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To the hills, to the hills - the Vikings are coming. Ish.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009
From that perennial source of interesting things, English language Swedish daily, The Local (Thanks folks):

Sweden should consider joining its Nordic neighbours in forming a five-country federation in order to increase the region’s weight on the international stage, a Swedish historian proposes.

A union between the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland – would give them a seat at big international gatherings, writes social scientist, historian, and author Gunnar Wetterberg...

In proposing the creation of a Nordic 'bloc of ice', Wetterberg suggests that Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II would be the union’s obvious leader, drawing parallels between the Kalmar Union, which united Sweden, Denmark, and Norway from 1397 to 1523 and was governed by the Danish Queen Margareta. 
The Union of Kalmar looked rather like this:



Note that our Scandiwegian friends held both the Orkneys and the Shetlands at the time, so that would stuff Scotland's oil-based dreams in a fairly big way. 

Were I Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, or come to that, Harald V of Norway, I'd be a bit miffed that the Danes get the catbird seat.  However, if memory serves, Queen Margareta has the distinction of having translated Camus into Danish, which makes her rather more of an intellectual than the average crowned head.

Our doughty social historian has spotted a few holes in his plan, however:

"He admits, however, that language might be a problem. “One solution would be to have all students learn another Nordic language from the start, in addition to their mother tongue,” he proposes. He believes that a unified Nordic region is completely realistic, “not least because of Swedish arrogance has subsided in recent decades”.

Erm, can't say I was aware of that.

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posted by Croydonian

If Lloyds HBOS gave money to Labour

Thursday, August 13, 2009
It might end up with a few broken windows, and certainly the loss of some business (1).

However, the Finns do things differently, as only now has the issue of donations to political parties by state-controlled companies become a live issue in those parts:

"Finland’s political parties would lose an important source of income if companies in which the state has a majority shareholding were banned from contributing to political parties. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) said on Tuesday that he feels that it is not appropriate for such companies to take part in financing political activities".

The sums involved are verging on the pitiful: "The [Centre] party says that it has received about EUR 20,000 from companies with a majority state holding between 2006 and 2009...Coming in second is the Social Democratic Party, which has received more than EUR 20,000 from state-owned companies, including both contributions to the party in general and for individual SDP candidates".

It turns out that the funding is mainly from companies buying tickets to seminars, but even so.


(1) I continue my one-man boycott of the Co-Op in all its forms, and occasionally get the opportunity to aver to some greenhorn, 'If you shop there, you may as well just fork over money to the Labour party right now.'

My Ma, otherwise thoroughly sound, would sometimes have to make use of a Co-Op in the nearest town, it being the only supermarket in those parts. So far so not very interesting, but she would then decant the marmalade or whatever in order to disguise her dealings from my father. This would have been to avoid a lecture, rather than anything worse, I hasten to add.

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And to think that I thought the British TV licensing system was iniquitous

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Looks like we have got nothing on the Finns:

"Financing of YLE [BBC equivalent] operations would come from a new “media fee”, which would replace the licence fee that owners of television sets are required to pay. The new fee would be introduced in 2011, and would be paid by all households. Also liable for the fee would be companies with an annual turnover of more than EUR 400,000.

The proposed fee would differ from the television fee in that all households would be required to pay it regardless of whether or not they own a television, radio, or computer. About 97 per cent of Finns use at least some YLE services on a weekly basis. Plans are for the fee to be EUR 175 (£158)".

Don't be surprised if the BBC's last grab at the brass ring is something along those lines.


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Astonishing policing insight o' the day

Monday, February 02, 2009
This from Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, reporting the thoughts of an FBI bod sojourning in parts Finnish:

"[Mary Ellen] O’Toole’s message was that it is impossible to draw up a reliable profile to identify a [school] killer in advance...Mary Ellen O’Toole emphasised that kids can say that they hate school and the whole world, and that nobody understands them. It is hard to recognise how serious such comments are. Many school pupils can do very crazy things without being up to perpetrating a massacre".

Well worth paying her to fly over to deliver those particular pearls of wisdom, eh?



As a footnote, my 1977 declaration that I was going to wait until I was thirty, when a much loathed P.E teacher would be 50 odd, and then hunt him down and tear out his viscera with a rusty bread knife turned out to be just so much talk. Fancy. Still, I hope plenty of unpleasant things have happened to him in the last 32 years.

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Happy the land that has no news

Saturday, June 21, 2008
To adapt Brecht.

Anyway, Finland would look to be the place to be in July, as this is what is showing at the site of Helsingin Sanomat, an English language site I have bookmarked:

"The International Edition will be offline for the whole of the month of July...Though there can be exceptions, July is not traditionally a very big month for "hard" news in Finland, either in politics or in business, as the country, too, is in recess, and is more or less "closed" for the duration".

Whereas we just have skateboarding ducks and so on heading the news agenda.

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Economic acts between consenting adults

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
The Finns have just enacted legislation that makes it unlawful to offer multi pack discounts for beer: "the price of an individual bottle or can of beer must be the same, regardless of whether it is bought singly or in a larger package". Source

And there's more, "any special offer pricing on drinks must be a long-term affair: the offer must be in effect for at least two months, rather than a spot benefit for shoppers, for instance at the weekend".

I could rail in the usual way about the iniquity of all this, but instead I think there is more fun to be had in wondering how this will be circumvented. The most obvious seems to be to make larger cans or bottles cheaper per litre / fluid ounce. Beyond that, packing cans or bottles in sealed boxes of 6, 10 or 12 might be another good move, as would making single can availability etc limited.

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Finland to decide - NATO or Molotov cocktails?

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
They have themselves a bit of quandary:

"According to an assessment issued on Tuesday by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), Finland should join NATO only if it is ready to defend other member states of the alliance against an attack... According to the writers, in such a case, Finns should not expect other countries to come to their aid if Finland is attacked".

It is, indeed, a cold hard world out there.

I think it is fair to say that Finland's neighbours to the North and West do not have designs on the place, and "the Bear that walks like a Man" was intent on selling back some of the bits it seized in 1940, rather than eyeing Espoo, Tampere and Turku with malicious intent.

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Something to chew on

Thursday, October 25, 2007
I do not suppose many people have heard of the Åland Islands, but they are an autonomous archipelago in the Baltic Sea, ruled by Finland but Swedish speaking.

Anyway, the Alanders look to have got themselves into a bit of a hole, because ferries registered in the islands have been selling this stuff:

They are not the grim teabags they appear to be, but rather are pouches of snus, a chewing tobacco popular in Sweden and Norway, but banned elsewhere in the EU.

And this is where the Alanders have a problem. Quite a big one, actually, as the EU is intent on levying a fine for this wickedness, and "Åland and Finland have an agreement according to which Åland pays its own EU fines". So €2m, and counting, is not an insignificant sum, and works out at about €75 per head.

But how is the EU going to get its greasy mitts on the money, I wonder?

Meanwhile, the islands have their own top level internet domain in .ax.

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A novel approach to foreign policy, national debt etc

Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Russians and the Finns fought a comparatively little known war in 1939-1940, notable for the Finns inventing the Molotov Cocktail and giving the Red Army a remarkably bloody nose, although eventually giving up the unequal struggle and signing a peace deal that saw substantial chunks of Finland passed over to the USSR, per the map below.



So much for the history lesson. The more immediately interesting thing is that the Finns are falling over themselves to deny that there were talks twist Helsinki and Moscow in the early 90s over the USSR selling Karelia to Finland for what looks to be the bargain price of €10 billion. That figure is considerably less than the cost of the wretched outdoor steroid abuse fest London will have to suffer in 2012.

Some years back the idea of Yakutia ('Siberia') being sold by the Russian Federation to the US, Alaska-style was floated, so maybe this is a way forward. I think we should make the French an offer for Gascony.

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When did we win the Cold War?

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Not, I would think in 1982. Brezhnev was in power until November of that year, Trident and cruise missile deployments were, ahem, controversial, the Red Army roamed freely in Afghanistan and Central and Eastern Europe were well and truly under the Red Wheel. While Thatcher and Reagan were doing a splendid job of sinew stiffening, it was by no means clear that the miracle of '89-91 was on its way.

So much for the history lesson. I pose the question as the Finns have decided to open up the archives to show the results of surveillance of the Finnish Communists. Said party was aligned with Moscow, polled 15-20% in elections and Finland was, after all, 'Finlandised'. While I imagine that the records will be mainly taken up by interminable exegeses of dialectical materialism and the like, I would imagine that there are a few bombshells lurking in the minutes of the central committee's meetings. The relevance to 1982 is that the then Finnish president decided that year was a really great time to pull the plug on the operation as "he did not feel that the surveillance of communists was necessary". I find that a surprising choice.

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Don't go to Sweden - you might catch something, or get hit by an elk

Saturday, January 20, 2007
Intent on my usual Nordic round up, I discovered that the average Swede took 39.6 days off sick last year. In these parts even the public sector 'only' managed 7 days . The last link is worth clicking as the HSE ties itself in knots trying to justify the goldbricking in the state sector. However, the Swedish statistics must necessarily be skewed by the inclusion of 'health-related early retirement'.

As if all of the Typhoid Emmas and Lukases were not enough to warn off the unwary traveller, "Road accidents involving elk in Sweden jumped 20 percent in 2006"(Source).

Crossing the border, Aftenpost headlines 'Royal terror exercises', and imagine my disaappointment that this does not involve King Harald stomping around Trondheim in a Hillary Clinton mask, Queen Sonja sporting a white sheet and making 'wooh' noises or even the Crown Princess breaking down doors with a fire axe and declaring 'HERE's Mette-Marit!' Ah well.

Finally, I think the Helsingen Sanomat might be suffering from low self-esteem, as it has a page called 'A list of possibly useful links for readers '. Given that one of the early links is to 'the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions', perhaps the questioning tone is not misplaced.

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Another Nordic round up

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
First up, the results are in for the most popular names for newborns in Sweden in 2006. The equivalent of Jack and Chloe are Lukas and Emma, and Sven has fallen out of the top 100. I suppose we will have to find a new emblematic name for the stereotypical Swedish male, and further research shows that Bruce does not feature in the top 20 in Oz.

Elsewhere, Sweden's next prime minister is quite likely to be the first woman to hold the office, as a sufficiency of Social Democrat party districts have already backed her ahead of the March congress.

Hopping over the Gulf of Bothnia, the Finns have an election in March, and political websites yonder sound rather more fun than those in these parts, as a Social Democratic pol reckons "One should enjoy one's visit even to an election website" and "a playful test on the Christian Democrats' website reveals whether one is a sobersided moralist type or not". Crikey.

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