an economic crisis, a minority to scapegoat, and established political parties not to take the threat seriously.

TBH, talking to mates who work in various state organisations the government has to a greater or lesser extent ignored the “threat” of mass immigration.

Mostly through under investment in services. All the budget models seem to have been worked out over the last few decades based on a generally healthy and stable population of people who have lived here for generations, with a small percentage of immigrants being added every year.

When you add 5% to the number of people using a service in a certain are (Somalitown as it’s known here), the budget only went up by the required 5%.
Except a good proportion of that 5% need masses more budget than is allocated. They’ve potentially just left a warzone, so need ongoing CPTSD treatment, or treatment for long term injuries, they are likely to be ill more often due to stress or a lack of medical care when younger, they have larger families, so need more school space and somewhere larger to live. They have kids in their teens who can’t read or write in their own language, let alone Swedish (or english), it’s harder to find jobs (back to that Swedish fear of brown people) so unemployment is likely to be more frequent and long term.

All of that requires more budget and people, which isn’t always being provided, or provided soon enough, so services have been cut. And there is an easy target for SD and the far right to focus on. “Current Government is useless, doesn’t care about Swedes, look at all the brown people.” And here we are.

Compound that with policies to close nuclear plants (immediately visible policy) and some frankly weird policies/contract around pricing and sale of energy internationally, and you have a situation where people are paying a quid a kWh for peak rate electricity when they were paying 15p last year, and diesel is up at over 2 quid a litre. (All the governments fault apparently.)

It’s a perfect storm TBH.

And SD have no idea how to fix it.

Wait for Swexit

Only a halfwit would vote for that…

Oh. Yeah. Carry on…

(hopefully they’ll see the issues around brexit and decide to give it a miss.)

Most of what is said about Sweden other countries is mostly stuck in a timewarp.

Is more the case ime, even people who have emigrated and currently live in country xyz forget the bubble they exist in.

The spectrum of politics is apparently (mentioned in a BBC article I think) calibrated differently over there, so what they consider right wing is basically our liberals.

Yes and no. This rant is not specifically at you but this general they are “better than us” comparison where usually they are different or comparison is caveated.

I tend to find different countries “left and right” vary in their make up. “Their right” (whoever they may be ) might seem to have much in common with our liberal in some areas and but on issues of immigration less so.

I also feel comparisons are very hard because the countries are in very different places in terms of history of immigration, amount of immigration, economy, population (size and distribution).

Basically what I am trying not say is comparison of politics and situations between countries, it’s not that you can’t compare but people have to be very careful and exact in you comparison and recognise the limitations of the comparison. Stuff is not simple dispite what many in politics would have you believe.

Simple sets of rules give rise to complex behaviour.

https://rsf.org/en/sweden-rsf-asks-country-s-second-biggest-party-stop-undermining-press-freedom-and-right-information

After the recent parliamentary election, the Swedish Democrats blocked access of several journalists to their election night and threatened the media in general. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warns of the link between political and physical attacks.

His words sounded chilling. When a journalist of the Swedish public broadcaster, SVT, asked on September 12th the chief of staff of the Swedish Democrats what he was looking forward to after the party ended second in the general election the day before, Linus Bylund responded: “A lot of work, a lot of what we call journalist rugby,” meaning “pushing journalists around.”

I reckon Donald Trump would approve.

What’s not been mentioned is that the largest party by seats was the previous left of centre party.

Probably because it is not notable, they have had the biggest share of the vote in every election since World War I,
the SD have obviously significantly increased their vote share this has led to the sufficient members of the right coalition seeking to work with them to govern – that is the biggest change – in the last two elections the SD vote effectively kept the right out of power because insufficient members of the coalition were willing to govern with their support.

Compound that with policies to close nuclear plants (immediately visible policy) and some frankly weird policies/contract around pricing and sale of energy internationally, and you have a situation where people are paying a quid a kWh for peak rate electricity when they were paying 15p last year

I looked into this and there are extra taxes on nuclear but only so that they actually paid for their costs. For example extra insurance after Fukushima and paying more to fund the expensive decommissioning and waste storage costs. So this is not a tax it is removing a subsidy as far as I could tell.

And I think the electricity contract stuff is as much to do with the European open market as anything

So this is not a tax it is removing a subsidy as far as I could tell.

As far as I am aware there has never been an example of nuclear power generation anywhere in the world being profitable. The horrendous costs involved, including obviously decommissioning, means that it always has to be subsidised by governments.

The reasons for having nuclear power are varied but I don’t think because it’s cheap is one of them

it won’t be called Swexit it’ll be called Swedone

Genuinely interesting thread. Thanks for the informed contributions.

A distraction… How to swear like a Swede

No, nuclear is rarely profitable, but suddenly removing a good chunk of our national generating power, whilst not having a suitable replacement available wasn’t the smartest of moves.

On a local basis, we’ve been told to extend the periods we’re not allowed to use our biggest machines (as we are still partially reliant on the local grid) and also to run our own power station at a higher load the rest of the time. No, i don’t know the details, but it’s been reported on our internal news.

There are also some commercial oddities around moving Swedish power via Norway that are impacting on our costs as well. And there is also a reciprocal deal with Norway getting Sweden to move their power, that is generating large profits for the electricity distribution companies, but has no impact on our rising bills.

One of my mates (works for Vattenfall) was ranting about it a few weeks ago after his bill quadrupled at the end of his fixed rate deal, no laughing matter when a good chunk of the country is reliant on electrical heating. And a few companies are either offering no fixed rate deals, or the sort of deal that’ll lock you in to paying astronomic rates for the next two years.

Danes supported building nuclear power station opposite Copenhagen. Danes wanted nuclear power station opposite Copenhagen a few years later.

Old nuclear power stations are old and due to be closed anyway. Just look at France where I think half of the nuclear are closed down for maintenance. Sweden is currently exporting 15% of its electricity in comparison to a decade ago even after closing down nuclear in the mean time. And a lot of that is getting sent to Finland due to the massive delays and cost over runs of their new nuclear power station.

https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/artiklar/fem-myter-om-karnkraften/