Satire · first published 2022-09-16
The targeting law, the "slave law" and Uniper's missing backstop | Weekly Wiseguys, 16 September 2022
Sami Miettinen and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 16 September 2022. The strongest passage is about a principle of legislative design: should a law be written assuming the best or the worst of whoever holds power, and does Finland's proposed "targeting" law survive a proportionality test when the interest being protected is an official's peace of mind rather than the prevention of genocide. On the economics Miettinen takes apart the nationalisation of Uniper, the backstop that evaporated, and why Fortum's original bid was made in a hurry. Also the nurse-staffing law, the Swedish election and the arithmetic of the debt.
The targeting law, the “slave law” and Uniper’s missing backstop | Weekly Wiseguys, 16 September 2022
Summary: Sami Miettinen and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo’s Weekly Wiseguys, 16 September 2022. The strongest passage is about a principle of legislative design: should a law be written assuming the best or the worst of whoever holds power, and does Finland’s proposed “targeting” law survive a proportionality test when the interest being protected is an official’s peace of mind rather than the prevention of genocide. On the economics Miettinen takes apart the nationalisation of Uniper, the backstop that evaporated, and why Fortum’s original bid was made in a hurry. Also the nurse-staffing law, the Swedish election and the arithmetic of the debt.
This is a summary on Neuvottelija AI. The episode itself is on Ivan Puopolo’s channel and is his — watch the original. The appearance is catalogued at neuvottelija.com/media, which is the canonical home of this content.
A note on reading this. Weekly Wiseguys is a tongue-in-cheek political panel, not a news broadcast. The speakers are right-of-centre commentators and politicians talking in their own names, sharpening for effect and joking as they go. This article sorts their arguments and marks who said what; it takes no position on who is right, and it does not reproduce the personal jabs. Speakers are named only where the recording itself identifies who is talking: the transcript carries no speaker labels, so uncertain passages are attributed to the panel or to “one of the guests” rather than to a name. The opinions are the speakers’ own.
The panel
Ivan Puopolo hosting, with Sami Miettinen and MP Onni Rostila as guests. Tere Sammallahti is absent from this one. Recorded in September 2022: a few days after the Swedish election, with the Finnish nurses’ dispute at its sharpest and the Fortum–Uniper story moving into the phase where the German state nationalises the company.
The free-speech corner: what a legislator should assume about power
The opening is the single best idea in the episode, and it is framed as a principle of legislative design rather than as an opinion.
Puopolo says he debated Finland’s proposed “targeting” offence with Jessikka Aro at a public event — the episode’s own description names the event — and that he came away with this conclusion: Finnish debate about legislation proceeds from the assumption that officials are endlessly well-intentioned and will use their powers correctly. His counter-argument is that the correct default assumption is the opposite:
If you assume the worst of whoever holds power, the legislation does not have to depend on who happens to be in the office at any given time.
That is an argument which does not depend on anyone’s view of online targeting. It is about which assumption a power is drafted against.
One of the guests continues from the same starting point with a Lord of the Rings analogy: Sauron’s ring is always available to somebody else too, and a law is a ring in that sense. His claim is that people pushing restrictions carry a certain hubris — a belief that they specifically will be able to manage, from above, what counts as true.
The third part is proportionality, and it is the most precise formulation in the episode. The panel concedes outright that speech can be restricted: if what is at stake is preventing genocide, the restriction is proportionate. It then asks what interest the targeting law protects — and answers: an official’s work being made harder. The distance between those two is the whole content of the argument.
To this the episode adds a structural note about separation of powers: if discretion is simultaneously handed to the prosecution service, two of Montesquieu’s three corners can end up on the same side of a political dispute. It is offered as a risk, not as an observation.
Finland as the teacher’s pet
On Russian tourist visas the panel makes a checkable observation: Finland’s leadership said national restrictions were impossible under EU rules at the same time as Poland, Estonia and others were adopting them.
Rostila’s point is logical rather than rhetorical: if Finland says it cannot act because that would breach EU rules, it is simultaneously saying that its neighbours are breaching them. That is a more expensive statement, diplomatically, than it sounds.
Attached to this is the sharpest institutional comparison in the episode. Hungary’s EU funds were being frozen on rule-of-law grounds, the stated reason being politicised courts. The panel asks the obvious counter-question: in Finland, constitutionality is assessed by a parliamentary committee made up of sitting MPs, whereas in Hungary the assessment is made by trained professional judges.
This is where the panel does not stay in its own echo chamber. Rostila concedes that Hungary’s judges are trained professionals, and another speaker concedes that political steering of appointments happens everywhere. Rostila also flags his own uncertainty about whether the freeze had actually been finalised: “viewers, correct me.” That is rare in this format and worth noting.
The nurses’ law: where the panel agrees with the other side
The nurses’ dispute is the passage where a right-of-centre panel ends up partly on the nurses’ side, and it should be read that way.
Rostila describes hearing a union representative on the radio being pressed on whether he understood how tight the public finances were. The answer was that they did, but that one ought to be able to put things in order of priority — and Rostila’s reaction is direct: “my Finns Party conviction stirred and I thought, you are right at the heart of it.”
The structural argument is still critical, and it has two parts:
- The 0.7 staffing ratio solves with a single number a problem that a single number cannot solve: if the nurses do not exist, the ratio produces empty beds rather than care.
- A pay rise opens a Pandora’s box. Concede the nurses’ claim and the rest of the municipal sector demands the same, after which the nurses demand the gap back.
The panel disagrees about the cost, and it is useful disagreement. One speaker cites a calculation circulating on Twitter that halving Yle’s budget — roughly 250 million euros — would nearly cover the demanded increases. Another corrects him: the figure is closer to two billion, because harmonisation follows, meaning the same rise flows through the rest of the municipal sector. Asked directly, Rostila separates the question: the dispute is not about the base but about the delta on top of it — the rejected proposal was around 12 per cent, and the claim is cumulative over several years.
As an aside, the panel notes that the compulsory-vaccination provision for health workers is being dropped at the same time as a work obligation is being imposed on them, and finds the combination ideologically inconsistent.
The arithmetic of the debt
The debt passage contains one figure worth checking, offered as an image, and it holds up: borrowing a thousand euros a day gets you to a billion in 2,739 years. (A billion divided by a thousand is a million days, which is about 2,740 years.) Applied to the government term’s forty billion, the same method gives a little over a hundred thousand years.
Rostila adds the demographic edge that public debate usually leaves out: the debt does not fall on the present population but on whoever pays it, and as cohorts shrink, debt per person grows faster than the debt itself.
The episode also offers a comparison it explicitly invites you to check: Sweden, Denmark and Norway went through the same pandemic and were, at the time of recording, in budget balance or heading into surplus.
The Swedish election and the “world of wishes”
The panel draws two separate observations from the Swedish result.
The first is political: the left suffered because it traded the position of the ordinary worker for immigration, minority and identity questions. This is offered as an observation about voter movement, and it can be checked against election studies.
The second is the panel’s own theory, and it is the most recognisable construction in the episode. First a “world of wishes” is built in which things work the desired way; when reality starts producing counter-examples, they are met with a label rather than an argument; and when the structure finally breaks, the explanation is that the idea has never been tried properly.
School inclusion is their example: “this was just implemented badly, there were not enough resources” — the same shape as the classic “communism has never been properly tried.” The shape of the argument is recognisable; whether it fits any given case is for the reader.
The Colin Wright case
The most concrete free-speech example concerns the evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, who on the panel’s account wrote a piece about the sex binary in biology. His university did not dispute the content — on the telling here, he was told the claims were correct — but advised him not to publish under his own name. He published, and his academic career ended. His PayPal account was later cut off as well.
The panel’s conclusion is structural rather than personal: moral positioning overrode holding to the facts inside the one institution whose job is holding to the facts — and the same demand for ideological conformity has since moved from universities into business, which makes challenging the prevailing view harder off campus too.
To this they attach a religious-community analogy: doctrine gets repeated because it is the only way to stay a member of the community, not because the evidence persuades. The analogy is the panel’s own.
This is the account given in the episode. The details of Wright’s case are publicly documented in his own writing, and the episode refers to them at second hand.
Where reality has already forced a turn
Here the panel is honest against itself. Its own observation is that hard reality has turned the debate on two things — energy and the NATO question — and that both turns happened because the consequence was immediate and concrete.
But no general optimism follows. One speaker expects a comparable return to sense in cultural questions; another is markedly more sceptical and says no such thing is visible wherever a problem can be handled by borrowing more. The disagreement is left open.
The host says he interviewed MP Atte Harjanne on television and asked him about nuclear power. The personal answer was positive; the question about the party’s position, on his account, produced hedging. That is his reading of the interview, not a quotation.
Gender self-identification: an individual problem or a societal one
The argument the panel makes is about framing. The problem the legislation addresses is, on their description, the distress of official papers not matching a person’s experienced gender. Their claim is that this is an individual-level problem being handled as though it were structural, in the manner of unemployment or homelessness.
As a counterweight they offer a comparison of priorities that anyone can check: the same government did not treat male conscription as a sex-based problem. The comparison is political, but its form — what gets treated as fixable and what does not — is a real question.
Uniper: a backstop that was not there
Miettinen carries the economics, and it is the most precise stretch of the episode.
- Germany was nationalising Uniper. On the panel’s reading this had been Germany’s intention throughout. That is an inference about intent, not an observation — but it turned out to be right.
- The “backstop” was the only thing the ownership-steering minister could point to — the idea that Finland’s exposure was capped. The episode’s claim is that there was no cap in fact: Fortum’s holding in Uniper dilutes, at which point minority-shareholder rights enter the picture and Germany can ultimately nationalise the company.
- The original bid was made in a hurry. On Miettinen’s account Fortum’s negotiating positions leaked, and the company was frightened enough of insider-trading rules to put the offer into execution immediately. He notes himself that this partly exonerates the government: in that respect the error did not originate in the ministry.
- The leaking recurred. According to the episode, the German side leaked at later stages too, which is awkward under EU market rules.
Miettinen also asks a hindsight-flavoured but concrete question: what was Fortum doing on the Germans’ home ground in the first place, when the other side of the table included Uniper’s own chief executive.
On accountability the panel makes the same observation as in the first episode: nobody was fired, and no public reflection took place on whether the state should be running an acquisition policy with taxpayers’ money at all.
The burden of proof
The closing media analysis starts from a checkable detail: a tabloid reported the prime minister’s flight time incorrectly, and the error was followed by criticism of the press in which one journalist used the word bullying.
The panel’s generalisation is that the burden of proof is not constant but moves with where sympathies lie — and that this applies in every direction, including to them. It is framed in the episode as two-directional, which is what makes it usable.
The second claim is sharper: that analysis specialising in the critique of power ends up aimed at who holds power rather than at power as such. That is an interpretation, not an observation.
The panel also names counter-examples to its own criticism: a tabloid’s politics podcast and Helsingin Sanomat’s news podcast are both credited with holding the government properly to account. That is worth noting too: the claim is not about the whole media field.
Claims presented as claims
- The status of the freeze on Hungary’s EU funds. Rostila flags the uncertainty himself.
- The claim that Germany intended to nationalise Uniper all along. An inference about intent.
- The cost of the nurses’ pay rise. Two figures appear, 250 million and two billion, on different scopes.
- The course of the Colin Wright case. A second-hand account.
- Halving Yle’s budget as a funding mechanism. A calculation quoted from Twitter.
- The reading of the Atte Harjanne interview. The host’s own interpretation, not a quote.
What survives
Two things.
The first is the principle of legislative design: a power is drafted against the assumption you make about whoever will hold it, not against whoever holds it today. It is an argument that runs in any direction, and the episode presents it that way.
The second is the constitutional-committee comparison. That constitutionality in Finland is assessed by a political body while in Hungary it is assessed by professional judges is a fact worth weighing regardless of what one thinks of either country.
How the episode runs
- 00:00 — The free-speech corner: the targeting law and what you assume about power
- 02:24 — Sauron’s ring — a law is always available to somebody else too
- 04:00 — Proportionality: genocide, or an official’s peace of mind
- 06:27 — The EU angle and Marin’s two sets of wheels on Russian visas
- 08:06 — Why Finland behaves like the teacher’s pet
- 09:00 — Hungary’s rule-of-law conditionality — and Finland’s constitutional committee
- 11:20 — The nurse law, the 0.7 ratio and blaming the previous term
- 15:21 — What the pay rise would really cost: 250 million or two billion
- 16:50 — Debt: forty billion, a permanent deficit and shrinking cohorts
- 18:37 — The Swedish election and what the left traded away
- 19:26 — The “world of wishes” and why facts do not dent it
- 21:02 — Inclusion in schools — “it has never been tried properly”
- 24:28 — The Colin Wright case: correct, but unpublishable
- 27:06 — Ideological conformity moves from campus into business
- 28:05 — The religious-community analogy and why people stay quiet
- 30:32 — Where reality has already forced a turn: energy and NATO
- 32:12 — Gender self-identification: an individual problem or a societal one
- 33:47 — The nationalisation of Uniper and the backstop that was not there
- 35:20 — Leaks, minority-shareholder rights and the original bid
- 38:41 — Why Fortum played on the Germans’ home ground
- 39:27 — Accountability: nobody was fired
- 40:17 — A tabloid’s error, “bullying” and the burden of proof
- 43:31 — Men’s and women’s voting behaviour drifting apart
- 46:01 — The media field, Orpo versus Marin, and a split parliamentary group