Good news year 2004
By Teemu Luukka
About three weeks ago the OECD published a study according to which Finnish schoolchildren are at the top of the world in their mathematics skills, alongside those in Hong Kong.
Wonderful! Bravo, teachers! Great kids! Now let’s celebrate!
But no: already at the press conference where the study was made public, Minister of Education Tuula Haatainen (SDP) started with the lamentations. There was no joy or pride when she listed the threats facing our country’s youth.
Experts continued in a similar vein. Here in Finland schoolchildren are not eager enough to study mathematics. There are also not enough top-level experts. People do not even use computers as much as they should.
"Schools should not move ahead on the terms of the slowest pupils, and certainly not on the terms of troublemakers", wrote the late-edition tabloid Iltalehti in its lead editorial on the Pisa study.
Finns dig the same mournful tones out of their back pockets no matter what the topic is. There is a tendency to cry over milk even before it is spilled, which is probably a good thing; this nation owes much of its success to fearing the worst.
But it is Christmas, and everyone has permission to enjoy the good things that peek out from behind all the misery. And now, here is a warning: in this article the shameless focus will be on the bright sides of the big news items of the year.
January 1, 2004 is a cold, but quite sunny day. On New Year’s Day the Finns wake up in homes that are bigger than ever.
The people are wealthier, healthier, and they live longer than ever before.
Poverty has increased in relative terms, but the main reason is that the income of those who have jobs has grown more quickly than for those who do are not employed.
The big news of the early part of the year is the liberalisation of personal alcohol imports. The media waits, with cameras ready, for dramatic scenes of a booze rally, but the journalists lurking in the customs areas are disappointed. Relatively few people bring a larger consignment of alcohol than usual. Gradually Finns start bringing in slightly more alcohol, but most do not go insane over their new freedom.
The debate becomes more lively when the domestic price of alcohol is cut in the spring. Although the warm spring weather and cheap alcohol make for a potentially deadly combination, the summer is fairly calm.
In the first half of the year Finns are worried that the flu might force them into bed, but ultimately, fewer people fall ill than was expected.
Even the bird flu raging in the Far East is stopped, and does not spread throughout the world.
There is much good news on the health front in 2004. Crib deaths, smoking among men, and lung cancer have declined sharply in Finland. British researchers claim to have developed an effective synthetic medicine against Malaria, which until then had killed about a million people each year.
The Finnish economy is doing quite nicely. GDP growth is over three percent, which is more than in most European countries.
The results of large Finnish corporations are at the second-highest level ever, and in 2005 they will probably set new records. Finnish companies hand out more in dividends than ever before.
Although there were many job cuts, more people get new jobs in Finland during the year than lose them. Finland now has 45,000 more people at work than a year earlier.
Although the cruelty of working life is one of the hot topics of the year, an extensive barometer of working conditions by the Ministry of Labour reveals that Finns give quite good marks to their jobs.
According to the same barometer, more than 90% of employees feel that they have a good deal of freedom at their work, as long as the job gets done.
Likewise, for the past ten years people have been strengthened in the conviction that even if they lose their jobs, they will be able to find employment that corresponds to their professional skills.
Political debate is lively throughout the year. The business community, the opposition, and the media make ceaseless reminders of how the government is incapable of making sufficiently courageous decisions.
However, the government is still quite active. So far the government has decided to bring down taxes on earned income by about 2.7 billion euros - about EUR 800 million already in 2004.
The tax cuts are greater than those enacted by the first government of Paavo Lipponen.
The state invests about nine percent more on social programmes and health than in the previous year. For instance, more child allowances are paid out. In 2005 a further half a billion is to be spent on social services and health care. For instance, the position of families and the aged will improve. Students will also get more residential benefits.
In spite of all of this, Finland’s state fiances are among the most balanced in all of Europe.
In the spring, calculations of the OECD and the EU come out, according to which Finland’s standard of living is only average for the Western industrial nations of the OECD. Why "only"? That is a very high standard of living. According to some studies, happiness has not increased in Western Europe since the early 1980s, even though the standard of living has skyrocketed.
We would have done much better in the standard of living contest if food were not so expensive.
Still, food is considerably cheaper in Finland than it was just ten years ago, and the price level continues to decline. The emergence of the German discount store giant Lidl in Finland has brought down food prices in small communities by about ten percent.
In sports, a series of magnificent victories begins already in the spring when Finland’s bandy team wins its first ever world championship. During the year, ski jumpers, downhill skiers, and women football players do very well around the world.
In the Hockey World Cup Finland finishes second, but some see it as Finland’s best achievement ever, because this time the opponents were tougher than when Finland won its only World Championship to date, back in 1995.
In the Olympics, Finland gets fewer medals than ever before. In spite of that, there is no national mourning, and even the sports announcers manage to maintain their composure.
Ultimately, the poor showing has a liberating effect on this sports-mad country; people are reminded that sport really is only sport. This time nobody was even caught on a doping offence. Without such a poor showing, Finns probably would not even have noticed how well our disabled athletes did in the Paralympics.
The whole year was a celebration of democracy.
In the spring, the train bombings in Madrid get the Spanish to vote in large numbers in their election. In the autumn, peaceful Presidential elections are held in Afghanistan.
The same in Indonesia, when the world’s largest Muslim country votes for in its first direct Presidential election. The incumbent President loses.
Later in the autumn the people in Ukraine do not accept hanky panky in their elections, and they rise to the barricades - peacefully.
Even the victory of George Bush in the United States is democracy in action - no matter what we Europeans might think of the man. And this time the most powerful country in the world manages to count the votes cast in the election more or less reliably.
In the autumn a majority of the members of the European Parliament oppose the nomination of hard-line Catholic Rocco Buttiglione to the post of Commissioner of Justice. Exceptionally, the Parliament overcomes the will of the President of the Commission, which is seen as an indication of the growth of the power of the Parliament. The European Parliament is the only democratically elected body of the EU.
Here in Finland, the voter turnout grows both in the European Parliament elections and the municipal elections.
The international community becomes closer knit during the year. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania all join NATO - all of them formerly under the domination of the Soviet Union.
The EU enlarges to become a giant of 25 countries, but nevertheless manages to decide on a new constitution.
The final outcome of the constitution is a disappointment to smaller countries, because the voting power of the large member states grows.
However, this time Finland is not the most obedient pupil in the class; instead, it fights bravely against the growth of big power.
The Prime Minister’s aide Olli Rehn (Centre) is chosen as Finland’s new Commissioner in the summer. The task of Rehn as Commissioner of Enlargement will be one of the most visible on the Commission when negotiations on Turkey’s EU membership begin next year.
During the year, many other influential figures get new jobs, and turnover is a good thing. For instance, the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE gets a new CEO: Mikael Junger, who did brilliantly in Mensa’s intelligence test, and the National Coalition Party hopes to get a new boost under the leadership of Jyrki Katainen.
Amer CEO Roger Talermo seeks, and gets, the post of Chairman of the Olympic Committee. It seems that quarterly capitalism no longer drains all of the time of top executives, as there seems to be enough time for volunteer work as well.
The theme of the summer is peace, as the Finnish media fills up with stories of the Continuation War, which ended 60 years ago. And it is not without reason that people commemorate it: never before has the Finnish nation experienced such a long period of peace. During the year it is also seen in the refreshingly courageous criticism that is voiced over the country’s foreign and security policy.
Russian officials make occasional confrontational statements, but it is a healthy sign that the notes and the statements do not seem to worry Finnish politicians and officials very much.
Late edition newspapers are typically full of crime stories, but in reality, crime has remained at about the same level during the new century. Thefts and robberies seem to have actually gone down, according to figures from January-September, as has drug crime.
The number of homicides seems to be at about the average level for the past five years. In 2003, 103 people were victims of homicides, which is an exceptionally small number - the lowest in 30 years.
Experts remind us at different times of the year how the Finns have splintered into many different cliques. It is said that the Finns have also lost touch with nature.
However, this nation of five million people is not ultimately too splintered. Two million people again sit with their eyes glued to their television sets on Independence Day as the President spends a couple of hours shaking the hands people she does not know. Nor are we completely alienated from nature. After all, we take about half of our Christmas trees ourselves from the forest. This amounts to a total of half a million excursions into the woods.
The Finnish language is also doing very well. Finns use their language in a lively manner, they want to hear Finnish lyrics, and read magazines and books in their mother tongues. Critics say that an exceptionally large number of good Finnish books have been published during the year.
Finland also do well again in music. Karita Mattila and our other opera singers melt the hearts of New York critics. Rock bands such as HIM, Rasmus and Nightwish continue their world conquest. Composer Kaija Saariaho wins praise around the world.
The Chechnya documentary of Pirjo Honkasalo wins piles of prizes. Finnish documentary cinema does splendidly in other respects as well.
The pride of the nation, Nokia, overcomes its difficulties, even though things look grim in the early autumn. Then the company gets its handset models right, and mobile phones sell just like they did before. A few members of the board leave, but that is quite natural: the core group of Nokia has stayed together an exceptionally long time.
The value of the US dollar weakens all year. This means that it is fun to travel to the United States and to show off with our valuable euros.
The low level of the dollar results from the fact that the United States is up to its ears in debt. For critics of the war in Iraq, the country’s indebtedness is comforting, because the United States is unlikely to be able to afford any new military operations before it pays some of it off.
At the end of the year Finland gets a record-long labour market contract. Before that, a bus strike in the Helsinki region spreads into the harbours and threatens to stop foreign trade, but even that situation is finally resolved.
Naturally, plenty of things happened this year in which there is no silver lining at all.
The Konginkangas bus accident, the Beslan school siege, and the continuing chaos in Iraq are quite simply horrible items of news.*
At least the death of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat has not caused any more chaos between Israel and Palestine so far.
Terrorism keeps the world in fear, but still, the world is a more peaceful place than it has been in decades. The number of wars is decreasing, and fewer people are dying in them.
This, in spite of the fact that each month, the number of people dividing the riches of the world increases by a number equivalent to the population of Finland. This also means many happy events and lots of good news every day.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.12.2004
*Note: This article, as the line above should make plain, was published in the paper before the events of December 26th. There were few silver linings there, either in Finland or elsewhere.
TEEMU LUUKKA / Helsingin Sanomat
teemu.luukka@hs.fi
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| 4.1.2005 - THIS WEEK |
 Good news year 2004 |
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