Common ground

There we are! Seems Sverigedemokraterna (SD) and the currect Government have even more in common than we thought. SD too, apparently, want to ban art and culture that can be deemed offensive by some.

So up until now we've got:
1. No respect of basic human rights
2. Less artistic freedom (as mentioned above)
3. Harsher punishment for committing victimless crimes
4. Moving away from the assumption that one is innocent until proven guilty
5. Even more surveillance

Plenty of common grounds to build a new government on. I think this might work out very well in the end.

The aftermath

This year's election was truly a choice between the bubonic plague and cholera. After four years of suffering we already knew how cholera felt, and the public seemed to think suffering from this disease was better than exchanging it for the bubonic plague. Interestingly enough even the right-wing party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) made it into the Riksdag, probably due to public frustration and great PR by the other parties as well as the media.

The election result gives us a situation where the cholera non-socialist Alliance is forced to cooperate with parties from the bubonic plague socialist coalition or indeed SD, out there on the far right of politics, which the Alliance has already denied.

To be honest I'm not sure I understand why the Alliance is so hesitant to cooperate with SD. Sure there are differences, mostly ideological, but if the last four years have showed us anything it's that the Alliance are experts in leaving their ideology at home before going to work. So, in practical politics the Alliance and SD aren't really that far apart. Sure, whereas SD nurture a fear and loathing of non-European immigrants, the Alliance nurture the same fear and loathing of all Swedish citizens. Equality, although a perverted one. Still, there are plenty of areas where I'm sure these two can cooperate: The views on crime, on human rights...

Looking forward to another four years in the dark ages.

You want some plague to go with that cholera?

The upcoming general election in Sweden is already turning into quite a bizarre spectacle, with 5 months left of campaigning.

The socialist coalition are working incredibly hard on ruining people's economy, making what kan only be defined as threats to increase taxed across the board should they be elected:

• Increased income tax (as if 56,7 percent isn't enough...)
• Increase fuel taxes (because clearly, in an effort to make it less profitable to work only raising the income tax isn't enough, the actual travel to work should also be punished!)
• Increase the payroll tax (you didn't think only the employee should be punished for working, did you?)
• Increase alcohol and tobacco taxes (God forbid you should be allowed to enjoy a drink after a hard day's labour)
• Restore the hopelessly outdated wealth tax (making sure companies as well as people move their wealth abroad - we don't want those rich bastards living in socialist Sweden!)
• Restore the arbitary and unfair housing tax (also known as the "Stockholm tax", because obviously it should be considered a crime to live in or near such an expensive city and spend all your money on that several million kronor mortgage)
• Introduce a new "energy" tax on the horribly polluting hydropower (well, actually the reasoning seems to be that the energy companies have a healthy profit, and the socialist coalition feels its only natural to introduce special taxes to get a bigger share of that profit - I guess a phone company tax, a lawyer tax or a property broker tax is next, and we all know who will get the bill in the end - the consumers)

Meanwhile the non-socialist coalition, "Alliansen", are hell-bent on finding new ways to strip the public of the last shreds of personal integrity and freedom:

• Random drug tests in school (clearly giving the police mandate to perform drug tests on kids without parent's permission wasn't enough)
• Publishing pictures of suspected criminals (because apparently the stigmata of sending purple letters to the families of suspected sex buyers wasn't enough...)

Not to mention all the disgusting laws that have been passed already during the last 4 years.

Of course, the socialists aren't friends of freedom and integrity either, supporting the new and oppressive laws that have been passed during the non-socialist government, the FRA-law, the data retention directive and the Ipred-law. They've even suggested every kid in school should get a "personal police officer" watching over them, making sure they don't do any mistakes (you know, being out partying on a Saturday night), and accepting any incriminating information they might have on other kids, in effect creating a society based on fear and squealing.

So the question is really, would you like some plague to go with that cholera, or is cholera enough? I'd like neither, thank you so much.

I noticed blogger Ravenna shares my views on some of this insanity. A post well worth reading.