Finland

FREE! magazine censored in Finnish tourist office

Am I not doing my duty to society?

FREE! magazine censored in Finnish tourist office Phil

The latest edition of Finland’s English monthly magazine, “FREE!”, was removed from the Finnish Tourist Information Office because of its front cover. Here’s the story from FREE!’s editor, Antonio Díaz…

I was walking around Helsinki, enjoying the sunny holiday day, when I stopped by the Tourist Information office in Esplanadi to check if it was needed to refill the stand where we left copies of last FREE! Magazine some days ago. I was surprised not to see any copy left, so I asked the girls working there. One told me that the responsible person of the office did not like the cover of the last issue, for being “too provocative” and that the stand and the copies are hidden in a store room, but if somebody wants and ask for a copy, they can provide it to the customers. To sum up, we could say that basically the last 3rd issue had been censored from the public.

Chinese Anti-Corruption Officials Encounter Anti-Corruption at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport Hank W.

Another piece of news of the rampant “xenophobia and racism” in Finland:

Finland’s Border Guard said Wednesday it had refused to admit into the country 10 high-ranking Chinese civil servants boasting a fake invitation to tour the Finnish prosecution service and visit the University of Helsinki. The party was composed of Chinese prosecution and anti-corruption service officials, the Chinese embassy in Helsinki said. The Finnish justice ministry confirmed that the letter of invitation was a forgery. The group arrived at Helsinki-Vantaa airport from Shanghai on Monday and presented the invitation to border officials, who discovered that the letter was signed by a person not employed by the Finnish justice ministry. Major Janne Piiroinen, the commander of the Helsinki border control department, told the Finnish News Agency (STT), that the invitation featured a six-day programme. The officials spent the night at Border Guard facilities at the airport and were put on a plane back to China on Tuesday. There have lately been a number of similar incidents of Chinese civil servants cloaking holidays as official travel. “Our impression is that these Chinese people obtain the funding for their trips as if they were official journeys. Once the holiday money and visas have been secured, the meetings are cancelled and they will not necessarily even travel to the country that was originally agreed on. The granted official trip is transformed into a tourist trip,” Maj Piiroinen said. “I don’t know how the Chinese official machinery will view this, but if somebody pulled this sort of thing in Finland it would be his last [working] trip.”

Hank W. Finlandforthought

5.3.2006

Finland bus drivers like a book of matches, they always on strike

The bus drivers are on strike again, (well, most of them are) they were on strike just a few months ago. Thank Christ the bus system in Finland is semi-privatized or else all of them would be on strike…or possibly none of them. Juhani Salonius has been sent in mediate the negiotations of grumpy old wealthy white men - you’ll remember Salonius last year was the mediator for the month long paper industry strike - somehow he was invited back to screw up yet another labor agreement.

The next time some hippie gives you shit for owning a car, or thinking of owning a car - remind them of these bus strikes. Fortunately I have a car, and so do most other middle class Finns, and wealthy Finns have three cars. It’s Finland’s ever-growing poor who are truly hurt by this strike, they can’t afford an automobile.

There’s not enough taxi’s in Helsinki and tomorrow it’ll be next to impossible to find one. I remember when I visited St. Petersburg, there were tons of these private mini-buses scooting around the city. Plenty of public transportation available, little (private?) white vans go where buses and trams don’t go, and anyone with an automobile could be a private taxi.And people had the freedom to flag down cars and pay the drivers to take them places if they were heading in the same direction - that certainly saves on gas!

My hometown of Baltimore was full of “hacks” - these were private citizens who used their car as a taxi. Vist a city supermarket, you’d see well-dressed men waiting outside the store offering to take women home in their Cadillacs (get a hack on a Friday night and it’s probably a rusted out Honda). You negotiated a price before you got in, they were great, much cheaper than a taxi, and never once did I read about a hack doing something bad. Of course, hacks were completely illegal, but the police had more important things to worry about.

Residents of Finland could really benefit from these liberalizations in transport policy.

30.11.2005

Less Mercedes taxis by Phil

When I first moved to Finland in 2002, I was amazed at all the Mercedes taxis on the streets - it seemed as if every taxi was a new Mercedes. This is in contrast to my home country where virtually every taxi is a old, rusted-out yellow American-made automobile. After I took my first taxi ride from Helsinki to Espoo and paid the bill, I quickly realized how they afforded these nice cars.

But lately, I’ve seen a lot more Toyotas, VWs, and (gasp) Renaults. Is it just my imagination, or are there less Mercedes taxis on Finnish roads nowadays?

3.6.2007 Am I not doing my duty to society? Phil

YLE and the state’s TV-license collectors use some interesting marketing tactics to entice you to pay your yearly fees. Their ads basically say, “Pay your license or else the costs go up and your neighbors pay it for you!”, pitting neighbor against neighbor to support the welfare state ideology. Imagine if a private company used the same advertising tactics, “Buy a Nokia phone or else the prices will go up for other customers!” LOL!!

Funny how YLE didn’t instead campaign, “Pay your license or else we’ll have less money for quality programming!” Instead of cutting back the budget, they just charge poor Finns even more. Again, imagine if a private company used that same financial strategy, “Well sales were down for last quarter, so let’s offer the same product, but just at a higher price!”