Milk has gotten much more expensive. Juice has gotten much more expensive. Beef has gotten expensive. In the news they say bread is going to get more expensive. Fuel has gotten more expensive. My electricity bill has gotten more expensive. The TV permit is going up 4%. Day care has gone up. Housing prices have gone up. Public transportation, and so on and so on.

I don’t really believe much in what the Minister of Finance, Jyrki Katainen has been saying about lowering taxes and us getting more buying power. I will believe it when it happens. Lowering VAT on food 5% might help a bit with food prices, but if the past teaches us anything, the stores in will jack up the prices to fill the gap quickly. Salaries just are not going up at the rate of all these prices, and we are heading for a face first plunge economically, if this keeps going on. I am not the only person affected. The reality will hit when people start not having enough money to live on and we fall into recession.

Finland has no mandated “minimum salary”. Someone asking that question will get the question back - “what will you be doing?” as the minimum salary in each job is more or less mandated by the comprehensive union agreements that differ a bit if you’re working in the public or private sector and also between industries (A lot of strikes recently have been about a job being outsourced and the new company having a different union agreement, cooks of bank cafeterias and cleaners at the paper factory come to mind). So everyone gets “union wages” in Finland.

But what are the wages then like? Taloussanomat did a survey on the average wages in Finland according to the average salary statistics by job classification and by gender, and compared the lowest rung of the ladder to the higher within the same profession. (The categories are by the Finnish Statistics Centre). Now it is said that the “wage differences in Finland are not that big”. Lets rephrase that, about as like the “cars are the cheapest in Finland” it makes everybody laugh as you need to remember the taxes on top. So the wage differences of the bring-home-pay are not as big in Finland - due to the progressive income taxation.

So who has the suckiest average salary doing a regular 9-5 workday your 38-40 hours a week? (Military not included.) A fraction under the 1600 euro limit would be for women a “farmhand” and for men a “laundry worker”. Thats about the lowest you can get… even a “cleaner” gets in the ballpark of 1700 euros average. But does education help? Do specialists get more salary? Do managers? That again depends on your profession. The lower rung of the specialist ladder is again farm work, a seminologist is in the 1700 euro ballpark. And if you get into mismanagement, the worst salaries are in the hotel- and tourism business.

Now as we’re talking of average salaries the survey also looks into the highest salaries. A stock and currency exchange banker or then your chief surgeon might get into the 5000 -6000 euro category, but thats the top end of the average “rich guys” salary. So what is the salary difference like? According to the nifty tax calculator provided by VERO ( just ballpark figures counted with 13 mo salary ):

1600e/month your income tax% is 16,5, take home pay ~ 1336 euros a month
6000e/month your income tax% is 36,5, take home pay ~ 3827 euros a month

So before taxes the income is 3,75 times, after taxes only 2,8… yay, socialism! BTW the SDP party secretary makes 6900 euros a month… yay socialism!

Travelling especially to the USA got a bit more interesting now that all new passports should be biometric. When I heard first of this biometric thing I was wondering if they had a strip of my DNA there like in every half-decent sci-fi movie or at least a retinal scan like they have in every spy movie, but the “biometric data” is as boring as a mugshot, and starting later next year fingerprints.

Or are fingerprints boring? They’ve been used for over a hundred years in forensics to identify people, as fingerprints are unique to each person. You have every other crime movie out there having someone dusting for fingerprints, even in CSI they still do it though it requires super glue and and hot air. So its definitely something even your average joe on the street recognizes whats it for.

The Aamulehti today ripped a headline over the newly appointed Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero wanting to form a fingerprint registry of Finnish citizens. Within ten years all adult Finnish citizens would be fingerprinted as fingerprinting would be a prerequisite of getting a passport (and probably ID card as well) The reason given is that with the registry it would be impossible to use forged passports and of course it would enable the police to find out their perps quite effectively. The Data Protection Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio is all against the idea of establishing a national fingerprint register.

In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

FFT has been somewhat silent of the recent politicial events in Finland. Of course this is smoking gun evidence of censorship, but as the reality is not quite as sinister I’ll do something to rectify the situation now that the database has finally stopped hiccuping.

The proverbial shit hit the fan in May,  from a very offhand statement over election funding. The law passed in 2000 states that MP’s should make a public notice of donations that were over 1700 euros from a single donor.  The Centre parliamentary group leader Timo Kalli went ahead and made  a statement in A-studio tv talkshow that he hadn’t  disclosed  some of his biggest donors - and wouldn’t - as there weren’t any sanctions for not disclosing the donors.  Now a parliamentarian who had himself been drafting the very legislation  showing such a disrespect to the law got people, both in the parliament and the public, to demand if not his head on the platter some other organs put in a vice.

After Kalli had let the cat out of the bag, several more MP’s got a miraculous cure from amnesia and  donors started to appear on the lists.  A curious  “association”  that had donated  money to several Centre party candidates was  “Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi” (Finland of Developing Provinces) that after several weeks of  hounding by the press was shown to be made up at the Centre party office, and the funds it redistributed were mainly by a quintet of businessmen with their hands in real estate and other development projects in the “provinces”. Now having a “friendly politician” has always been a businessman’s wet dream, and even if it was only dreaming, a few statements that have been published make the ties too close for comfort.

There were a few other than Centre party candidates who got money from the association, but most of the money was channelled to the Centre. The Centre party claimed to have had no knowledge over the dealings, until it came into public that not only the Centre party officers had been involved in the association, but namely the head of development had been in access of the bank accounts and made money transfers.  Of course, both the head of development and the party secretary have taken a sick leave. The prime minister has distanced himself from the scandal and is now in Japan learning the art of public harakiri.

The public uproar has achieved something - there is an agreement of donation caps, 3000 euros in the municipal elections and 6000 in the parliamentary. As a gentlemen’s agreement it is to be passed as a law - though if there will be sanctions that remains to be seen.

There is a lot of articles on ths case and its slow unfolding and the squirming of politicians in the HS International Edition.  The latest one today, but theres going to be a lot more unraveling. The question of the opposition trying to topple the Prime Minister isn’t quite out of  the question, and the Centre Party is having its own annual meeting shortly and the discussion there can also get somewhat heated.

Minister of the Interior Anne Holmlund has called for age limits and supervision to protect children and young people on the internet.

Addressing a seminar on the use of the internet by young users, Holmlund noted that on-line message boards are popular among the young. For that reason, she feels that they should have security personnel just like entertainment venues in the offline world do.

LOL!! There’s gazillions of forums out there, how exactly does she expect for the administrators to check people’s ages?? And how about forums outside the country?

When Bill Clinton pardoned people on his way out of the Oval Office, the nation went into a frenzy, as they should. When Finnish President Tarja Hanlonen pardons dozens of people each year, no one blinks an eye…

Over the past two years, President Halonen has granted pardons to a number of shoplifters and drunken drivers or to people whose unpaid fines have been converted into imprisonment. Typically, a pardon is not the same as the overruling of a fixed-term prison sentence, but it means that a prison sentence can be passed as conditional.

[...]In the majority of pardon cases, Halonen reached the same conclusion as the Supreme Court had done. The President cannot grant a pardon to a prisoner without a statement from the Supreme Court. The Ministry of Justice requests statements from the Supreme Court, while the President is entitled to an independent decision on the matter and is not forced to observe the recommendations made by the Supreme Court.

Incidentally, President Halonen has granted parole to some people who have been convicted of crimes pertaining to the refusal to perform military service or unarmed military service, even though the Supreme Court has given a negative statement on the issue. Only one in five parolees who had refused to perform military service had received a favourable opinion from the Supreme Court.

Moreover, two female murder convicts and one woman found guilty of attempted murder were granted parole by Halonen against the recommendation by the Supreme Court.

[...]The President does not give reasons for her pardon decisions, which are mainly confidential information.

Wow! Well fuck the judicial system and fuck democracy. Should judges and juries be making these important decisions?! Isn’t this all the qualities of a…dictator!?