-TSS-

Funny really; there are no gays in Sochi, at least according to the mayor of the city, but there are two gay-bars there.

The old Canada-cup had best of three finals. The 1987 Canada-cup finals between canada and the Soviet Union were probably the most epic matches in hockey history. The old world still existed with the iron curtain and the Soviet players were still nominal amateurs though they did nothing else than practise.

Tournament ice hockey is just rubbish with its one match play-offs but as the tournament has to be carried out in two weeks and there are twelve teams you can't really have four rounds of play-offs by the best of seven method. I have very little confidence in the chances of Finland this year. The media here in Finland disagrees with me on that point.

Hollande has broken all records as to how soon an elected president has become the most unpopular and most loathed politician in the country. Perhaps that is an indication that he has done something right. Usually the needed remedies are not very popular with the electorate.

All muslim-contries are shitholes but not all shitholes are muslim-countries as is the case with Uganda.

Apartheid was wrong and it's good that the system was abolished. Yet, no-one can deny that under the white rule South Africa was the only Sub-saharan country which somehow resembled a normally functioning country.

There are good and solid arguments against Scottish independence and I'm sure that the no-votes will win more or less comfortably and the issue will be buried for decades to come. However, there are also stupid arguments against Scottish independence and one of them is that Scotland with 5m people would be too small to be an independent country. The idea that a small country has more influence in the world as a non-independent part of a bigger union than as an independent country is just bonkers. We in Finland could also say that we should have stayed part of Russia so we'd be more respected in the world because we belong to a big and mighty country.

The whole idea of a welfare-state is based on mutual trust within society. people view themselves to be in the same boat. People throw money into the common coffin and those in need receive the money and even those people who know that they throw more money in than they receive out gladly keep on throwing money because we're all in this together. The sense of togetherness is vital for the idea of a welfare-state to function. That feeling begins to erode very fast when people witness complete strangers who haven't paid a dime into the system and are yet claiming full benefits of the system. There are some good articles about how multiculturalism destroys the trust within communities. I'll try to find some.

One argument which is thrown time and again is that if Scotland secedes from the UK then there would never be a Labour-government in England(or whatever the country that is left of the UK would be called) but I think that is exaggeration. The Tories are admittedly more popular in England than elsewhere in the UK but when Blair won three elections in two of those elections Labour was the largest party in England as well.

How on earth has this guy ever got to the position in the first place? having said that, even though to a lot of people he seems like a deluded clown there are also a lot of people who think he's a really cool guy. The old adage holds true: Any publicity is good publicity.

French is not a compulsory subject at schools throughout Canada and besides French is a world language something which can not be said of Swedish which is useless outside of Scandinavia. If I'm not totally mistaken the Icelandic people have compulsory Danish at their schools. I wonder what their sentiments are about it.

Be French-speakers in Canada or Swedish-speakers in Finland even though most of them can easily speak the majority language but when in an area where they form the majority, be it Quebec or SW-Finland, they can be very rude towards speakers of the majority language and pretend not to understand.

This thread reminds me so much of our situation here in Finland as we are also officially a bilingual country, Finnish and Swedish being the languages. It is really frustrating how a tiny 5% minority can maintain such a privilege that everyone at school must learn their language. I've spent some time in the Swedish-speaking areas and as Finnish is the only language I can speak it was surely an ordeal.

I support the idea of fixed-date elections up to a point but if there was a vote of no-confidence for the government and no chance of a new majority-government to be formed under the old parliament then having another election is a way out of the quandary. When I say I support fixed-date elections I mean in the normal circumstances when there is a majority-government I wouldn't give the PM the power of element of surprise.

There are no indispensable people. The constitution with its two term limits reminds people of that fact.

The more I hear about this guy the more I seem to like him.

I wish we in Helsinki had a mayor who is always high. Couldn't be deterioration to the current non-entity on the job.

Chris Christie is my bet.

Federalism is an extremely artificial system of government but when we're dealing with huge and vast countries like Canada, the USA or Australia, there really isn't any alternative for federalism.

Does Canada have any laws about restricting the same people from serving both in the federal Parliament as well as in the provincial legislatures?

I thought Governor General is the correct title.

What I find unbelievable is that in this day and age sovereign countries such as Canada or Australia really give a toss about some "Crown" which resides thousands of miles away from those countries.

I apologize in advance if I have got you wrong but your post seems to imply that you don't know the difference between Niger and Nigeria.

There was news the other day how dozens of people died of thirst in the desert in their attempt to reach North-Africa and from there on further to Europe. Some of the survivors made it to Algeria. The next thing which happened was that Algeria turned all those people back to Niger. What I am asking where is all the international outrage and condemnation at the actions of the Algerian authorities? Perhaps those Algerian authorities saved dozens of lives by stopping the intruders to sail by their unseaworthy boats across the Mediterranean.

There was an interesting report on the BBC about the hurricane Mitch which occured 15 years ago. The societies of Honduras and Belize, the ones worst affected by the disaster, still haven't fully recovered.