Satire · first published 2022-12-30
A lie, a shaded truth, and the year's accounts | Weekly Wiseguys, 30 December 2022
The last episode of the year, with four people: Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 30 December 2022. The best passage in the first half is a distinction the panel draws against its own headline: lying requires knowledge, a false statement does not — and for accountability purposes the difference changes nothing. The host also flags his own choice of words in his own video as a mistake. The second half is the year in figures: excess mortality, borrowing set against Denmark's, Finland's rank among taxing countries, and the Credit Suisse finding that Finland was the only Nordic country where average wealth fell in 2021.
A lie, a shaded truth, and the year’s accounts | Weekly Wiseguys, 30 December 2022
Summary: The last episode of the year, with four people: Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo’s Weekly Wiseguys, 30 December 2022. The best passage in the first half is a distinction the panel draws against its own headline: lying requires knowledge, a false statement does not — and for accountability purposes the difference changes nothing. The host also flags his own choice of words in his own video as a mistake. The second half is the year in figures: excess mortality, borrowing set against Denmark’s, Finland’s rank among taxing countries, and the Credit Suisse finding that Finland was the only Nordic country where average wealth fell in 2021.
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 Tere Sammallahti, MP Onni Rostila and Sami Miettinen. The last episode of the year, recorded on 30 December 2022. A table is laid in the studio, Miettinen sabres open a champagne bottle, and the framing is a “rich Nordic simulation” — a joke about what New Year would look like if Finns were as wealthy as Danes rather than as Portuguese.
A distinction the panel draws against its own headline
The episode is titled with the word lies, and its first half is spent on why that word does not quite apply — and why it changes nothing.
The background: the prime minister had answered criticism about being late by saying the electricity support models had been in preparation since September. The civil service side stated that the assignment was given on 13 December.
The panel’s conceptual observation is precise:
Lying requires knowledge — knowing a thing to be one way and saying it is another. A false statement can also arise from incompetence or by accident.
But from that follows a second observation, and it is the episode’s most durable: for accountability the difference changes nothing. If a leader gives wrong information, the question is not whether he knew but that he answers for it. The analogy used is from business: a chief executive cannot excuse an error by saying his division heads failed to understand what he said in a meeting.
The host marks his own error here. He says he made a video on the subject for his own channel and used the more cautious phrase — not lying but a shaded truth — and regards his own wording as too soft. That is worth noting, because the episode’s criticism is precisely that Finland will not use the direct word.
The origin of the convention is also covered: parliamentary etiquette forbids accusing another member of lying, and on the panel’s account the habit has leaked from there into the press, where the justification does not apply.
Why the claim does not hold
This is the checkable part of the episode, and it does not rest on interpretation.
The path of the electricity price had been visible long before September: a thousand-euro megawatt-hour had already occurred the previous Christmas, prices had roughly doubled year-on-year by the summer, and the summer of 2022 saw daily prices in the hundreds of euros, which is unheard of against a ten-year trend.
So the panel’s conclusion is not that the claim about when preparation began is decisive. It is that even if the claim were true, preparation would still have started too late. That is a stronger argument than a dispute about a date, and the panel makes it itself.
A second observation concerns the pattern: responsibility is shifted to officials, officials answer with a document, and after a few days of silence the conversation moves on. That is the panel’s reading of a recurring shape, not a documented finding.
The personality cult — including on their own side
This is the clearest passage in which the criticism runs in both directions.
The argument: once a politician’s popularity is large enough, consequences disappear, and the result is an administrative culture in which there is no accountability in practice. The voter’s consumer protection vanishes.
And then the panel applies the same test to its own side: one speaker says he publicly criticised the president of the republic over his shifting NATO position, and regards the personality cult around him as equally unhealthy. Same argument, different target.
The NATO consensus, and criticism that lands on their own
The panel listens back to its own episodes from the year and concludes that the one recorded the day after the invasion held up well: it had recommended NATO membership immediately.
Then comes the most surprising passage in the episode. One speaker says the press should not have joined the NATO train, even though he regards the conclusion as correct — the media’s job would have been to keep the alternative alive. The same observation is extended to the vaccine debate.
It is a criticism of the press for arriving at the same conclusion as the speaker himself. That is rarely seen, and it is the episode’s strongest single demonstration that the argument is about procedure rather than outcome.
A fair qualification is made in the same passage: many senior politicians hesitated on NATO for a long time after the invasion, so the shift was not straightforward for anyone.
The year’s accounts, in figures
The material in the second half is the episode’s most valuable, because it is checkable. The figures are given from memory and should be verified against original sources, but the orders of magnitude are clear.
- Excess mortality. Around 11 per cent for the year, roughly 6,200 more deaths than projected. The panel says itself that the cause is not unambiguous.
- Debt. About 40 billion borrowed over the term. The central government deficit grew over the term by nearly as much as during the previous four terms combined.
- The Denmark comparison. Denmark had no deficit years over the period, reduced its state debt, and had lower covid mortality than Finland. This is the episode’s most effective comparison, because the comparator is close in size and structure.
- Tax level. Finland rose in 2021 to fifth-highest taxing country in the world, passing Sweden. The panel’s additional point: spending was increased and taxes were not cut, so this is not only a borrowing story.
- A marginal-rate comparison. Scotland was complaining about having among Europe’s highest rates at a time when, on the panel’s reading, its top marginal rate was almost ten percentage points below Finland’s.
- Wealth. On Credit Suisse data Finland was in 2021 the only Nordic country where average wealth fell — and that in a record stock-market year. The other Nordics are some 200,000 euros per adult ahead.
- The share of millionaires. About 2.5 per cent of adults in Finland, around 6 in Sweden, around 11 in the United States, and roughly one in seven in Switzerland.
What particularly irritates the panel is the sentence “compared internationally, Finland came through well”. Their objection is methodological rather than political — the comparator is never named, so the sentence means nothing. It is a criticism that could be made of anyone’s claim.
A proposal about language
The cleverest single device in the episode is an inversion of framing.
The proposal: since cuts is politically heavy as a word, use instead saving taxpayers’ money — and put the question to the prime minister in exactly the form the electricity question was put: when did the ministry begin preparing measures to save taxpayers’ money, what is in them, and at what amounts?
It is not only a joke. It is an observation that the wording of a question determines who gets asked it, and the episode presents it as one.
The year’s woke cases, with corrections
The closing section runs through the year’s examples. They are worth reading as two different things, because the panel separates them itself.
Those with material consequences. EU gender quotas for listed-company boards, and representation requirements tied to eligibility at an awards gala, are on the panel’s account the category where a rule determines who can take part. That is a criticism of a mechanism.
Those that are mostly rows. The arguments that formed around a board game and a newspaper supplement. The panel concedes these are harmless in themselves.
The connecting argument is the more interesting one, and it is about expertise: if a researcher appears in public with a strongly ideological reading of a trivial subject, a reader acquires a reason to doubt the same researcher’s reading of a serious one. That is a claim about the price of credibility, and it runs in any direction.
Two corrections inside the episode are worth noting:
- When one claims both hate-speech studies were government commissions, another corrects him: the later one was not commissioned by the government but funded from a foundation.
- When the conversation turns to a 1970s schools controversy, another points out immediately that it is not a case from this year.
The moralising argument
The logical sharp end is short. The panel cites a research finding that moralising increases hostile speech online, and draws a conclusion using the other side’s own premises: if hate speech is a threat to democracy and moralising increases hate speech, then moralising is a threat to democracy.
This is a reductio rather than a position, and it is offered as one. The research reference is given without a source.
Claims presented as claims
- All the statistics in the closing section. Quoted from memory.
- The date of the electricity-support assignment and the officials’ statement. Second-hand.
- The textbook claim that answering “two sexes” would be marked wrong in an exam. It rests on one speaker’s own video; the original material is checkable.
- The study finding that moralising increases hate speech. Without a source.
- The reading of the smokescreen pattern. An inference from a recurring shape, not an observation.
What survives
A distinction that helps nobody. The difference between a lie and a falsehood is real — and the panel’s conclusion that it does not affect accountability is the part worth keeping.
Criticism that lands on their own. That the press reached the same NATO position as the speaker himself is presented as the press’s failure. It separates an argument about procedure from an argument about outcome.
The Denmark comparison. Two Nordic countries of comparable size, the same pandemic, opposite debt figures. It is a comparison that needs no ideology to work.
How the episode runs
- 00:00 — The last episode of the year, and a “rich Nordic” simulation
- 02:24 — Why parliament does not permit the word lying
- 03:10 — The host marks his own wording as an error
- 04:03 — What the claim was about: when the electricity support was prepared
- 04:51 — Responsibility does not transfer to subordinates
- 05:36 — The officials answered with a date
- 06:23 — The price data had been visible a year earlier
- 07:18 — Lying, falsity, and why the difference does not change accountability
- 08:52 — Why the claim does not hold: the subject was in the news daily
- 09:47 — The pattern of the smokescreen
- 11:06 — The personality cult, and why it is dangerous — on their own side too
- 13:03 — Checking their own earlier episode
- 13:54 — Why the press should not have joined the NATO consensus
- 15:31 — The covid panic stopped like a wall
- 16:32 — What they predicted a year earlier, and how it landed
- 17:20 — “Compared internationally” — compared with what
- 18:07 — The tax level, Scotland, and a marginal-rate comparison
- 19:49 — The only Nordic country where wealth fell
- 20:38 — The deficit against the previous four terms combined
- 21:23 — The Denmark comparison
- 22:10 — A press that reprints the release unchanged
- 23:04 — An unpublished piece, checked in hindsight
- 23:52 — Trust in media as a function of diversity
- 24:38 — A public-broadcaster producer, and journalistic integrity
- 25:29 — A proposal: not cuts, but saving taxpayers’ money
- 27:12 — The year’s most absurd woke moments
- 27:52 — A correction: the later study was not a government commission
- 29:30 — A textbook claim, and a 1970s comparison
- 31:07 — A reader’s letter from decades ago
- 32:03 — Who defines hate speech, and the targeting law
- 32:57 — Quota requirements at an awards gala
- 35:23 — Quotas with economic consequences
- 37:05 — Why activism costs a researcher credibility
- 38:10 — Woke as an old doctrine in new wrapping
- 38:50 — Moralising increases hate speech — and what follows
- 39:39 — The oat-milk millionaire and the obligatory epilogue
- 41:16 — The share of millionaires in Finland and elsewhere