Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it --Woodrow Wilson

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

the autonomy of the Swedish courts

There have been a very surprising verdict by the Swedish Regeringsrätten regarding the Gaming monopoly in Sweden, they ruled in favour of the Swedish goverments continuation of gambling monopoly in Sweden against Ladbrokes.
The fact that the Swedish courts have no, I repeat no manouver room in this issue seems to be avoided by the courts totally. The whole verdict is an order from the Swedish goverment against free enterprise, they do not want anyone else get a piece of the action.

According to the Gambelli verdict already ruled by the EC-court, a goverment cannot forbid other companies to offer gambling where the goverment has their own company offering the same service in order to make money. Sweden is the most gambling people in Europe, wherever you go you see ads for gambling, Svenska Spel, the goverment gambling company offers games and bets for everything, no niche is to small or too vertical for them not to create a game to cater to that particular taste. They have TV-shows, TV-ads and newspaper ads, still the courts in Sweden claim that all this is not in order for the goverment to make money, but then what is it for?
Other European countries have much stricter rules regarding social responsibility for gamblers than Sweden, the whole purpose of the gambling monopoly is to make the goverment money, and they want to keep that cash cow.
Ladbrokes is taking this to the EU courts and there Sweden will get their fingers slapped, again.
Like so many times before policy is decide by the courts and not by politicians because they are just to slow and don't want to change things in accordance with the future, another brilliant example of this is the stubborn resistance in order to keep the pharmaceutical monopoly in Sweden, even after EU ruled it illegal and against EU law. Go figure, I hope Sweden will change gov't next election to a more progressive one, the one we have seems tired and unwilling to change.

Sincerely
Mr. Silence Dogood

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

the whole purpose of the gambling monopoly is to make the goverment money, and they want to keep that cash cow.

Just like everything else in Sweden. What should be made illegal is that the Swedish Statsminister is allowed to be married to the CEO of Systembolaget (Swedish Alcohol Monopoly), one of them should be made to resign.

BTW have a great midsommar.
Angelina

11:44 pm

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Welcome back Mr Silence Dogood. It's good to see you back on air.

12:51 am

 

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