-TSS-

The angry exchange of words between generations is always so entertaining. I know what I'm talking about; we in Finland have a very large proportion of the population born in the late 1940's and now they have all either retired or are just about to retire. However, all this talk about the looming labour-shortage is nothing short of pissing in the face of the unemployed.

Isn't it true that the Vancouver hockey-final two years ago broke all the TV-viewing records in Canada?

I know what you are getting at. It has been said that the main prerequisite for a language to survive is that it is either spoken as a majority language in a large enough area or if the language becomes a minority language it can survive if it is the language of the ruling elite.

Is there any chance that Nunavut would gain a full provincehood or do they even wish for such a status?

There has been a big news in England this week as the black Bolton player colapsed after a heart-attack a couple of weeks ago and his condition has been in the attention of the media, an idiot person on twitter commented that the n***** should just die and other kind of moronic comments. He has been punished with 56 days in jail. His comments were beneath all contempt but was his crime worth locking him up as many people have got away with fines and suspended sentences following causing GBH to totally random strangers?

In Ireland Irish was still the majority language until mid-19th century when there was a widespread famine which either led to the death or emigration of vast proportion of the population. Some Irish people say that the famine was orcestrated by the British but there is unanimity that that is a bit of an exaggeration but the English did not care about the blight of the Irish who were heavily dependant on one crop, potato, as the landed gentry took the best farmlands. While people were perishing in their thousands a lot of food was exported from Ireland. The noteworthy thing is that at the time Ireland was an integral part of the UK, not a colony or a dominion. However, the great famine was a devastating blow to the Irish language which to our day is still being tried to be revived but there really are not any monoglot Irish speakers anywhere.

Canada is currently no79 in the FIFA-rankings. Not exactlty a major power in the sport. We in Finland are below that ranking and we even care about the sport. Very sad.

What do think is the reason why the sport has not really caught on in Canada?

I know it must cost a lot to get into Afghanistan but not a fortune, surely not?

One could be mistaken in thinking that people who are vehemently against abortion would be all in for increased sexual education and availability of contraceptives so that things never went to the point of unwanted pregnancies. Surprisingly though the anti-abortion people are often also against those things. They really make no sense.

Indeed, a lot of Swedish-speaking Finns use language where they use a lot of Finnish words. A Swede could not understand those people.

Finnish and Estonian are closely related, almost mutually intelligible. Neither are even Indo-European languages.

By the time of the next election the Conservatives in Canada may have been in power for 10 years. That is a length of a period after which people are naturally beginning to yearn for a change. Only if the alternative is genuinely considered even worse the government still wins.

I know it's a cultural thing but still I think rugby would be perfectly suited for a country like Finland. I wonder why we haven't discovered that sport yet. In Australia cricket is hugely popular. The popularity of that game is a mystery to me. Watching it without falling asleep is an achievement AFAIC.

What exactly is that? Care to to enlightening me?

I must say that I'm a typical Finn in that sense that I really enjoy watching ice-hockey and have never understood the fascination some people have for the sport where a ball of pig skin is kicked around. Ice hockey any day for me over that comatose sport called soccer but obviously the rest of the world disagrees with me.

What I've heard from the learners of French they say that French is considerably easier than German. I don't know as I have never studied French myself.

Canada together with Finland are the two countries where ice-hockey is easily the most popular spectator sport. In most European countries soccer is easily the most popular sport. Then there are countries such as Australia and New Zealand where rugby is very popular. Why do you think ice-hockey appeals to people in countries like Finland and Canada as the most popular sport? In Sweden and Russia ice-hockey is also a popular spectator sport but in those countries soccer is more popular.

Indeed, I can't fathom why non-Canadians would spend any time on a Canadian forum. Hahahaa, look who's talking now.

It is a complicated matter and therefore it is easy to understand how this issue feeds many people's prejudices. The fact is that both sides of the argument are right and wrong. The justice-system indeed has an in-built bias against the indigenous people and I'm not talking about Canada alone but many other countries including my own. On the other hand, wallowing in victim-mentality and justifying everything with the victim-card is also not the right way to go forward.

Indeed, the anti-catholic laws were implemented in the UK some time in the 17th century. Incredible really that such obsolete laws have not been repealed. On the other hand the institution of monarchy itself is obsolete but the reason it still exists is because the alternative is considered even worse. It has been said that monarchy is a system which does not work in theory but works well in practice.

This is an issue there will never be any agreement on. Those who say that religion and politics should be kept apart think that any religion in politics is too much. Those who are religious think that religious values are nowhere near enough represented in politics. I remember a survey some time ago where it was shown which factors with candidates would stop people from voting for them. Being African-American was one of the bottom of the list of factors, only about 20% of the respondents said that they could never under any circumstances vote for an African-American candidate. Even being female had slightly more opposition as a factor for a candidate. Therefore, when a female gets elected President there will be hype again but it is really much ado about nothing. For other factors the percentage of people who were against rose fast as an open gay was opposed by a majority, being Jewish was also very high on that list but the list was topped easily by one factor: Being a declared atheist was the biggest factor stopping people under any circumstances voting for such a candidate. I must look it up if I can find that survey somewhere.

Referendums on very fundamental issues like independence or joining an international organisation can be very divisive on the electorate. In Norway the 70's referendum on joining the EC, the then predecessor of the current EU, was said to be so divisive that even members of the same families or people who used to be good friends but were on the different sides of the argument, have never spoken to each other ever since. I wonder has the 1995 referendum had similar impacts on the people of Quebec.

I thought that the first nations people living in Quebec are against the idea of an independent Quebec as they have a good deal with the federal government, or perhaps not as good as they would like to, but at least better than they could ever expect from the government of an independent Quebec. Is this the case or am I completely mistaken?

All this comes just handily for Sarkozy as the election is one month away and he has been making very doubtful statements about the bliss of multicultural society. Suspicious minds could even conclude that there is one co-incidence too many.