The World of Sunny Banks

An otherwise uninteresting item of news this morning dealt with a split in the Swedish social democratic party over what, in English, might be called “close-to-home services”. It concerned the party’s attitude to tax breaks for ordinary citizens for services in and around the home, such as cleaning, baby-minding, repairs and renovations and the like. These were introduced by the current right wing government* as part of their job stimulus package – they came to power on the slogan that they wanted to get people back to work. The left wing* opposition, including the social democrats, was outraged. They had visions of housemaids and nannies in uniforms and little caps, curtseying to the rich, like something out of Upstairs, Downstairs.

The result of the tax rebate was that in less than three years, over 11000 ‘new’ jobs have been created, and any number of small businesses formed to handle the market. Of course, these are far from all being new jobs. Many are formerly black jobs that have become white, and result in better conditions for the employees and more tax money for the state. And the beneficiaries are not the bankers and directors the left wing feared, but ordinary middle class people whose lives are so hectic that they – principally the women, of course – just don’t have time to cope.

Of the three parties in the left wing block the greens were the first to realise that scrapping this tax rebate would piss off the middle class, but also piss off the formerly unemployed, now working in close-to-home services, who would once again be out of a job. Today we heard the abovementioned report that one phalanx of the social democrats wants to keep the tax rebate whilst the main party line is that it will be scrapped. I saw in this news item a symptom of one of our society’s problems and a glimmer of hope.

The symptom is the main party line, that something popular with a large part of the population, something that people have voted for with their wallets, something that is working as intended, is against party policy and should be scrapped. It’s a symptom of the total estrangement of politicians in every country from the actual wishes of the citizens. Everywhere one looks one sees a conflict between the views of the rulers and the views of the ruled, to the extent that one can speak of a we versus they situation. Very occasionally, often over some minor point, there will be a massive outcry in the press or via internet, and the government will scratch a plan or more likely postpone it until they have had time to bring the power of the media into play to change the people’s minds, or enough of them to be able to effect the original change.

The hope I spoke of is that some politicians – usually the younger ones, understandably enough – are beginning to realise that they are painting themselves into a corner, making unnecessary enemies of the people they rule. Unfortunately I’m afraid I have difficulty buying their conversion. Their older colleagues have so damaged the public opinion of politicians that all I see is opportunism.

One problem the social democrats have, and probably the reason for their holding to the party line is that the third party in the left block, called simply “The Left”, (formerly the communists) is so far removed from reality that one can hardly say they live on the same planet as the rest of us, and the idea of some people working so that other people can have a slightly easier life is anathema to them.

Another symptom of the estrangement of politicians from the people is playing itself out now in Iceland. That country, as many people know, is still struggling with the effects of the total collapse of its economy a year and a half ago, at the hands of some extremely thuggish and, to my way of thinking, psychopathic bankers. A new government was voted in on the banderole of openness in government, openness in the investigation into the causes of the collapse and the protection of households from the effects of the collapse.

The result is not encouraging. The people in key positions in the collapsed financial system are back in the same or similar positions in the reconstructed banks, the report of a parliamentary committee into the causes of the collapse have been delayed from November 1 to February 1 to February 24 to March 1. The government has made no attempt to alleviate the situation of the households of the country, who are waiting for executive auctions of their homes and belongings. These auctions have, to be sure, been postponed three months today (so as to place them after the local elections in April).

And the government has spent the greater part of the past year negotiating for the repayment of bank guarantees to Britain and the Netherlands (the so-called IceSave business) instead of taking the matter to the European court to challenge the legality of the debt And after the President listened to 20% of the population, who signed a petition asking him not to ratify the agreement, the government have since been in constant negotiations with the current opposition, the ones they were elected to replace and the ones with a significant responsibility for the collapse, to find a way to avoid the referendum that is a necessary consequence of the President’s refusal. In other words, they’re more scared of being put in their place by the citizens than they are of trying to put together a new deal involving their political adversaries, who have everything to gain by becoming a party to the renewed negotiations with the Netherlands and Britain.

I’ll be coming back to this issue of the estrangement of governments from the governed, you may be sure of that.

* “right wing” and “left wing” are relative terms. It has been said that the Brits and certainly the Americans would call them the left wing and the very left wing respectively.

Hope I got the Mandarin pinyin phrase right. There were four variants on the on-line English Chinese dictionary I use. Whether or not, a very Happy Chinese New Year to all who read this.

I have become interested in Chinese culture since one of the principal characters in the novel I’m currently working on comes from China, in fact from the province of GuangXi, just to the west of GuangDong, where the above picture was taken.

And that’s it for this post.

I just saw an article in one of the Swedish newspapers about the crisis of confidence in Greece. One point that was made was that Standard and Poor has threatened Greece that their creditworthiness can be damaged.

Is this the same Standard and Poor which rated toxic credit as AAA a couple or three years ago, and, together with Moody’s and the other credit agencies, played a big role in unscrupulous finance institutions being able to unload the shit onto unsuspecting individuals, councils, charities and other investors who trusted them?

Doesn’t sound like much of a threat to Greece. More of an honourable mention.

Come to think of it, the names of these agencies: Standard and Poor. Well, poor at least is what those investors are. And Moody’s? Well yeah, I guess I’d be pretty moody if someone told me that toxic waste was a good investment.

What’s with the Sunny Banks, I hear people ask. Well, Sunny Banks is a rough translation of the name of our house. In Swedish it’s called Solbacken, which is the name one of our grandchildren selected during that first summer when we more or less camped here before we had officially moved in. Like childhood, our memory is that every day was sunny that summer. Or maybe it really was so. It does seem to us that there are an unusually large number of sunny days here.

We live on a couple of hectares of beautiful Sörmland, about 100 km south west of Stockholm. Three quarters of the land is forest – we’ll never want for firewood! – the rest garden, formerly flower garden. We’re slowly turning it into kitchen garden although I’m afraid my better half will not allow me to root up all the flowers. We’re getting to the stage where we see roses as weeds!

There’s the main house, which you can see in the right hand column above – until I change it – then there’s a small cottage and a barn as large as the house. We have a huge greenhouse and, behind the cottage, an earth cellar where we store our vegetables and fruit from autumn until they are eaten. At the time of writing, we have maybe a month’s potatoes left, some carrots, onions, beetroots, and probably enough apples to last the winter. Oh, and some pickled cucumbers.

We have built a swimming pool where the old kitchen garden used to be – a paltry kitchen garden it was – and we have installed geothermal energy and cut our fuel bills by about three quarters. We have some chickens which more than provide us with eggs and some meat. We also sell to one or two neighbours. And I have my plans for other animals and maybe birds, but don’t tell my better half…

In an earlier lifetime I had a connection with Iceland, as a result of which I have been paying more attention than the average citizen to the events leading up to, and in particular resulting from the economic meltdown in the autumn of 2008. So it is probable that a lot of my posts will contain some reference to Iceland – as indeed this one does.

I noticed on one of the Icelandic blog sites that I visit regularly a news item in which a politician, Svavar Gestsson, formerly an mp for the communist party, now one of the countries special negotiators with the UK and the Netherlands over the IceSave issue, complains that the president’s refusal to sign a recent piece of legislation about IceSave and thereby sending the law to a national referendum has damaged Iceland’s image overseas. He goes on to say that the president “has initiated a revolt against parliament”. There are a number of points raised by these statements.

The first, and most obvious, is that 60,000 people signed a petition to the president requesting him not to sign. 60,000, you might say. Not so many. Who cares. But in a population of around 300,000, that’s 20% of the population. It’s as though twelve million Brits or sixty million Americans signed a petition. It’s not something you can ignore. Or at least, it’s not something you should ignore. So what does it say about Svavar Gestsson’s view of democracy if he wants the president to ignore 20% of the population?

And as for tarnishing the image of Iceland overseas, what sort of a country is it that thinks Iceland’s image has been tarnished as a result of sending a parliamentary decision to a national referendum at the request of 20% of the population? Well, I can imagine that there are a number of governments, both dictatorial and those purporting to be democratic, which would blanch at the thought of a citizens’ revolt of that magnitude. If there’s one thing a member of parliament or a minister in a government fears above all else, even more than the loss of power for his party, it is the loss of power to the people who put him there, in other words the loss of power for the parliamentary process as he has designed it for his own benefit.

On the other hand, I can imagine that there are many countries where the citizens are extremely pleased to see other countries’ citizens claiming the right to have the last say in respect of laws passed by their governments. It may be subjective, but I think I see an unpleasant trend of governments and parliaments actively working against the interests of their citizens, and this trend seems to me to be increasing with time rather than standing still or decreasing. In Sweden we have seen similar revolts in recent years against the increasing general surveillance of the populace, surveillance comparable to that previously reserved for serious criminals. And the turning over to private companies the kind of official powers that properly belong to the police, such as the ability to demand access to the name and address behind an IP address which they suspect has been used for the dissemination of copyrighted material.

It’s no use saying that the president of Iceland shouldn’t have used the powers he is granted under the country’s constitution, that he is merely a figurehead. You can’t have your cake and eat it. If he is given certain powers, one must expect that he will use them sooner or later, in appropriate circumstances. If you don’t want your president to have those powers, they shouldn’t be written into the consitution.

If there is one thing that the internet has given us, it is the enfranchising of the citizen in a way not previously possible. By email-bombing their mps, joining Facebook groups, taking part in on-line petitions, or registering their choice of important election issues, as the group, www.power2010.org, has organized for the upcoming UK elections, ordinary citizens can make their views known to the people who are supposed to represent them.

Small wonder that the people in power, both in government and in opposition, want to increase their surveillance of the Internet, and the people using it, and preferably to take control of it out of the hands of the populace.