I'm glad that neither the SDP or the Left Alliance caved in on this particular issue (increasing the VAT - both parties have rejected the very idea ever since the previous government started doing it whenever it was convenient to raise some money.
If the Coalition party is still going to be able to form a government that'll agree to raise the VAT, it's going to come at a horrible political cost.
edited 21st Jan '14 6:33:29 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Maybe Katainen won't be able to form a government now that the Left Alliance and Social Democrats were left out. He might try to get the Centre Party in the talks, but he would only get a small minority of 105 seats of 200 with a government of National Coalition, Centre, Swedish Peoples Party, Christian Democrats and the Greens.
Urpilainen (the chairwoman of the Social Democrats) might get her chance to shine if Katainen fails. And maybe the True Finns would get a chance to play a part in forming a new government.
Slightly unrelated, what is the Left Youth's relationship to feminism and men's rights?
Slightly more unrelated, that sketch was brilliant.
The Left Youth is a feminist organisation, but we define feminism as a movement that demands equality for all genders, not just women. We included a clause demanding equal rights and legal recognition for "third genders" and we do sometimes campaign for men's rights, too.
We're not going to limit anyone's rights to appease the other side unless we're talking about rights like "a man's gotta rape sometimes", which, honestly, only fundamentalist Christians (and only a few cult-ish churches, at that) support in this country.
So you'll see us demanding equal pay for women while also demanding the 6+6+6 model of parental leave (6 months for the mother, 6 for the father and 6 they can split evenly, including, if they like, being on paid leave at the same time) and demanding fair treatment for men in custody trials.
Forgot to add: I hope the SDP will form the backbone of the new government. That way, we'd have a pretty safe seat without having to give up on very many of our goals. They'll also include the True Finns or the Greens (they'll likely call the True Finns first,) and it's pretty likely that they'll invite the Centre along, as well.
That would get them 130 seats without the Swedes.
Without the Centre Party, the SDP could get 110, including the Swedes and the Christians (but excluding the Greens 'cause the True Finns and the Greens don't get along.)
With the True Finns out and the Centre in, they'd have 110 (assuming that they'd get the Swedes and the Greens in the government, which they would. This number doesn't include the 6 seats that they'd get if they included the Christians.)
edited 1st Jun '11 3:06:21 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I'd be content with SDP, True Finns, Centre and Christian Democrats forming the government, as at least then we'd get the Swedes out of the government for once, though it still would not end mandatory swedish in schools. I'm cool with the Christian Democrats, even though I'm an agnostic leaning on the atheist side and I think that we ought to separate the church and state. I even befriended Päivi Räsänen on facebook after the shitstorm she stirred because of her comments about homosexuals to show sympathy for her.
Men's rights are an issue that only some of the Pirates have talked about, but I despise that party and will propably never vote for them. I discussed the issue with my candidate, she said that she was sympathetic towards my point of view, but I doubt that she will make a number of it in the parlament. Even though the Left Alliance is too feminist for my taste, at least some of them oppose conscription, abolishing it would be a great step forward for equality in this country.
It's not "mandatory" Swedish any more than Finnish is mandatory. They're both official languages of this country, as stated in the constitution.
As for Pirates and men's rights... well, whatever reasonable points they might have, I have a hard time seeing past the "mandatory prostitution and free vouchers for single men" kind of gaffes they made. Pirate Party is a mixed bag, half of them are techno-liberals with expert knowledge on laws and civil liberties that the old parties aren't aware of, and the other half have wraped the tinfoil a bit too tight around their heads.
Fully agreed on the bit about men's rights, though the way I see it, the party that is doing the most to fix the problem is the Left Alliance.
I think Päivi Räsänen deserved every little bit of bad press she got from her comments.
I don't think we need two official languages anymore; let Swedish be a recognised minority language like the rest! It's unfair that students who fail at Swedish are barred entry to many government and municipal offices even if it's entirely possible to do a long career in any of the government offices without even once having to read, listen to, write or speak a single word in Swedish for the job.
One of my Swedish-speaking friends once said that since they can't manage day-to-day life in most cities without learning Finnish, it's only fair that we should get mandatory Swedish to make things equal. It's the best argument I've ever heard in favour of mandatory Swedish, and it's not a very good one. By that logic, everyone would have to learn every language that is spoken in Finland, and even if you only include significant minorities, that'd still include Swedish, Russian and English, and if not yet, soon Arabic and potentially German.
The best way to organise our language policy would be to have Finnish as the only official language and keep English mandatory in schools the way it is now, and make Swedish electable so that you'd be offered Swedish, French, German and Russian (and maybe Spanish or Arabic) and you'd choose from them.
Personally, I've never met a person who spoke Swedish at home and didn't speak either Finnish or English very fluently, including tourists. In fact, I've never met anyone who speaks Swedish but not fluent English of Finnish, even if they have Swedish as a second language or are native Swedish speakers but speak some other language at home.
And I worked as a guide for 3 years, with plenty of Swedish-speaking tourists from all the Nordic countries and pretty much all parts of Finland; all of them were satisfied when I served them in English or Finnish.
edited 21st Jan '14 6:41:50 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.In all this exitement over the new cabinet hearings, I had completely forgotten about My People. So yeah... if the True Finnns or Christian Democrats are in the cabinet, there's very little chance of getting marriage equality the next four years. The recently chrashed lineup would have been my best bet. Well, we llive interesting times, and there's four LGBT PM's (Pekka Haavisto, Oras Tynkkynen, Jani Toivola, Silvia Modig).
Of course you have. I have relatives in Helsinki and the surrounding cities, and each one of them knows people who'd rather speak Swedish than English. But here in Eastern Finland, you'd have to go to a whole lot of trouble to find someone who speaks Swedish at home. You can probably imagine how frustrating it is for Swedish teachers and the students alike when the first time they'll hear Swedish in their life (if you don't count TV, and most don't watch Swedish programmes) is in school.
I'm fairly sure that if you'd measure all communication in Finland that occurs in Swedish, there would be more of it in schools than out of school.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Here in Lapland it's even harder to find people who speak swedish at home. Hell, they speak finnish on both sides of the Tornio river valley, the older people, that is. The younger ones communicate in english. It would make sense that mandatory swedish was abolished and made into a minority language like the sami languages.
Swedish speaking people are concerated on Åland and west coast, altough only in major places. I lived near Pori and only once heard people speaking swedish. Same thing Tampere, where I live now.
Also, funny thing: In Sweden, finnish speaking population is 4,7%, where as in Finland it's 5,4%(2009) and live mainly in Åland. Yet, Sweden does not recognize finnish as official language.
Fact it, mandatory swedish is a artifact from early days of Finland when old swedish aristocrats(I guess that's the word) held main power in Finland and required that their rights are recognized to support independence movement.
Augh... you do know that Swedish speakers used to be a LOT bigger part of the nation? It was during the Nationalist period in the late 1800's and early 1900's when thousands of Swedish families changed their home language to Finnish and adopted Finnish names. A majority of early Finish cultural and political figures were Swedish speakers. Stålberg, Relander, Svinhuvud, Mannerheim...
Had the Fennnoman movement been so Russophobic (because surely there were Russian-speaking Finns with equally nationalist desires), we might have even had our share of Russian speaking founding fathers, and thus Russian as an official language.
Fact is, back then finns were in no position to actualy do political maneuvering, thus mandatory swedish.
Now days, that ain't the problem, but I fail to see reason why I am punished from failing to learn language, that is spoken as majority in one country and that another keeps artificialy neccesary. Besides, if you ask me, learning curve of swedish drops when it stops being mandatory("Fuck this, I didn't choose this") and is voluntary ("Picket this myself, so I should atleast put some effort")
I agree with Mandemo in that finns swedish skills would probably improve if swedish was voluntary. I am aware that the swedish-speaking minority used to be bigger, but these days there is really no point in forcing the great majority of finns to learn swedish, which most never ever learn to speak at all. Jussi Halla-aho had a good proposal to this language problem: http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/kielipoliittisia_linjauksia.html
, unfortunately it has not been translated to english.
The proposed language policy was actually very good, except for the stuff about Åland and one of the details regarding municipal language policy: Halla-Aho proposed that at least 20% of the municipality's population would have to be Swedish-speaking to mandate the municipality to offer services in Swedish. I think a figure like 10% would make a lot more sense.
edited 2nd Jun '11 10:26:33 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

When we weren't talking politics - that is to say, in the party after Saturday's meetings were over - I discussed TvTropes with the people in my table and mentioned you ('cause you and I seem to be the only Left Youth in here), and indeed, most of the people there already knew you by your real name (no-one knew you from your handle here, though when I mentioned what it was, someone recognised that it was a Monty Python reference.)
It seems that you've met some of the people in our delegation IRL.
...And yeah, since I came back home, I've been getting friend requests left and right (Incredibly Lame Pun well, mostly Left) on Facebook.
edited 31st May '11 7:56:49 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.