More on Persson’s raise

Article from Stockholm City If I didn’t know better, I could almost imagine that news agency TT reads my blog. Spot the similarities in this article about Prime Minister Göran Persson’s raise, and my previous post. Same conclusions, same sources. Now I don’t really think that they got inspired by my post, so I will settle for beating most papers with several hours.

Lookalikes


Spitting images – journalist Björn Hedensjö of Dagens Industri and actor Keanu Reeves. Or was it the other way around?

Watergate and journalism

The article in Vanity Fair about the unmasking of “Deep Throat” is indeed interesting reading (pdf). A good follow up is this post from Jay Rosen regarding the Watergate scandal and how it affects the common view on the role of journalism in society.

It is the great redemptive tale believers learn to tell about the press and what it can do for the American people. It is a story of national salvation: truth their only weapon, journalists save the day.

Somebody’s gotta be on top

I wish I could get a 4.5% raise, but then again, I’m not the Prime Minister.

According to a press release today, Göran Persson’s salary increases from 111.000 SEK to 116.000 SEK from July 1, that’s a 4.5% increase. Meanwhile, and forgive me if I’m reading these figures the wrong way, statistics (pdf) from LO show that the rest of us must settle for less, between 2.5 and 3.2% increase year-over-year (private sector) at the end of 2004. Figures for the public sector seems to be just above 4%.

Stats from LO

Worth noting is that Konjunkturinstitutet recommends an average increase in hourly wages in the municipal sector of no more than 3.7% (pdf).

Mot denna bakgrund och med hänsyn till de för
näringslivet slutna avtalen 2004–2007 är det enligt
Konjunkturinstitutets bedömning samhällsekonomiskt
önskvärt att de kommunala löneökningarna
blir 0,3 procentenheter lägre än enligt prognosen för
2005–2007, dvs. uppgår till i genomsnitt 3,7 i stället
för prognostiserade 4,0 procent.

More stats from SCB here.