Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Just like Swedish summers -short, sweet and sublime- Miriam Bryant singing "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess on SVT's "Sommarkväll"; @MiriamBryant, @Zedd, #GeorgeGershwin


Steve Layton YouTube Channel:  Miriam Bryant sings the DuBose Heyward/George Gershwin classic from Porgy & Bess, "Summertime" on the August 10th, 2013 broadcast of SVT's "Sommarkväll" at The River Cafe, Göteborg, Sweden. http://youtu.be/5cVr9VKmmdo
Just like Swedish summers -short, sweet and sublime- Miriam Bryant singing "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess on SVT's "Sommarkväll"; 
@MiriamBryant, @Zedd, #GeorgeGershwin

Why this song, now? 
Because sometimes you just need to hear an old song you've always known, and hear someone you've just begun to admire and appreciate over the past year, sing that song really well to remind you why you like them.
Miriam's voice is just perfect for this song.

I first saw her perform this iconic song the weekend after it first aired on Swedish TV, and was very keen on sharing it here, since it reveals another aspect of her range, but to be honest, I then sort of spaced it. 
It was probably the oppressive summer heat.













In any case, when I finally did remember, I thought it was probably long gone from the SVT website after a few weeks, as they are VERY punctual about their rights.
It they say it will be up for 30 days on their website after first being aired, that's it.
It will be gone by Day 31

But fortunately, someone thought ahead and placed it on YouTube for me to later see again and share with you today.

I've mentioned Miriam in five previous blog posts, but the ones that actually featured her were these two:

April 9, 2013 - If Miriam Bryant isn't on your musical radar yet, she ought to be ;) Miriam Bryant - Push Play (Official), Finders Keeper (Official); @MiriamBryant http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/if-miriam-bryant-isnt-on-your-musical.html

August 4, 2013 - Awesome! Miriam Bryant's musical talent is opening eyes and opening doors everywhere -even in the U.S.; video of Miriam performing LIVE Saturday night on TV4's Sommarkrysset at Gröna Lund in Stockholm, easily the best and most-compelling performance of hers I've ever seen; @MiriamBryant, @StereoscopeAB, @Zedd, #pushplay, #sommarkrysset, #happy
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/awesome-miriam-bryants-musical-talent.html






Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Obama's bad foreign policy from the start shows little sign of improving, as Washington Post Editorial Board lashes out Sunday : "Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria": "So what does the Obama administration propose to do to stop this barbarism? The simple answer is: nothing, other than issue strongly worded statements..."; #stonecoldfacts, @washingtonpost

Obama's bad foreign policy from the start shows little sign of improving, as Washington Post Editorial Board lashes out Sunday : "Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria" 
In case you were still on your summer hibernation when this happened a few weeks ago, the only time that President Obama has brought the country together this year on a policy is when nearly the entire country stood-up in opposition to his ill-considered ideas, plans and policies over Syria, one of his major weaknesses since coming into office in January of 2009.
That hasn't changed.
Think about that for a minute.

The Washington Post
Washington Post Editorial: Mr. Kerry’s empty words on Syria
By Editorial Board
Published October 28, 2013
ACCORDING TO Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad now is waging “a war of starvation” against his own people. In a robustly worded op-ed column posted Friday on ForeignPolicy.com, Mr. Kerry denounced what he said was “the systematic denial of medical assistance, food supplies and other humanitarian aid to huge proportions of the population.” The regime’s tactics, he said, “threaten to take a humanitarian disaster into the abyss.” They are “intolerable,” and “the world must act quickly.”
So what does the Obama administration propose to do to stop this barbarism? The simple answer is: nothing, other than issue strongly worded statements. 
Read the rest of the editorial at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-kerrys-empty-words-on-syria/2013/10/28/d422b6c4-3feb-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html

Monday, October 28, 2013

LIVE online TV coverage of #StormSt.Jude #StormenSimone hitting southwest Sweden, including Halland. Reports of hurricane strength in places. Öresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö remains closed to traffic as of 8 p.m. Video of one-woman gang Nike Jacobson remaining steadfast as the winds howled


Above, my screenshot of Expressen reporter/camera operator Nike Jacobson keeping her cool and remaining steadfast while being buffeted by the high winds of Stormen Simone, as the following video shows:






More screenshots of mine from this afternoon my time, evening in Sweden.




Expressen has amazing multi-media tools to watch/read:

SVT had its usual good and comprehensive coverage at
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/sverige/livebevakning-av-stormen-fran-kl-13 but has now gone to regular news, while the other two remain LIVE.
Not sure if they will pre-empt afterwards.

Posted 2:55 p.m. Eastern U.S. - Will be updating thru the day as events warrant.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

Even as your faithful blogger posts from his home in South Florida, two miles west of the Atlantic, way across the North Atlantic, a huge storm riding the jetstream from east of the United States, is preparing to batter southern England & Wales on Sunday night and Monday morning, bringing gales and downpours and causing widespread disruption, with powerful winds of 60-80 mph winds expected.
Winds are expected to be even higher in coastal areas, where risk of damage to property can and should be expected.

The storm, moving SW to NE, will then continue across The North Sea and arrive in Norway, Denmark and Sweden on Monday night, with heavy snowfall expected in parts of western Sweden currently experiencing autumnal temperatures.

I've been watching SkyNews the past two nights and have seen their video of much of the advance preparation for the storm that's expected to lash parts of Great Britain for hours, with ferry and shipping cancellations already taking place, trimming of some trees to reduce damage and possibility of becoming projectiles, and removal of anything movable on piers and in dockage areas, where some destruction seems highly likely.


Two storm-related video pieces done by veteran Sky News correspondent David Bowden that aired Saturday night:  
http://news.sky.com/story/1160250/britain-braced-for-severe-80mph-storm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/warning-major-storm-way-172515226.html

Shortly after 8:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, I heard a number mentioned during the newscast as an estimate by some group (?) that total clean-up costs could hit 1000 £1m, i.e. a Billion Pounds.

Again, there are still memories present among many over what can happen when there is a lack of proper preparation by those in charge and they are caught up short:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987

Last I heard, there's an expectation that very windy and rainy conditions will exist in the affected areas from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m.

That means cabin fever.
I'd have those candles, junk food and coolers of ice-filled drinks and pre-prepared sandwiches ready for when the lights go out -and stay out .

Below, a screenshot I snapped of Aftonbladet's website mid-Saturday night about the approaching storm:


HÖSTSTORM PÅ VÄG! (Autumn storm on its way!)
Early Sunday morning, SMHI, the Swedish equivalent of NOAA here in the U.S., issued Gale Warnings for ships in and around the Baltic Sea, and they have also issued a warning to my friend Andreas and everyone else living in Gotland that there is a very great risk of powerful dust storms there, though that will obviously be before all the heavy rain gets there and soaks them as well.








The most recent public dispatch from the Met Office is this one:

Severe storm heading for the UK
26 October 2013 - The Met Office is warning of the risk of a significant storm bringing exceptionally strong winds to parts of England and Wales on Sunday night into Monday morning

Currently forecasts suggest a low pressure system will rapidly deepen just to the south west of the UK on later on Sunday, before moving across the country to be out over the North Sea by the afternoon on Monday.
This is expected to bring gusts of 60 - 80 mph widely across the southern half of the UK, with gusts of more than 80 mph possible in places - especially on exposed coasts.
Any major storm which occurs in early autumn has the potential to cause widespread severe disruption through falling trees, structural damage, transport disruption or power cuts and possibly flooding.
Frank Saunders, Chief Forecaster at the Met Office, said: "We are confident that a severe storm will affect Britain on Sunday night and Monday. We are now looking at refining the details about which areas will see the strongest winds and the heaviest rain.
"This is a developing situation and we'd advise people to stay up to date with our forecasts and warnings over the weekend, and be prepared to change their plans if necessary. We'll continue to work closely with authorities and emergency services to ensure they are aware of the expected conditions."

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Video: Zlatan Ibrahimovic's two amazing goals for PSG, backheel vs. SC Bastia, cannon shot vs. Anderlecht; #Zlatan, #Ibra, #PSG, @EASPORTSFIFA



TV4.se video: Zlatan Ibrahimovic's amazing scorpion goal for PSG against SC Bastia last Saturday, October 19th, in Paris.





I've mentioned it in some of my email to some of you out there but haven't mentioned it here yet on the blog, but in the World Cup Group A Qualifying Round, Sweden, after enduring a demoralizing recent come-from-behind 5-3 loss at home to Germany, drew a powerful Cristiano Ronaldo-led Portugal, which was not the draw that Swedish football fans were hoping for.
The first match will be played in Lisbon on November 15th, and the second at Friends Arena in Stockholm on November 19th.
So with two of the best players in the world set to play one another, there's obviously a little bit of this nervous feeling going around re FIFA kingpin Sepp Blattner.

 

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Thursday, October 24, 2013

#OpenGov, #OpenData and meaningful government reform finally hits Los Angeles via Control Panel L.A., a powerful website that opens city finances to quick, easy online public scrutiny, with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of tax dollars; Plus, there's an expanded version of CompStat to track neighborhood problems online; Dear Santa... I want THAT!

#OpenGov, #OpenData and meaningful government reform finally hits Los Angeles via Control Panel L.A., a powerful website that opens city finances to quick, easy online public scrutiny, with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of tax dollars; Plus, there's an expanded version of CompStat to track neighborhood problems online; Dear Santa... I want THAT!



















Los Angeles Times
L.A. controller unveils website to make city finances more transparent
The website gives the public access to a huge volume of data on taxpayer expenditures for police, sanitation, street repairs and other services.
By Michael Finnegan and Ben Welsh
October 24, 2013
Los Angeles' new controller moved Wednesday to open city finances to quick and easy public scrutiny online, unveiling a website with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of dollars.
The website, Control Panel L.A., gives users access to a huge volume of data on taxpayer expenditures for police, sanitation, street repairs and other services — information that previously would have taken weeks or months to get through formal requests for records.
Read the rest of the article at
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1024-city-opens-books-20131024,0,3215790.story#axzz2ifPH4BOe

While Los Angeles slowly marches forward towards the digital future via their Control Panel L.A., https://controllerdata.lacity.org/ we in South Florida can only look longingly at this sort of practical and common sense tool from a great distance and sigh wistfully...

And here's another transparency effort, building upon the successful use of CompStat by LAPD that will be the first major initiative of Mayor Eric Garcetti, who took office in June, which will track progress on goals from neighborhood concerns like pot hole to streetlight repair, on a computer system that residents can check online.


Mayor Garcetti Unveils First Major Initiative: Online Accountability Plan September 26, 2013 10:41 PM
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/09/26/mayor-garcetti-unveils-first-major-initiative-online-accountability-plan/

More on the effort to gets the facts and figures into the hands of taxpayers..

caforward YouTube Channel video: L.A. City Controller's plans for a more efficient, accessible city hall
"Los Angeles is one of the oldest cities in California. The City is rich with history. A lot of that history lays within City hall, with the data and information to tell a story. The City of Angels is also the most populous city in the state, with more than 3.7 million people. You'd think a city this large and this old would be at the forefront of technology. Well it's just the opposite. California Forward had the opportunity to sit down with the newly elected L.A. City Controller, Ron Galperin. He took office on July 1, 2013, as the 20th Controller. With less than two months under his belt, the Contoller explains his big plans to transform city hall."
Two-part interview. Uploaded August 27, 2013 http://youtu.be/95GoouHZTso

One on One with Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin
Uploaded September 3, 2013. http://youtu.be/I1idK1OuwTI


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

North Miami Beach in the World Series -Steve Nicosia makes sure the first time's the charm! NMB High grad Steve Nicosia was the first Charger to play in the World Series, on the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979; @Pirates, #NorthMiamiBeach



With the World Series slated to start tomorrow night between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, i wanted to share a little bit of information I know and have been keen to post about for quite some time, and that time is now, since it's World Series-related and a local South Florida angle.

The first North Miami Beach High School grad to ever play in baseball's major leagues was also the first former Charger to ever play in MLB's World Series, catcher Steve Nicosia 
of the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979, against my beloved Baltimore Orioles, whom I grew-up loving, and was a mini-season ticket holder of when I was living and working in the D.C. area 20 years later, and going to about 20-25 Oriole home games a year at Camden Yards.

I watched every pitch of those painful 7 World Series games from the packed TV room of Briscoe Quad, while I was at IU my freshman year, back when only the affluent -esp girls- had a TV in their own dorm room. Trust me, I knew exactly which of my friends had a TV and what their favorite programs were, but some things need to be watched in large groups.
Even if they're Pirate fans, as most of the people in that room were.

(Did I ever mention to you dear blog readers how many people from the greater Pittsburgh area went to beautiful Indiana University in Bloomington? 
Trust me, it's huge, in part because it's only about 410 miles east of Bloomington -a day trip. The most-famous IU grad from Pittsburgh this far is Marc Cuban, @mcuban.

Nobody I met at IU from Pittsburgh was a better advertisement for what a great school IU was or better company to be around than my friend, Laura Seitz. Laura was a freshman when I was a sophomore, and she lived on the same floor at Briscoe Quad where I already had a LOT of close female friends, and eventually we met and became friends because our personalities really meshed well. Among my male friends, Laura was renown for always turning so many heads when she combined her sporty good looks with her shiny red adidas IU Swimming sweat jacket whenever we went to see a movie or met in-between classes over at the Student Union, or went to an IU soccer game at the-then new Armstrong Stadium, two blocks away from Briscoe. Laura was such a charmer and so honest and level-headed! The sort of friend you can confide in and trust in any kind of situation, no matter how upsetting or awkward, and genuinely feel a great weight lifted off of your shoulders after you've shared the news with her. I always thought she'd make a great psychiatrist, esp. in Left Coast Hollywood, as opposed to the one here north of Hallandale Beach. Just a great friend to have in good times and bad.)

So getting back to the main point of today's post, just to give you some helpful context, Steve Nicosia, who still lives in South Florida with his family, was about six years older than me when he was in high school at NMB, while yours truly was doing my thing over at Fulford Elementary, in 5th and 6th grade his last two years at NMB, when he was such a phenom.

This was back when NMB High School, on the north side of the street from the then-very prosperous 163rd Street Shopping Center, was spanking brand new and had absorbed kids whose older siblings (and parents) had gone to either North Miami or Norland,
depending upon where in Northeast/Northwest Dade their families lived.

So in a rapidly developing area with lots of well-established family and school loyalties and traditions comes a new school into the mix in NMB with neither, and located in an area of the city that was hard by the side of a huge retail complex and on another side, apartments for mostly senior citizens, a demographic which seemed almost of the city at the time.
Not exactly a target-rich environment to develop school tradition!  

What made it controversial from the start, as if that wasn't enough, was its in-vogue educational approach that most parents weren't so crazy about -no letter grades, just passing and failing.
It's hard to get into really good schools with that siort of subjective thing, obviously, regardless of tests scores, so parents and high-achieving kids were not down with the way things were being done

It's hard to imagine now in 2013, but there was no high school in Dade County north of N.E. 135th Street and east of I-95 -or Aventurauntil NMB showed-up in 1971 and shattered that longstanding reality of life.

Yes, that's the sort of reality I can still recall, since I walked with my mother and two younger sisters on our way to 163rd Street Shopping Center thru the future NMBHS when it was merely a willowy field, from the nice apt on NE 170th Street I lived in while going to Sabal Palm Elementary for 2nd grade.

When it opened and while Nicosia was there, NMBHS was an "experimental" school, a bit of a fad that the Dade County School Board decided to try out with kids from NE Dade as guinea pigs, as if the fact that it was a gigantic two-story building with no windows wasn't enough of a tip that it wasn't a regular high school, though with cool air conditioning and carpeting everywhere.

(I wrote a fact-filled description of NMBHS in the early years about 6-7 years ago on Wikipedia, an entry that really put some meat on what was then present there, which I regarded as a paltry and unappealing description of the school.
Unfortunately, over the years, the "helper bees" at Wikipedia have taken a knife to the facts I added and turned it into a bland stew last time I checked it two years ago, removing about 75% of what I'd posted, though some scraps remain.
I'll try to remember to re-post that Wiki description I wrote here in the future, which you still sometimes find on the Internet when looking for NMB-related news of the 1970's, esp. re the 163rd Street Shopping Center.)

By almost any reasonable measure, Steve Nicosia was South Florida's most-celebrated HS baseball player between 1972 and 1974.
A result of that was that he was regularly featured on the front pages of the Herald and Miami News sports section, back before there was a Heat, Panthers and Marlins to easily distract everyone from the primacy of high school sports, and people actually going to games to support the kids even if they didn't have kids at the school, because that's what you did.
Just as is true in so many communities outside of South Florida right now.

I know about all those newspaper articles because I cut out every article on him that made it into print, since I was already a news junkie then, reading both papers every day, even when in elementary school at Fulford(Cutting out newspaper articles -how very old-school!)

Here's a more recent piece on him, from 13 years ago, though the article greatly undersells how big a deal he was down here.

The first thing about him that jumped out at you when you looked at him was that he was very un-NMB-like in appearance, in that he resembled nothing so much as a miniature Joe Mauer, a catcher who was just more naturally athletic than anyone else on the field, something that was readily-apparent the moment he was in a position to affect the flow of the game.

He was, as I recall it, a "Natural" in every sense of the word, smooth and completely in-charge on the field and quick with a bat in his hands.
To my mind at least, he was the progenitor for everything that happened later with A-Rod in HS many years later in Miami, with the constant media attention.
If the Internet or USA Today or ESPN had existed back when Nicosia played...

Allen Park, the same City of NMB baseball field next to Fulford Elementary that I played Optimist football, soccer, Little League and Pony League on, was also the field where Nicosia played American Legion ball for NMB Post 257, back when that was really huge down here.
The stands would routinely have a half-dozen MLB scouts taking notes, stop-watches at the ready.

Me being me, I'd naturally try to size up the crowd and figure out who the scouts were and then try to matter-of-factly sit near them and eavesdrop on any baseball scuttlebutt, hoping
that one might be with the Orioles. If only...
It never was on the nights I was there.

I dug up this article on the Internet which was THE best article on him for the longest time.

Miami News
May 25, 1973
The scouts can't stay away
All eyes are on NMB's Steve Nicosia
By Jeff Klinkenberg

Make sure you see the great photos above the article!

I must've stared at those photos for 5-6 years in the manilla folder I kept with all his clippings,
plus the one I cut from the extra copy of the paper I bought and then taped on my bedroom wall. 
To me, what made that black and white photo of him awesome was that because in the original that appeared in the Miami News, you could see all the sweat on his forehead and on the tops of his right shoulder coming out thru the jersey.
That was really something and people always commented on what a great photo it was

Back then, because of the novelty of the whole thing, people who didn't even live in NMB, esp. knowledgeable middle-age baseball fans, would routinely come from all over the area to the games at Allen Park.

They'd come over-and-over and even recognize me, because they'd come to gawk at him because of what they'd read, and then seen for themselves, because he was, literally, like a man-among-boys.
Trust me, that was the one-and-only time something like that EVER happened in NMB!

Chaz Stevens at his popular must-read blog, M.A.O.S. recently mentioned me in relation to my knowledge and love of baseball, which was nice of him, but the truth is that I had to reveal to Chaz recently that I was actually able to go the whole 2013 baseball season without watching a single inning of Miami Marlins baseball on TV, or listen to an inning on radio, even though I really do like their announcers.
Yes, my personal boycott of David Samson & Jeffrey Loria has remained in place since last year's team break-up, and I do hereby declare victory.

As I told many people in my original email about Nicosia, my pre-playoffs pick was the Pirates playing the Red Sox in the World Series, a rematch of the 1903 World Series, Pittsburgh vs. Boston, Cy Young over Honus Wagnerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_World_Series

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Other NMB grads whom you may have heard of who came after I graduated in 1979 and my sister Linda graduated in 1982, include Facebook COO and recent author Sheryl Sandberg, actress Garcelle Beauvais and best-selling author Brad Meltzer.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

"Who is mystery blonde girl found in Greece gypsy camp?" Roma/Gypsies need a Hollywood PR Counselor, stat! Channel 4 News video is devastating reproach to many well-intentioned but naive people who just thought Roma were victims who had bad PR.; #childtrafficking



Channel Four News video: 19 OCTOBER 2013 -Greek plea over mystery girl found in Roma gypsy camp
http://www.channel4.com/news/roma-missing-girl-gypsy-madeleine-mccann-abduction

"Who is mystery blonde girl found in Greece gypsy camp?" Roma/Gypsies need a Hollywood PR Counselor, stat! Channel 4 News video is devastating reproach to many well-intentioned but naive people who just thought Roma were victims who had bad PR. No, in Sweden as in England, genuine facts and reality re Roma must trump holier-than-thou platitudes and good intentions/guilt; #MadeleineMcCann, #childtrafficking

I received this disturbing news on Saturday via my daily Snowmail from Channel Four News at 12:06 p.m.

With this news on Saturday, it appears to me that the year of all the naive pro-Roma stories written in Europe are about to come to a thud, esp. in the U.K. and in Sweden.

As I've previously mentioned to some of you via an email or two, this past summer, a week after Nationalsdagen, a sort of Swedish July 4th but without the military angle but with picnics, a nationally-televised TV show fusing Swedish traditions, music and the Royal family,



a college in the Stockholm area, for security reasons, ordered all of its students out of their dorms near a campus parking lot after Roma took it over with their vehicles and set about transforming it into a  place to live, and soon engaging in some unruly criminal behavior, to boot, which got the attention of everyone in the area.

TheLocal (Sweden)
Students forced out over traveller safety fears 
14 Jun 2013 18:26 CET
By Oliver Gee

The reason that the college felt obliged to require the students to get out toute-de-suite was that the Police did NOT want to intervene right away and remove the new arrivals because, as we'd later learn months later, there were some complication.
Complications and secret efforts that very few people in Sweden knew, which is to say that about 99.99% of the country did not know anything until later this summer:


Plus,
a.) Sweden has what is, alternately, a charming/quaint/preposterous law that is treasured by many and lamented by some that allows people to use/camp/hike on unoccupied private land if it's not specifically prohibited, but with that comes certain responsibilities.

In this instance, and not for the first time you suspect, the Gypsies involved intentionally conflated and stretched the limits of what is permissible under Allemansrätten and the Police knew that if they tried anything, they'd cite their rights under Swedish law.


Clearly, a university parking lot is not one of those places envisioned by the law, which was/is geared towards allowing the public free access to nature, near private property on lakes, forests, etc.

(NOT asphalt and concrete and proximity to a 7/11, which are on every third or fourth corner in Stockholm for reasons I'll get into in a future blog post.)

Owing to the fact that it was summer break for most college students, so the parking lot  was obviously more empty than usual- and,

b.) Police were very concerned that in light of the riots in immigrant-intensive Husby this spring in the town NW of Stockholm, professional Leftist community activists-types and 
the area's legitimate political players would immediately criticize the Police for trying to remove them, as we'd expect to see happen here  in a similar case of trespassing.

So in essence, the Police wanted a green light first from these political players that they could proceed rather than simply walk into what they perhaps rightly perceived a no-win trap, and
subsequently find everyone criticizing them for just doing their job.

That's the part of Sweden and Swedish life that you never read about in the U.S. news media, and which consistently drives many people there -like my friends, par exemple- quite crazy, since some things in a society DON'T need a consensus, they simply need people prepared to do their job correctly and as professionally as possible, however difficult sometimes.

My friends and their neighbors want the same thing that people here in Broward County want in their interactions with and expectations of local and regional government, and especially the Police Department. 
They want PREDICTABILITY.
The same thing the individual police officer wants.
But politics and good intentions often gets in the way of that, just as it does in England as well.

The Telegraph YouTube Channel video: Truth about the Romanian beggars of Park Lane. Uploaded July 28, 2013. http://youtu.be/SNhhJh81GxE

By the way, here's one of the possible reasons why the Police in Skåne had a registry of Roma children in the first place: http://www.thelocal.se/50464/20130926/

So that when, oh, hypothetically, blonde-haired, green-eyed girls were found that are clearly not related to anyone they are traveling with, Police know to immediately put out an alert.

Or to quote the piece, "Channel 4 News has been told the story reflects
a common trend in Eastern Europe." 
Right, because sometimes, a list is composed NOT to keep track of who belongs in a group, but rather for who doesn't, no?

Exactly.