LETTER TO THE EDITOR • I grew up as the third child of seven in a family during the 1940s and 1950s. The family was poor, like many other families during and after the Second World War.

Our father had emergency jobs as a road repair worker and building the country’s infrastructure and other important social functions that needed to be restored. It was really too tough a job for him, as he suffered from advanced tuberculosis (TB).

But there was no alternative. The family needed food on the table and rent for a small, worn-down, and drafty one-room apartment with cold water and outhouses in rows in the yard, on Södermalm in Stockholm. At that time, the area was classified as workers’ housing for poor people.

Today, the same kind of apartment, but renovated, sells for at least 2.8 million or 3.3 million Swedish kronor, depending on size and condition. The working-class label is gone.

The family moved around between relatives until we were offered a newly built four-room apartment in a just as newly built suburb south of Stockholm.

That became my salvation, as I had been infected by my father’s TB and the children’s hospital couldn’t cure my illness. But our father died from his TB and our mother was left alone with seven children.

It was tough. But she managed by cooking meals from scratch, healthy and tasty, and as she put it: “You have to work miracles with nothing.”

The house that was built close to the forest became my rescue and my sanatorium.

I finished the eighth grade of elementary school with very good grades and wanted to continue studying. But that was impossible with four younger siblings at home. At the age of 14, I started working in private companies and then in the ‘death row’ of society, the long-term care sector, and finally a job in emergency services.

When I retired, I had fifty years of work behind me. But what counts is the tax paid during the active years. Low wages equal a poor pension.

I have made a political journey through a collection of parties, from VPK to the Liberal Party, to the Center Party, Democracy, and finally my vote went to the Sweden Democrats.

Listening to the news on Swedish Radio and SVT, as well as reading daily newspapers, felt like participating in a mutual admiration club. The same journalists, day in and day out, with the same left-wing political slant.

By chance, I got a tip about the online newspaper Politically Incorrect. It was a real eye-opener!

Since then, I have followed the newspaper’s development, from PI to Avpixlat and now Samnytt. When truth is in short supply and those who publish it are threatened by extreme left-wing forces and even sentenced to prison for their fact-based journalism, you cannot remain silent.

I don’t have much money but I subscribe and donate a good sum every month to Samnytt’s investigative journalism. During elections, Samnytt is especially indispensable.

Surely you, as a reader and commentator, can help the newspaper with a subscription and/or a life-sustaining donation?

What are we without the ability to freely express thoughts and opinions? Support Samnytt and our constitutionally protected freedom of expression!

Vendela
Long-time Samnytt reader and former moderator