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.

Thanks to the long running Finnish grocery store racket, Finland’s already insanely high grocery store prices are increasing faster than any other EU state – and 2nd to only Iceland throughout Europe…

Food prices have risen faster in Finland than in any other EU state, finds Eurostat, the statistics centre of the European Union. The agency reports that the price of food in Finland is rising at a record speed of over 10 percent a year. Experts say there may be a lack of competition on the food market.

[...]“In Europe, only Iceland has outpaced Finland when it comes to rising food prices,” says Martti Luukko of the Finnish Consumers’ Association.

Luukko says that primary production composes a minor share of food prices. However the secondary production phase and grocery stores take the lion’s share of the price sticker. Experts say there may be something wrong with competition on the food market.

”Is it perhaps an issue of competition not being entirely effective?” asks Luukko.

Finland’s supermarket duopoly coupled with the people’s/state’s resistance to any new business (remember how hard everyone fought when Lidl arrived?) means that we get raped each week at the registers for the most basic of necessities.

Visit the foreign food stores in Hakaniemi for an eyeopening experience – everything is a fraction of the price you’re accustomed to, and these stores are essential boutiques who import everything from Asia (so BULLSHIT to anyone who says shipping to Finland is expensive).

“But Phil, you can’t trust those Asian fucks with our food!” …get your head out of your racist, ignorant ass.

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…

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

This is sort of old news, but I came across this article telling how a bloke named Colin Slater tried to take Mika Waltari’s book The Roman, change the name to Lindum Colonia, and sell it as his own work. Waltari wrote some real masterpieces, and all or most of them are also available in English. The most famous is Sinuhe, The Egyptian also know simply as The Egyptian. What an idiot to think he could take such a master’s work and try to call it his own, thinking noone would notice.

In a way it is flattering that someone would see the potential in such great works, but it is a pretty lowdown deliberate crime to take it, call it your own work, and then sell it to a publisher. If you want to make money selling Mika Waltari’s books, why not sell them as Mika Waltari’s books. The dude probably would have been stupid enough to move on to The Egyptian, and try to plagiarize it, when a Hollywood movie has even been made from it. This might also be an indication that it is time to make a new round of publishing Mika Waltari’s books.

If only more people spoke Finnish, there would be so much more good stuff that never gets translated into English that could be published.

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!

Growing up in Finland I heard a lot from the politicians “its a lottery win to be born in Finland”. When I had grown up I realized “you require a lottery win to be able to live in Finland”.

Things are expensive in Finland – maybe not that expensive in comparison with the other Nordic countries with a similar taxation and geographical structure, but expensive to the average consumer as the purchase power in Finland is low. The Finnish financial magazine Taloussanomat wrote about the purchase power in Finland earlier this month. According to the article , “Finns are paying themselves sick” for goods and services. Lack of competition is given as one of the a reasons why for example groceries in Finland cost one fifth more than the EU average. Finland has been quite notorious for keeping foreign competition out, and now that there are no more barriers it seems nobody is really interested in coming over as the volumes aren’t there. So Finland remains a keskolandia.

Now being somewhere at the EU average is one thing, but starting to compare things globally doesn’t make the prices look any better. When Phil goes to buy a chicken in Finland, his cousin in the USA can buy four chickens with the same price! The Iltalehti had a comparison of prices for groceries in Helsinki, Stockholm, London and New York, and it seems in the UK and USA (and London and New York are expensive cities), you can get by with about half of what you pay in Stockholm or Helsinki. Of course one explanation is the sheer volumes that bring the prices down, but it still is peculiar while milk or potatoes cost approximately the same, in some products, like meat, the price differences can be quadrupled.

With the global food shortage being blamed on the biofuels is causing food prices to go up, it still doesn’t quite explain why in Finland you need to pay your ass off just to buy your basic stuff. Then again if Norwegians come to buy “cheap booze” from Finland, we can say theres a place where things are worse. Or are they – the purchase power in Norway is higher than in Finland . Your avarage consumer is faced with the problem of rising prices and already now the shopping habits of people are changing. Maybe next year this time I’ll be sharing a potato and brown sauce recipe.

One small piece of news in the Iltalehti today struck me as a reminder of a past era. I guess it was the so-called “IT boom” in the late 1990’s in Finland that drew me along, so much I decided to change careers. Of course those guys who were in the forefront starting it went much higher up catching the stars – but they also burned in re-entry. According to the IL Jaakko Rytsölä was sentenced for more or less for “deliberately misallocating money from his debtors – read: tax office” to a year and six months in jail (probational) and 50 hours of community service.

Now you might ask “who”, but the Rytsölä brothers, Antti and Jaakko especially were branded as the icons of the new success story Finland was launching in the late 1990’s. Two brothers from a regular family had started from scratch in 1995 establishing DLC, one of the first ISP’s. Jaakko had started his own IT business when he was 16 selling computer parts, and when his little brother Antti joined him in Helsinki, he was selling hotdogs at the Helsinki Railway station to make the ends meet while the ISP business was in its fledgling state. A few mergers later the Saunalahti was formed and the young men in their twenties were all of a sudden millionaires, remembering that in 1992 the whole country had been more or less bankrupt. Of course the press hounded the new IT millionaires – after all a Lamborghini Diablo as a “company car”? The two young men were favorites in the tabloid headlines. Finnish envy nonwithstanding the flamboyant lifestyle annoyed some, so the police found a red Ferrari in Helsinki traffic a red flag and Jaakko Rytsölä was fined a whopping 100 000 euros for speeding in his Ferrari (oh, he had about seven cars at one time).

The laws of physics say what goes up must come down, unless the escape velocity is fast enough. A Lamborghini is too slow in Finland. When the “IT-boom” as the “dot.com bubble” was called in Finland turned into the bubble that burst, Jaakko Rytsölä lost overnight a record 6 million euros of his calculated wealth of 10 million in the autumn of 2001 when the Jippii group stock crashed 90%. By the spring of 2002 the tax office had filed him bankrupt, but the tax office was still after money, and the result of the trials that followed was handed out today. Jaakko Rytsölä has claimed innocence and stated that the money wasn’t hidden anywhere but was invested and thus was lost in the stock crashes.

The boom/bubble era had a lot of similar from rags-to riches-to rags stories. Many of the people were young and maybe perhaps been hearing from their parents the “no money” saga growing up so once money was coming from the doors and windows the “crazy years” of the 1980’s came back overnight. It was an era to seize the moment – but there were other people running away with the money. As the dot.com bubble burst in the USA, the flash downed several Finnish companies who had gone venturing to Europe such as Jippii and Sonera which lost huge investments in Germany. And the aftermath was bankrupcy trials, insider trading suits… USA had Enron but we had our own scandals we remember the 2000’s for.

Comparing to the “crazy years” of the 1980’s the dot.com bubble years in the 1990’s could be called “riot years”. If you haven’t seen it before, try to find the documentary Riot On!, its about a small Finnish gaming company Riot-E which got 20 million dollars of venture capital… and ” where the f*ck did it all go?”.

But at the end of the day – regardless of how far the frontier is – the tax office is the last man standing.

As it is summer we need to dig up old crap according to the best journalistic traditions of Finland.

Old news from around Easter – I think we were out to lunch when this happened, but Phil mentioned he got RickRolled… I guess he can count himself in good company.

The “minister of information” is saying “it is not a (security) breach before we have confirmed it is a (security) breach ourselves”.

Don’t know how far the “primitive system” has evolved from that, but its almost been… 4 days from the last time any “problems” were reported.

It’s time for my fourth annual summer board game auction, yay!! This time I’ve teamed up with my neighbor and close friend, Saku S., to bring you even MORE great games – here’s how it works…

Below are the starting prices. Simply leave a comment below with your bids. Each bid must be 1 euro higher than the previous. Please include both your name and e-mail address. (if your message doesn’t immediately appear, it may have got caught in my spam guard – I’ll check my spam throughout the day so just wait a few hours and it will show)

I will update this page daily with the highest bids – however, when placing a bid, search through the comments to be sure you are the highest bidder.

I’ll be at Ropecon 2008, so I can bring the games there. If you won’t be at Ropecon, I can meet you in Espoo, or send the games in the Post (at your expense). I’ll accept bank transfer or cash.

The auction begins now (July 30th) and ends on Friday, August 8th at 12:00.

Good luck! E-mail me with any questions: phil >>at>> finlandforthought . net

Latest update on the bids: Friday, August 8th at 15:00, Winners updated

	Age of Napoleon / Das Zeitalter Napoleons, Phalanx	5 EUR, Kalle Miller WINNER: 10 EUR, Valtteri Pirttilä	German version with printed English rules. Unplayed.
	Heart of Africa / Ins Innere Afrika, Phalanx	WINNER: 5 EUR, Mika	German version with scanned printed English rules. Unplayed.
	Elasund: The First City of Catan, Kosmos	5 EUR 6 EUR, raaf WINNER: 7 EUR, Mirko	German version with printed English rules. Played maybe two times.
	Quarto!, Gigamic	5 EUR	Good condition.
	Marco Polo Expedition, Rio Grande	WINNER: 5 EUR, barber	English version. Good condition.
	New England, Goldsieber	5 EUR, Timo Malvisalo6 EUR, Hessu 9 EUR, Timo Malvisalo WINNER: 10 EUR, Hessu	Played condition.
	Scene it!, Screenlife LLC	10 EUR	First Edition (2003). Played condition.
	Space Dealer, Eggert Spiele	10 EUR 15 EUR, Kalle Miller WINNER: 18 EUR, Valtteri Pirttilä	German version with printed English rules. Good condition.
	Die Weinhändler, Amigo	2 EUR, Mosse 3 EUR, JoeLamer 5 EUR, Mosse WINNER: 6 EUR, metsku	German version with printed English rules. Good condition.
	Taru Sormusten Herrasta/Lord of the Rings, Tactic	5 EUR, Timo Malvisalo 7 EUR, Timo Malvisalo WINNER: 12 EUR,  Mirko	Finnish version. Unplayed.
	Combat Commander: Volume II – Mediterranean, GMT Games	15 EUR WINNER: 30 EUR, Vesa	In shrink. Unopened.
	Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery , Tropical Games	15 EUR 21 EUR, Patrik Lervik WINNER: 33 EUR, Tombad	With the components for extra player shipped with pre-order, box a bit caved in during shipment.
	4 x card games package	WINNER: 2 EUR, JoeLamer	Lao Pengh, Up & Down and Turbo from Adlung Spiele (all with English rules) + Herzlos from Winning Moves (German with no English rules)
	Amyitis, Ystari	5 EUR12 EUR, Mosse 13 EUR, Opettaja H. WINNER: 15 EUR, raaf	Played   3 times, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Augusburg 1520, Alea	5 EUR, Ossessione 9 EUR, Mirko WINNER: 15 EUR,  Mirko	Played 4 times, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Before the Wind, Mayfair	3 EUR WINNER: 9 EUR, Ossessione	Played once, like new. English edition.
	Blue Moon City, Kosmos	5 EUR 10 EUR, oskari 12 EUR, raaf WINNER: 13 EUR, Mika	Played several times, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Chicago Poker, Phalanx	WINNER: 3 EUR, barber	Played several times, like new. English edition.
	Darjleeing, Abacus	5 EUR 8 EUR, Jhua 9 EUR, metsku WINNER: 10 EUR, Jhua	Played once, like new. English edition.
	Double or Nothing, Uberplay (Reiner Knizia)	5 EUR	Played several times, like new. English edition.
	Evergreen, Goldseiber (Wolfgang Kramer)	WINNER: 2 EUR, Cane	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Great Wall of China, Kosmos (Reiner Knizia)	3 EUR WINNER: 5 EUR, Timo Tikkanen	Played several times, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Limits, Amigo (Uwe Rosenberg)	2 EUR, JoeLamer WINNER: 3 EUR, Cane	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Lucky Loop, Queen	3 EUR	Played twice, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Rage, Fundex	2 EUR, barber WINNER: 3 EUR, Cane	Played once, like new. English edition.
	Saludos Amigos!, Goldseiber	5 EUR	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Sleuth, Face-2-Face (Sid Sackson)	5 EUR WINNER: 10 EUR, Timo Tikkanen	Played once, like new. English edition.
	Walhalla, Amigo	5 EUR, Timo Malvisalo 6 EUR, Hessu 9 EUR, Timo Malvisalo WINNER: 10 EUR, Hessu	Played several times, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Ziegen Kriegen, Amigo	2 EUR, JoeLamer 3 EUR, metsku WINNER: 5 EUR, Cane	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Shogun, Queen (Dirk Henn)	10 EUR 25 EUR, Mosse 31 EUR, Mirko WINNER: 40 EUR, Jhua	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules.
	Thurn & Taxis: All Roads Lead to Rome, Rio Grande Games (Andreas Seyfarth)	5 EUR 6 EUR, JoeLamer 7 EUR, Hessu 9 EUR, Hessu WINNER: 11 EUR, Hessu	Played once, like new. English edition.
	Buccaneer, Queen (Stefan Dorra)	5 EUR, Hessu 7 EUR, Hessu WINNER: 13 EUR, Eikku	Played several times, like new. English edition.
	Imperial, Eggert-Spiele	10 EUR 30 EUR,  Timo Tikkanen WINNER: 31 EUR, pillar	Played   once, like new.  English edition.
	Canal Mania, Ragnar Brothers	10 EUR 11 EUR,  Niko WINNER: 12 EUR, Hessu	Played   once, like new.  English edition. Signed by the designers!
	Eketorp, Queen (Dirk Henn)	10 EUR 11 EUR, Akseli Pulkkinen 16 EUR, Hessu 20 EUR, Akseli Pulkkinen WINNER: 22 EUR, Akseli Pulkkinen	Played once, like new. German edition with English rules

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.