Like Screaming at Deaf Ears

On Monday I was invited by the local government's business relations department to speak to a visiting politician on behalf of the network for female small business owners of which I'm the chairperson. We're only about 20 members, so I invited the others to come along, and two of them did. So along with a kinesiologist and an internet specialist I met with a city councilman and a member of parliament. I was disappointed to find out that the MP did not represent this area; she was just here to visit a power plant and make a speech on the behalf of her party (part of the somewhat conservative coalition, but on the liberal side). There are 7 major political parties in Sweden, 4 on the right and 3 on the left, though by American standards the most conservative would be liberal democrats. While this may seem confusing, the differences between parties are so slight that it is essentially a two party system at the national level and a free-for-all at the local level.

I came with three main points that I wanted to make. The first was the proposed increase in the gas tax that her party was pushing for. Gas is already about $6 per gallon and most of it is taxes. Her party's argument was that ethanol is better for the environment than gasoline, and since the market for ethanol has driven the price up so that it is now higher than gasoline, an additional tax on fossil fuels is needed to make ethanol a more attractive alternative. Sure, I'm all for reducing emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, but ethanol only works in certain new flexi-fuel cars, and there's some debate if it's really that much better for the environment when you consider what it takes to produce it. Since public transportation really is not an alternative in rural areas, the people that are most impacted by the price of gas are women/families with small children in rural areas. I thought I made a good argument, and she saw my point, but her response was that her party (which supposedly is the one that represents farmers and small businesses) was driving this tax increase because it is politically correct and nothing else matters.

A related point that I made was the need to maintain the roads in rural areas. She promptly agreed that this was necessary but could not defend why all the budget was being spent relieving congestion in a few big cities and putting up center barriers on a few major arteries that had been working pretty well before. These barriers are used to make 2 + 1 roads which means that instead of being able to pass into oncoming traffic, it is now one lane in each direction with alternating passing lanes. This sounds pretty good in theory, but out here, you spend a lot of time stuck behind a tractor, or a harvester, or a load of beets going only a fraction of the speed limit. This creates long lines of traffic which then drive like maniacs to try to get by the obstacle during the short passing sections. Also, if there is an accident, all traffic is stopped in that direction and it is very difficult for emergency vehicles to get through. But I digress. Instead of maintaining the smaller roads, the department of transportation has been lowering the speed limits on them. This just teaches the locals to ignore the speed limits. This might not sound like that big a deal for a Californian, but Swedes are generally a very law-abiding folk and I think the little things like driving the speed limit are a part of their culture that is in danger. I'm digressing again. Just fix the damn roads! It's better for everyone (locals and tourists), good for the economy (more tourism and more spending money for people who don't have to pay so much in car repairs and fuel), and good for the environment (better fuel economy).

The third thing I wanted to mention was the poor mobile phone coverage out here. Like most small business people, I use my mobile phone for my business. What's not so good for business is that the first thing I have to say to people who call is that I need to call them back from my regular phone before we lose reception. In general, I have only 3 minutes to talk on my mobile before the call is dropped. My colleague the internet specialist has the same problem, and it's unfortunately not uncommon. Apparently the problem has to do with how far apart the cell phone towers are placed. Most were built for GSM, but now it's 3G that everyone is using, and they need the senders to be a little closer together. But when the government renewed the licenses, there was no requirement for extra senders to make sure that the service still worked. What's really scary is that the next generation of phones (4G) requires contact with two senders at the same time.

My colleagues backed me up and also had their own issues to discuss. Since the MP was interested in entrepreneurship among women, we tried to put everything in that context. Both she and the local politician took a lot of notes, and I hope that some of what we said will be of some use, but I'm not holding my breath.