The Centre Party is also more clearly in favour of implementing permanently the congestion tax / environment fee in Stockholm than the other three bourgois parties. It will be interesting to see what kind of fudge they come to here in Stockholm on that now that the residents of Stockholm kommun itself have voted yes, but in some of the surrounding municipalities where they had referundums (on the basis that they are affected by what goes on in STockholm) with no votes. The Moderates promised both to go by the vote of Stockholm but also to consider those surrounding municipalities in the pre election period.

For a multi-party system to EVER become realisable in the U.S. (or the U.K. for that matter) the whole idea of electing one candidate per “voting district” would have to be abolished. This utterly un-democratic voting mechanism – common to two of the MOST “snobbish” countries, when it comes to giving others advice about e.g. democracy – is a disgrace.

Now, Phil wants to plant the first seed on the road towards this idiotic system, by suggesting a coalition similar to the one in Sweden also in Finland. We’ll see about the future of the Swedish coalition (I personally do not think it will succeed very well, but that remains to be seen), but I believe that the differences between the supposed coalition parties in Finland are way larger than in Sweden. And many others have already written of other difficulties w.r.t. importing this idea to Finland directly.

http://palun.blogspot.com/2006/09/only-post-communist-nordic-country.html

By the way, I think that the “English” thing in Scandinavia is annoying. The fun part of going to a foreign country is having to learn some new phrases. Having a bunch of know-it-all Scandinavians reply to your advances in English sucks.

The highlight of my Iceland trip may have been when I had to buy food from an old woman who didn’t speak English and I had to use my guidebook.

When I am abroad, I want to be abroad. Not in some more expensive, larger Epcot Center.

I think the image of Swedes in Estonia is the same as in Finland – but when your land borders Russia and Latvia, Sweden takes on a special golden aura. These things must be looked at in context gentlemen.

We had a nice long conversation about Estonia’s Nordic leanings at my blog … I still give it another 10-15 years before they’re on the council. It will work like this – right-wing governments will become the entrenched majorities in Sweden and Finland, said right-wing governments think the sun shines out of Mart Laar’s asshole, Estonia gets wealthier —->

“Welcome to the sauna, boys. Make yourself at home, and while you’re at it, could you get me another birch branch?”

However, often when we are speaking to each other (so long as no Finns are in the group), we just use our own tongues (be it Swedish, Norwegian or Danish). It’s easier enough to understand Norwegian and Danish. Icelanders all have to learn Danish at school. Although of course, sometimes and perhaps increasingly often English.

Actually Boyle, the Danes understand Swedish really quite well. It is more Swedish speakers that have difficulty to understand Danish as their pronounciation is much more shall we say ‘eccentric’ compared to Swedish and also Norwegian.

Isn’t the lingua franca of the Nordic countries English? Scandinavians might use Swedish among themselves, but if there are native Finnish speakers present, I would guess that English is preferred in most cases.

Estonians like Swedes, but it’s because they want to be part of Nordic. They’ve got a long way to go for that..

Probably a poor translation on my part; “The Latin of the Nordic countries”… in the opinion of the particular Swede who made that remark to me, that was his rather arrogant opinion of the Swedish language… i.e. the lingua franca, superior to all the other languages in Scandinavia. I suppose I should have pointed out the limited use of Latin these days.

Hmmm, no country comes to mind. Ok, let’s hear the answer.

What do you mean? America has plenty of interest in news of other countries. For instance, there’s lots of reporting about Texas, California, southern Florida…..

By the way, what is Nordens Latin?

Who elected Halonen?

Not me. But I’d say she got the anti-NATO vote. Supposedly, it would have been decided via referendum; but, nonetheless, people decided to show their sentiments early-on by voting for someone who opposes joining—and therefore wouldn’t initiate a referendum in the first place.

She also got the anti-privatization and anti-authoritarian vote, obviously. Generally, I see her more as a protest candidate than someone people really wanted.