Thanks for the coffee Carl Bildt.
Ouch! There will be no more coffee milk for you if you work for the Swedish Foreign Ministry. It’s time to economize everywhere, and coffee milk is simply too expensive. “It might seem a bit stingy,” says Andreas von Uexküll, chairperson of the Foreign Ministry’s union. When Carl Bildt took on the position of foreign minister, there was a budget deficit of 50 million SEK ($6,861,317) and harsh economy measures have been made. Since summer one embassy and four consulates have closed down, New York and Los Angeles among them, and now it’s time to kiss the little tetra pack boxes with coffee milk good-bye.

What do you want after Christmas?
Did you get what you wanted for Christmas? Perhaps not. But what do you want after Christmas? Perhaps you can get that? Telia, the Swedish telephone company, wanted to know about Swedes' Christmas habits and what Swedes want most of all after the holidays are over. Turns out more than 50% of those asked simply wanted to be left alone after spending Christmas with family. Almost as many wanted to have be the sole person in charge of the remote control. In general it seems, most Swedes are tired and fed up with Christmas food and music in the days following the big holiday.

Jesus OK but Allah is not.
A baby in Burlöv, Skåne, was not permitted to be named Allah. The Swedish Tax Agency made the decision. There are already 54 persons named Allah in Sweden (19 women and 35 men) but they were already called Allah when they came to Sweden as children. “We can’t prohibit them from having that name,” says Margareta Lärkfeldt, instructor at the Swedish Tax Agency, “but we can ban using that name for a newborn.” According to a paragraph in the Swedish law, a name that may cause offense or create problems for the person in question, is not approved. According to Statistiska Centralbyrån (Statistics Sweden) there are 667 persons with the name Jesus in Sweden, but none with the name Gud (God).

Fired for rating dresses.
Freelance writer Linda Leopold is not allowed to write for Dagens Nyheter (the newspaper in Sweden with the largest circulation, reaching about 881,000 people daily) again. Leopold’s article about the dresses at the Nobel party, made Gunilla Herlitz, Dagens Nyheter’s editor-in-chief, hit the ceiling. Though the article was published, Herlitz was deeply upset when she saw it in print. Leopold criticized some of the more prominent Nobel guests’ choice of garb. “Hertha Müller’s the most elegant thing we’ve seen from Romania since Dracula,” Leopold wrote about the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, about princess Madeleine she wrote: “(in that dress) she could have easily been mistaken for a Christmas tree”, and about Queen Silvia: “(it looked as if) she had draped herself in Drottningholm Palace’s curtains”. Said Herlitz: “I think the comments not only about Silvia’s clothes, but everybody’s clothes, were written in a very condescending way, and it wasn’t necessary to write it like that at all. If she had done it with a bit of elegance it would have been fine.” Gunilla Herlitz became editor-in-chief for DN in November of this year, and is known for her high standards.