Winos in Finland?

Decided to do a bit more formal and serious posting this time. You can blame Financial Times for that, lol. Dunno whether you heard about or even read (well, probably not, especially if you happen to live outside Finland) the article "All is not as it appears in the frozen land" (FT Sep 04, 2007) but surely you haven't been able to miss it in Finland. The biggest Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, made freshly comment on it in its editorial already on the 5th. In that editorial the article and especially its informants were labeled more or less as malicious and aspirant to the power.

So what's the big deal? What was the information that caused such a reaction in Finnish press (haven't notice any discussion going on in a real life - though maybe I'm not living in the real world...)? Unfortunately I haven't been able to get my hands on that specific article (no, I still haven't subscribed the FC, or the Economist in that sense - maybe I should do it now that the graduation is getting closer) since there's no web access for it. Only information I have is the beginning of the article from the FC page and of course the information provided by the Finnish press (and we all do know that people should keep some of their criticism when dealing with media).

Basically Financial Times starts the article by describing situation in Finland as "the corruption of Nordic purity that embraces alcoholism, unemployment, a double murder, drug abuse, family violence and depression, all set in a darkened land of dirty, semi-frozen slush". Now I won't go to the statistics or start comparing Finnish way of getting pissed to the British one. I just going to talk from my own experience.

The reality is that you can see drunken people every day just by walking around the city. They are at the railway station asking for a change, in your local market buying beer for their hangover or just travelling in that tram you're taking to work every morning. But never have I thought there's more drunks in Helsinki than there's for example in London. And I still refuse to do so. Dunno whether it is more to do with the believe that the problems might be more visible in Finland (or might come up differently - for example, it's not every week I read about the teenagers who have stabbed each others like in London; here it's 'just' two middle-aged alkies) or with the fact I still believe in Finnish affluent society, at least in some level.

Dunno who's right here and what is the purpose of the FT for writing stuff like this but I do know that it has initiated a starting point to the healthy discussion inside the Finnish society. I can only hope the topics are going to be the important ones like alcoholism, unemployment and family violence and the discussion won't be overshadowed by the fight over who gave the information to the FC in the first place. That would be such a Finnish way to deal with it...