Another strange school in Guernsey…

Dover (UK) reminds you of the dangers of cannon climbing…

I came in Amsterdam…

I don’t know how much the readers follow the Finnish politics and issues, but so far it seems that the old game of “broken telephone” gets even worse when it is transferred from the reality into a newspaper with a political slant, regurgitated, edited and then translated into a foreign language. One of my favorite authors, Mark Twain wrote of this in his short story “Running for Governor” already in 1870, and nothing much has changed since. So you may see headlines of “Finnish politician sued for blasphemy” but I bet the articles are more or less confusing the issues.

There is no confusion that we still retain a paragraph in the Penal Code on “blasphemy”, actually Ch.17 Par. 11: “Breach of the sanctity of religion “(563/1998). Which enables the courts to sentence people on the grounds of “ridiculing what others regard as holy”. Of course in modern times you can laugh at Jesus and God, but can you laugh at Mohammad?

Double standards if you can’t laugh at both equally – and Finland is a land of equality, isn’t it? Then again theres a few other vague subjective laws in the Penal Code that require only that you be accused of them. You don’t have to find a victim for these crimes which makes them perfect to be used in silencing people. There is a law Ch.11 Par8 – “Ethnic agitation” (578/1995) that says “A person who spreads statements or other information among the public where a certain race, a national, ethnic or religious group or a comparable group is threatened, defamed or insulted shall be sentenced for ethnic agitation to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.” Which of course is a noble law. Again the question is, are all races, national, ethnic or religious groups or comparable groups equal before the law? For example, can you say that Finns are prone to drunken killing sprees? So if you can say that, can you say that X are prone to robbing passersby and leeching off welfare?

The vocal (or can you say vocal of someone who writes but doesn’t speak much) anti-multiculturalism blogger and aspiring politician Jussi Halla-aho got into the eye of a shitstorm running for the Helsinki city council (he is now among other things supervising the wanking baboons and lethally biting camels in the board of the Korkeasaari Zoo) and now as a result he’s facing court of his blogpost he made in 2006 that questioned the above equality issues. It is quite important to note that the Green Women had no case and no crime to have investigated – not liking someones opinions isn’t enough grounds.

The text “A few baits for Mika Illman” (the state prosecutor) was in fact the *only* one the prosecutor took upon himself to draw charges upon. Can you call that a hook-line-sinker?

On the one hand I find the whole case totally preposterous, as it clearly has a political agenda. Then again “publishing the Mohammad cartoons” issue has been a watershed so the blasphemy part might prove interesting. A part of me though wants Halla-aho to be sentenced for the agitation, so I can sue the ass off anyone claiming Finland is a cold soggy dark place with drunk wifebeaters who have a difficult language.

Too funny…

A modern day farce

Politicians in all countries seem to be able to start a leapfrog competition out of the blue. One minor brainfart and soon frogs start leaping out of politicians’ mouths left right and centre, only its blogs that are the culprits. And the more the politicians explain what they really meant the worse it gets. Just like the Watergate building break-in was a small article in the back pages the continuous denial of involvement only poured more and more gasoline into the fires and we all know what that ended up with. “I am not a crook.” As I said a while back Finnish politics has not been this much fun to follow since the Yoga Fliers ran for Parliament.

There isn’t exactly one thing that alone would be such a disaster, but the total of the past week is a chain of events best described as political correctness, stupidity and vicious sarcasm gone mad over equality, tolerance, freedom of speech and political liberties.

The storm in the Duck Pond

Four young men in Espoo were thrown in jail because speaking Swedish to the police, the tablods ripped. Not caring to mention the youth were in a house, at an 18-year ods birthday party, with about 50 other people, and rather were arrested for speaking up at the police, which gets you in jail for sure in these parts. The Sami council objected the use of “Two Language One Nation” slogan as the Sami are a recognized minority language. Before the Swedish Folk Party had time to get all indignant they got a massive wedgie when the aide of the Minister of Culture, Sports and Equality , the SFP chair,Stefan Wallin, state secretary Stefan Johansson went and groped two women at the Swedish Embassy’s reception on the Swedish Day. He promptly resigned. Of course the Fashion Police Resident Lenita Airisto went ahead and derided “Finnish Men” who are always drunk, cannot dress, act nor even speak proper, and was given a wee bit of a retort for claiming Finns speak “Monkey English”. Despite the short burst the whole issue might have been forgotten unless the SFP crone Maria Björnberg-Enckell elected to the Helsinki Council hadn’t written in her blog a pretty much “better people” comment to the lines that the reason the aide misbehaved was due to him being born in Korppoo (i.e. small hick town) and being overwhelmed being exposed to the cultured society such as the Swedish Embassy… we’re waiting for the duelling banjos.

The war between Green Women and Dr. Evil

A Finnish-language blog called “Scripta” authored by the linguist Dr. Jussi Halla-aho was a catalyst for the mayhem that followed. He has written for some five years very acerbic essays opposing the joys of multiculturalism. Lets say like Voltaire, his sharp tongue and acrid wit belie his seriousness of intent. The “official truth” in Finland has been promoting multiculturalism. However the multiculturalism they have elsewhere in Europe doesn’t always match with the noble aims. And while people have started questioning the policies almost any objections have been slammed down by the racist card. No debate against the “official truth” and no veering from the idealistic “chosen path”. But in the internet blogs and websites have sprung up though mainly then concentrating on the failures and ment to be offensive. Denying a debate is never a good idea if you wish to keep a consensus.

When the “True Finns” had made their landslide victory two weeks ago Dr. Halla-aho running as an independent predicted “it only starts now”. And he was correct, the initial shock and awe was replaced by pulling out the racist card and dismissing the True Finns as right-wing racists as some of the people elected were also members of the Suomen Sisu nationalist movement. The Minister of Justice being grilled of the fiasco regarding the electronic voting blunder was quick to make a statement she later said was misquoted that due to the win over the True Finns the Councils must receive training over tolerance.

As the True Finns were so morally objectionable the press and media had a field day taking quotes from here and there and churning out statements of how wicked the True Finns were and how the nation had “voted wrong”. A television talk-show had a field day over quotes from Dr.Halla-aho’s blog. However they forgot that they could not fool the people as the original texts were in the internet and the discussions flared within a few days so that people who had never heard nor paid any attention went to see for themselves what the uproar was all about.

Meanwhile the Green Women had noticed the vitriolic debate over the slanders over their beloved multiculturalism and picked up a comment in an old post in the blog of Dr Halla-Aho. Called “Multiculturalism and Women” (EDIT: Translation of the original article from another blog) the entry was regarding some rapes in 2006 when Helsinki rape statistics had surged and he had written, in an entry he said could have been better:

“The number of rapes will increase in any case. Therefore, as more and more women will undoubtedly get raped, I sincerely hope that at least the right women, the green-leftist reformers and their voters, will find themselves in the clutches of the rapists, who randomly select their victims. Rather them than anyone else. With people like that nothing else works, except when their own multiculturalist views turn against them.” (translation from the HS Int’Ed)

Which the Green Women obviously got extremely upset about and demanded a criminal report being filed as the entry “clearly promotes rape”. Nevermind the Greens should be very quiet about digging up old statements as their philosopher Pentti Linkola had openly written that the managers of industry should be executed among some other direct action pamphlets. The discussion over the issue is about the equivalent of Verdun in the net as now every assclown in the market is trying their best to fuel the flames.

2084

The unfortunate school shootings the past two years had started the government pondering over the control of the internet, and it was the consensus that as the internet is evil it must be controlled to save the youth.  The police reported in a brief that they had been monitoring the internet prevented a number of school attacks and “sent people for treatment”.

Was it not in the DDR and the good old USSR the dissidents got sent to the mental asylum?  So who says only the youth need to be saved. Also the immigrants must be saved from these wicked racists questioning multiculturalism. And while we are at it, why not save the poor politicians. After all several politicians had had to close commenting on their blogs because the public wasn’t understanding their best interests but were being all mean. Does this mean in a few years then anyone opposing the “official truth” and “chosen path” – off to the asylum with you? By 2084 we should have black helicopters and “thought police” as we already have political correctness,  email monitoring and foundations for a Ministry of Truth.

The chair of the “The Council for Mass Media in Finland” made a speech at the 40th anniversary of the council mentioning about curtailing the internet and subjecting it to the Council for Mass Media due to and other nice ideas. The local chief editor of the Hustler magazine went Larry Flynt on him. A complaint with the Council for Mass Media over the statement of the chair of the Council for Mass Media as he had mentioned pornography as one of the vile and wicked things that ought to be censored from the internet.

The fat lady sings in the end

Interestingly, the Ombudsman for Minorities has taken a pretty neutral stance on the whole issue. While the demonization of the True Finns was at its fashion stage she kept her cool not joining the bandwagon. But it may be she is an old fox – while a few years back she was smothering the discussion – any discussion – portraying the Finnish immigration policy in a bad light, she has now said there should be an open debate without “borderline opinions” rather finding a consensus. Oh, and why is the Minority Ombudsman careful of not stepping into the quagmire? Well, after all she is the human rights lawyer who was instrumental in importing the Somali refugees from the USSR in 1990. I guess it was a well played card to gain a seat in a shelter job, after all we wouldn’t need a Minority Ombudsman to deal with the troubles if we wouldn’t have troubled minorities needing an ombudsman.

The big mainstream political parties have also come forth stating that there needs to be an open discussion and tackling the problems. Now I wonder why you require 5 years of offensive blog posts and diarrea hitting the fan before you can have the sensible people actually take a stand and agree to disagree? Well, its better late than never but this discussion really should have taken place 10 if not 20 years ago. And hopefully – finally – at last they will not only start organizing the Finnish classes properly but implement an English user interface to the MOL job search engine. Can’t expect bloody miracles in a day.

Curtain and applauses.

Probably the heated debate and flamewars will continue, but hopefully the sensible brigade will take over once the intolerance of the tolerants has burned off.

After all, if you demand tolerance you may not yourself be intolerant.

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…

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.

(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

I don’t know if that is so original of a thought, but the past few weeks’ news as well as the Finnish politicians’ reactions to the conflict in Georgia have on the one hand surprised me as it seems the politicians aren’t quite as Finlandized as they were in the 1970’s.

Maybe its due to the fact that the foreign minister Stubb is a triathlonist. Back in the 1970’s the ministry was pickled, as a recent book bluntly reveals “the things everybody knew but nobody talked about”. So how about the foreign minister passing out while negotiating with his French colleague… (Interesting change in the morals of the time – being drunk was accepted but a divorce was a huge scandal. These days its the total opposite.)  And as we’re not living in Kekkoslovakia the president doesn’t “take care of foreign affairs” as directly as before.

The Russian operation in Georgia also didn’t show much along the northern border. Back in 1968 the situation was totally different as a great article in the HS Int’l Ed details.  But still we can see some reflections of the “old days”. Apparently Halonen still has a direct line from Moscow and the politicians still keep their rhetoric… “politically correct”.

And why is this – well if you look at the numbers. Finland has huge trade with Russia – we remember what happened when the trade stopped after the collapse of the USSR. St.Petersburg is a huge market area with more people than the whole of Finland. Russian tourists bring in a significant income – a quarter of all money brought in by tourists. And of course then there is a few other deals like the Baltic gas pipe the Finns are involved in like the former prime minister Lipponen. So the rhetoric can’t be too strong. Then again the old codgers like Paavo Väyrynen have done some amazing hardline rhetorics especially regarding the wood tariffs and the truck queue problems, so its not all suck-up either.

The new reality also is that Finland is a part of the EU, and we cannot do as much solo flying as in the 1970’s… the EU formation flying seems to be a bit of a challenge in itself, but the destiny is not in Tamminiemi.

What comes to the conflict in Georgia in itself I’m not only sorry about the destruction and death but more worried of the escalation of things and the destabilization this causes – not only in the Caucasus region but even here up north. I am not looking forward to another cold war, let alone a hot one.

The Helsingin Sanomat has written about some British & Irish paving labourers who apparently have not had “trouble finding work without speaking any Finnish”. So that proves false the assumption Finns are discriminating xenophobes and racists. Doing a paving job for 3500, sans receipt, when the Finnish quote is 8500-10K and the material cost alone is between 2-3K though might have something to do with the equation. Also the claim that Finnish officials are xenophobes and racists is proven wrong, as if a local Finnish resident would be driving drunk, stealing and doing black labor without paying the social fees and VAT; they’d be in serious trouble. But EU citizens are free to do whatever they effin please. So apparently there is a “need for workers” in Finland indeed and the EU has once again proven to be the source of multiculturalism that enriches the nation. Again three basic theses regarding immigrants in Finland have been proven wrong. I find this quite hilarious, though there’s an owner of a campsite full of complaining Finns (as opposed to whining foreigners) that might not think I am so funny.

Cliff notes: Snatch in Järvenpää

We’ve always suspected it, but now we have proof. The Finnish europarliamentarian Anneli Jäättenmäki had to get a new passport. Reason being her old one got “lost” in somewhere between the Europarliament and the Indian Embassy. Neither party has it. As the Ilta-Sanomat says

According to Jäätteenmäki, thefts are quite usual in the EU-parliament. The member’s “boxes” where materials are transferred between Brussels and Strassbourg are missing things, such as cameras and laptops.

- “The police can not investigate the thefts, as they do not have access to the EU-parliament” says Jäättenmäki

Not only the idiotic and expensive dual seating and travelling between Brussels and Strassbourg, but also there is then nobody with jurisdiction to investigate either… Makes you wonder who designed the system.

Nice to see Finland in yesterday’s New York Times. And it’s about a topic that touches every Finn so dearly, wolves…

Finland, which joined the European Union in 1995, came under criticism that its hunting practices did not mesh with European habitat directives. So in 2001, the Finnish government tightened its hunting laws to meet European Union standards. Finnish law now states that every kill must be covered by a permit and restricts the number of permits to about 10 percent of a particular predator’s known numbers.

Seven years later, the populations of wolves, lynxes, brown bears and wolverines in Finland have grown substantially, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Helsinki. In this area, the number of wolves has roughly tripled since 1996, and attacks on reindeer herds have increased more than threefold in the past 10 years.

[...]Asko Moilanen, 40, a third-generation herder, said that because of his losses to predators over the past three years, his income from reindeer has been reduced to almost nothing. “Either we should be allowed to hunt or they should pay compensation for the real losses,” he said. “It affects my whole life and my family.

[...]In much of Finland, reindeer hold a hallowed place in the collective imagination, perhaps akin to the buffalo in the history of the American West.

Before we discuss illegal police searches, here’s an interesting side note to introduce the topic: In Finland, the Names Act limits parents’ choices in naming their offspring; only names with historical and ethnic relevance are accepted as valid entries. In this case, parents were denied their preference, so they sued in the The European Court of Human Rights and won…

The European Court of Human Rights has delivered a judgement on a violation of Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human rights, following the refusal of the Finnish authorities to register the forename Axl Mick for the applicants’ son.

I assume this is an amalgam of the names Axl Rose and Mick Jagger. But only the parents know for sure.

Whereas the Names Act has been eased somewhat since 1999 when this case was first brought to The Court, there might be reason to believe that Finland is in conflict with Article 8 on another, perhaps more serious ground. Therefore, I would like to direct your attention to Article 8 of The European Convention on Human Rights, to which Finland is a signatory:

ARTICLE 8

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Imagine that you are stopped for suspicion of speeding, and the police demand to follow you home and rifle-through your personal files and data. Then, everything from pay records to investment and bank statements are used for determining the amount your fine should be.

In the United States, this would be considered “Illegal Search and Seizure” by police. The right to privacy is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads:

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Obviously, Finland is not the United States, so its residents can’t benefit from Fourth Amendment protections. But Finland did sign the aforementioned European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees everyone “the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right…”

The wording of Article 8 seems remarkably similar to the Fourth Amendment and is apparently meant to span an even broader range of circumstances. After all, The European Court of Human Rights determined that the naming of a person’s child is covered under Article 8’s definition. So, perhaps it is no big stretch to assume that a person’s personal financial data is also covered.

But that’s not all. Let’s consider that Article 8 of the the European Convention of Human Rights is grounded in Article 12 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Finland is also a signatory. It reads:

Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Of course, for the most part, this “interference with privacy” in Finland is done electronically; not via paper correspondence. Nonetheless, it’s an invasion of privacy. And in my opinion, the practice breaches both, Articles 8 & 12 of their respective conventions. It will be interesting to see if the newly elected Parliament addresses this impropriety or whether it’s yet another matter that needs to be tested by The European Court of Human Rights.

After all, if you’re an educated and talented professional who is considering a move to Finland, wouldn’t you expect to receive all the human rights protections granted to you by the European Union and United Nations?

And on a more personal level, would you want your private financial details closely examined by the average traffic cop? For a speeding ticket?

If you are interested in further reading, here is an excellent reference on this topic and more.