Sweden has spent a considerable amount of money on international aid to Afghanistan in recent decades, SEK 14 billion in the past 19 years to be precise. According to a report by the Expert Group…
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Climate equality comic book
Climate and gender equality are the buzzwords of the day. Why not combine them and see the grant money flood in? The Swedish Gender Equality Agency handed out a neat SEK 802,000 to environmental…
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Welfare fraud
Where there is lots of money, there are fortune-hunters. Swedish welfare systems are naively organised. Poor coordination between different government agencies and a lack of checks have meant that a large proportion of our shared…
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The sound of Malmö
The City of Malmö, in Sweden, paid a communications agency SEK 485,000 to produce “the sound of Malmö”, which includes the silence of a library. The sound will create a sound identity for the city,…
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Tranemo’s municipal poet
Tranemo municipality wanted its own poet in residence and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee gave them funding to the tune of SEK 900,000. The idea is that over the course of a year, the poet…
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Draped poetry – or junk art?
“The idea is that a child could have done it,” said the artist about the main attraction, The Octopus, in the art work Draped Poetry. The work is in Paradisparken in Borlänge and consists…
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Non-existent study circles
In recent years, widespread fraud and irregularities have been uncovered in Sweden’s ten study associations that run non-formal adult education. Tax money has gone to fictitious study circles with no actual participants. The money may…
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The biogas plant that never got off the ground
In 2012, Söderhamn Nära, a Swedish municipal company, decided to be a trailblazer and started building a biogas facility at a cost of SEK 9 million, aiming to run the municipality’s vehicles on the gas…
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Luxury offices for Swedens’ municipalities and regions
SKR, the Swedish association of local authorities and regions, is planning to spend huge sums on building itself a new office in the centre of Stockholm. Exactly how much money is involved, SKR does not…