Finnish Social Democrats and nationalist Finns Party nearly tied in election

[Mac98]

Retirees are the problem. The high medical costs they incur cannot be met as they live longer, and low birth rates pile taxes on fewer workers. Thus immigration. And where do they find the immigrants? 

   There is a solution: stop denying health care to expats. Total health care costs would decline as even more retirees would feel free to relocate into a more affordable country. A cap could be put on outlay so the program is not taken advantage of by host countries. Encourage the retirees to find a sunny climate somewhere and hit the road. 

[rudi49jr]

21 hours ago, mokwit said:

Doesn't that tell you it is a supra governmental policy?

So what are you implying, that there is some kind of international conspiracy to flood Europe with immigrants? And who would be behind that? 

[dick dasterdly]

31 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

So what are you implying, that there is some kind of international conspiracy to flood Europe with immigrants? And who would be behind that? 

Very good question....

 

Certainly not those at the bottom of the pyramid.....

Edited April 16, 2019 by dick dasterdly

[Guest]

Perhaps it's time to demystify some of the believes.

 

The Finns or in Finnish Perussuomalaiset and which we Finns have nicknamed as Persut, in Finnish which can be translated as "<deleted>". 

 

They had a good run 4 years ago. They had a charismatic leader, who then left the party and created a new party called Siniset, the blue ones.

 

Persut is a party of middle Finlanders, lesser educated people who are afraid to be left aside as the city green parties have taken the power out of them.

 

I'm with them in this matter. However the agitators of Persut, mainly Jussi Halla-Aho, has been, for years, feeding these people fears that there is more and more foreign people coming to Finland, who takes their jobs.

 

I have talked to the said party leader, Halla-Aho few times over the years and he is always very vague what he actually wants. His 1st lieutenant blocked me on twitter, once I made a bit of fun of her unintelligent comments. Life goes on ????

 

The benefit of being from a small nation is that we can actually talk directly to our members of parliament and other politicians. 

 

The <deleted> is mainly a protest party. It collects the people who are generally unhappy and wish to show it out. The people who voted the party are not stupid, they are just unhappy. 

[Guest]

This whole right wing thing is actually quite hilarious as Jussi Halla-Aho is actually more of an intellectual. He does have right wing views when it comes to immigration, but otherwise he is more moderate on his views. 

 

If we give him government post of being interior minister, that should keep his mouth shut for some time. Give a man responsibilities and he will have to think hard of the consequences.

 

Edited April 19, 2019 by Guest

[bristolboy]

On 4/16/2019 at 1:55 AM, blazes said:

 

Granting that I know as much (or, more accurately) as little as Bristolboy here, I would observe that commenting on Finnish politics is work for a nordic Einstein.  Even if you were a Finn commenting on this thread, I would probably have to take your comments with a pinch of salt.

 

Take a look at this paragraph which indicates that the Finns Party lost 20 of its MPs back in 2017 after some kind of defection (which no doubt our resident expert on Finnish politics, Dr Bristolboy, will explain to us):

 

 

 

According to Vaalit, the Centre Party lost the most seats, with the Social Democratic Party, Green League, and the Left Alliance recording the largest gains.

The Finns Party, Movement Now and the National Coalition Party also gained one seat each since the last election. However, twenty members of the Finns Party had defected during the 2017 Finnish government crisis, so technically they had a net gain of twenty-one MP's since the split.

The Centre Party got its lowest vote share since the 1917 Finnish parliamentary election.

 

Now, Dr BB, could you please explain for us how it is we don't count the Finns Party as having 61 seats IF you count in those defections.  (Or how come they went from Zero to 21, looked at from another way?)

 

The above quotation came from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Finnish_parliamentary_election

 

I think I will now go and have some fun with a Finn....

 

7 hours ago, oilinki said:

This whole right wing thing is actually quite hilarious as Jussi Halla-Aho is actually more of an intellectual. He does have right wing views when it comes to immigration, but otherwise he is more moderate on his views. 

 

If we give him government post of being interior minister, that should keep his mouth shut for some time. Give a man responsibilities and he will have to think hard of the consequences.

 

What astonishes is how badly some people insisted on seeing this election as a populist victory when in fact the Finns Party share of the popular vote slightly declined. To be fair, though, the article itself feeds into this narrative. The way the article was written with passages like this:

"At stake in Finland is the future shape of the country's welfare system, a pillar of the social model across the Nordics, which the leftists want to preserve through tax hikes and the centre-right wants to see streamlined because of rising costs."

a casual reader might well assume that the Finns party was against the welfare state. The results of the election clearly run counter to that. The Finns party may resent government support for immigrants, but not for native-born Finns.

 

[bristolboy]

On 4/15/2019 at 2:59 PM, Brigand said:

The left has only themselves to blame for this surge in anti-immigration and nationalism (due to them having been in power in one form or another for like 30 years) as it is a natural push-back to balance the scales after the free-for-all joke that has been going on. The world has changed and people are increasingly becoming disillusioned with many things (like the EU/immigration etc.) along with the idea that your average person has not benefited much from what has been going on over the last couple of decades ... if anything the opposite seems to be the case and they have been squeezed for every drop of everything that they can be, as well as being asked to swallow some pretty unpalatable stuff.

 

We are all well aware of the dangers of the far right but the far left has hidden itself well in plain site over the years but has failed to realise that they are equally a threat with their intolerance too. Most normal people are center ground with views a little to the left or right of that depending on the issue (for example, center right on law enforcement but center left on social services). All political roads eventually lead back to the political center ground as the extremes of both sides only offer failure and cannot have their way forever. What we are seeing now is the scales being corrected as people start to realise what's at stake and that it is interjecting into their lives in a way that they negatively notice. We could speculate as to why this has happened like prolonged unparalleled prosperity, lack of conflict or adversity, gone soft as life has got so cushy, near sky-high levels of education in the West and a superior sense of moral and ethical values ... who knows?   

 

However, immigration is the thing that's driving this and will eventually bring down this flirtation with the far left as it's been too many too fast. People don't like to see their traditions and cultures being diluted or even dismissed in their own countries in favour of some sort of characterless amorphous blob of a culture that has no meaning to them or that they can't even recognise. 

except of course that the left gained the most seats by far in this election.

[rudi49jr]

On 4/19/2019 at 3:18 AM, oilinki said:

Give a man responsibilities and he will have to think hard of the consequences

That worked out well with Donald Trump becoming president of the USA, didn't it?

[stevenl]

15 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

That worked out well with Donald Trump becoming president of the USA, didn't it?

He doesn't see it as a responsibility.

[dick dasterdly]

Getting back on topic....., yet another country that is not happy with the status quo, which has resulted in nationalist parties gaining a significant number of votes.

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, dick dasterdly said:

Getting back on topic....., yet another country that is not happy with the status quo, which has resulted in nationalist parties gaining a significant number of votes.

Actually the Finns party's share of the vote slightly declined in this last election. They did pick up 1 seat. But the Left parties picked up 15.