The Great Nordic Thread

[CumbrianLefty]

Yeah you don't like her, we get it.

[Helsinkian]

I have an aversion to cults of personality.

[If my soul was made of stone]

You just hate to see a girlboss living her best life. SAD!

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Hopefully Silvio berlusconi requests foreign minister when the nightmare alliance wins italy, and immediately makes as many diplomatic trips to Finland as possible. Either that or offers Sanna asylum to escape the anti-partyrock lifestyle discrimination that is endemic in Finland.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Meanwhile in Oz our PM went to a concert and got heckled by the crowd into skolling a beer. And the media is celebrating him as the spectacular man of the people… god the Finnish are weird.

[crals]

Is partying looked down in Finnish culture? As an outsider it's hard to understand what about Sanna Marin's behavior required a tearful apology. Even the infamous picture in the official residence doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

“ Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me, and only in me shall their stain move on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all that I am.”

[Helsinkian]

The current controversy in Finnish politics concerns the possibility of a nurse strike. The government is trying to pass a law which would prevent the nurses from striking. The nurses' union calls this a "forced labour law" and has announced that their nurses will start resigning from their posts if it passes. That would be a strike by another name, and the union would pay compensation for its members for it -- though one wonders how long it could afford such an action.

Going so hard against unions and their right to strike is of course awkward for the government's left-wing parties in a country which has traditionally been very permissive of strikes -- and six months before an election. PM Marin tweeted in 2018 that women-led professions (like nurses) should go on a general strike for higher wages, but now she considers this law necessary. One MP of the Left Alliance suggested that the controversy could lead to the party having to leave the coalition.

Finnish nurses' wages have lagged behind their colleagues in similar countries. One also often hears that there is a shortage of nurses, even though Finland has more nurses per capita than most other EU countries. One reason for this is that Finnish nurses are responsible for duties that in other countries' hospitals are done by physicians or admin staff.

Update: The bill was passed by parliament. Left Alliance backed it (with the exception of five MPs) after it was amended so that the fines for striking go to the union and not the individual nurses.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

A very informative article published this morning in Aftonbladet:

"The Social Democrats' shift from labor party to middle class party: before they wanted to lift the working class, now they want everyone to leave it"

(Note: the article uses the term "klassresor", which literally translates into English as "class trip/journey", which makes it sound like they are talking about school field trips, but what it really means is "class mobility")

https://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/a/nQWzzQ/bo-rothstein-om-socialdemokraterna-och-klassresor

You can roughly say that up to and including Ingvar Carlsson 's time as party leader, Social Democracy's policy was aimed at raising and strengthening the position of the working class.

During Mona Sahlin 's time as party leader, however, there is a reversal of social democratic politics that has not received the attention it deserves. Instead of a policy that elevates the working class as a class, the main aim becomes to pursue a policy that, to the greatest extent possible, makes it possible to leave the working class. In her speeches as party leader and especially in the election campaign that was her first and last as party leader, Sahlin repeated almost like a mantra that Sweden would be a country where it was easy to make "class trips".

But the message, that the central point of the policy you want to pursue is to enable as many as possible to no longer belong to the working class, is a bit strange for a party that actually calls itself a "working party".

Many of the working-class voters of Social Democracy must have felt a certain alienation in the face of this rhetoric, where one could sense a certain contempt for those who had not succeeded in making class trips.

Added to this is the education policy that the party has pursued over the past 20 years. It has assumed that, in principle, all upper secondary education, i.e. also the so-called vocational programmes, must provide university competence. This has meant that the requirements for entering upper secondary vocational education have become so high that as many as 15 percent of the young people who leave primary school lack the qualifications.

Many of these young people end up in a situation where there is no place for them in any education, but they also don't get a job because very many employers nowadays rate applicants without a high school education even when it comes to more manual jobs. The whole thing becomes even more absurd because today there is a great shortage of personnel in many traditional working class professions and that the number of places in upper secondary education for such professions has been greatly reduced. Anyone who wants to train to become a skilled (and not so rarely nowadays well-paid) professional worker often does not get into the vocational program at the upper secondary school, either because they have not passed in a number of subjects that are actually completely irrelevant to acquiring the education in question or because there are very few places.

The problems for these young people who have failed the grading system have been noticed from many different quarters. Social physicians have pointed out that Sweden now has an unusually high mortality rate for young people compared to comparable countries , and that this can be traced back to as many as one in seven 16-year-olds being labeled as "failed".

Educators have questioned whether the grading system is at all compatible with the possibility of conducting good teaching .

Experienced police officers testify that what generally distinguishes all the young members of criminal gangs with whom they come into contact is that they left school as "failed" and that this group is easily recruited into gang crime .

A more reasonable message would have been that the party strove for Sweden to both offer the best possible conditions for those who wanted to train to become skilled workers, while also providing very good opportunities for those who wanted a different career path.

This is a pretty eye-opening article, but it confirms that the debates that are happening around the world in terms of excessive focus on university preparation in the education system are also happening in Sweden. Combined with residential segregation from Sweden's ridiculous housing policies and prices, you will see many aimless young people (especially young men) drawn into criminality.

Education policy is one area, along with housing policy, where I feel that Germany really outperforms Sweden with regards to recognizing multiple valid life-career paths and not having an obsessive focus on university preparation. The apprenticeship system and strong technical training not only supports Germany's strong manufacturing sector, but also provides a place for people for whom academics just aren't their strong suit and puts value on skilled manual labor.

I still have mixed feelings about how young the German system sorts people into different educational paths, but it's good that Germany doesn't buy into the obsessive focus on universities to the detriment of skilled manual labor.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Kristersson coalition going anti-immigration in deal to make peace with the Swedish Dems:

LINK

[If my soul was made of stone]

Swedish Dems

no one has ever said this

[Helsinkian]

The most recent issue causing a crisis in the Finnish government is a bill that concerns the Sami Parliament's electoral rolls. Essentially, around 60 percent of the Sami want to declare the remaining 40 percent to be "non-Sami" (claiming that their connection to the Sami language and community is too distant) and kick them out of the electoral rolls. Marin's government, with the exception of the Centre Party, has wanted to pass a bill that would allow them to do that. The Centre Party is strongly opposed.

Marin could still bring the bill to parliament and might be able to pass it with votes from the opposition National Coalition Party. But that would go against the long-standing tradition that the government only puts forth bills which the government backs unanimously. And with elections in April, the bill might not make it out of the committees in time anyway (after the election, the process would have to start from the beginning).

There are around 6,000 people on the electoral rolls of Finland's Sami Parliament, and the bill would purge over 2,000 of them. The majority of the Sami in Finland seemingly want the definition of who is Sami to be so stringent that their numbers will probably go to zero in a hundred years. In that sense they remind me of the Parsi of India.

[Helsinkian]

Part of the reason why the Centre Party is desperate for some wins before the election:

Kantar/HS poll (change from 2019 election)

National Coalition Party 24.2% (+7.2)
Social Democratic Party 19.3 (+1.6)
Finns Party 17.4 (-0.1)
Centre Party 10.1 (-3.7)
Green League 9.2 (-2.3)
Left Alliance 8.0 (-0.2)
Swedish People's Party 4.4 (-0.1)
Christian Democrats 3.3 (-0.6)
Movement Now 1.9 (-0.4)

[Helsinkian]

The organisers of Helsinki Pride have banned the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party from taking part in this summer's Pride events. This is because some of their MPs voted against the trans self-ID law that was passed at the end of the last parliament. While the majority (13 to 12) of Centre MPs voted against it, most NCP MPs actually voted for it (26 for, 10 against), and the bill would not have become law without their votes. The Finns Party and the Christian Democrats of course also voted against, but they have never wanted to take part in Pride anyway.

[Helsinkian]

Some recent Finnish political news from the past few days:

1) Minister Junnila

The new Finnish government, which started its work a week ago, came close to collapsing today in a confidence vote on the Finns Party's Minister of Economic Affairs, Vilhelm Junnila. Normally, such votes are predictable party-line affairs. However, this time there were desertions in the governing coalition, as 7 MPs of the Swedish People's Party voted for no confidence, another 3 SPP MPs abstained, and 2 National Coalition Party MPs did not vote despite being present. In the end, Junnila received confidence with 95 votes for, and 86 against (there is no requirement to get a majority of all 200 MPs; only a majority of those voting, not counting abstentions). If all opposition MPs had been present, the no-confidence motion would have succeeded, but many were absent. SPP had suggested that the Finns Party swap Junnila for someone else, but Finns Party's leader Riikka Purra declined and stated that the party would have left the coalition if the motion had succeeded.

The Junnila controversy concerns his perceived far-right links. First, a few years ago he had been a speaker at an event attended by neo-nazis. He countered that it was an event open for everyone (a memorial on the anniversary of an islamist terrorist attack), and the nazis just happened to show up. Second, in the 2019 election he had been assigned the electoral number 88 -- that was not the issue, as the numbers are assigned randomly to candidates; however, it can be argued that he did some dogwhistling when he then used the slogan 'On the 14th day, 88' in a banner. He countered that he was merely stating the date of the election and his electoral number, but of course the combination of the numbers 14 and 88 has another meaning as well. And then ahead of this year's election, when another candidate of the party in his district was assigned the number 88, Junnila was recorded saying in an event: 'Congratulations on the excellent electoral number. I know it's a winning card. 88 of course refers to two H letters, of which I won't say more.' Junnila later regreted this as an inaproppriate joke.

Edit. 30 June: Two days after the confidence vote, Junnila has resigned, as the controversies around him continued to swirl. The final straw was the Christian Democrats turning against him after discovering a parliamentary motion from four years ago where Junnila advocated for the expansion of abortion services in Africa as a solution to climate change, calling the proposal "climate abortions".

2) Deputy Mayor caught spray-painting a graffiti

Left Alliance's Paavo Arhinmäki, former Minister of Culture and currently one of Helsinki's deputy mayors, was caught spray-painting an illegal graffiti in a train tunnel in the neighbouring city of Vantaa. He is being billed €3,500 for the cleanup and also faces charges for obstructing rail traffic. He is still expected to continue in his office. Arhinmäki has a history of supporting 'counter culture' and has advocated the establishing of places to paint legal graffitis; this was not such a location, however.

3) Lenin Park renamed

Helsinki City Council has voted (57 to 20) to rename the City's Lenin Park. The small park was named after Vladimir Lenin in 1970, during the era of 'Finlandisation' -- but even as late as 2000 the city tried to place a bust of Lenin in the park, though that fell through. The park's new name will be decided later.

4) 'Independent' candidates for President

Candidates have started to announce their bids for the January 2024 presidential election, and many are choosing to stand as independents. These include Pekka Haavisto, Olli Rehn, Paavo Väyrynen and possibly Mika Aaltola. This despite the fact everyone knows that Haavisto is Green and Rehn is Centre Party -- apparently they think they will get more votes as nominally independent candidates. For Väyrynen, this would be his fifth presidential election (he was previously Centre's candidate thrice, and an independent candidate once). Aaltola is a foreign policy expert who has received a lot of air time commenting on Russia and its war in Ukraine; he has not officially announced, but is reportedly leaning towards it. The Finnish President's powers are mainly in the fields of foreign and defence policy (but not EU policy, as that is not counted as foreign policy).

[NewYorkExpress]

Vilhelm Junnila is out as Finland's Economy Minister over repeated Nazi jokes.

Finland's economy minister, Vilhelm Junnila, has resigned his post after sustained allegations of ties to right-wing extremists as well as a series of distasteful Nazi jokes.

Junnila is a member of the anti-immigrant Finns Party, which is part of Finland's new four-party center-right ruling coalition.

Though he survived a vote of no-confidence called by opposition politicians in Finland's Parliament on June 28, Junnila announced he was stepping down Friday, saying, "For the continuation of the government and the reputation of Finland, I see that it is impossible for me to continue as a minister in a satisfactory way."

Junnila had come under fire for, among other things, a public speech that he had given in 2019 related to a far-right memorial in the western Finnish town of Turku. He was also criticized for repeated Nazi jokes.

The populist apparently joked with a fellow Finns Party politician in a campaign speech on March 10, calling his candidate number — 88 — a good omen.

"First of all, congratulations for the excellent candidate number. I know it's a winning card. Obviously, this '88' refers to two H letters which we won't say more about." The number is a popular cipher among neo-Nazis who use it as code for the phrase Heil Hitler.

Media reports said Junnila had repeatedly joked about the number in the past.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

What’s going on with the Norwegian Rodt leader charged with shoplifting? It’s seems such a bizarre story.

[NewYorkExpress]

Finnish Finance Minister Riikka Purra is under fire for racist comments made in 2008 on social media.

Finnish finance minister Riikka Purra has apologized after she made racist comments in 2008 that were recently discovered online.

The leader of the far-right Finns Party said her old comments were “stupid” and that she was sorry for the harm they had caused.

“I apologise for the stupid comments I made 15 years ago on social media and the harm and upset they understandably caused, I am not a perfect person, I have made mistakes,” Purra said in a series of tweets on Tuesday.


“Taken out of context and judged in the present, some of the texts seem even worse. I do not accept violence, racism or discrimination of any kind,” she added.

One post captured in the digital archive website “Wayback Machine” under the username “Riikka” used racist language and made anti-immigrant slurs to describe multiculturalism in Spain.

[NewYorkExpress]

Sanna Marin is quitting politics and joining a nonprofit based in London.

Former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin, who was one of Europe’s youngest leaders and a strong voice in supporting Ukraine, said Thursday she’s quitting politics and will join a London-based nonprofit organization.

....
Marin will join the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and earlier this month, the nonprofit organization said she would become “strategic counsellor.”

[JimJamUK]

Marin will join the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and earlier this month, the nonprofit organization said she would become “strategic counsellor.”

Christ that’s a dire career move.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rest in pieces sweet princess

[Helsinkian]

Finland has confirmed the purchase of the Israeli David's Sling air defence system, becoming its first operator outside Israel.

https://twitter.com/IsraelWarRoom/status/1723634618811789626

Some Left Alliance politicans are now screeching about buying Israeli weapons.

[Flyersfan232]

so the danish royals had a birthday gala for the future king prince christian ((gee I wonder what his son will be named?))  and invited a boy and girl of 18 from every region there was someone on twitter who went who is possibly a member of this forum.

[Flyersfan232]

The Finns Party leadership election will take place on 14 August, with the main candidates being the MPs Riikka Purra and Sakari Puisto. Purra is favoured to win.

Purra wins with 64% of votes.

The National Coalition Party is now the only major party never to have had a female leader.

any contenders for that role currently in the ncp?

[Helsinkian]

The Finns Party leadership election will take place on 14 August, with the main candidates being the MPs Riikka Purra and Sakari Puisto. Purra is favoured to win.

Purra wins with 64% of votes.

The National Coalition Party is now the only major party never to have had a female leader.

any contenders for that role currently in the ncp?

Yes, Elina Valtonen (current foreign minister) is considered the most likely successor to Petteri Orpo.