I live in Sweden..
I pay 40% tax and this is what happens...

www.sj.se This company run all bus and train systems. Busses in the middle of town go every 3-5 minutes, with nearly every street covered.

A fresh timetable is posted to you every 6 months, and you can do a quick search on the web and plan your journey... parties usually end with people tapping in their destinations and working out when they have to go to the bus-stop. In Malmö you are never more than 4 minute's walk from a bus stop..

Trains are entirely usable, and a train ticket allows you to use the buses at you destination town.

The streets are cleaned regularly (once a month) and this is marked on each street on the parking signs... If you're there while they try to clean, you'll get a ticket.

This Ticket is payable online in a few seconds. If you forget to pay your ticket, you get a polite reminder with no extra charge... 2 months later you'll incur a 150kr (10 quid) extra charge. Standard Parking Ticket is about 20 quid.

The road surfaces are impeccable, with HUGE cycle lanes and integrated cycle-traffic-lights etc. All bus stops have massive bike racks for cyclists to dump their steeds at.. all with steel cables built in to make your wheels safe too.

In the winter the council pays for the many fountains in town to be set up as ice-skating rinks. This in most cases involves hauling bit refrigeration units into place and sorting lots of other things too...

Also "Marshals" line the paths. www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06168.jpg throughout the center of town, replaced nightly for a month. Sod the environment =)

The police are devastatingly quick, roadworks last all of a week with workmen tending to concentrate their time on the weekends and nights when there are less road users to inconvenience.

.. and the lasses here are stunning too.

The ONLY downside is that alco-ma-hol is NOT cheap...

This country runs like clockwork. And after reading your stories about the pure stupidity that the UK seems to run on, I'm damned if I'm ever coming back.

That is all.

*dismounts orange box with a back-flip*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 27 Jul 2007, 13:33, Reply)