David Richardson

I fully endorse George's call to extend our perspective a lot further back in time. Sweden nowadays is a peace-loving country … but it hasn't always been that way. It was instructive reading Peter Englund's biography of Charles X of Sweden, for example, who launched an unprovoked attack on Poland-Lithuania. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in that war, and the basis for it from Charles X's own account was plunder + attacking Catholics, with the attack on Catholics being probably the more important. There's a folk memory of that time among many people in Eastern Europe, with 'be good or the Swedes will come and get you' being a way of frightening the children. Charles X lucked out in that war - the Swedes were driven out of Poland and across northern Germany, ending up on the territory of their arch-enemy, Denmark in the winter of 1658. They managed to attack across the (melting) ice, and ended up imposing the Treaty of Roskilde on the Danes, which gave Sweden huge tracts of the richest parts of Denmark. They failed to conquer the Danes totally because they were too weak to take Copenhagen. There were an English fleet and a Dutch fleet involved, but Oliver Cromwell withdrew the English ships (who would have intervened on Sweden's behalf) because he felt that his forces should be employed in killing Catholics, not in fighting against fellow-Protestants. And then we have the 30 Years' War … and the massacre of the Huguenots … the extermination of the Cathars … the Crusades … and the 100 Years' War, to name but a few religious persecutions. You can see why the Founding Fathers didn't want foreign entanglements. Seems to me that religious people have been killing others in the name of their creeds on all sides and in all faiths for about as long as there've been religions.

It's going to be an interesting election next year - for people who live here, anyway. The opposition had a comfortable lead in the opinion polls … until they started telling voters what they intended to do. The chaos caused the last time the opposition were in power is still fresh in people's minds here, and it looks like it's working against the opposition. At the same time the Social Democrats in particular seem to be regaining their appetite for fighting for their policies and political philosophy, so it'll be interesting to see whether Polly Toynbee's analysis holds up next year too.

How's this whole topic been going down with your students, Andy? Have they found the inputs useful … or is this just another load of wrinklies sounding off?

Could we just nail this one, once and for all. The contribution of the United States of America to World War Two, from the beginning of 1942 was very important in defeating the Nazis. Before that time, the USA played an equivocal role, to say the least. The contribution of the Soviet Union was quite a lot greater, both in terms of the numbers of men and women, both soldiers and civilians, killed, wounded and captured, and in terms of the numbers of Germans killed, wounded and captured. The contribution of the other Allies wasn't negligible either …

About Sweden and wars … The last time Swedish armies marched to war was 1814, but they managed to take control of Norway without having to fight. The last full-scale war was in 1809 when Sweden lost Finland to Russia. There were plenty of sabre-rattlers around in 1905 when the Sweden-Norway union was broken up by the Norwegians, but the issue was settled amicably in Karlstad, and the two countries have just been celebrating 100 years of independence from each other! The Swedish ruling class have always hankered for a good war (joining NATO is the latest campaign from the right), and I've taught plenty of people with similar stories who were stationed on the borders during World War II. "I was detailed to shoot the captain if the Germans came over, otherwise the bastard would have sold us out to the Nazis." Traditionally, Sweden has had a large standing army, with the rank-and-file being conscripts and the officers being career soldiers. In contrast to most armies, the officers at lieutenant level and above have a lot more experience than the NCOs and below (who are promoted conscripts who disappear when their conscripted service is over). Thus a Swedish lieutenant is both better-trained and more experienced than his or her counterpart in other armies. 'Realpolitik' has always played a large role in Sweden's attitude to wars. In the 17th century, when Sweden had a technological advantage over her neighbours (better cannons and tactics about using artillery), Swedish armies often attacked the Poles and Germans - mostly in the name of killing Catholics.

"Thatcherism would not have been possible if the UK had a system of proportional representation." There are bitter political fights in Sweden … but it's worth remembering that the Social Democrats have been in power for 61 out of the 73 years since 1932. During that period they had a majority of their own only once (in the mid-1960s), but rarely formed a formal coalition with other parties. In other words, they ran a minority government, and relied on the votes of allied parties to win crucial votes. For most of the period, Sweden had three-year terms of government (they changed to four-year terms in 1994), and the electoral system used proportional representation all the time. The bottom line was that they were forced to discuss policies with the other parties and convince them that the policy the Social Democrats proposed was good for the country. I can't imagine Thatcherism working in those conditions either …

Let me just add some details about the Swedish system of proportional representation. Firstly, any party which gains more than 4% of the votes cast is entitled to seats in parliament. And any party which has gained seats in parliament qualifies for state aid until the next election (when the aid is withdrawn if they don't get in again). Any party (or individual) which gains more than 12% of the vote in any single constituency gains seats in parliament. Each party standing for parliament produces a list of candidates in a ranking order. When the total votes have been counted for each constituency, each party is allocated a number of seats according to the number of votes it has gained, and the seats are allocated according to the ranking order. I.e. if the Conservatives gain 4 seats in a particular constituency (and the constituencies in Sweden are regional, rather than local, in size), then the first four names on the Conservative list are elected. The exception to this is that voters can tick the box next to the candidate on the list they want to be elected. If that person gains more than a certain figure, then she or he knocks out the lowest candidate on the normal list. In the last election to the European Parliament, the Social Democrats made sure that no anti-EU candidate was placed in an electable position. The highest-placed anti-EU candidate was actually in position 32, which happened to be on the back to the voting paper … but she got in, because anti-EU Social Democrats from all over the country put a cross by her name. At an election, each person entitled to vote receives the parties' lists in the post. There are also extra lists at each polling station, and representatives of the parties often stand outside, handing out copies of their list. You then go into the polling station and are handed out an envelope for each of the elections being run that day (the County and local elections are normally held on the same day as the General Election). You then put one list into each envelope and deposit it in the ballot box. It's quite common for people to vote for quite different parties at national, regional and local levels.

For me, the question about tax is really one about whether we see ourselves as belonging to a society which includes everyone, or one which includes only the people we care about. The latter is very attractive if you're rich. You can live in a gated community and pay for security guards … but what happens when people start getting struck down by bird flu or any other danger which affects rich and poor alike? Even a community of very rich people can't afford to run world-class medical research facilities or top-class hurricane rescue services. In the end, being rich and low-taxed is only really possible in a world where someone else picks up the bill for all the 'hidden' services which the rich and low-taxed actually consume without knowing they're doing it. If you want to see this type of parasitism as moral, then the definition of 'morality' needs a lot of changing!

I've experienced both the 'first-past-the-post' system of the UK and the proportional system of Sweden. On balance, I'd prefer the latter, since it tends to produce governments which are supported by greater numbers of people. It makes politics a bit more boring in a way, since governments need to talk to the opposition a lot more and try to find a consensus, but political decisions tend to be made on a more rational basis, and tend to be longer-lasting.

Or … to use an argument current at the time of the first Gulf War, if Kuwait's main export had been Turkish Delight instead of oil, the Western armies wouldn't have gone anywhere near the region.

I don't know about the other findings Paul made, but when it comes to STDs, abortion and teenage pregnancy, I'm fairly certain that the correlation isn't between fair hair and low levels of problems, but between people who believe that it's worth trying to improve the world we live in … and low levels of problems. In other words, the fact that contraception is freely available in Sweden, and that Swedish young people get very clear and accurate information about sexuality does seem to result in low levels of teenage pregnancy, STDs, etc.

"Is it better for our political leaders to believe in God than to be agnostics or atheists?" Well … there's just been a bit of research done (I don't have the source right in front of me right now) which compares all sorts of factors such as poverty and the incidence of violent crime, abortion, teenage pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases in a number of different developed countries. The raw data indicates that there's a strong correlation between having lots of problems and there being a lot of religion in a particular country. Thus, the more religious countries and regions within countries have much more murder, violent crime, abortion, teenage pregnancy, sexually-transmitted disease and general unhappiness than the countries and regions which are not particularly religious. Of course, we don't know for certain why this is, but it would seem to indicate that being agnostic or atheist is a good quality for a society.

I have two Marratech meetings scheduled for next week: on Tuesday, 11th October, I'm due to be 'meeting' a group of academic course students at 7pm CET in Harpo to discuss Achebe's Things Fall Apart, assimilation and elision in phonetics and perfect tenses in grammar on Thursday, 13th October, I'm meeting Bryan Carter from Central Missouri State at 3pm in Harpo so that we can work on an article we're writing about podcasting, Internet radio, etc. On either of those occasions, you can 'lurk', and then we can continue afterwards. Alternatively, we could fix a definite time just for ourselves. Would you prefer daytime or evening?

I wondered what had happened! However, don't worry, we'll have another go when you get back. Let me know when that is and I'll give you a call (since we both live in Sweden).

Yes, I can think of quite a few! The Swedish Social Democrats are in their usual position of having the greatest number of seats of any of the parties in parliament, but falling short of a majority in their own right (which has been the case nearly all the time they've been in power). They are currently being supported by the Green Party and the Communists … but those parties aren't in a formal coalition with them. The Green Party are very much in favour of 'free schools', which in Sweden means schools which are supported by taxpayers' money, but which aren't under the control of local authorities. The Greens switched their votes to the opposition in order to drive this one through, but the Social Democrats didn't put up much of a fight. The net effect of this policy is to weaken the local authority schools by draining resources away from them. Instead of, say three viable schools in an area, you can now have six that aren't viable. Another policy the Social Democrats went along with because the Greens supported it concerns protection of people's jobs. The Greens and the opposition put through a law allowing employers to exempt a number of people from the principle of 'last in-first out' when redundancies have to be made. The net effect of this has been to give the employers the chance to fire pregnant women and trade union activists - a chance they've been glad to take.

My understanding of the difference goes like this: a socialist wants the means of production in society to be under common ownership (which could mean nationalisation, but could also mean being run by a workers' cooperative) a social democrat, on the other hand, is quite happy for capitalist owners to continue making profits and paying dividends to shareholders (profits and dividends which have been created by the workers), provided that the state sets the rules for how these capitalist companies operate. The point with this is to ensure that profits aren't excessive, and that desirable social ends, such as equality between the sexes, can be achieved.

They're called 'employee investment funds' in English and were an idea people had in the pre-Thatcher era. The Swedish government actually implemented them (after pressure from the Swedish trade union movement) in the mid-1980s. They were hated by the right, and the bourgeois government of Carl Bildt abolished them in its last month in office. The vast amount of money in them at the time was put into trusts, which the bourgeois government packed with its own supporters. Bildt also tried to create a structure which would make it impossible for any incoming government to get rid of the trustees he created (something seen as incredibly anti-democratic here). Ultimately he failed, as he did with nearly all of the policies his government tried to push through. The trust funds, however, have invested a lot of money in technological developments in general, and in IT in particular since 1994 … which probably accounts for the incredibly fast development in these areas, compared with other countries. People tend not to know that much about Swedish involvement in the development of IT (it's embarrassing for 'red-blooded entrepreneurs' to accept that the Swedish nanny state has been so dynamic). Skype, for example, was started by a Swede and a Dane. Without money from the employee investment funds, I think that it's a racing certainty that there wouldn't have been any money for this development … which in turn would have left Sweden a poorer country than it is today … which is, in my ideology, one of the reasons for not being a Conservative, because if you leave it all up to the 'hidden hand of the market', the vast majority of people end up poorer.

Podcasts are still getting rave reviews. Here's an unsolicited comment from Cecilia in Hong Kong: "I've already downloaded the podcasts and I enjoyed most of them already. I must say that it's a very convenient way of studying, to be able to stop and rewind your teacher whenever you need to (or have the urge)."

It looks as if this coming weekend isn't such a good time. Could we try one evening next week? I'm actually having a Marratech meeting in Harpo with some students on Tuesday, 4th October at 7.00pm CET, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind visitors. In fact, they might not even show up! I schedule Marratech meetings at regular intervals so that students have a chance to ask questions directly (and get audio-visual answers directly). We could carry on after they've finished asking whatever they want to ask. Just to give you an idea of how I'm using Marratech at the moment, I've got a link-up with a student in Hong Kong in about half an hour. We'll be doing Phonetics, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and the finer points of English verb tenses. Then, at 5.00 pm, I'm linking up with an academic in Missouri who I'm writing a long article about blogging, podcasts, Internet radio, etc with. This will be a very focussed session, where we look at each other's latest texts and revise them together. Next Wednesday, (5th October), I'm scheduled to present at a conference in Stockholm in the afternoon … except I'll be doing it from here in Kalmar (got a parents' evening at my daughter's school that evening, so I don't want to be going all the way to Stockholm, just to do a 45 minute presentation). PS. I forgot to say 'Congratulations, Richard' (and what on earth were you doing coming to Gothenburg a couple of weeks ago? Your missus must be very understanding!).

And here's a bit more from me … I was writing the first post this morning before the kids woke up … and, of course, I missed out something really important - how I got to this position in the first place. Thanks, John, for pointing it out. I had a conventional middle-class upbringing in Britain: I spent my teenage years in the London Borough of Harrow, went to a grammar school, got good A levels and went on to university (Warwick). My grandad, however, was once Labour Party Agent (the name for the local organiser) for the Sheffield Attercliffe constituency (in one of the most deprived areas of Sheffield), and my dad has been involved in Labour Party politics since he learned to talk. When we moved down to London from Sheffield, I remember wondering where all the factories were. "What do all these people live off?" was the question I kept asking. And I was, of course, struck by the vast difference between the leafy suburbs of North London and the polluted factory environments that anyone from the North was familiar with. As I grew up, I was struck again and again by the lack of realism in many of the ideas put forward by the Conservative right. As many people said during the Thatcher era, her idea was that you make poor people work by taking money away from them, but you make rich people work by showering them with dosh. I remember an article in the Sunday Telegraph magazine about a year into the Thatcher era which was about 'Thatcher's new millionaires'. Every single one of them had made their money basically by screwing the state (opening hostels for the evicted, and charging the state enormous sums of money so that their poor 'clients' could live in squalor, for example). Not one had opened a new genuinely private sector business. In other words, they were sharing the spoils - but making everyone in the society poorer than they would otherwise have been, in the long run. As a Northerner I was very aware of the consequences of this kind of stupidity and corruption on people as a whole. Just look at the difference between house prices in Britain and Sweden (say a factor of ten times higher in Britain to buy property that would be condemned as uninhabitable in Sweden). Think of all that wealth that's gone into exchanging bricks and mortar for other bricks and mortar … but hasn't gone into investing in British industry. What the experience of the Nordic countries shows is that the way to make an entire society richer starts with making sure that everyone in that society is working together. Whenever you have great inequality of income, you tempt the people who've lucked out (by having the right kind of parents, usually) to imagine that they've been really clever, when in reality they've just been lucky. The dilemma for any egalitarian, however, is how to make sure that innovation still happens - isn't there a danger that the entire society will be dragged down to the lowest level, instead of being raised up to the highest. One lesson I've learned in Sweden is that people will only take risks (such as starting a new business) if they feel that it's safe to do so … and another is that innovation is a very delicate flower, which needs the kind of nurturing that the private sector has proved itself almost incapable of supplying. My oldest daughter's godfather has just retired from his business of making church organs. He and his wife escaped from East Germany the week before the Berlin Wall was built, and ended up in Sweden without a penny in their pockets. Johannes frequently goes on about high taxes and bureaucracy in Sweden and wonders whether he'd have done better to go to Canada or the USA instead. I tell him that he's got to be joking. There are only so many craftsman-built church organs that one person can build in a lifetime, and which capitalist entrepreneur would invest in such a business way up near the Arctic Circle? The way Johannes did it was by getting lots of help from the Swedish state at key points in the development of his business … which he's conveniently forgotten about now! The state's wanted its cut, of course, in terms of taxes, but i) Johannes and his family lead an extremely comfortable life here (cars, boats, properties, holidays, etc); and ii) that cut is invested back in creating the next generation of Johannes-es! In other words, if you want an economy to be successful, you have to have an element of capitalism in it … but if you want to keep it being successful, you're mad if you leave it to the capitalists! Sorry if this is turning anecdotal again … but that's the sort of person I am. If I'd thought that right-wing conservatives really did care about making a good life for *everyone* - and had a plan for doing that that looked like it might work - then I might have changed my ideology. My point is, though, that they haven't, and I'm not prepared to give up the immense benefits of living amongst my equals for the kind of fatally-divided society that's represented by the USA.

Libertarian Socialist I suppose I must be a libertarian socialist too. I tend to look at political issues one at a time, rather than trying to measure them up against a template of ideology … but I still seem to come to similar conclusions, so perhaps there is a template hiding there anyway! I'm a member of SAP, which is the Swedish Social-Democratic and Labour Party. It's very difficult to make inter-country comparisons because each party has a different history, but I suppose you could say that the Social Democrats here are more or less the equivalent of the Labour Party in Britain. One difference, though, is that the SAP has led Swedish governments for 64 out of the last 73 years and has really made Sweden what it is today. I recognise the dynamic nature of capitalism in creating wealth … but I also recognise that the most rational thing for any successful capitalist company to do is to strangle competition and create for themselves a monopoly (or a near-monopoly). One reason why Swedish food prices are so high is that, for many years, there were only two real suppliers of food in Sweden, and their pricing policies resembled those of petrol companies. It's strange, isn't it, that all those private petrol companies are so close to each other in efficiency that they have to put up their prices by exactly the same amount within an hour of each other … The only sane policy I can think of in these circumstances is for people to band together to regulate the market. And I'm sure that Sweden's example since 1932 shows that this works. Between 1880 and 1920 Sweden lost a quarter of its population to emigration. Mass starvation was widespread and living conditions were generally very poor indeed. You could hardly imagine this if you looked at the country today … but it's not just a question of Sweden being rich now, it's also a result of a conscious political decision over many decades to spread the wealth around evenly. The Swedish government (led by that SAP) invested in industry, housing, training and welfare, resulting in a situation where there are lots of industries which happen to be Swedish. Sony Ericsson is a case in point. The original company was rescued from the Kruger crash by the incoming Social-Democratic government in 1932, given lots of backing by the Swedish state (who gave them a virtual monopoly over the domestic telephone system, so that they could grow into a viable export-led company), and then was let loose on the world. One thing you notice, however, is that having both an economy and a welfare state that's the envy of the world is not an end in itself, but rather the levelling of the playing field ready for the big political fights. Sweden uses a system of proportional representation (a party list system with a 4% threshold parties need to get over to gain representation in parliament). The division of votes between the political blocs has nearly always been 51%-49% in favour of the winners (often the SAP). Sometimes it's as much as 52%-48%! The political debate is just as acrimonious here as in other countries, and the next election (in 2006) will be an interesting one, since the bourgeois parties (Conservatives, Liberals, Centre Party and Christian Democrats) are going to the electorate with a neo-liberal programme (slash the welfare state, cut taxes) which Mrs Thatcher would have felt comfortable with (IMHO). The bourgeois parties had a comfortable lead in the polls until they revealed their programme, but now their support is crumbling. As a libertarian socialist, I'm not at all happy with lots of things the SAP do and have done … but they're a democratic party capable of change, so it's partly up to me to work to change those policies I don't like. I just don't buy the idea that the people who've led Sweden to where it is today were just interested in lining their own pockets (it's very difficult to be a corrupt politician in Sweden, since the Freedom of Information legislation here is very strong and dates back to 1760!). However, I do buy the idea that the bourgeois parties don't really understand how an entire society works - they tend to know what's good for their own backers … but not for society as a whole. As you can see … not much of a coherent political philosophy, but I know what I like.

The people who were in Gothenburg earlier this month got to look at an OHP slide of a desktop video conferencing screen … and I heard a few people saying "we need to look into this". If you're ready to take the plunge, why not try to find a time within the next two weeks (otherwise it'll be put off into Never Never Land!)? What you need to do is this: 1. Go to http://www.marratech.com and download the latest client software. That's 'Marratech 5.1' for your operating system (PC, Mac or Linux) - NOT Marratech Manager, which is server software. 2. Instal it, plug in your headphone and webcam, and start the programme up. 3. You'll be taken through one of those wizards which will check your connections and hardware, and test the sound levels. ------ The next trick is to decide on a time for a trial run, using Kalmar's Marratech server. I'd suggest 5.30 pm CET, which would be 4.30 pm UK time. You start the Marratech programme, and replace "http://sessiondirectory/" with: http://artemis.hik.se:8080 and click Return This brings you to our portal page, and you just click on the room we've agreed to meet in (it'll probably be Harpo - all our rooms are named after the Marx Brothers, by the way). You can do this on your own too - but choose Groucho's Café, which is the public non-bookable room. Remember to click the Whiteboard tab right down at the bottom of the screen if you want to see the picture of Groucho in Groucho's Café. ------- So … are you lot up for it? Feel free to meet without me - but I'll also happy to be there to show you what the system can do, and also some of the things we've already done.

Well done, both John and Varndean School. Just let us know what you want from us next here in Kalmar

Let's imagine that you've decided to do a distance course to prepare participants to a f2f meeting, so that they know all about what E-HELP is and what it's achieved before they attend the f2f meeting. Your 'Teachers' are likely to be the E-HELP members, who'll be pretty good at desktop video conferencing by the beginning of Year Three. Your 'Students', on the other hand, are likely to be beginners … but, if they're interested in a project with the name 'E-HELP' in the first place, they're likely to have a certain degree of computer literacy. So … a place to start might be a crash, 2 half-day course in 'On-line Meeting Techniques', so that you can use desktop video conferencing as one of your tools on the distance course. In language teaching we often talk about students 'owning' the language (meaning that they've learned it and used it actively so much that they don't have to even think about how and why to use it). One way of getting students to own the lessons of the E-HELP project (in these terms) is to get them to work with it actively. Thus, a rolling schedule of work on web-sites, on-line discussions (perhaps in writing on a forum), and desktop video conferences with E-HELP members might be the right mix. Such a schedule would, of course, need to be preceded by team-building activities (so that people dare to be open with each other), which could happen f2f … or could be the subject matter of the crash course I've just mentioned. I've run courses organised like this as INSET for language teachers, where the teachers meet f2f without me being there, and then report back at video conferences. They work really well (provided, of course, that the 'Administration' is such that teachers are given the 'Time' to do this). However, with E-HELP you'll almost certainly need to turn these 'study group meetings' into virtual study group meetings … which takes a bit more effort on the part of the teachers and course designers. ----------- OK … that's the basics of what I've learned over the years about on-line distance course design. The devil, however, is in the details … which I now expect you E-HELP members to provide!

OK, on to the 'how'. There are, of course, lots of different ways of making a distance course happen. What I'm going to set out here is a way that's worked well for us. It's always a good idea to start out on paper (the back of an envelope, for example!). In the middle you write 'Course Features', which is what you're aiming to decide on. However, in the process of deciding, you're going to have to consider a number of factors, each of which interacts with - and changes - the others. We usually start with 'Time', 'Budget', 'Administration' and 'Logistics'. In other words, if you've got plenty of time, you don't need so much money (because you can do your thinking in a leisurely manner). You'll all be working for organisations, and their administrative routines for participating - as either teacher or learner - will need to be taken into account. I.e. you've decided on a timetable for the course to happen in … and then discover that Country X or EU body Y requires you to submit names 6 months in advance, which b*ggers your timetable. Finally, the machines and other facilities both you and the other participants have available are the ones you'll have to use - so if you're planning for a lot of 3D animations, you'd better make sure that you've brought a nice Sun workstation for everyone. Then we add 'Teachers', 'Students' and 'Course Aims' into the mix (see how low down the list 'Course Aims' comes!). It's no use using super-duper Internet tutoring if your teachers don't feel comfortable with computers - there's nothing wrong with using the tried-and-tested distance technology called stamps and envelopes. Why not let them write in long-hand, if that's what they feel happiest with. On the other hand, if you're going to augment their skills, you need 'Time' and 'Budget' to do it in. Same thing with 'Students' - if they don't know how to download sound files from the web, then podcasting isn't going to work … unless you use 'Time', 'Budget' and 'Teachers' to train them. Similarly, if you're building your distance course around a discussion forum that people are going to be expected to contribute to in English, you're going to have to spend 'Time' and 'Budget' making sure they feel happy doing that. As you can imagine, with all these factors interacting with each other, it's very likely that the 'Course Aims' you first thought of have had to be radically revised by now. It's only when you've worked out who you're going to work with … and in what timescale … and what it is that your teachers, students, administrators, technicians, animators, programmers, etc can cope with … and what programmes you're going to use … and who's going to pay for everything … then you can finally get round to creating your 'Course Materials' (and don't be surprised when some bureaucrat intervenes at the last moment and tries to change all the parameters again). I'll speculate about how this could work in practice for E-HELP in my next post.