Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 21.11.2025 · 2025-11-21 · 54:04 · In Finnish

An audit report, a defence of an opponent, and a supermarket that took up foreign policy — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys

Published as “Viisastelijoiden pikkujoulu: Sanna Marinin tolkuton törsäys | Vasemmisto vihapuhuhujana | SS-Market”

Hosted by: Ivan Puopolo

▶ Watch on Viikon viisasteluklubi

Sami Miettinen joined Viikon viisastelu — Ivan Puopolo’s weekly political panel, known in English here as Weekly Wiseguys — on 21 November 2025 for the series’ pre-Christmas edition, alongside MPs Tere Sammallahti and Onni Rostila. The host notes at the start that the recording’s audio was corrupted and had to be restored by machine, which is why the write-up quotes it sparingly.

The episode’s central moment is not the one its title advertises. In the free-speech segment the panel takes up a case in which the chair of the Left Youth faced possible prosecution under the criminal provision on ethnic agitation — and defends her. They say plainly that they disagree with what she wrote and that the formulation was badly put, and then argue that the problem lies in the provision rather than the speaker: its elements include defamation and insult, terms whose interpretation is left to whoever is assessing them. Their test is that a law has to be written so that it holds when it is applied to you. They then compare the case with an earlier prosecution of someone from the opposite political side, and note that almost nobody criticised the law itself at the time. The demand is symmetrical: change the provision, not just the outcome in this case.

Around it sit two other things worth keeping. From the audit-office report on the previous government’s spending: the number that matters is not how much was spent in the crisis years but how much became permanent, and the ending of a support that was legislated as temporary is not a cut. And from a retail group’s decision to drop Israeli products: a consistency test, an observation that small elections are decided by whoever is organised, and the most practical line in the hour — a company gains nothing by taking a position that splits its customers in two.

Chapters

• 00:24 — The line-up, and a damaged audio track
• 01:10 — An Italian opening
• 02:03 — What the audit report is about
• 02:52 — Why the report came only now
• 03:45 — Who writes the report
• 04:47 — The starting point that was inherited
• 05:33 — The permanent increase is the number that matters
• 06:19 — Units of measurement, and their limits
• 07:07 — Was the figure right — and does it matter
• 08:02 — What is included in the figure
• 08:57 — Spending limits, and dismantling them
• 09:49 — The finance minister’s party’s position
• 10:39 — The borrowing started before the pandemic
• 11:32 — Temporary supports, and their ending
• 12:21 — Pay harmonisation, upwards
• 13:09 — Public and private pay trajectories
• 13:56 — A comparison that stays with you
• 14:46 — Who did what in the health care model
• 15:36 — How things are made to look
• 16:22 — The working group being demanded
• 17:07 — Who made the mess and who fixes it
• 17:54 — Two demands that exclude each other
• 18:43 — One project as an example
• 19:35 — What it cost the taxpayer
• 20:21 — A former prime minister in the private sector
• 21:07 — The panel praises — and means it
• 21:57 — How a consulting career is built
• 22:45 — Everyone capitalises their own abilities
• 23:34 — AI and recruitment
• 24:27 — The free-speech corner
• 25:12 — What was said, and where
• 25:59 — The panel disagrees with the content
• 26:45 — An earlier case, and how it was handled
• 27:30 — The problem is in the law, not the person
• 28:16 — Defamation and insult in the provision
• 29:01 — Where the regulation comes from
• 29:57 — A student union’s strategies
• 30:45 — Media asymmetry in comparison
• 31:32 — The link to a parliamentary party
• 32:21 — The party leader’s reaction
• 33:09 — What should happen, and what does
• 34:06 — Abusive messages, and reporting them
• 34:54 — Who gets a phone call and who does not
• 36:38 — The incentive the press creates
• 37:25 — Vocabularies change over time
• 38:11 — What follows from the incentives
• 40:39 — A retailer drops products
• 41:24 — Is there a commercial logic behind it?
• 42:17 — Where the decision started
• 43:07 — Representative elections and vote counts
• 43:53 — What the boycott achieves
• 44:51 — The consistency test
• 45:56 — A comparison that does not work
• 46:44 — What would follow if the goal were reached
• 47:30 — Whom the boycott touches
• 48:16 — Protecting the consumer, or signalling?
• 49:07 — The order of reporting
• 49:58 — Why even small elections decide things
• 50:56 — The assumption of good intentions
• 51:46 — Where the influencing is done
• 52:35 — Advice for companies
• 53:39 — Sign-off

The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it. This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The recording’s audio track was corrupted and partially reconstructed by machine before publication, which the host states at the start of the episode. Timestamps are derived from the recording as published; some passages are less reliable than usual, and this write-up avoids quoting them.

A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, in English and in Finnish.

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