Posted on 04/26/2007 10:55:19 AM PDT by WesternCulture
A group of local politicians from Sollefteå in northern Sweden have lodged a complaint to the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket) after viewing an advert that promotes shopping.
The three-member consumer delegation - consisting of Micael Melander from the Social Democrats, Tonny Molander of the Greens and Left Party representative Niklas Lind - discussed the advertisement for clothing chain Kapp-Ahl at a meeting on March 23rd.
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The triumvirate took exception to the ad on the basis that it fosters the development of retail therapy.
"It's an ad where a young girl is really depressed because her boyfriend has just broken up with her. Goldie Hawn, who is an actress, encourages her to indulge in some comfort shopping.
"We think that because there are so many people with shopping problems it's not a good idea to encourage people to practice comfort shopping," Micael Melander told financial news site Dina Pengar.
The politician was then asked whether the group's stance was not simply critical of advertising in general. After all, is not the point of marketing to get people to shop?
"Yes, maybe so. I'll have to think about that. It was so obvious in this particular ad. I didn't take this matter up myself; it came in as one of our cases," he said.
According to Dina Pengar, all three members of the delegation took exception to the message of the advert and supported the decision to report it to the Swedish Consumer Agency.
"We think that they are exploiting young people by showing that all problems should be solved by shopping. There have to be some sort of ethical limits," said Niklas Lind.
The delegate added that he does not watch adverts on television.
"I have some sort of filter," he said.
I thought that was only supposed to be the SUBLIMINAL message.
American comedy TV show from the late '60s. It's where a young Goldie Hawn made her debut.
- Muslims have very little influence in Swedish society in relation to their share of the population (around 4% of which something like, at least, 50% are very secularized)
Our PC politicians wish Muslims to ‘integrate’ with Swedish society at large. This will never happen due to the following reasons:
1. Most Swedes think Islam is incompatible with Swedish Culture.
2. A lot of Muslims, especially those from North East Africa don’t wish to be integrated. They don’t want to mix with ‘infidels’.
3. While some Muslim immigrants to Sweden are well educated and rather secularized (many even drink alcohol and eat pork!) and have been rather successful in finding jobs and starting businesses of their own, a lot of Swedish Muslims lack qualifications even for the most simple of jobs (and to some of them, such jobs are below their dignity as they belong to some ‘respectable’ clan in their home country). This lack of interest/incompetence will be passed on from generation to generation at least for many decades from now.
“American comedy TV show from the late ‘60s. It’s where a young Goldie Hawn made her debut.”
- Thanks for telling me. I don’t know this show, even though it might well have been on Swedish TV.
I’ll check it out. Guess there are clips on YouTube.
Can you find a 288 sq meter (3000 sq ft) detached house and yard in a decent neighborhood for under $180,000??
“Guess there are clips on YouTube.”
- I was right (an experience not wholly unfamiliar to me here on Free Republic)
Here’s one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b7BGBa6MTI
“Can you find a 288 sq meter (3000 sq ft) detached house and yard in a decent neighborhood for under $180,000??”
- In Stockholm it probably isn’t possible. But in many other parts of the country it is. I decided to try a region called Gävleborg. No problem.
http://www.svenskfast.se/Templates/ObjectView.aspx?objectid=3CLID88H5Q075UG0&SearchResultIndex=9
Pictures:
http://www.svenskfast.se/Pages/ObjectViewPictures.aspx?objectid=3CLID88H5Q075UG0
280 sq meters is very close to 288 and 925 000 SEK equals about $136 000. OK, this is in the countryside, but I don’t think it would be that much more expensive in a city with around 50 000-100 000 inhabitants and Swedish building standards are perhaps the best in the world.
Most Swedes who’ve worked in the US say things like everyday consumables are cheaper than in Sweden, although the cost of housing is ridiculous.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Sweden
- This is correct. I’m just saying INCOME taxes aren’t 50-60% which seems to be suggested above.
The main reason Swedes pay more taxes than Americans in the end, despite the fact that income taxes are not extreme and corporate taxes are lower, is our sales tax of 25% and our ‘extra’ taxes on alcohol, tobacco and gas.
Swedes/Scandinavians and US Americans have very different ideas concerning taxation, welfare and distribution of wealth. However, both paths has lead to immense wealth and both concepts are based on Lutheran work ethics and capitalist enterprise. Maybe the things that unite us are of greater importance for building prosperity than the matters that separate us?
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