Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 16.9.2022 · 2022-09-16 · 48:59 · In Finnish

The targeting law and Uniper's missing backstop — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys

Published as “Viisastelu 16.9. | Tunari-Tuppurainen | Hoitajien pakkolaki | Marinin kahdet rattaat | Maalittaminen”

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 16 September 2022, alongside MP Onni Rostila.

The opening argument is the one worth the time, and it is a point about legislative design rather than about any particular law. Finland’s proposed offence of “targeting” public officials is debated on the assumption that officials are well-intentioned and will use the power correctly; Puopolo’s counter is that the correct default is the opposite, because a power drafted against the worst case does not have to depend on who is in the office this year. The panel then applies a proportionality test out loud — conceding that preventing genocide would justify restricting speech, and asking what the interest is here.

The sharpest institutional observation follows: Hungary’s EU funding was being frozen over politicised courts, while in Finland constitutionality is assessed by a committee of sitting MPs and in Hungary by professional judges. Rostila, a Finns Party MP, concedes the Hungarian judges’ professional standing rather than arguing past it, and flags his own uncertainty about whether the freeze had been finalised.

On the nurses’ dispute the panel ends up partly on the nurses’ side — Rostila says a union representative’s line about putting things in order of priority was “right at the heart of it” — while still arguing that a single staffing ratio cannot conjure staff, and that conceding the claim opens the rest of the municipal sector. The cost is disputed inside the panel: 250 million on one scope, closer to two billion once harmonisation is counted.

Sami carries the Fortum–Uniper section. The “backstop” the ownership-steering minister kept pointing to did not exist in substance, because Fortum’s holding dilutes and minority-shareholder rights then govern; and the original bid had been rushed into execution because Fortum’s negotiating position leaked and the company feared insider-trading rules — a point he notes cuts partly in the government’s favour.

Chapters

• 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

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 chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.

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

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