[alkonaut]

Among other things, that we get angry in public when this happens. Hopefully that someone will see at least some consequence. That we are even surprised and upset about this I think is a good sign. I’m sure there are places where people would shrug even if the brother of the politician in question was running the firm that got the contract. Thankfully we have very little of that.

[NalNezumi]

Do we though? There's a couple of government watchdogs that specifically track waste of taxpayer money, and sometimes underlying corruption. Those names (Slöso) are considered by both politicians and certain political leaning citizens as "right wing capitalist propaganda machines/special interest outlets".

I vividly remember how everyone shrugged of some small, local politician spending 50 Million SEK(5 Mil USD) on some project to "Cheer up the town square" ended up with 5 contractors, all friend of the local politician, that produced one 50 page report on how "dancing and talkin street lamps will cheer up the town square" was the final result. The politician denied to answer further question to reporters, insisting the project gave good insights, and no one gave a single crap

[brtkdotse]

Slöseriombudsmannen is employed by the private lobbyist group Skattebetalarna. The love to rage about stuff like the thing you mentioned but have “a curious disposition” with stuff like Nya Karolinska:

https://www.skattebetalarna.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Sk...

[NalNezumi]

And your point is? Never claimed they were perfect and some of their more nitty picky hit pieces have been criticized by their followers too.

My point is rather that the issue of "wasting tax payer money" should in principle not have any political side; its about efficiency and both left and right should engage in the question. If anything the side that is vouching for more government should be the one leading the discussion of the efficiency of tax payer money utilization.

Yet most just jump to simple adhomiem attack on the critisizers. "right wing propaganda"; That was my point. That we pretend to care but we don't, and rather switch the discussion to petty tribalist name-calling.

And I'm well aware the sponsors of the organization and that they probably have some rotten eggs in the basket too.

[brtkdotse]

My point is I don't like them :) Seriously though, I feel they do a lot of astroturfing and smokescreening to make a lot of noise about inconsequential stuff while saying nothing or very tame things about the real leaks in privatized education and healthcare.

If you look at their "Worst of 2020", almost everything is below 10MSek, which is drop in the bucket budgetwise https://skattebetalarna.se/arets-varsta-sloseri-2020/)