Swedish News:

Young left would like a porn ban in Sweden. Youngest member of Parliament leaves.The algae danger isn’t over yet.Stingy managers. Foreign countries supply Sweden with doctors. 

  • Sweden’s youngest member of the parliament ever, 21-year old Anton Abele (of Moderaterna, or the Moderate Party) is leaving the parliament after the next election. He is dissatisfied with the work climate and how things are being done in parliament. Photo: Frankie Fouganthin

  • Young left would like a porn ban in Sweden
    Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain wants to stop net porn with a new law. Sweden’s Ung Vänster (Young Left) believes it is a good idea even for Sweden. “Watching porn is not a right. Society has a responsibility to protect women from an industry that is founded on exploitation and abuse,” writes Johanna Granbom, board member of the Left Party’s youth organization Ung Vänster on SVT Debatt. The new law that Prime Minister Cameron proposes will mean a tougher fight against net porn. A new law would force people to turn on or off a family filter while surfing. For new customers the filter would be turned on, as a standard. And all porn featuring rape would be totally banned. The proposal has led to a hot debate in England and many other countries regarding Internet censorship. Granbom writes that law and prohibitions may be one way to deal with the issue, though it doesn’t solve the main problem, as she believes the core problem is in the power perspective. “Practically all porn is made by and for men. A natural consequence is that it creates and recreates an absurdly lopsided and unfair image of sex, where the woman’s part is to be dominated and degraded, while the man is the one who takes the initiative and who is to be satisfied,” she writes. That Internet and porn is discussed critically in school is much more important than a family filter, according to Granbom: “The sexualization of the public room not to mention Internet, forces young people to relate to messages about what they ought to look like and are expected to behave like in sexual relations, and the school must be able to give another image.”

  • Johanna Granbom, board member of the Left Party’s youth organization Ung Vänster (Young Left) believes that British Prime Minister David Cameron's proposal to stop net porn would be a great idea for Sweden also. “Practically all porn is made by and for men. A natural consequence is that it creates and recreates an absurdly lopsided and unfair image of sex," Granbom says. Photo from ungvanster.se

  • Youngest member of Parliament leaves
    Sweden’s youngest member of the Parliament ever, 21-year old Anton Abele (of Moderaterna, or the Moderate Party) is leaving the parliament after the next election. He said so when it was his turn to host “Sommar”, the popular radio program, on Thursday. During the program, Abele criticized the parliament’s way of working and the work climate in general. He said that an overwhelming majority, 99%, of the roughly 3,000 proposals written by the parliamentary members is rejected every year. “All this work and then nothing happens. If we cannot influence through proposals, then why do we have that tool?” Abele asked in “Sommar. “And how does one really make a change?” His criticism doesn’t stop there, however, Abele is also critical towards the attitude he feels exists in Sweden today. An attitude that shows a lack of empathy in the politicians, and an all too great interest in these politicians to criticize their opponents. “For me it is the attitude of a loser. Nobody has ever changed the world by nagging on people and their ideas. Abele was elected to parliament during the 2010 election, when he was only 18 years old. He first made himself known for starting a petition against street violence on Facebook following the deadly assault on Riccardo Campogiani in Stockholm in October, 2007.

  • Swedish waterparks are implementing a screen ban - for parents.

  • The algae danger isn’t over yet
    In spite of the warm summer, Sweden has thus far been spared from poisonous algae. Blankets of algae can be found in the Baltic Sea, and have been sighted in several places, but the winds have picked up, and thus bettered the situation. “But the danger is far from over,” says Sture Nellbring, a marine biologist at the Information center for the Baltic Sea, and the person continuously checking the algae situation. “Last year we had blooms as late as mid-August.” When the winds pick up, the algae gets mixed down into the water. But they are under the surface and can quickly reappear when the winds calm down.

  • Because of winds, there’s been little evidence of algae bloom this summer in the Baltic Sea. But marine biologist Sture Nellbring cautions: “Last year we had blooms as late as mid-August. The danger is far from over.” Photo: Felix Andrews

  • Stingy managers
    More than half of all Swedish managers won’t pick up their cell phone when they are abroad for fear it’ll cost them too much money. According to daily Dagens Industri, Tele2 Business has compiled a business panel, in which one can study Swedish managers’ cell phone use when they are abroad on business trips. 55% of a total of 920 managers avoid taking business-related phone calls or reading business-related e-mails when abroad because they believe it’s too costly. 57% say their companies have no policy when it comes to e-mails or calls outside of Sweden. Half of all the managers said they go on business trips more than ten days per year.

  • Sweden doesn’t educate enough medical doctors but must rely on people with foreign medical licenses. Sollefteå in northern Sweden is in need of more doctors and even offered a finder's fee to anyone whose help leads to a hire.

  • Foreign countries supply Sweden with doctors
    Sweden doesn’t make enough doctors. More than half of the medical licenses issued by Socialstyrelsen (the National Board of Health and Welfare) are handed out to people educated abroad. “Without them we’d have a huge shortage of medical doctors in Sweden, so this is good and necessary,” says Svante Pettersson, investigator at Sveriges läkarförbund (the Swedish Medical Association). Pettersson has watched the number of foreign educated doctors grow; in 2010 at least 23% of all professional doctors in Swedish healthcare were educated in another country, according to statistics from Socialstyrelsen. That’s nearly the double compared to 1995, when 13% were educated abroad. Since 2003, more than half of all Swedish medical licenses issued each year, are based on education received abroad. Some on these people have immigrated to Sweden, but more and more Swedish-born leave in order to get their education abroad. “The entire international cooperation is founded on that you can get your education in different countries, but it is still a reason why we are expanding our medical education and it takes a long time before there’s a result,” says Peter Honeth, State Secretary and the Ministry of Education. The reason it takes time, according to Honeth, is that it’s paramount not to jeopardize the quality of the education. “But of course, we have to be self-sufficient in the long run.” It takes excellent grades to be able to get into medical school, and many Swedes view a foreign medical education as their only chance to their dream profession. Since the early 2000’s, the number of those receiving study support for such an education has nearly fivefold, and now makes up for nearly a third of all medical students with study support. “The medical education differs markedly,” says Carl-Johan Stolt,” investigator at Centrala studiestödsnämnden, CSN (the National Board of Student Aid). “It’s become so popular” The number of medical students not tied to a Swedish university and studying abroad, has increased more than any other. “Only the medical education has increased so much during these years,” says Stolt. Chairwoman of Sveriges läkarförbund (the Swedish Medical Association) Marie Wedin, worries that those with a foreign education might risk discrimination, since they don’t have as natural a way into the system as the others. For instance those who have studied in Hungary already have a license when they arrive in Sweden, and therefore not a chance to do their internship, called AT, here. “Already there’s a discrimination, because those who do their internship make themselves known at the hospital and therefore have an advantage with their practical training. It’s easier for them to get into a Swedish hospital.”