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titude of bankers. ‘I admire the independence of English bankers,’ said Mr Tore Browaldh, sometime managing director of Svenska Handelsbanken, one of the three major Swedish banks, ‘but it could never happen here. Swedes like State control. It would never occur to a Swedish banker to help a customer against the State; his instincts are the other way: to carry out the orders of the Central Bank. He identifies himself with the State. I suppose it’s a result of the Corporate State. I would lay there are no conflicts of loyalty; between the State and the customer, the State always wins. Even if we know we’re cutting our own throats.’ This interplay of bureaucratic control, acquiescence and 82 The New Totalitarians private identification with the State, smooths official control in most fields. Much of the development of Swedish society, mbt sale for example, lies with the Directorate of Social Affairs which deals with social welfare, medicine and health services, housing and, to a certain extent, education as well. For some years, the director general was Professor Bror Rexed, who also happens to be one of the Social Democrats’ leading ideologists. He frequently announced future policy, before his own minister had spoken, and before the party had officially made its decision. But, speaking as a senior bureaucrat, his words were accepted as a rescript which, in due course, would be formally endorsed. To take two important examples, mbt trainers outlet he it was who announced in 1970 that the transplantation of organs was to be reviewed, and the law modified, and that, until the results of further research were available, the fluoridization of drinking water was to be suspended. Both were questions of public interest but, because he dealt with them, they were removed from political controversy. By the time the Diet was allowed to discuss <a href="http://www.cheapnikeairforceones.com/"><strong>air force one shoes</strong></a> these issues, mbt shoes uk what might have been a matter of parliamentary debate turned into the consideration of received truth. It is in this manner that controversial subjects are removed from politics. The Directorate of Social Affairs enjoys untrammelled power in the custody of mbt walking shoes children. An administrative order issued by a petty official is sufficient to take any child away from its parents and have it brought up by any person (or institution) and in any way seen fit. This is no modern contrivance; it is an old arrangement brought up to date.* In the last century, it was not infequently used to ensure that the * Illegitimate children are automatically wards of child welfare boards, the local agents of the Directorate of Social Affairs. They have to be brought to child care centres regularly for inspection, and their mothers are legally compelled to undergo any cross-examination which the officials see fit to carry out to retain custody. Unmarried mothers are particularly exposed to the removal of their children. A Planner’s Promised Land 83 children of religious dissidents were brought up in the State Church. Courts of law have no say in the matter, and there is no way that a parent can oppose an order depriving him of custody of his mbt lami own child. The only redress is after the fact, and concerns the way in which the order is carried out. For example, if the police use excessive violence in removing the child, a complaint may be lodged, but only to an administrative committee. At no point is it possible to invoke the due process of law, and parents may not be present at the administrative boards which discuss the removal of children from their homes. In the last resort the Ombudsman may be approached, but he has no power to rescind a decision on custody; he can only reprimand an official for not acting with proper decorum. Custody of children, then, is in the hands of bureaucrats. Child welfare officials may enter any home to investigate family conditions. They have power to order the police to force an entry and remove children without recourse to the judiciary. This is a daily occurrence, and it is only mentioned in the press if something unduly dramatic occurs. For example, mbt kisumu in Gothenburg in 1970, six policemen entered a flat to remove a teenage girl from her father because she had repeatedly run away from foster parents to whom she had been committed, since she preferred to live at home, mbt walking shoes and she refused to leave of her own free will. Her father also wanted her to stay. In local eyes, the sensational part was that half a dozen constables had been considered necessary to remove a child, where two ought to have been enough. Child welfare authorities are in contact with every citizen at one time or another. By law, every birth must be reported to the local child welfare centre. A representative will then visit the home to assess conditions and report findings to the doctors at the centre. It is unwise to resist entry, because that will arouse suspicions mbt stockists of maltreatment, with consequent danger of official action. Moreover, there is a legal compulsion 84 The New Totalitarians on the citizen to report all suspicions of maltreatment to the child welfare centres. Anonymity is guaranteed, so that the suspected parent, like the victim of the Spanish Inquisition, need never know who his accuser is. The danger of arbitrary action is obvious and, indeed, perfectly reasonable mbt shoes australia parents, mainly in the countryside, walk in constant fear of having their children taken away if their methods do not conform absolutely to the accepted ideas of the day. This is at least partly due to the popular acceptance of the child welfare board, the local body administering the field, as one of the authorities that direct everyday life. The board is one of the citizen’s overseers, rather than his helper. In 1970, about 2,500 children <a href="http://www.cheapnikeairforceones.com/"><strong>nike air force ones</strong></a> were removed from their parents’ custody. This is about 1 per 3,000 inhabitants. Sometimes children must be removed for their own good, usually from the violence and neglect of alcoholic parents. But not infrequently action is taken because children may be a little scruffier, or parents somewhat more happy-go-lucky than is considered acceptable. The important point is that parents fear arbitrary action. A hard-working, respectable divorcee in a country town, for example, was reluctant to travel away from home, although her eldest daughter was eighteen and capable of caring for the younger children, because she feared that the child welfare authorities would use her absence as a pretext to break up the family. She felt defenceless. The point is not so much mbt shoes sale that her fear was justified but that it exists. An official of the Ministry of mbt shoes Justice admits in confidence that there are grounds for such fears, and that child welfare boards do act arbitrarily. The intention of the Swedish child welfare arrangements is to protect children from maltreatment. But the form which they take is obviously a gross violation of the integrity of the citizen. Yet native disapproval of this state of affairs is rare in the extreme. I once asked a man, a schoolteacher, university graduate and supporter of the Liberal party, whether he was A Planner’s Promised Land 85 not worried at what could be construed as a breach of the rule of law. After all, his rights as a father were at the mercy of bureaucrats. His answer was this: ‘I don’t see that there is anything to worry about. A civil servant is to be trusted more than a cheap mbts judge, because he is an expert in the matter, while the judge is not mbt shoes review . And anyway, I’ve got more important things to worry about than theoretical matters like these; I’ve got two children, and I’ve got to see that they have a decent standard of living.’ Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are ‘to be obeyed but not carried out’. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy. 5. The Corporate State The Swede considers the Diet as the least of the five components that make up his State. Of the others, government, bureaucracy and the party in office are familiar in Western countries, but the fifth is peculiar to Sweden. It is a branch of public life known as the popular organizations. The popular organizations are mass movements, representing interest groups, that dominate national life. Far more than pressure <a href="http://qqegg.net/blog.php?do=showone&uid=295&type=blog&itemid=18505 1"><strong>tod Finding the Right Store to Buy Your Jordans Shoes_13379-Sport ...</strong></a> groups lobbying clandestinely in parliamentary corridors (although that is mbt chapa part of their work), they are corporative bodies, like medieval guilds, with a mbt shoes online quasi-legal status, and a prescriptive right to speak for their segment of the population. They influence the process of government directly, by-passing the Diet. They are agents of authority. They deputise for the State in whole sectors of public life, and they have had duties delegated to them that properly belong to the civil service. In the hierarchical structure of Swedish society, the popular organizations occupy an intermediate level, like a bulkhead between the rulers and their subordinates, dividing among themselves the conduct of affairs in most spheres of everyday activity. The country is adapted to dealing, not with the individual, but with corporate bodies and the citizen is therefore expected to belong to some organization catering to his occupation and interests. ‘The broad masses,’ to quote a Swedish poet, ‘live in the depths of mbt discount the popular movements.’ Like Fascist Italy, Sweden is today a corporate State. But mbt the Swedish version of the corporate State is far more The Corporate State 87 complete than the Italian one. Corporatism sat uneasily on the Italians, with their individualistic tradition, and it only affected the country superficially; in Sweden, it has permeated all corners of national life. The difference is that, whereas in Italy corporatism was an alien contrivance imposed by a RSS feed &copy; 2011 Internet Marketing Articles