Good news, bad news

I am not bragging, kidding or marveling anything when I say that Finns are - generally speaking - the smartest people I've come across, at least in Europe. (But then again, I've never been outside Europe.) If you want to hear an insular preassumption which in my case has only strengthened through travelling and education, then tick that one. It results in relative lack of everyday stupidity in Finland and, as such, is a nice thing if you live there.

Yep, it's that PISA triennale again. I personally think that for instance honesty, sisu and most other Finnish myths are, well, just myths, but if mankind still is to draw some lesson from my people it could do much worse than preventing everyday stupidity and going to a Finnish primary school for a week or two. Ditto, I tend to be quite skeptical towards most cross-country mumbojumbo rankings, yet wouldn't seriusly mind if PISA results were to draw even more attention than they usually are. That's because the quality of education as an evaluand is something quite measurable, but also because no one can't really explain and analyse why some peer countries are doing so much better than some others. It's a very complex issue, and if you're to learn from it you should treat it as such - i.e. without any kitchen sociology or petty policising. (McKinsey tried to explain and analyse it this autumn, and, as far as I remember got as far as concluding that in order to have good schools you must have good teachers and in order to have good teachers you must have bright young people willing to become teachers...but that's when it all gets blurred again. There seem to so different, yet equally successful, approaches that you can't trace it to one single underlying factor. Here's the PDF, and here's a brief article about it, if you fancy further reading.)

For instance, my student union has traditionally bred idiots who have publically interpreted "the world's best primary education" as "the world's best education system" and on such grounds argued that Finnish tertiary education system shouldn't be reformed - which of course means that they are either lying bastards or suffering from serious cerebral laziness, or just that Finnish tertiary education is counterproductive. Another rather typical hobby horse is that our kids score so well because they are to taught to such a large extent in their mother tongue, suggesting that the small number of foreigners might explain it. However, science-savvy and relatively multiethnic societies like Canada, Australia and Netherlands prove it clearly a wrong assumption.

So, anyway, my most humble observations have indeed confirmed that Finnish youngsters generally know more than their brothers and sisters elsewhere - or, to put it other way, young people in e.g. Italy, Britain or Lithuania generally have not known as much as I would have expected them to know at their age. Which makes perfect sense, of course, since why would you bother about your education system if it made no difference at the end of the day?

This year's PISA theme was science and one of the questions, apparently, whether one can contract a) AIDS, b) diarrhea or c) diabetes by drinking contaminated water. British kids obviously did pretty well at this time, ranking as the 16th overall, and those who did not probably didn't comprehend the questions in the first place - one field where they score badly is literacy, and to get a grasp of that problem you just have to buy an ordinary tabloid newspaper. The Sun and Daily Mail are read by approx ten million readers in total on daily basis, and I'm not exaggerating at all if I say that they are targeted at people who can't read properly - that is, readers who have problems processing information in written form and in order to do so need pictures, catchy headlines and regular concrete examples among abstractness. Their closest Finnish equivalents - Seiska, Katso (always popular among Italian Erasmus students), Hymy etc. - may well be equally bad, but take into consideration that those are neither newspapers nor published daily, whereas The Sun is the primary source of news for its average reader. Bear that in mind: if British news coverage is sometimes sensational, tasteless and of low quality it's not, primarily, because the journalists responsible for it are like that, but simply because they are writing for a deterministically stupid audience. That is scary.

Well, well. I was actually going to relate to this topic to supply and demand in the context of Italian television, but then realised that such would make me come across either as homesick or a wanker (of which I could only subscribe to the latter - no matter how hard I sometimes pine for Keskisuomalainen's unmatchably factual, even-handed and in-depth EU coverage, or the sparking intellect of Finnish talkshows) so it was good that I spotted also this piece of news.

Finland will meet the objectives of the Stability and Growth Pact both in terms of the balance in public finances and with regard to the debt ratio in the medium term. However, a sustainability analysis that includes the forthcoming demographic changes indicates that overall general government finances are not sustainable in the long term. Based on Eurostat's 2004 population projection, a surplus of 4% of GDP would be required to secure sustainability in general government finances. Under the current Stability Programme, the surplus would amount to 2½ of GDP by the end of the government term, which means there would be a sustainability gap of about 1½% of GDP. If the latest national population forecast were to be used for the computations, the sustainability figure would be even bleaker than this.

Here is the same piece in Finnish, for my people to go and test their world-class reading skills.

Did you read it? If you did, did you understand it? If you did, did you try to relate its content to your opinions on politics, democracy and social justice? And if you did, how did you feel about it?

This is a theme that has haunted my readership ever since I kicked off this blog and I quite feel obliged to spell it out on regular intervals. Seriously, do you people have any clue of what that text above means? It means that the government, the same that is accused of saving too much today, is spending far too much - which, correspondingly, means that the ones tomorrow will have to save and squeeze even more. No ifs and no buts, really. I promise that it is this simple.

I'm sometimes scared to braindeath when I - from a safe distance, nowadays - am following the political discourse in contemporary in Finland. It's a discourse between people whose mentality is lagging a couple of decades behind the reality and who will be in agonising trouble when they in most foreseeable future have to come to terms with the fact that politics isn't about what it used to be. Politics has always been about trade-offs, yet in future those trade-offs will be twice as painful. So if you lean to right, you might well stop childishly flattering yourself that you can both have and eat your cake, i.e. cry for tax cuts and oppose welfare reforms at the same time - whereas the lefties just have to strangle their dearest brainchild, and learn to live without the idea that you can banish any possible evil just by valiantly covering it with tax money. It surely hurts, but there's nothing you can do about it, whatever your political inclination is. Just change your mentality sooner rather than later, and you won't be so stressed when times get truly confusing.

Think about it. A surplus of 2.5% is very solid by pan-European standards, but even still it's quite far from enough. That is scary, too.

Sematary

This is actually my sign picture number one, taken in Streatham Cemetery, Tooting:

(That said, the sign makes a good point. Ancient and massive gravestones can be dangerous, considering that it's usually the elder folk who tend to visit and spend time in cemeteries - for example, I remember one old lady being once injured in Finland, when the memorial towards which she had knelt fell out of sudden. But even still, I do find its warning a little bit...erm, phantasmagoric?)

Roger Boyes & social life in Europe

I think it was more than two years ago, on some illuminatingly light and so very fucking wonderfully warm Adriatic winter night spent with Sangiovese in my Forlì apartment near those inspiringly muddy banks of Rubicon, when I first time discovered this pot of gold: a nicely and neatly extensive list of Eurofound's quality of life indicators - a guaranteed source of pleasure and satisfaction, for certain, given that you're a die-hard social scientist, a stats freak or an "analytical mind genuinely interested in cross-country comparisons" (aye, that's an euphemism for something, or someones), and even if you aren't it might be of your occasional interest.

Just pardon me for my secrecy and informational possessiveness - like a dog who has found a juicy bone I have sniggeringly returned to it only at nights, and always alone - but Ukko as my eternal puppeteer my behaviour and movements have been been haplessly spasmed by words of a Finnish poet who wrote and created on verge of insanity and who ever since his very birth was meant to die on a fatefully dark and cold January night, or day or afternoon - what does it matter at that time of the year? - in 1926 and in the village of Tuusula, and whose hubristically forlorn poems those hopeless hopes of Finland - for that I remember - even today read, analyse and absorb in upper secondary schools; yes, indeed, for kell' onni on se onnen kätkeköön. (S)he who has luck is strongly advised to hide it.

It's time, though. Ari has sung and sunk Roger Boyes even deeper into that endless (as well as appropriately dark and cold) swamp behind his remote farmstead, so all that is left for me to do is to wipe the case under the carpet before the crime scene investigation and foreign journalists arrive, and before any poor teenage girl adds insult to brain injury by drowning herself.

I've got numbers - they aren't exactly up to date, but they're numbers anyway. This is my truth, tell me yours or consider yourself informed:

Satisfaction with social life; percentage of the population aged 15 and over, who are very or fairly satisfied with their social life (2004)

1) Denmark, 96%
2) Netherlands, 95%
3) Finland, 93%
Luxembourg, 93%
Sweden, 93%
6) Austria, 91%
Belgium, 91%
Spain, 91%
9) France, 89%
10) Ireland, 88%

Toivoton taisto taivaan valtoja vastaan.

Use of the Internet; percentage of people aged 15 and over who use the Internet (2003)

1) Sweden, 68%
2) Denmark, 66%
3) Netherlands, 62%
4) Finland, 59%
5) Luxembourg, 53%
United Kingdom, 53%
7) Spain, 50%
8) Austria, 49%
Malta, 49%
10) Estonia, 47%

Kaikuvi kannel; lohduta laulu ei lastaan.

Contact with neighbours; percentage of people aged 16 and over who talk to their neighbours more than once a week (2000; EU15 excluding DE, FR, LU and SE)

1) Greece, 97%
2) Ireland, 91%
Spain, 91%
4) Portugal, 87%
5) Italy, 81%
6) Austria, 79%
Finland, 79%
8) United Kingdom, 77%
9) Netherlands, 72%
10) Belgium, 71%
Denmark, 71%

Hallatar haastaa, soi sävel sortuvin siivin.

Meeting friends and relatives; percentage of people aged 16 and over who meet friends or relatives not living with them more than once a week (2000; EU15 excluding DE, FR and LU)

1) Ireland, 95%
2) Spain, 94%
3) Greece, 92%
4) Sweden, 87%
5) Netherlands, 85%
United Kingdom, 85%
7) Denmark, 81%
Finland, 81%
Italy, 81%
10) Belgium, 78%

Rotkoni rauhaan kuin peto kuoleva hiivin.

Or will they?

Me and my mate spotted this one outside Crossharbour's big ASDA, more than a month ago. I can't get it out of my mind.

St Katharine's Docks, my hazardous neighbourhood

It feels safe, but it is not. This hazard is just fifty meters from my own front door.

Whereas moving round the corner, and even closer to my house, you're pinned down by the British equivalent to a mine field - i.e. uneven surface. It's a small courtyard with four trees, and two of the trees have been equipped with a warning like this:

Yes, as you enter and leave that rough square meter of sand and gravel totally at your own risk, you might want to pay better attention to the black male figure. Can't you hear him? Can't you hear what he is trying to tell you? You should, because he is trying to tell you that: "Oh no, oh my gosh, what a fool I was, walking straight into this awful trip hazard - cor blimey, it is nobody's fault but my own and now I will soon hit the cold hard concrete, and the only thing left to do is to stretch the arms, like this; if only they had equipped this tree next to me with one of those yellow trip hazard warnings and secured it with a strong metal chain, but oh no, oh my gosh, no they didn't, and now I walked straight into this awful trip hazard."

Or, who knows, maybe he's trying to tell you to rave safe.

Sinan Hoxha revisited

As it happens, the largest share of all traffic this blog receives through Google searches owes to Sinan Hoxha, and hence it is probably appropriate to share the following reviews I have originally published as part of the Sinan Hoxha to Represent Albania in Eurovision 2008 Lobby on Facebook also here.

They are five, and they appear so that the most recent piece, my reflections on Sinan Hoxha's and Ermal Fejzullahu's version of "Hajredin Pasha", is at the top; in order to gain a better grasp of Sinan Hoxha's growth and self-development as an artist, I suggest you to start from the bottom.

Sinan Hoxha and Ermal Fejzullahu: Hajredin Pasha
Sinan Hoxha: Qik Kosovare
Sinan Hoxha: Me Fal
Sinan Hoxha: Do Vec Do
Sinan Hoxha: Me Hir A Me Pahir

Sinan Hoxha: Hajredin Pasha

"Hajredin Pasha", or "Raisinless Paskha", a profound duetto with Ermal Fejzullahu, is Sinan Hoxha's gesture of goodwill to Albania's Slavic neighbours; it's his statement for condemning feud and prejudice and for siding with peace and amity. Young Ermal, who plays the role of a keen and zealous kid brother, doesn't understand why paskha, a Russian Orthodox Easter dessert, must contain raisins - paskha would be better off without raisins and the world better off without paskha, argues he. Yet Sinan Hoxha, older and more travelled, takes a different stance. If paskha had no raisins it wouldn't be paskha at all; accept it even if you may not approve with it, as it may mean much to someone else. In the end, young Ermal agrees that the older man has seen more and is thus better positioned for making judgements. The song has two teachings: take life, including raisins, as it is, and respect age, for age brings insight. Learn and see beyond the curd.

Sinan Hoxha: Qik Kosovare

"Qik(e) Kosovare", or "That Quick Kosovar", tells of strong ethnic awareness and belongs to Sinan Hoxha's more controversial production. It's his tribute to Shefki Kuqi - the man, the myth and the holder of a forged birth certificate - and makes no frontal bones about whose flying headers will soon take Finland to Euro2008. The ten dancing girls symbolise the rest of the national squad; not an innuendo of their effeminity in eyes of Sinan Hoxha, rather than an opinion of whose tune the starting lineup should be dancing their last cabarets to if they're willing to qualify. Before the dance ceases we witness the dancers grouping for a round game and swarming round the hero, just like satellites orbiting their raison d'etre and providing airtime to a head like a television - as it once was in Mikkelin Pallo, or "The Ball of St Michael", where Shefki ascended into his life as a footballer. Shefki's faith knows him as Mikhal and he, a winged creature, is the patron saint of flying headers.

Sinan Hoxha: Me Fal

Criticised for sexism in his earlier music videos, which had associated the opposite sex with banditry and habitual quarrelsomeness, Sinan Hoxha now refutes with "Me Fal". There's only one culprit this time, and that's the artist himself; witness the role of alter ego in the narration of his sense of guilt, as if a way to say: "I look down on that lecher, that libertine, that myself". Sinan Hoxha is with a woman but then makes out with another woman, which brings him into trouble with the first woman. Were he sane, this loss would finally force him to come to terms with his libido, but no, for what a fool he is - he goes and fumbles even the Maiden of Shkodra! The tower is no coincidence; once phallic and invincible, today defeated and haunted. Yet don't blame it on the chessboard if your bishop has fallen and your rooks bring bad weather; you take the sword, you perish with the sword. Self-sufficiency, hence, won't save him from this siege, either.

Sinan Hoxha: Do Vec Do

"Do Vec Do" takes place after the incident that cost Sinan Hoxha his jeep, and shows a different, more mature side of the artist; the boyish "Come on!" has yielded to a less gung-ho, more sure-footed "Ready?". It's a rhetorical question. Drones and lethargists may be sleeping, but this is the night of the week when Sinan Hoxha hosts women's gymnastics in the attic of his Tirana apartment; the trainess, a mysterious afro-haired foreigner, is his muse. The session is intervened by a heated debate over on which garnish they should order their after-gymnastics takeaway. Sinan Hoxha wants rice, but the trainess has decided to put his manhood to test and agitates the others to follow her example and order potatoes. Secretly she hates potatoes, though, and after seeing that the host won't flip-flop on this one, she reveals that beneath her bitchy surface she, too, is absolutely fine with rice. This releases the atmosphere and allows the weekly gymnastics to continue for another half an hour.

Sinan Hoxha: Me Hir A Me Pahir

In this music video of "Me Hir A Me Pahir" Sinan Hoxha and his best mate are driving Sinan Hoxha's jeep in the desert. As their co-passengers, they have two Tirana women, yet this doesn't prevent them from taking a third one, a lone hitchhiker, aboard. No one is wearing seatbelts. The men, unsuspecting and oblivious of things to come, are fooled into stopping their jeep and starting to play music; the Tirana women start to dance until the hitchiker, after cunningly contributing the chorus, steals the jeep and drives away with the two other female passengers. Sinan Hoxha and his best mate have to walk home. The story doesn't tell whether there actually was an attempt to beg the carjackers to change their mind and turn around, but I doubt it; it is indeed a story of rural male innocence, two clueless countryside boys being tricked by girls of the capital, but for all their obliviousness there is one thing they must have known. You turn if you want to. The Tirana woman's not for turning.

They are taking the fluid, are they not?

The company where I've been working lately has been kind enough to explain what may go wrong if you don't use toilets in a responsible manner - so take note in future, gentle reader, and pay more attention to all that fluid and other waste. Thank you.

Makes me wonder, though, which sort of curricula you have to go through if you want to become an engineer in this country.

Sinan Hoxha to Represent Albania in Eurovision 2008 Lobby

(The cover of Sinan Hoxha's 2nd album "Sinan Hoxha", from Albasoul.com)

It was about half a year ago, in the aftermath of last Eurovision Song Contest, when I suggested that the people of Albania should seriously consider sending Sinan Hoxha, one of the biggest names of contemporary Albanian popular music, to next year's event. Some surely thought that I was joking, but I wasn't.

Earlier this week, I launched a Facebook group Sinan Hoxha to Represent Albania in Eurovision 2008 Lobby. I had estimated that by the end of the first week I should have rallied at least 10.000 souls behind my initiative, but obviously got some part of the social arithmetics slightly wrong since up to now I've managed only 148. Also, I've been told by my informants, the people of Albania are to choose the voice of their country already in December, so I am running badly behind any realistic schedule and may soon have to compromise the numeral part of the group's name. The cause itself, however, will remain.

Readers are encouraged to join and invite their friends and relatives.

Analytical times continue

Roger Boyes has responded to his critics, and didn't manage to come across as absolutely convincing. Ari condenses it again well; it indeed tells of a pretty muddy flow of thought to explain the murders by picking a few elements and claiming that there is something particularly Finnish about them - and then completely ignoring the fact that none of them really applies to the underlying case.

His witty arrogance makes him appear as unprofessional - myself I can't avoid the impression that he came up with that silly folklore allegory of the original article during his flight from Heathrow to Vantaa, and then just built the rest of his analysis upon it - but above all uncivilised. For example, what on Earth is he trying to say with that "I bet most of you haven't been in Tuusula, it's not Arctic Circle but I happen to think teenagers have quite a hard time of it here" part? Is it his way to say "this place seems boring, myself I could never live here"? That's of course an informative and valid point to be shared as such, but I don't think it's the most relevant thing you can include to serious news coverage. I can perfectly comprehend that such tone serves its purpose well indeed when an undergraduate student of journalism, having transcended into unmatchable wisdom and worldliness during a gap year spent tuning didgeridoos in Australian desert, collecting corpses from Ganges or doing something equally wise and worldly, is writing to his university paper on his disappointing Erasmus semester during which he failed experiencing a sexual intercourse, or when an Established Fleet Street Journalist is demonstrating his level of sarcasm and wittiness to his trade at Friday night drinks in their local wine bar, yet that shouldn't necessarily qualify it for the "analysis" of an authoritative daily newspaper.

His is not a world view of a civilised man, for civilised men don't expect everyone sharing their values and preferences. I grew up in a place smaller and much more remote than Jokela (Yes, Roger, I have been. We have relatives there and their proximity to Helsinki and those vast highways leading to Helsinki, let alone that big and international airport, was always a source of excitement to me.) where we didn't have any traffic lights within the radius of 30 kilometers and where the secondary school was a twenty minutes bus journey away; in December and January the moon was shining when we left from home as well as when we returned to home, and sometimes the only sound you heard, when walking to and from the premises of the local pub (where the bus stop was), was that unique narks-narks only snowflakes frozen in temperatures of below thirty degrees breaking their form under your winter shoes can make. I don't recognise the mental terror and rural misery he is associating with Finland.

At the moment I'm however living in a place where within the radius of 30 kilometers there are more people than is the population of entire Finland, and since this Roger Wilco of British journalism supposedly lives here as well I guess this was one yardstick against which he was evaluating the enjoyability of Tuusula. Personally I'm in love with this city and have no intentions of moving away from here in any foreseeable future, but if I think those forty who graduated from secondary school with me I can name maybe four or five others who might want to live here for a while, and of them maybe one or two would truly enjoy it. And, still, this doesn't mean that London is a bad place to live.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not moaning because I'm a patriot who doesn't bear criticism to his native country. For instance, I consider this month-old radio programme even worse piece of journalism than the one by Roger Boyes. It pictures a whole different version of Finland, but I didn't even listened to more than the first ten minutes of it because it seemed so rubbish. (Nokia this and Nokia that, the Nokia money allowing Finland to provide outstanding care for the elderly population, and bla bla bla. Ironically, in the same week it was aired I read that in Kitee, North Karelia, the residents of municipal rest-homes go to bed after 3pm because the evening shifts are under-staffed by default.)

But just for comparison, think about how this would sound if printed by Helsingin Sanomat: "The case of Madeleine illustrates the famously hedonistic ways of British parents: in a culture where the parents are more likely to bring their children to pubs and restaurants than to sacrifice their own social life by spending a night in with the family, drugging your offsprings was always to be a logical alternative." Or how about the following: "A female student from a country as much known for teenage pregnancies as for casual relationships between its young, Meredith Kerchner was brutally murdered in the Umbrian city of Perugia."

That would be quite fucking tasteless, if you ask me.

The Times gets analytical

Ah, almost forgot about this one.

Yesterday, invoking new gods and myths, an 18-year-old brought thunder down on a small frozen township. It was a sign of disturbed times — but also a very Finnish tragedy.

Two words.

FUCK. YOU.

(For versions 2+ consult Ari and Egan.)

On guns

I, for one, think that there are too many guns in Finland and too many people have access to them. I do accept hunting, and actually think that it is a good pastime - it of course prevents elks and wild beasts from overbreeding, plus the hunters I know personally tend to have, in my opinion, a less neurotic nature relationship than the people who think that hunting is barbaric and should be banned - but I can't say the same about sport shooting. It makes sense to practice your shooting skills if you are a policeman, a professional soldier, or if you indeed go hunting, but if nothing of those applies to you then I wouldn't care too much if they barred you from it. If you like shooting things then play paintball or shoot with air weapons and if you like aiming at things then play darts, but are there really any valid arguments for why urban people should be allowed owning firearms just because they like to shoot and aim at things at a shooting track? It is a useless, silly hobby.

Also, since I am not familiar with the facts, I can't tell whether or not Finland's gun lex is too lax, but I definitely think that you can buy yourself a gun too quickly and too easily. Pekka-Eric Auvinen had got his license just a few weeks ago. Why couldn't there be a pending time of, say, one year? Young shooters are young, so they have time, they can wait. It might or might not had prevented this tragedy, but I guess it could help with some other cases when a mentally ill (or just violent) youngster applies for a gun license just because he wants to kill people. Year is such a long time that many things may happen. He may get better, kill himself or choose knife as his murder weapon. All of which are better outcomes than the ones you may face if you sell him a pistol.

Apart from that, I believe that if you really want to blame someone or something you can blame the Internet and free speech. These murders would have not happened if he had not been familiar with those of Columbine or Virginia Tech. So basically you can blame every newspaper, TV channel or, most certainly, every blogger, who has spread and discussed the details of previous school shootings more than has been absolutely necessary. It doesn't mean that we should, or could, do anything about it, but it's something useful to acknowledge anyway - consider it the dark side of information society. Young Werther, at least according to conventional wisdom, inspired more than one thousand suicides, and his creator's audience and means of expression were a little bit more limited than Auvinen's role models'.

That's all I have to say about the Jokela massacre. I also think that there should be a certain mourning period during which sociologists shouldn't be allowed to comment these kind of tragedies publically and journalists shouldn't be allowed to ask ministers what the government is going to do now. I find it awful.

Thou shalt not spread yard gossips

After a long dogmatic soulseeking, I've finally decided to give in to modernity and start posting pictures on this weblog, now that I own again a mobile phone that has a camera. It's my third phone this year - having lost two previous ones in certain, slightly bizarre nocturnal circumstances - and now I'm actually feeling quite safe. For my bank - a beacon of sanity in this country where opening a bank account is ridiculously difficult if you are a foreigner - indeed provides a mobile phone insurance as part of the benefits associated with my brand new current account.

In regard to the pictures I've been taking, Britain is a country of signs and notes. In the scheme of things, the British aren't as obsessed by rules as, for instance, Finns and Germans are, but on the contrary they really like their recommendations, requests and advices. And I don't know why - perhaps because the Brits can get pretty witty and euphemistic with their language, perhaps because I am weird with my perceptions, or perhaps of some other reason - but those recommendations, requests and advices, from time to time, can be quite funnily put and have given me a good deal of verbal pleasure. I'll start sharing my favourites as soon as I've found a mini-USB for my Noksu, so we'll now launch with two notes from Finland.

They are in Finnish, though the former contains a picture that in its context is a worth a word or two - it is addressed to "Dear Piper" and deals with the delicate residential issue of one tenant wishing to play her wind instrument and some other tenant wishing her to do so somewhere else. It was posted once on the bulletin board of a student house where I lived three years ago; whereas the additional comment was added by myself after a winter night out in Tampere, possibly in Semafori. The latter note I spotted in July, when helping my mate to move from his old apartment in north Hervanta into his new one in south Hervanta. Its moral content is very communal.

Click to enlarge, excuse the poor quality and bla bla bla.