Ilta-Sanomat and other evening newspapers are at their yearly exposé again:

So do you want to know who is who in Finland? Its all there. Eat the rich.

We here in Nokia marketing just changed the corporate slogan…

From Engrish

As we all know Finns have been hugely proud of the “low corruption index”, while on the other hand “everyone knew” the political scene was a pile of manure just sitting there in the back of the yard. The old wisdom said “Shit don’t stink unless you go poking it” and now that shit has hit the fan. I don’t know how much the readership of this blog knows about the intricacies of Finnish politics, or the constitutional dependencies of the president, parliament and the cabinet, but mildly put the government right now is in neck deep, and any move they will make means more trouble.

The whole issue is about election funding – the whole stinkpot started bubbling already in May when it came clear that the legislation over party funding and especially its transparency were so full of loopholes that in principle there were no reprecussions for not disclosing where a politician got the money. Different parties came forward wanting to come clean and at the same time started to make all kinds of “privacy” excuses for not revealing their funding sources. Quite showing the slimy nature of politics the Left League was at first vocal demanding all parties open their books, but after the Left League was asked of their own funding the excuse was “the treasurer is on summer holiday”.

Unlike political scandals usually, this all wasn’t forgotten over the holidays. The parties started divulging their sponsors but the bankruptcy of Nova Group investment company started the domino effect. The investment company had channeled several hundred thousand euros towards the Centre party and the bankruptcy court eventually has sued the Centre party to return the monies as misappropriated assets. The Nova Group’s business dealings and municipal zoning started to raise questions of corruption, but more was to follow. As the different sources of money were investigated, centre party politicians were found to be in leading positions in government organizations and foundations that had then channeled money back to the party coffers. Of course the Prime Minister doesn’t see any troube in this kind of funding.

Now the other parties definitely don’t have unblemished reputations either, after all its a well-known fact the Social Democrats get huge funding out of the different unions’ and the Swedish Peoples Party from its rich cultural foundations. Which isn’t technically wrong if the purpose of the foundation or organization in the rules is actually to support political parties. Meanwhile the different opposition parties are starting to demand for the cabinet to resign and even a new early parliamentary election. Which provides an interesting dilemma – the Prime Minister, neck deep in the scandal is highly unlikely to call for a new election as his own party would definitely lose. The President’s powers have been curtailed, so she cannot dissolve the parliament either. And for the parties now in government, their outlooks of getting to form a new government looks slightly bad. The professor of public law from the University of Jyväskylä dryly stated that “in a Western Democracy the government would have resigned already”

The funding issues have caused several government organizations starting from the parliamentary ombudsman to start investigations regarding party funding, and it seems there might be more and more revelations as the weeks pass. So far there has been outrage over the fact that blatant tax evasion creative tax planning seems to be rife, and the secrecy of the funding has raised the question wasn’t the government-paid party support money supposedly put in place so that parties could function without dodgy support. There will be a lot more shit hitting the fan before the politicians can withdraw back to their cabinet schemings, so if the opposition manages to pull off a vote of no confidence we might well be looking for some interesting campaigning already this winter and not have to wait for 2011. Even though the politicians in power are definitely hoping that the shitfan will run out of power next year and the nations’ memory fade any moral outrage by the next. And we all can go sleep again peacefully as “there is no corruption in Finland”.

- UPDATE - The opposition parties made a statement today suggesting the Prime Minister to “make conclusions” over the issue. The Cabinet announced it shall be giving its “Government report to the Parliament” over the election funding issue – after which there shall be a “vote of confidence”. The discussion over the issue is still waiting the PM who is at the moment in the USA attending an United Nations Climate Change Conference.

During the Spring, CITIBANK’s stock price dropped below a dollar – and it’s no surprise with the terrible card and service they offer. I’ve been battling with this terrible card for months, here’s five reasons why you should never get a CITIBANK credit card…

1. I got two letters in my mailbox – The first one was my new CITIBANK card with a message saying “the PIN code would be sent separately for security purposes”. And the second letter contained the PIN code. Bulletproof security.

2. Don’t use this card outside of Finland, they’ll shut it off the second you do without any sort of phone call or notification – they automatically assume it’s stolen. It’s nice to have the waiter tell you “Sir, you’re card has been rejected” in front of co-workers.

3. I ordered $91 wort of books from Amazon, the transaction was rejected and card was subsequently shut off. I phoned and they told me my purchase was “either from a suspicious merchant (Amazon) or suspiciously high price ($91).” Even the CITIBANK employee over the phone had a chuckle at that.

4. Nokia’s “Ovi Store” is considered a suspicious merchant. The transaction was rejected and card was shut off. My card has been shut off six times in total (in roughly 8 months), not once did they ever phone me, I always had to contact them.

5. Verkkokauppa’s retail shop in Ruoholahti is considered a suspicious merchant. The transaction was rejected and card was shut off. CITIBANK sucks!

Well it looks like you can start soon forgetting to stock up for the long holidays. The government has gotten through the wrangling over shop opening hours, and the legislation seems to be ending up as follows:
- Shops can be open 12-18 Sundays except on “Holy Days” say like Pentecost.
- Shops smaller than 400 sq.m can be open 24/7 if they so wish.
- However there is also an amendment that small shops in malls may stay closed on Sundays if they so wish.

When the law gets passed and we step into the shopping era is still to be seen… baby steps, still requires a pole vault to be able to buy your Tylenol at 3am at the Siwa.

The Global credit crunch and the recession that has been its after-effect has slowly been gnawing at the Finnish economy. The wailing over a shortage of labor has switched over to a louder wailing from people being laid off or terminated. The latest figures from the Ministry of Labor state that the trend is looking worse.

Meanwhile, the Government, lead by “things don’t need to be discussed” PM Vanhanen has been taking steps to stall the recession. The first measure was to remove a part of the employer contributions, known as the “social insurance payment” to enable employers to keep their laborforce on for longer. Maybe a cosmetic change, nevertheless KELA wasn’t amused as their budget is tightening. Last week a new proposal was made changing the highest pension age from 63 to 65. While I am quite assured I’ll be 75 before I get to pension, the proposed change has caused more than a little stir with both the labor unions and the opposition parties. (*)

There is also fears that in the current economic situation and the fact that the last years of your employment directly relate to your pension has made more and more people in the ages now allowed to go on pension to “take the money and run” and not chancing being laid off and loosing out. Which of course puts more burden on KELA and the pension insurance companies. And as we’re in a recession there isn’t as much revenue coming in and the investments of the insurance companies are in the red, it seems we will not be seeing too many tax cuts. And we won’t seeing too much improvement in public services – any public services.

What does this mean in real life one might ask. If you aren’t depending on such services you might miss the situation, but if you depend on services you might feel the full blast. One small streamlining operation by the tax office for example will effect small enterpreneurs. Basically your monthly returns must be both in time, and correct, or you’ll be hit with a fine. Which also is a bit rude as if you figure out you made a mistake and go correct it you still be fined for it. And as tax fines are non-negotiable… Oh yes, I bet the revenues will be certain for a while at least.

(*)The HS International Edition has a pretty extensive coverage of the ins and outs.

The workers of the Solna branch of the German LIDL in Sweden had a brilliant an idea of how to take care of the homeless problem. Really does make you think of how cruel life even in a civilized welfare state like Sweden can be. For starters, you need to be destitute to go to LIDL in the first place let alone skipdive.

I wonder if that would have been adapted to the USA by Wal-Mart if the Republicans had won?

Oh wow, wonder why. Lets not build new roads and the problem will just go away. The HS writes:

All the main arterial roads in the Helsinki area threaten to become blocked because of excessive traffic volumes within the next ten years. Blockages threaten at least some sections of every single main highway. The maximum capacity of at least some of the main trunk roads has already been exceeded.

No shit sherlocks. I can see it daily past my office window. Quite used to the traffic noise. And whats the solution? Congestion charges. yeah right.

OK, Phil, start taking a bicycle to work. its all you Espoo yuppies to blame, especially the Westend voters who don’t want the metro to bring in the rif-raf.

A small storm in the glass. The two highest managers of VR – the national railway operator resigned. Nothing really new in that the government-owned companies have government messing into the business. However I am at a loss as to who came up with this brainfart. As we are in the EU the competition tender process is open. So there is nothing ensuring the Transtech plant would land the contract (*). By all probability we’ll be getting some sighing trains again, this time from Spain, only to be used in summertime.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants a hovercraft – the Finnish Navy has one been sitting for 5 years unused. Cost only 16 million euros and then some brainfart decided it wasn’t such a brilliant idea any more.

(*) of course as we all know there is no corruption in Finland and such…

I always *love* it when Finland gets into international news. Well, this time over the issue was boiling hot domestically and no wonder. The HS international Edition basic description of the events. Basically, a new editor-in-chief Johanna Korhonen, was hired to the Eastern Lapland regional newspaper Lapin Kansa which is published by a big Finnish publishing house Alma Media. And she was fired before she started in her job the reason being given there was a “lack of trust”   Well, the lady in question, who has been among other things the editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the Finnish Union of Journalists cried “foul” and stated in a press release she got sacked because she is living in a registered partnership with a woman.  The CEO of Alma Media Kai Telanne stated that the reason of course is not that, nothing discriminatory etcetera, but the fact that her partner is active in municipal politics while the editor should be politically nonaligned and the CEO said she had been fired for lying in her job interview, and she is just using the lesbian card.

And everybody thought in the traditional Finnish manner the issue would be brushed under the carpet.

Oops, not quite so… today had the Alma Media board of directors publishing a very curt statement of how they stand behind the CEO and do not want to discuss issues “that do not belong in the public”. Laughing my ass off as Alma Media publishes the worst scandal tabloid Iltalehti…

So what is the opinion – the current editor-in-chief of Lapin Kansa stated that an “while nobody asks what people do in their private lives as long as they keep int the closet an openly gay person would find it difficult to act as the editor-in-chief as the newspaper represents the region”.  Well, the region represented nor the newspaper doesn’t wish to be labelled as a redneck bible-belt hickdom it seems. The editors of the Lapin Kansa newspaper have demanded the CEO of Alma Media quits and is removed from the board of Lapin Kansa, The Lapland University’s women studies researchers has started rallying a boycott against Alma Media and its been said people have been canceling their subscriptions. The opinion is still out whether what Korhonen alleges is true – if it is then this is one of the most blatant discrimination cases to pop up.

Legal experts and journalists have come forth stating that personal issues should not be taken up in job interviews, and that as each person is responsible for themselves it is unfair to have some persons job depending on their spouses political activity. The government has stated that the issue should be investigated thoroughly – there was a debate but the government wanted facts as the situation is unclear. Meanwhile the biggest shareholder, a private investor stated that the “publicity is good” and that Alma Media stocks are on the rise. The Nordic newspapers also picked up on the story, especially the Danes as they have also a holding in Alma Media.

Yay! Publicity!  It seems that anything that is said or done in this case will cause another crap sandwich to appear in the lunchbox.

EDIT: 3.10 update HS International Edition of the new developments

So there it was, the 700 billion dollar bail-out plan on the table and there it stayed. The House of Representatives vote on the bill was split. Of the 205 votes for there were 65 Republicans and 140 Democrats and of the 228 votes against 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats. The analysts noted that representatives looking for re-election were most likely to vote no for the unpopular bill. Republican house leader John Boehner repotedly described the package as a “crap sandwich” in his floor speech before the vote.

President George W Bush renewed calls for Congress to back the bill stating the obvious: “”We are in an urgent situation and the consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act.” Congress will not meet again until Thursday – after a break for the Jewish New Year – with another vote unlikely before the weekend, by the time an amended version of the bail-out bill will be introduced.

The US stock market reacted to both the bill failing with Dow Jones dropping 770 points as well as Mr. Bush’s speech on Tuesday when the Dow Jones rose by some 200 points. The stock markets around the world followed the wave trend and in Russia the exchange was closed for a while. The subprime mortgage crisis has hit a number of European banks, but the credit crunch is biting hard.

The EU commission released a statement calling for the US to take its responsibility and try to stabilize the markets. The EU parliament is making a formal request to the Commission to propose new legislation to improve regulation of financial markets, in particular regarding hedge funds and private equity investors. They also want measures to deal with some of the causes of the credit crunch.

The governments of Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg agreed to use 11.2 billion euros to save Fortis, and only today the French, Belgian and Luxembourg governments declared another bank Dexia is on the same nationalisation path with 6.4 billion euros being poured in. Meanwhile in Iceland the Glitnir bank was taken over by the government and in the UK mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley was nationalised. No doubt this next week will bring forth other similar news from around the globe.

Meanwhile in the USA there is five weeks left for the presidential elections.

A small piece of news struck my eye yesterday and made me thoughtful. Theres been a restructuring of the 112 call centres into a national organization instead of the previous county-run regional units since the 2000’s, and the results have been a bit questionable. The nationalization of the Helsinki emergency centre has been blasted as the restructuring has caused and stated that the safety in the region has come down. Another question is the services in the Swedish-speaking areas.

Basically before you also had the police as well as ambulances or fire departments have their own numbers you could call for “less emergency” so you’d call the “emergency number” when the house was on fire, but the lesser number when the cat was up the tree. But now you deal only with the 112 with all kinds of nonsense. Which isn’t anything peculiar to just Finland.

The new reform into larger units also caused some problems as many villages and towns have similar or the same streetnames, and the 112 operators weren’t necessarily that versed with the area. So in 2002 a “middle aged woman” who worked on the west coast got a warning from the court as she’d directed an ambulance to the wrong city and a man with chest pains died of a heart attack.

The yesterdays piece of news said that the same woman had been fined in court for negligence of duty and stripped of her office, as she had cut approximately a hundred 112 calls that then had redirected to other operators in 2006. She had logged these as missed calls or wrong numbers. Apparently the stress and workload at the 112 centre had overwhelmed her – maybe the first mishap was a cause or a symptom, but the manager of the centre said that of course the “performance is evaluated”… Now I can understand this is a job that does not bring in profit – but now you need to remember that we are talking of peoples lives – so adding insult to injury and stressing the workers out when the job itself is stressful enough sounds they should hire comrade Stahanov.

At the end of the day, who can your stressed out 112 operator call?

Cliff notes: emergency services in emergency

(Sorry the article didn’t get all there the first time because of the database hiccups.
Hank W.)

Going once, going twice, gone… and there go the jobs in the paper industry. As the global recession dawns upon us there is going to be more and more “pops” when the weasels take our jobs and run away with the money. And what will the politicians do? Build garden cities. Yes, and meanwhile “Finland needs more workers”… sorry, did someone say “a cheap exploitable labor force”? There is always someone out there desperate enough to be brought in to do the job cheaper.

I always contradict people saying there is a “shortage of nurses”. There is no “shortage of nurses”. There is a “shortage of money and tenures” which results in people not wishing to enter the profession which has created an illusion of a shortage of nurses. Finnish polytechnics churn out about 3000 nurses per year – after 5 years maybe 500 remain in the profession. And why is that? The job is hard, the pay lousy and you have only short-term contracts. So instead of making the profession something people want to do – the answer is to bring in people from someplace where the conditions are if possibly worse and they think they are getting a good deal.

There wouldn’t be all these Finnish nurses working for the NHS in the UK or Norway unless it was the same situation – the Finnish nurses think they get a good deal. While on the one hand economically bringing in foreign nurses is a business decision – we wait 10 years. That nurse has either gone back home after saving enough money for a new house and childrens college, or then the nurse has a family here. She wants a better salary and a continuous job contract, but as the culture of exploitation is there – what is the answer? To bring in some other – cheaper nurse working for peanuts and not complaining of actually having to support a family on those wages. So it continues on and on and on without anyone needing to address the core problems of the system itself.

So I would rather say “Finland needs more jobs” – but theres always the patent answer of creating your own. Oh yes, even back in the days of the big recession of the 1990’s the magical answer was for everyone to put up an enterprise and start selling soap and vitamins. Fixed the statistics greatly but how many people selling soap and vitamins to each other do we need? Does the economy of a village run on everyone selling soap and vitamins to each other? Because the fact is that the production industries are outsourcing and if there is no production there is not much money in the economy after a while. Not that there is a lack of the “enterpreneurial spirit” in Finland. Or would this “make money and become rich” spirit. Now as everyone knows one cannot come rich in Finland with honest work. The welfare state has its hand in your pocket. But as the human animal operates on greed we have now had not only one but two pyramid schemes where someone has gotten the great idea of making a fast buck off peoples greed. The WinCapita system allegedly had 10 000 Finns “invest” hundred million euros into the pyramid… that is quite a mind-boggling sum to think of. Another smaller scheme called GPP has just unraveled selling “pension insurance”… So what does *that* say of the country? We do remember Albania had a revolution in the 1997 due to a pyramid scheme taking all the money out of the system – they were probably high up in the “global competitiveness” figures back then – before the weasels popped the bubble.

It is questionable how far Finland could afford to copy the Nordic Welfare State model with its limited resources in the first place. It has worked so far, but even Sweden has been showing a hiccup… Norway has oil and gas to support their regional policies, but Finland just thinks it has resources. The current political parties – the three largest having equal 21% of the vote at the moment cannot come into consensus of what needs to be done – so everyone does something and the direction… The decisions made back during the big recession of the 1990’s was to “liberalize” the economy have now in 15 years resulted in the liberated industries escaping away. You look at the latest survey on the “hi-tech” Finland and its broadband connections. Even if done by Cisco which has its own interests. The government expects private market forces to take care of the infrastructure – and what is the result? Finland is now in 13th place. Really is this the way to go? We are living interesting times as they say in the Chinese proverb. But Finland isn’t as much alone any more – the rest of the EU is to be considered, but is the direction of the EU any clearer? Surely each country is pulling into its own direction – and is the EU not a giant on clay feet?

So what will Finland be like in 5 or 10 years with the global competition? Weasellandia 2018? Scrapped remains of a welfare state turned into a cut-throat globalized capitalist state with huge income gaps and poverty – a polarized society with ghettos with proles the weasels use as a resource pool of easily exploitable cheap labor that can be popped off when not needed?

The only thing your average Finn can do thinking about this is drink cheap alcohol imported from Estonia and look at how the country is going to hell in a handbasket – and that is my positive outlook of the day.

Cliff Notes: Paha maa

The YLE scandal investigative journalism programme MOT broadcasted last week has caused diplomatic strain between Finland and Slovenia, both small EU countries whose populations probably never much were aware of each others existence. The MOT programme revealed the Finnish defence contractor Patria of paying bribes to gain a lucrative deal on ATV’s for the Slovenian armed forces. The police investigation on the case along with an investigation of a previous deal of howitzers to Egypt had started in May, and the CEO of Patria had stood down from his position. Patrias deals before such as that with Poland also raised some questions but no investigations were started. As the Finnish NBI investigations are noted for their rapidity, the case is expected to go to the prosecutor in October and a possible court case to take place sometime next year.

Meanwhile in Slovenia the MOT programme caused an uproar, as the programme suggests that on the receiving end of the bribes was the sitting prime minister Janez Janša, who is along with his party just preparing for a tight parliamentary election. The Slovenian government even produced two diplomatic notes over the MOT programme to the Finnish government demanding proof of the accusations. Despite both YLE and Patria are to some extent government-owned, the Finnish government said that they can not much do anything about the situation at present. Janša has denied any bribery even been suggested to him by Patria, though he said the other party in the tender process did as for meetings. Which seems very interesting indeed.

The can of hairy worms the MOT programme opened is actually an old one, but it does seem to squirm vigorously. The contract was signed in December 2006 and was the biggest arms deal in Slovenia so far and thus a huge issue in Slovenia, basically as the other rejected tender was from a Slovenian company later sold to an American conglomerate. Allegations of bribery started escalating in Slovenia, going deep into the country’s leadership, including politicians and senior civil servants so a parliamentary commission of inquiry was established in March 2007 to investigate the tender process relating to the sales contract. From what I understand the Slovenians were manufacturing the Steyr-Puch Pandur I on a licence and the competition was between the Patria AMV, Piranha and Pandur II with obvious logistical benefits. Now the Slovenian officials interviewed in the MOT programme were politicaly opposing the current government, and some had ties with the Slovenian contractor. Sour grapes maybe? Or then maybe not… in any case the election race in Slovenia got a surprisingly well-timed injection of scandal.

Cliff notes: Lord of War

After 30 or so years of bickering and nimbying it seems that the nortern wastes of Vantaa will get developed instead of just being industrial areas on the Ring III.  The metro to Espoo seemed about as an absurd idea, but it seems now that there is not only the willpower but also the money to go forth with quite expensive rail projects just as the new number 9 tram in Helsinki. Oh, did I say money? With the slumping economy it seems the developers are having flats nobody is willing to buy, so the risks of housing development projects are higher.

Maybe I should rant here for a moment. The cost of living is so high that people can only afford small studios. There is a huge demand for small studios – currently theres dozens of new students in town sleeping in the gym of the school as they’ve been unable to get flats. However some intelligents in the Helsinki city planning office passed a decision that the avarage flat sizes must be 75 square meters.. meanwhile the mayor Vapaavuori is demanding smaller flats being built… hello? Anybody at home? Its your own zoning stupid! As an example of the big developers hitting the bottom – theres  a development project on Mechelininkatu where the old Matkahuolto depot used to be in a standstill as the flats won’t sell. Studios would, but nobody can afford the bigger flats. I don’t know what the council thinks but if a family has that kind of money to shell out, they’ll buy a house in Kirkkonummi instead of three rooms in a block of flats to raise their family.

These days when I go downtown Helsinki I am amazed as the whole city seem to be dug up half the time. Theres huge development projects also in Helsinki harbour and in Espoo all being initialized at the same time. Now I don’t know if theres going to be overcapacity after the projects have been finished, but at least the building industry will employ a lot of people… and for me it’ll mean a lot more traffic jams. Even now that they are planning to remove the traffic lights from Ring III even last Friday at noon just one bulldozer excavating a lamp post caused a huge traffic jam with a lane being cut off. I’m just sceptical what they can do to the roads – even the Ring III project is a part of the E18 highway and it has the government funding earmarked I cannot fathom what they can do unless they add about four lanes. Meanwhile in Helsinki the huge excavation at the end of Mannerheimintie is gotten to a point they actually cast the concrete roof of the tunnel last week… and the Leppävaara tunnel on Ring I is appearing to be in schedule. Both places are such I rather not go anywhere close to them… the Mannerheimintie intersection is quite a zoo. Funny thing its as if roadwork follows some kind of fashion trends – first it was roundabouts and now it is tunnels… And there is no end to roadwork, I blame global warming, before we had two seasons, winter and roadwork but now its only roadwork.  I’ve also seen the plans of refurbishing my local road with roundabouts and removing the traffic lights – we have some serious accidents almost weekly so I guess that is a good thing – apparently people learning to drive isn’t an option.

What I see as a good point in the whole Marja-Vantaa project is that they are actually basing the development on public transport and making the M-train track into a loop connecting to the main northern track. So at some point in time you can actually take the train to the airport as well. I’m not an ecohippie frothing over public transport, but I do see its benefits. And I am still sore over the YTV planning to screw up my local bus routes.