Freedom Of Speech Is Stronger Than Privacy In Finland

(This is a small referate of my Finnish rant.)

Finland has just decided there's no need for privacy.

Our Foreign Minister sent couple of text messages to a girl. When he was interrogated for it by the media, he paniced and denied the whole thing. Mistake, yes, but is denying a small flirt in his private life with a woman really big enough mistake to let him go? There are bigger mistakes in Finnish politics that led to no-one's dismissal.

The woman was an erotic dancer. So she was employed and she pays her taxes. As long as the job is legimate, should it matter what the job is? Better an erotic dancer than a CEO of a large international company. The latter would compromise the integrity of the Minister's position. Even two politicians dating would be scary thing to hear, especially if they are in different parties.

FM Kanerva used his work mobile to text few text messages. 200 SMS' is hardly excessive. If I join my mobile phone company's some music plan, I would get 200 free SMS' per month as an extra. Big deal. Mr. Taxman knows he has the mobile and charges him because they expect him to use it for his private calls, too.

Many of the messages were during the evening or during the night. So he didn't even spend company time to send those.

He has a woman he lives with, though. But as the text messages didn't lead to anything sexual, it is not so immoral he would have to be fired. This whole discussion about faithfulness should be between him and Elina, the woman he lives with.

The Finnish media has been quiet lately when it comes to news. First the domestic "news" side was full of our PM's woman adventures, now it has been completely stacked with the ex-FM's text messages. Finnish people have become more and more like Brits and the Americans. We do not care about real news. We want a show.

And of course media has no morals anymore. People want gossip, media sells gossip. It's not like they do this for charity. Too bad the private side suffers. Private things like this should not be published. Especially if the other side does not want that. I do like freedom of speech, but I'm not talking about that now. I'm talking about ethics, which were wolfed down by the freedom of speech.

The people want a show so badly, it gives the media the power to get even our Forgeign Minister fired.

I hope there's no more sex scandals in Finland for a while. I want to read some news for a change.