Sweden find it completely ridiculous that there is only one or two stores in a whole city where you can purchase alcohol. Not to mention that on red days Systembolaget is closed. During Halloween for example, all of Systembolaget’s stores in Sweden were closed. People who were planning on partying were extremely frustrated that they had forgotten to buy a lot of spirits the day before and had to settle for low percentage drinks from grocery stores instead.

 

On Systembolagets homepage they have published a short video on their stance on what were to happen if the monopoly was removed. The video is only about 1,5 minutes and in english so it is well worth a look.

 

http://www.systembolagetkampanj.se/forskarrapport_en/

 

There is also a Swedish version for those of you who want to practice you swedish. The two versions are almost identical apart from the fact that they are in different languages. There is also the possibility of subtitles so you can hang along a little more.

 

http://www.systembolagetkampanj.se/forskarrapport/

Producer responsibility = Producentansvar

Posted by Katja 3 Comments
Oct 17 2011

Many countries all over the world have recently banned free plastic bags (plastpåse) in grocery stores, including in Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, France and many more. Kenya, certain parts of India, Bangladesh and Taiwan have even banned plastic cutlery in some cases. Sweden has not. According to Hannes Borg, employee at the Ministry of Environment, Sweden has no reason to.

The reasoning being one that, Sweden has a law saying that all producers have the responsibility to take care of the waste of their product. They have to by law, offer their customers some sort of possibility to recycle the containers of the bought product. The producer responsibility (producentansvar) has been applied to 6 different areas; packaging, waste paper, batteries, electric and electronic devices, cars and tires. The customer also has an obvious responsibility to sort and return the remnants of the packaging.

Consequently, there are no rules for a product like a dish-brush, since nobody has payed for the dish-brush to be specially “taken care of”. That is also one of the reasons why only packaging is recycled in Sweden. Other plastic materials, for example, are usually incinerated with the rest of the garbage.

When one of Sweden’s most established newspapers SvD (Svenska Dagbladet) interviewed Svante Axelsson, secretary general for the environmental organization “The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation” (SSNC) (Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen) even he said that a ban on plastic bags would be more of a symbolic action. He however pointed out, that it is not good to consume plastic, and any unnecessary consumption of plastic bags should be avoided. SSNC hope consumers will bring their own cloth bags with them when they do their shopping instead.

After learning that “environmentally friendly” Sweden, in faith that their producer responsibility law will be enough to stop mass pollution, has not banned plastic bags, do you think the right decision has been made? Which would in your opinion be the more efficient way to prevent environmental damage?

If you are interested in reading an article on the subject (although it is in Swedish) this is the link to SvD’s (Svenska Daglbladet’s) homepage:

http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/plastpasen-forbjuds-men-inte-i-sverige_759345.svd

10 facts about Swedish politics

Posted by jennie 1 Comment
Sep 15 2011

Since today marks the opening of the Swedish Riksdag and it’s election day in our neighbouring country Denmark, I figured 10 nice and easy facts about Swedish politics would be appropriate.

 

1. As Head of State, the King opens the Riksdag session every year in mid-September. This service takes place in Storkyrkan and the members of the Riksdag, the Royal family and invited special guests are attending.

 

2. There are currently eight parties represented in the Riksdag: the Moderate Party (Moderaterna, M), the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna, KD), the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet Liberalerna, FP), the Center Party (Centerpartiet, C), the Green Party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna, MP), The Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna, S), the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) and the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet, V).

3. In the general election of September 19, 2010, Fredrik Reinfeldt (Moderaterna) became the first conservative prime minister to be reelected. When he became Sweden’s prime minister back in 2006, he ended 12 years ruled by the Social Democrats.

4. Since the 2006 election, the Riksdag set a world record for female parliamentary representation, with women making up 47 percent of its elected members. Sweden remains in the lead after the 2010 election, with 45 percent female representation in the Riksdag.

5. To vote in Sweden, you need to be 18 years and a Swedish citizen. 7 million people in the country are entitled to vote.

6. The Riksdag makes the decisions and the Government implements them. The Government also submits proposals for new laws or amendments to laws to the Riksdag.

7. A party must receive at least 4 percent of all votes in the election to gain representation in the Riksdag, a rule intended to prevent very small parties from getting into the Riksdag.

8. Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce freedom of press, in 1776.

9. Sweden is one of the largest contributors to the United Nations and one of the few countries to meet the UN’s aid target of 0.7 percent of GNI. Sweden became a member of the UN in 1946.

10. Sweden was one of three EU countries not to join the European currency. Swedish voters rejected it by a clear majority in September 2003.

The lefy wing of the Riksdag, Stockholm.

The Chamber.

(Source: www.riksdagen.se, www.sweden.se)

Sweden prioritizes recycling

Posted by Katja 1 Comment
Aug 25 2011

It’s funny the things which you notice sometimes. Just the other day I moved into an apartment, one that was built quite a few years back. The linoleum floors, the big windows and the kitchen were the things I noticed, but what I noticed most of all was that under the kitchen sink there was no recycling storage. Noticing that, I thought “wow this apartment is old”. Nowadays all the apartments that are built are influenced by what this age’s Sweden stands for. We have agreed that recycling is something good, and so decisions have gradually been made to make it easier for people who rent housing to be able to recycle in the garbage room, as well as leave compost bags. The paper bags are left in huge piles in the common garbage room for people to take when they need them. Though it is still the private individual’s responsibility to make sure that dangerous waste gets left at a special recycling station.

Sweden is good about reusing and recycling in a lot of ways I think. The special recycling stations are in Swedish called “Återvinningscentral”. Usually people load big trailers filled with junk and they drive up to the containers to sort the stuff into the right containers. Different categories are burnable, cardboard, electronics, styrofoam and wood amongst other things. There are special spots for paint, light bulbs and other dangerous or poisonous matter, as well as garden waste like cut grass and branches.

 Not so long ago recycling wasn’t anything people were so interested in, and not at all something natural like nowadays.

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