So… We are
moving in to election times here in Sweden and this equals the erecting of what
is called a “Valstuga”, a small shed that each local branchy of a political
party put up on a busy square or similar place, usually they all end up in the
same place and in essence create a political shantytown. =P so these small
sheds anyway work as storage for marketing material and basic shelter from the
Swedish summers. Now this is not anything uncommon... it happens each election but
so far this year we have had 2 stories in national media about incidents connected
to these valstugor.
The first
one happened about a week ago as two carpenters working on erecting these sheds
where attacked by a man who complained about the noise and then proceeded hit
them with a hammer, he fortunately failed to cause any serious damage and
retreated back towards his apartment but thanks to several witnesses police
could apprehend the man without much of a incident. According to some the man
did raise the hammer towards the police but either finally came to his senses
or was incapable of getting to the police. It would fortunately turn out that
the man had no political motives with his attack... He was just under the
influence… deeply under… .. . Now i agree that people hammering away can be a
very annoying sound… But the answer is never to pick up a hammer and try to
beat the sound out of people… It does not work. It is also pretty stupid to do
this in broad daylight as other people tend to notice your impromptu xylophone performance.
The second
story is perhaps at the same time both less and more severe, but it does
involve a valstuga and someone taking offense.
It would seem
that during the night one or more people felt that they had to redecorate the
valstuga of up and coming political party F! (Read as fi, short for feminist
initiative) using the Mythbuster school of re-decorating. After breaking down a
wall they simply gutted the small shed and left a fairly neat pile of tinder
outside. Much to my surprise they did not lit it on fire… This otherwise seems
to be the primary form of entertainment for hooligans. Now again as I said
before there are good and bad ways to express frustration, tearing down
valstugor is not one of them... All that says is that you are immature and have
the mental capacity of pack of instant-noodles. Especially as these places are
usually manned during daytime by people who want nothing more than to argue
over the finer points of how and why this or that party should in fact be named
guildmaster and be given all the guildbank privileges. Then again I am sure the
F! Will not complain about this in the long run as this give them a lot of free
publicity and a free box of sympathy point, and traditional marketing is
expensive these days.
Now why I bring
these two stories up is because we are still fairly early in the game for the
not-so-Iron throne and I hope this is not an indication of days to come. I like
living in a place where political violence for the most part consist of the
very edge cases of conservative or communist parties having their Friday night
love sessions and the rest posting angry rants on the internet. But this year
we have two parties that are stirring the pot... so who knows.
So all I can
say is.. People if you feel that you need to express your dislike with this or
that party… either do it on election day (honestly the most efficient... but also
the least individually visible way) or at least keep it civil and try to not
cause bodily or financial harm to people… But I guess that is hoping for too much.
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