Sweden, really?

Firstly, let's get one thing absolutely clear, we live in uncertain times. This phrase has certainly been banded around over the years. I can remember reading newspapers and academic journals at university in 2002 or 2003, relative golden years, at least in terms of public confidence, that talked even then, of high unemployment and rising inequality. Now everything is relative, and these years had specific worries of their own but roll on 8-9 years and things start to become much more foggy.

I suppose in a way, being British, we tend to see the problems we face i.e social inequality, a disconnected youth and immigration as purely British problems. For sure, other European countries have had successes in areas that the UK have not but they are by no means immune to the social problems that we face as a nation.

Economical policies apart, the social problems we now face stem more from our inability to tackle the problem head on rather than evolve policy initiatives to deal with them over time. Take school exclusions for example. By insisting that schools do everything in their power to retain extremely disruptive pupils, the government help maximise classroom disruption, ensuring that the other 95% of pupils aren't given the education that they deserve. It's somehow thought that teachers who fail to control these pupils are somehow failures themselves, or at least that is the way it reads in the Government statistics. Imagine another industry or business where the employees are given the task of selling insurance to someone who has already said no fifteen times before to a certain policy. Not only would that one customer get more annoyed that you have continued to push something in their face that they do not want to accept but the other customers, some of them who are crying out for your policy, are ignored. It's a depressing reality that teachers, in fact nearly all public sector workers, aren't given the necessary freedom to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

It's often when talking to people from continental Europe that you start to get a good idea of the similarities between us. We often think that to look at Sweden, the bastion of the social model which bears the same name, is to look at a society bordering on utopia. I suppose it's lazy in a way, stereotypical even, to think of countries based purely on their reported benefits or problems but from the outside Sweden is nothing but a beacon of prosperity. From the inside you can hear, much like the UK, the same problems that we all face. Rising unemployment, astronomical house prices and an immigration policy without direction.

Sweden is but a small example and they, seemingly, continue to flourish, relatively speaking, compared to other Western nations. Spending the past week with two Swedish couples it is interesting to hear, comforting even, that even though the media would have you believe otherwise, we are not alone in the problems we face. It's almost as if we could have been spending our time with a couple from Leeds and another from London. Our hopes, worries and insecurities are, understanably, inextricably linked.

These certainly are uncertain times but that should never be a reason to start thinking introspectively. Although we are separated by language and culture, we are, socially speaking, closer to our European cousins now than we ever have been. Without sounding like the European financiers, we need more Europe, not less!