Sweden

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Low taxes work

I ration my writing about Sweden. As CoffeeHousers know, I can extol its virtues with room-emptying conviction. But it's now a few days since its election, and as far as I can tell no English publication has told the extraordinary story of its conservative victory - and the economic turnaround driven by the largest tax cuts in Swedish history. It is now the fastest-growing economy in the West. I tell the story in the political column of this week's magazine (subscribers, click here), but I will summarise it for CoffeeHousers here. Normally, conservatives are elected in Sweden as a kind of light relief, to punctuate decades of leftist rule. They're usually thrown out after one term, and the social democrats get back to taxing the bejesus out of the country.

Saturday

Andrew Taylor

From gloom to dispair

In little more than a decade, the cosy world of Anglo-American crime fiction has been transformed by wave after wave of Scandinavian invaders. Some, like Steig Larsson, are suddenly parachuted into the bestseller lists almost before we have had time to become aware of their existence. Others, like Iceland’s Arnaldur Indridason and Norway’s Karin Fossum, advance steadily but less dramatically in terms of sales and critical plaudits. And then there’s Henning Mankell, the Swedish commander-in-chief of the invading forces, who deserves a category to himself. He is a distinguished playwright, publisher and children’s author, who has a long and honourable record of supporting charitable causes, especially in Africa.

Wednesday

Interconnect

Good women and bad men

Just in case you hadn’t guessed after nearly 1,800 pages of the ‘Millennium’ trilogy, the late Stieg Larsson has his alter-ego hero Mikel Blomkvist spell it out. Just in case you hadn’t guessed after nearly 1,800 pages of the ‘Millennium’ trilogy, the late Stieg Larsson has his alter-ego hero Mikel Blomkvist spell it out. ‘This story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies,’ he says. ‘It’s about violence against women and the men who enable it.’ Larsson’s three Millennium books, which feature adult reboots of Astrid Lindgren’s children’s characters Pippi Longstocking and Kalle Blomkvist, are slow-burners in the crime fiction charts.

Monday

Daniel Korski

The Swedish-Israeli War of Words

I am just back from holidaying in Sweden. And while I dutifully kept away from blogging, I did follow the news and the developing Swedish-Israeli dispute, the implications of which may yet become global. For those of you who have yet to read up on this story, it all started last week. In an article for Aftonbladet, Donald Bostroem recounted Palestinian allegations that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians to harvest their organs, and implied a link to the recent arrest, in the US, of organ-trafficking suspects. Many of the suspects were Jewish. Having read the article, the Swedish Ambassador to Israel issued a strong condemnation, saying she found the article "as shocking and appalling to us Swedes as it is to Israeli citizens.