Spring, that flexible concept (2)

Despite the clear differences in weather types that Finns recognise, loathe and love, we still only use the same four words for seasons as the rest of Europe. This explains why a snowy landscape can be described as spring.

But this Arab Spring that’s continuing into November… Shouldn’t it be renamed?

I have heard of Arab Autumn, but the phrase is not catching on in the media.

And street protest isn’t catching on in Helsinki. No “occupy Fabianinkatu” here. Though a few hundred people did show up to protest in Narinkkatori on Saturday, of whom some continued on to protest homelessness. And some local blogs do keep track of these things even if the mainstream does not.

Perhaps the lack of discernable address for the architects of domestic mistakes (no Wall Street here, no equivalent of London’s City) just means that Finnish economics was always on the right track hence no need to block its route.

Alas we doubt it. In frustration we wonder what could explain Finnish politics? Why do Finns never name capitalism as a problem?

Why no protestors in tents, organising themselves in solidarity with the 99% of folks who haven’t benefitted from zombie capitalism? Why do the ongoing events of this Arab “Spring” barely even make the news any more?*

Maybe a small town can only do small protests. Protests are almost always tiny. Most consist of people with illegible banners hudlling on the steps of the Parliament Building.

Maybe it reflects the snug consensus about how marvellous Finland/Helsinki is. Perhaps it’s part of the national psyche (not that we believe in such things). Or maybe it’s a generation thing.

We don’t know if it’s a protest, but Helsinkians are apparently to be host to an international congress of extreme right wingers this coming Saturday.

Nor does it really constitute protest either, but today, 20.10.2011 a new democracy group will further enlighten or confuse us about how participatory and representative democracy might coexist. Or they might just air a constructive thought or two.

* Footnote: Of course, by 19.00 helsinki time the media is once again full of it, Libya’s news that is.

Return of the repressed – politics

For some years social science types despaired of trying to get anyone to make choices about anything more weighty than what brand to go for. The world, it seemed (at least to those for whom the phrase “doesn’t everybody have a Blackberry” made sense) was going along swimmingly on an unstoppable tide of creativity and exuberance.

Right here right now, those times seem long gone. Stuck in Helsinki because of a volcano erupting a few thousand kilometres away, I feel politics has washed right over me. Surely it must have influenced the most authoritative of statements about the risks of taking to the skies en mass in metal tubes, given that the Brits say it’s OK, the Finns say it’s not OK, though the conditions (apparently) are the same. Politics, however you define it, was definitely behind the dock workers’ strike of a few weeks ago.  Politics is also behind the awesome threat of Vappu celebrations being washed out due to strike action in the food sector (according to one informant). (Meat is apparently the one item that has been snapped up by panic buyers. Still, not much growing out of the ground even in the sunshine around here (and certainly not asparagus!), so one shouldn’t be surprised or rude, perhaps.)

The most visible sign of politics today were Helsinki’s protesting students. There I was thinking they were just embracing spring by going around in packs wearing the appropriate garb to their age-set and status group. Twenty-somethings in workers’ overalls is one sign that Vappu, that Helsinkian carneval to beat them all, is just around the corner. But it was a protest against proposals to charge student fees, saying YES to free education.

It’s great to have a bit of politics back. Thinking There Is No Alternative (TINA) and doing what everyone else (who is good-looking) is doing just never seemed to fit into how I understand Helsinki. It does fads and it does elegant (oh, yes) and it can seem a bit samey, but the consensus politics it lorded over for decades didn’t even make it a boring place in the Kekkonen era, said by detractors to have been fundamentally, darkly, Sovietly grim. Rubbish, I say. it was only grim if your idea of fun is a day in Disneyland. Or, if you only spoke English and were forced into conversation with a Finnish engineer who thought he spoke it. Or, if you were part of the political elite. Or… [enough. ed.]

With Kekkoslovakia receding into history, and as the aversion to deliberation popularised by the TINA doctrine is swept out along with the ash of the volcano and the now old new capitalism, or melts away in the April sunshine, Helsinki appears to have learned to say “NO” when it comes to real choices.

Everybody’s talking about it…

… and it has to do with cities, planning and architecture so we can no longer ignore it. Corruption allegations, resignations and outrage are circulating like greyhounds on speed around these parts. When the stories point accusing fingers at the prime minister, quangos, charitable organisations, construction firms, uplift in land-values and guesses about how long it takes to build a suburban home yourself, well, the usual sources had to put it all into English. Eventually. And it all comes on the heels of a summer of discontent with politics.

Our protagonist, ever weirdly optimistic, thinks all this might work as a wake-up call for people to see that there’s politics in them there buildings. Not just in Parliament buildings, small (on the left) and big (to the right).