Bloody brilliant it was too! I was there with my friend Anu, flying the flag for Finland. There were about a dozen of us in the studio audience at BBC Television Centre in London supporting Suomi (the rest Finns, needless to say)... and think what you like about the whole Eurovision thing, but it was fabulous with a capital F. Of course, if ETV had two sents to rub together, I would have been there for Estonia. But since they weren't, my loyalties traversed the gulf for the night to lay with the neighbours. And we won!
Showing posts with label finland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finland. Show all posts
Monday, September 3, 2007
See what happens when Estonia says no?
Bloody brilliant it was too! I was there with my friend Anu, flying the flag for Finland. There were about a dozen of us in the studio audience at BBC Television Centre in London supporting Suomi (the rest Finns, needless to say)... and think what you like about the whole Eurovision thing, but it was fabulous with a capital F. Of course, if ETV had two sents to rub together, I would have been there for Estonia. But since they weren't, my loyalties traversed the gulf for the night to lay with the neighbours. And we won!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Everybody needs good neighbours
BBC News has published an article entitled Baltic neighbours face alcohol crisis. It provides a pithy snapshot of life in Estonia and Finland. Here is an abridged version.
The Estonian government plans to raise taxes on alcohol next year as the small Baltic nation of 1.3 million is struggling with a drink problem. The BBC's Baltic correspondent Laura Sheeter examines the effects of heavy drinking in Estonia and neighbouring Finland, where Baltic booze cruises remain popular.
Grey-faced patients barely respond to the doctors and nurses treating them in intensive care at the North Estonian regional hospital. Many of them are here because of alcohol.
Heavy drinking is widespread in Estonia, which comes near the top of EU rankings for alcohol consumption. On average each Estonian drinks 12 litres of pure alcohol each year - and every year they are drinking more. Experts warn that if the trend continues, alcohol will contribute to an irreversible population decline.
The tax hike may sound like good news, but anti-alcohol campaigners say it is unlikely to help. The government, they say, has kept taxes low for years to boost economic growth, despite rising alcohol consumption. They argue that it is only raising taxes now because it is not planning to join the eurozone soon, so it is no longer worried about a tax rise pushing up inflation.
At the Ministry of Social Affairs, they are barely more optimistic. Chief public health officer Andrus Lipand says the government asked for a national alcohol strategy, but his proposals to limit sales and advertising are simply being ignored. "Our government supports a so-called liberal alcohol policy. It's a conflict between health and business, and at the moment business is winning."
Yet the Estonian tax hike has been welcomed on the other side of the Baltic Sea, by the Finnish government. When Estonia joined the EU in 2004, the Finns, worried that people would travel to Tallinn to buy cheap liquor, cut their own alcohol tax. But the plan did not work. Finns just started drinking more. Hundreds of thousands of them catch the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn and return home with crates of cheap booze.
In the last three years there has been a sharp rise in alcohol-related diseases and crime in Finland, and drink has become the country's number one cause of death among adults. Now, encouraged by the Estonian tax rise, the Finnish government has announced that taxes will go up there too.
Shoppers on one weekend ferry had mixed feelings about the rise. Some wanted to see an altogether more liberal alcohol policy in Finland, while others said they were worried about heavy drinking in Finland - but none of them thought it would stop them shopping in Estonia. One told me that if the price got too high, he would just go to nearby Latvia instead.
_____
There's loyalty for you. And I was about to say how nice it is to see that Finland and Estonia still share such strong ties. For the full text of the article, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6957153.stm.
The Estonian government plans to raise taxes on alcohol next year as the small Baltic nation of 1.3 million is struggling with a drink problem. The BBC's Baltic correspondent Laura Sheeter examines the effects of heavy drinking in Estonia and neighbouring Finland, where Baltic booze cruises remain popular. Grey-faced patients barely respond to the doctors and nurses treating them in intensive care at the North Estonian regional hospital. Many of them are here because of alcohol.
Heavy drinking is widespread in Estonia, which comes near the top of EU rankings for alcohol consumption. On average each Estonian drinks 12 litres of pure alcohol each year - and every year they are drinking more. Experts warn that if the trend continues, alcohol will contribute to an irreversible population decline.
The tax hike may sound like good news, but anti-alcohol campaigners say it is unlikely to help. The government, they say, has kept taxes low for years to boost economic growth, despite rising alcohol consumption. They argue that it is only raising taxes now because it is not planning to join the eurozone soon, so it is no longer worried about a tax rise pushing up inflation.
At the Ministry of Social Affairs, they are barely more optimistic. Chief public health officer Andrus Lipand says the government asked for a national alcohol strategy, but his proposals to limit sales and advertising are simply being ignored. "Our government supports a so-called liberal alcohol policy. It's a conflict between health and business, and at the moment business is winning."
Yet the Estonian tax hike has been welcomed on the other side of the Baltic Sea, by the Finnish government. When Estonia joined the EU in 2004, the Finns, worried that people would travel to Tallinn to buy cheap liquor, cut their own alcohol tax. But the plan did not work. Finns just started drinking more. Hundreds of thousands of them catch the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn and return home with crates of cheap booze.
In the last three years there has been a sharp rise in alcohol-related diseases and crime in Finland, and drink has become the country's number one cause of death among adults. Now, encouraged by the Estonian tax rise, the Finnish government has announced that taxes will go up there too.
Shoppers on one weekend ferry had mixed feelings about the rise. Some wanted to see an altogether more liberal alcohol policy in Finland, while others said they were worried about heavy drinking in Finland - but none of them thought it would stop them shopping in Estonia. One told me that if the price got too high, he would just go to nearby Latvia instead.
_____
There's loyalty for you. And I was about to say how nice it is to see that Finland and Estonia still share such strong ties. For the full text of the article, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6957153.stm.
Monday, August 13, 2007
He's coming home
A report in today's Äripäev business daily suggests that the gulf between Finland and Estonia may be getting smaller - and we're not talking tectonic plates. While there are as yet no statistics to support the claim, the pay on building sites the length and breadth of Ye Olde Suomi is said to no longer be sufficiently higher than it is in Estonia for our hard-hat labourers to bother working abroad, and the boys are heading home.This is good news for me, as I may finally be able to find someone who can turn the pile of tiles gathering dust on my balcony into something.
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