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Category: Government

01/11/2022

Victory of Liz Truss in UK: Style over Substance

7 August 2022

Liz Truss is Britain’s new Prime Minister. A few things are worthy of comment. She was elected by the members of the Conservative Party 81,326 votes to 60,399 for Rishi Sunak.

Prime Ministers used to be elected by their Parliamentary colleagues, which is obviously a lesser number but at least has people doing the job assessing the candidates’ competence. I am not a huge fan of Presidential systems, but the 141,725 Conservative members who were in the ballot are only 0.002% of the UK population and the Conservative party members are 63% male, 58% over 50 and 80% in the top half of the class demographic spectrum. So much for government ‘by the people’.

Her defeated rival, Rishi Sunak, had at least been Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasurer) and had resigned to force Boris Johnson’s resignation. He was a multi-millionaire in his own right, having worked for Goldman Sachs and being involved in hedge funds. His wife, Akshata Nurty was one of India’s wealthiest women as an heiress of Infosys and worth 690 million. Together they were said to be worth 730 million pounds. He was also dogged by stories that his wife had the money offshore in various trusts and paid minimal tax. (ww.india.com/explainer/rishi-sunaks-net-worth-how-he-entered-uks-super-rich-list-explained-5523793/ ) Some commentators said that his Indian heritage may have been a problem with the Conservative party membership.

It is part of the continuation of mediocre candidates winning in Anglo elections. Trump, Johnson, Morrison, Truss. Something is clearly wrong with our systems. My view as often stated is to go to Swiss-style Direct Democracy. Politicians are part-time and keep their previous jobs, which they return to after the maximum two terms. People can collect signatures to force debate on issues or even overturn Federal legislation with quarterly referenda. Political parties exist as here and the Parliament in similar, but the party hierarchies are much less powerful as there is no long-term career as a politician.

Here is a better summary of Liz Truss than I could have written. It has been in a number of papers and journals:

www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/liz-truss-triumph-style-over-substance

01/11/2022

Want to know about high energy prices?

4 September 2022

It is about market failure. When public power utilities were privatised a market was set up and power producers could bid into a market to supply at a certain price for each period of time. But obviously if someone bid in at a low price for part of the market, they would then watch as others bid in higher and made more money. So the price to all producers was set at the last bid, so the cheap producers made a lot of money.

There were a few problems. The amount of electricity needed varies widely. Coal fired power is not very flexible-it needs a constant load, cannot be stopped and can vary its output only slowly and within a limited range. When renewables came, solar is only in the daytime, and wind varies, so the system had a problem with ‘stability’- the ability to dispatch power when it was needed.

Another problem was rorting, though no one wanted to talk about this. There were big players who could withhold power so that there was a shortage; the price went up, and then they all cashed in. ‘Imperfect competition’ as economists would call it. No one wanted to build coal plants and there was not enough storage to let renewable energy last overnight or for dull or windless days. So the Morrison government said that gas was a ‘transition fuel’ and more gas plants would be built.

Meanwhile the Australian gas industry agreed to massive export contracts on the assumption that they could frack Australia as the US had been fracked. But the environmentalists realised the harm this did and resisted. So our price of gas went up. So the companies pressured the Albanese government, which is now breaking its election promises and approving fracking. Sorry environment- what is a bit of permanently polluted groundwater and desertification between friends?

Of course years ago, publicly owned utilities run by professional engineers were charged with providing electricity and gas to the public on a non-profit basis. They charged enough to cover their costs with some money for maintenance and future planning. The price was the average price of generation, not the most expensive component. The model worked quite well and could again. The change to a ‘market’ was ideological.

At an international level, the problem is similar, but it all being blamed on Russia, which is only partly true. Naturally in a globalised world, we are also affected by the European gas market, but less directly, especially if we frack to get out of it; which is a very bad solution, substituting a long-term problem for a short-term one.

Here is an international article:

https://eand.co/this-is-why-your-energy-bills-are-going-through-the-roof-cc99e2a59d12

01/11/2022

Bribing the Governor-General?

4 September 2022

The antics of Scott Morrison were bad enough when he was Prime Minister. Since he left two journos, Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers wrote a book, ‘Plagued- Australia’s 2 Years of Hell’, about how he had 5 ministerial portfolios.

There were quite a lot of questions arising out of this.

It was not illegal, which was presumably obvious. Who would pass a law saying ‘The Prime Minister shall not secretly give himself Extra Cabinet portfolios’? It would not occur to anyone that this was possible.

Also ‘Corruption’ seems to be defined very narrowly in law- someone has to make money, usually personally. Corrupt process does not seem to count. When I was in Parliament a whistle-blower, Nola Fraser told me about corruption in SW Sydney Area Health Service. The first question I asked her was, ‘Do you mean someone was taking money, or do you mean that the processes were corrupt?’ She said, ‘No, its not about money, they are just killing people by pushing complaints sideways. They are supposed to be helping people, but they are doing the opposite’. So I helped her and we had an inquiry into SW Sydney AHS. Then ICAC got on the case and had an inquiry that cost more than a million dollars, and said that she had no credibility as she had no evidence of money changing hands. They wasted a million dollars and trashed her reputation because they used their definition of corruption and did not bother to ask hers.

So probably Morrison is not corrupt either. The Solicitor-General did not just say briefly that it was legal, he wrote quite a lot saying in essence that was highly undesirable.

One of the journalists, Simon Benson, was the editor of the Daily Telegraph and must have known about this before the election, but chose to reveal it in a book after rather than in a news story before. In that this would have made a lot of difference to the election and Morrison might have been defeated by even more, it is a decision that frankly bothers me. I knew Simon Benson as the News Ltd journo in the NSW Parliament when I was there. He was a Murdoch man and had nothing but contempt for the cross-bench; an interest in power rather than procedure.

The other aspect is that the Governor-General knew about it and did nothing. In that the 1975 Governor-General was vilified when he sacked Whitlam, it could be argued that Governors- General since will obey their Prime Ministers and not question them. But they are there ‘above politics’ to see that the interest of the Australian people is served, and when the unusual appointments were not announced, the Governor-General should have both known and acted on it. It is strange how little criticism he has had. I wonder if this is because this is being stored up as evidence that we need an elected President rather than a figurehead one when we become a Republic. Those who would criticise the G-G are mostly Republicans.

But now The Saturday Paper has a story by Karen Middleton that Morrison gave $18 million to a leadership program that was suggested by the Governor-General, David Hurley. Hurley is an ex-military man. The military naturally do leadership training and according to two of my nephews who have been in the military do it very well. Various ex-military types have leadership training as part of elite Management Courses which exist commercially. But whether leadership should have a large subsidised program seems dubious to me. It sounds like an elite getting even more resources. Church schools are subsidised and it seems just to be governments paying to increase social inequity. Surely if leaders are going to emerge, they should do so from the rough and tumble of life. The military, private schools and Management seem more than capable of looking after their own.

So what did Hurley want, how indebted was he to Morrison, and did this have any bearing on his response to Morrison’s dubious activities in personal Kingmaking?

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/post/max-opray/2022/08/15/morrisons-secret-resources-portfolio

26/10/2022

Some Thoughts for the Jobs Summit- Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

27 August 2022

Definition of unemployment
Years ago, the ABS definition of unemployment was less than 25 hours a weeks of full time work,
which was considered to be a living wage.
The world’s definition was any regular work, even 1hr per week. The Australian definition was
changed ‘so comparisons could be made’ and unsurprisingly our unemployment rate improved
dramatically. But the figure is actually meaningless as an index of how the population’s work status
is. All gig workers on non-living wages are treated the same as full time permanent workers as the
latter category dwindles mightily.
What no one is saying is that the unemployment rate is very low because all the foreign students
and visa workers, who were getting very exploited in the gig economy, are no longer there. Even
backpackers, willing to work for poor wages as a ‘life experience’ are no longer here.
Employers have had a dream run for about 40 years. What has happened is:

Australia has de-industrialised so that the organised groups of full time workers that were
unionised and could demand a reasonable share of wages has dwindled hugely as a
percentage of the workforce, weakening the unions.
The governments, inspired by neo-liberal ideas of free markets, have attacked unions so that
wages can be lowered. Wages are seen as a cost to the exclusion of their other attributes.
Globalisation has made workers compete across the world, so as long as the goods produced
are transportable or the service offered can be done remotely, many jobs can be ‘offshored’.
It is easier for employers either to import goods rather than manufacture them here or to
move services offshore.
Increased labour mobility has helped:
a. The development of Education as an export commodity has brought many students
here, who are only allowed to work 20 hrs per week. Since they cannot live on that
amount of money they are forced to work ‘illegal’ hours, so employers pay cash or
low wages or both.
b. The ‘work visas’ from developing countries has allowed tasks such as fruit picking to
be done at exploitative labour rates as the workers do not know what they are
entitled to. No effort seems to have been made to inform them, and they have no
power if they were informed.
The internet has enabled jobs to more casual, as recruitment is quicker and simpler, allowing
more part-time and short-term work.
‘Labour Hire’ has meant that the rights of workers can be undermined. Because workers are
not ‘full time’ but only get what shifts are ‘available’, they can still be ‘with the agency’ in a
legal sense, but be given no work. If there is a workplace injury, creating a legal obligation
to the employer in terms of wages and rehabilitation, this can be avoided or minimised. The
person who they actually did the work for (and who was responsible for their injury) is not
their employer- the agency may be, but even they can say that they are merely a conduit to
a workplace who take a commission only for the hours worked.
In economic terms, workers are now in a perfect market, so the price falls. Higher executives claim
to be in a ‘world market’, so can take stratospheric salaries and the gap between rich and poor will
grow. This is very bad for social cohesion, and in the subcultures of management there is a real and
dangerous loss of contact with the world in which the employees live.

What is needed is:

Government has to recognise and state that in an unregulated market, the power of
employers will allow the continuation of the increasing inequity of the last 40 years. People
are unwilling even to state this obvious fact.
The Government needs to recognise, acknowledge and implement the idea that everyone
should be able to participate in society. Not all jobs will make a profit, and a volunteer
framework needs to be created for older folk and long term unemployed which gives them
dignity and the ability to participate in society. But volunteers must not be cynically used to
replace paid jobs; they should concentrate on doing jobs that are needed but otherwise
might not be done. A structure of tasks and volunteer coordinators is needed, organised by
local government and based on models such as the bush regenerators of Hunters Hill.
Award wages for job categories are needed to set norms as a starting point for negotiations.
Collective bargaining with general awards, and employers that want to deviate from them
have to justify their position with appeals to a Tribunal.
Support for Unions. Many workers cannot negotiate with big businesses any more than ants
can negotiate with elephants. Bureaucratic Fair Work Commissions are needed to enforce
rules, but there have to be people at the workplace to observe and advocate. The
Commission cannot replace workplace membership systems.
Aged Care and Disability industries need rules set with more input from residents,
complaints mechanisms and enforcement. Self-regulation is frankly no regulation.
A regulator and external enforcement is also needed in the aged and disability residential
sector. Currently this is driven by real estate- the idea is to get people to sell their houses,
move into overpriced units and then be ripped off, even in the supposedly not for profit
sector. Once in there the level of care needed tends to increase, but not to be provided.
A systematic assessment project for overseas qualifications is needed. In my own
experience there are large numbers of very well qualified Koreans who have nothing
recognised and work in very menial jobs. This is discrimination and a waste of talent.
The Commonwealth Employment Service should be re-established as a Federal public
service department. The idea that public servants do not work hard is frankly wrong and
offensive. The private sector incentives have resulted in cream-skimming. The onerous
‘mutual obligations’ are punitive and just waste employers time. Centrelink does not meet
its mutual obligation to help people. It takes up to 2 hours for them even to answer the
phone. They are currently set up like a business that strives to minimise its costs by
deflecting customers’ requests. A whole new philosophy is needed in job placement.
Training is needed, especially in trades. Apprenticeships have been badly neglected as
education has been seen as a commodity, and university education almost a universal right
to gain entry to the upper middle class. TAFE, which was a very valuable training venue to
get skills, a place where aging tradesmen could transfer their skills and a major social ladder
for people pf all ages to better themselves, and hence a considerable driver of social equity
has been long neglected. The Government needs to research the skills mix needed,
subsidise places to fill those needs, and subsidise apprentices, obviously with supervision so
that here cannot be systematic churn, which has happened with some job subsidy programs.
This research can be done within the public service, hopefully with some links to academic
departments that study employment needs.
In terms of future industries, the government has to have policies that favour the change to
renewable energy. An example of this is that Electric cars should be able to plug into the
grid and buy and sell electricity on the spot market. This will make them part of the solution
to the problem of energy storage, rather than exacerbating peak demand. It will also allow
owners to offset their purchase costs. If there is a change of policy the jobs in this case will
follow.

26/10/2022

Ukraine- Paul Dibb at the National Press Club

19 March 2022

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address/series/0/video/NC2211C007S00l Press Club

16/10/2022

‘It’s the Monopoly Game Stupid’

13 August 2022
In case you missed it, that is a misquote of Bill Clinton’s 1992 election mantra, ‘It’s the economy,
stupid’. (He beat George W Bush when the US economy turned down).
Other apposite quotes are Stalin’s ‘The only thing I believe in is the power of the human will’ and
Mao Tse Tung’s ‘Power comes out of the barrel of a gun’.
The Stalin and Mao quotes relate to the power of governments, Clinton’s the power of economic
forces. It seems that the economy is more powerful than governments, as it was responsible for the
collapse of the Soviet Union, and the current rise of China is partly because they have a new model
where they set the rules for the economy.
The other variable more powerful than governments is technological innovation as it totally changes
the way we live, but this is not a point I want to discuss now.
The two Wars last century were over access to markets, so at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944
that set the rules for a post WW2 economic system the object was to eliminate trade barriers so that
countries that were doing well would rise, and those doing poorly would fall, all this happening
gradually and without wars. This has turned the whole world into a market, and because money
crosses borders so easily, big companies can take over smaller ones, and governments, being
restricted by their borders have their powers limited. The ability to move jobs offshore makes
workers compete globally.
As governments’ power has fallen relative to big companies and the best brains in the nation go into
companies rather than into government, many governments do not believe that they can defy big
corporations. The Australian governments following the interests of the mining lobby and the
Murdoch press are just a couple of examples. Another is the tax and (non-)royalty system, and yet
another the drive to privatise public utilities as Capital wanted the returns from performing certain
functions that had previously been done by the public service for no profit. The governments did
not have the courage to say ‘No’, particularly as the companies were generous donors to the
political parties.
As in a Monopoly game, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer unless there is government
intervention, and even this has limits.
As we struggle with rising inflation rates, falling relative wages, house prices supercharged by 40
years of negative gearing and manifestations of rising inequality, we need to look at the root causes
and to what extent they can be modified. Governments need to rattle their cages domestically and
cooperate more internationally. Is Albanese up to it?
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/08/13/how-tax-bludgers-are-ripping-their-
fellow-australians

16/10/2022

Roll Out the Barilaro

13 August 2022
I sometimes get upset that I missed a good series on TV, but I was recently sorry to miss the Barilaro
Show on the NSW Parliamentary website stream.
It seems that John Barilaro, the Deputy Premier worked to get rid of Gladys Berejeklian, then set up
an entire Trade Commissioner Service for NSW, then someone made its jobs subject to political
appointment rather than public service protocol, then he said that he wanted a job in New York
rather than London, then someone decided that he was the best man for the NY Trade
Commissioners job. So because of the ‘someones’ in the above sentence Barilaro was surprised to
get the job in NY and is a ‘victim’ in this process, so he has ‘mental health issues’ and cannot front
the Parliamentary Inquiry about all this.
Looking at the 3 aspects of this:

Whether we need a NSW Trade Commissioner
How they are selected and
Politicians with mental health issues at critical times
I am not sure if there should be State-based Trade Commissioners, as there is a danger that the
Australian States will have a race to the bottom to get foreign investment. I recall NSW competed
with Qld and Victoria to have a new tobacco factory built. In the Randwick and Botany Sites
Development Act 1982 it rezoned the tobacco factory in Kensington from industrial to high-rise
residential, changing its value from about $5 million to $17 Million and handing over the Pagewood
bus depot site at a peppercorn price to get British Tobacco to stay in Sydney rather than move
interstate. British-Americal tobacco got a huge windfall, NSW got a new tobacco factory and the
industry had a good base to lobby against smoke-free legislation for the next 20 years.
Australia has a Federal Trade Commissioner service and New Zealand has one lot of Trade
Commissioners who sell their national brand very effectively and consistently.
As far as the selection of staff is concerned I am also in favour of proper and transparent selection
processes, which were in place in the NSW Public Service when I started in in it in 1983, but were
being considerably frayed with political interference when I left in 1994.
My track record on Mental Health is that I initiated the NSW Mental Health Inquiry (Hansard
11/12/2001), which was chaired by Dr Brian Pezzutti, was completed in 2003 and noted the
appalling state of Mental Health in NSW since the large institutions were closed after the Richmond
Report, and Premier Greiner saved on the alternative by not providing the promised community
mental health support services. The result of the 2003 inquiry was more money ($320 million) for
NSW mental health services so that practitioners’ complaints changed from ‘we cannot afford it’ to
‘we cannot get trained staff’, which is progress after a fashion. It also triggered a Federal Senate
Mental Health inquiry in 2007, which resulted in psychologists being put onto Medicare, which
increased the professional workforce by about 6 times as there are many more psychologists than
psychiatrists. But perhaps the main effect was some degree of destigmatisation of mental health,
so now sportspeople and others can time off for mental health problems when they could not
before.

But before you drop all scepticism about mental health, you should read Rick Morton’s piece in The
Saturday Paper today, which is the source of my potted summary above and traces Barilaro’s
actions. Sometimes being stressed looks particularly like getting comeuppance when you think you
are entitled to something.
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/08/13/front-row-seats-the-barilaro-

16/10/2022

A Robodebt Re-Run? Labor bound by Pre-election contracts?

22 July 2022

It seems that the Liberals are ruling beyond the election, by letting long-term private Centrelink contracts that Labor must honour. With the public service effectively dismantled, all work is done by private contractors, and doing tasks defined in a highly ideological framework. Even if the contracts were rescinded, with whatever penalty clauses the Libs and their contractors had agreed on, the Labor party has insufficient public administration staff capable to do the job of paying people in the short term. So they default to the Liberal contract.

This is about managing Centrelink’s Jobseeker program and ‘debt recovery program’. We have seen how the Liberals used Tax Office records in the Robodebt scandal, with totally unsubstantiated financial demands, then enforced by garnisheeing payments leading to suicides. Behind this sort of activity is a philosophy that those on welfare have only themselves to blame and need to be forced back to work, even when it is obvious that there are fewer jobs than job seekers, so that all that will change is who gets what jobs there are. Labor has to change the philosophy to a more realistic one, then have a serious plan to help those who cannot get jobs. Everyone knows that technology is replacing people in many areas, and jobs are moved offshore in manufacturing or services such as call centres because it is cheaper.

The fact that Labor was dependent on contractors chosen by the Liberals is another feature of privatisation that must be reversed. The Public Service must be rebuilt, and staff given guarantees of long-term employment- like they used to have. They must do their job helping people without the cost constraints of false bonuses that reward them for doing the easy tasks and leaving the hard ones.

www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/robodebt-2-0-labor-moves-to-hit-up-the-unemployed-for-debts-caused-by-mismanagement/?fbclid=IwAR1S4n-kMmQIO70ABi_kStmuTgnqw2zQOE6RgXRz_C31hFJfQ3_0vik_Pio

16/10/2022

Priorities for a Pro-Life US State Senator

3 July 2022
One of my US friends quipped that ‘Republicans are pro-life until it is actually born’. During the birth
process Republicans are against free health care and after the birth they are against welfare, child
support, living wages, equal opportunity in education etc.
The Pro-life senator in Oklahoma, Wendi Sherman, who was the proponent of the abortion ban
there, said, “The purpose [of government] is to protect life, not to provide for citizens.”
The practical corollary of this definition of the role of government is that women are forced to have
children that they did not want and then forced to care for them, when they knew before the birth
that this was too difficult to attempt. One might ask whether this is the same religious view that was
extant when I was young that having a baby was punishment for the sin of having sex. There is no
quote or evidence of a question on this subject, but these sort of fundamentalist views do seem
extant in the US.
I wonder if political hardheads in the Republican party just use abortion to shore up the significant
religious vote. Abortion is painted as a ‘life and death’ issue and so has great weight. Other policies
like foreign wars, tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts to Medicare and welfare programs can sail
through because of this preoccupation/obsession.
www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-03/abortion-rights-oklahoma-roe-v-wade/101167280

16/10/2022

Finland

22 June 2022
I am currently in Finland, holidaying after the EuPRA (European Peace Research Association)
Conference in Tampere.
I had hoped that there would be more insights on the Ukraine situation, but peace research has its
topics and budgets set years ahead, so Ukraine was barely mentioned and no new insights given.
Finland generally is very pro-Ukraine, with Ukrainian flags flying alongside Finnish ones at railway
stations and even Ukrainian flag stickers on traffic poles.
The conference was mainly about ‘positive peace’ which means trying to get harmonious social
policy, with papers on minority, immigrants and disadvantaged groups, rather than ‘negative peace’
which is taken to be the absence of war. So there was surprisingly little on politics or foreign policy.
The situation of the indigenous ‘Sami’ (formerly called Lapps) was also a big topic. Researchers claim
it is very hard ever to get funding for peace research, and it has to be framed as ‘conflict resolution’.
The conference had a distinctly feminist flavour both in attendance and in tone. It was very
competently organised, principally by Masters and PhD students from the Tampere Institute of
Peace Students. Despite their acronym, TIPSY, the students were very serious and organised.
Participants were shepherded around by Norse goddesses, who seemed charmingly unaware of
their aesthetic attributes.
Finland is an affluent, modern country of 5.5 million with an ambience very like Sweden. They have
the best education system in the world, and almost all speak excellent English. Signs used to be
written in Finnish, Swedish and Russian, but there is a trend towards Finnish and English, as all
Swedes speak English, and Russian is becoming less important to the Finnish economy. Finnish is
quite a distinct and unusual language, quite different from Swedish, which was used by the elite
when Sweden occupied Finland, and is widely spoken. Finland has high taxes, a good welfare system
and a very high standard of public facilities. Incomes seem high as prices are about 50% higher than
in Australia. Petrol is about $A3.75/litre. There is a Universal Basic Income and no visible poverty.
I had not known much about Finnish history, but it had been something of a rural backwater with a
very low agricultural population, principally populated from Sweden. It was under Sweden until the
Swedish-Russian war of 1721, when it came under Russia. The Swedes took it back in 1788, and
Russia took it back in 1809, but left it relatively autonomous. Finnish nationalism was relatively late
to develop, starting in the 1850s. A Scot, Finlayson, set up textile factories in Tampere in the 1850s,
based on the model of Manchester, England. Tampere became the industrial heart of Finland. Lenin
came to Finland and stayed for some time in Tampere as it had a high population of workers. He
promised to give the Finns autonomy if the revolution succeeded. He actually met Stalin in Tampere
so the Lenin Museum there claims that there was the birthplace of the Soviet Republic.
Stalin had his own methods of funding the revolution, which included robbing banks such as the
Helsinki branch of the Russian bank. Relations between the Russians and the semi-autonomous
Finns had generally been good, though the Tsar in his last days from 1899 tried a policy of
Russification, which was not popular.
Lenin had to flee Finland from the Tsarist police, but after the revolution succeeded in 1917 the
Finnish Senate declared independence. Lenin kept his promise and supported the new republic but

he hoped for world revolution, so sent help to the Reds in Finland who initiated a civil war in 1917.
The Reds were strong in the industrial cities such as Tampere. The White nationalists were more
middle class and rural. The war was short and brutal with victory to the new White republic but
many were killed and there were considerable recriminations. Russia at that time was fully occupied
with its own internal strife, but Finland respected their power, remained neutral and benefitted
from trade with Russia, as it increasingly industrialised.
In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement, which pledged non-aggression
between Germany and Russia and gave the western half of Poland and Lithuania to Germany. The
eastern half of Poland and all the countries east of it were ‘given’ to Russia.
The Baltic States, Latvia and Estonia were in this agreement, and so was Finland. Safe from attack by
Russia, Hitler then started WW2 by attacking Poland, and the Russians moved to take their half (so
that Poland ceased to exist). The Baltic States quickly fell to Russia, but Finland resisted, successfully
at first, but the Russians overcame them and took some territory in an unfavourable settlement, but
left them some degree of independence. When Germany invaded Russia, they demanded passage
through Finland to attack Norway, and the Finns agreed, not having much option. The Finns then
supported the Germans to get some of their territory back from the Russians, so in the settlement
after the war in 1944, the Russians took even more territory from the Finns, including part of
Lappland in the north, so that Finland no longer reaches the Arctic Ocean and Russia meets Norway
above them.
After WW2 the Finns built a Nordic welfare state and developed their industries, Nokia being the
best known example. Farm forestry is still a major industry, particularly pine and silver birch. There
are almost no grazing animals. They concentrated on education and industrialisation and their
economy grew as fast as many of the Asian ones, but with higher wages. They took a very neutral
foreign policy stance not to offend Russia, but did join the Euro currency launch in 2002.
Geographically, Finland is quite a large country as it extends so far north. It has no mountains and
only low hills and a large number of lakes which tend to have their long axes to the south-west due
to fact that the country was covered by a huge sheet of ice in the Ice Age, which moved to the south
west. It is quite warm in summer (now) and the Finns go to their summer cottages on the lakes. In
winter it is very cold, so all the houses are triple glazed and well insulated. There are no solar panels
and they are trying to become carbon-dioxide neutral, telling you on the tickets how much carbon
dioxide is produced by your bus or train journey. 28% of the electricity used is of nuclear origin.
Travelling is reasonably easy, though the Finnish language is difficult but almost everyone speaks
reasonable English. Getting used to cars on the right side of the road is a bit of a challenge, and
walking on the footpaths also, and the latter is rendered more complicated by the fact that the
footpaths also have a section for bikes and electric scooters which takes half the footpath, but there
is no consistency on which half. Finns smoke more than Australians and seem to have a lot of junk
food restaurants, so I suspect that the prevalence of obesity will be rising, especially as electric
scooters now considerably outnumber bikes, and are available everywhere to be picked up and used
after buying a plan and putting in a code.
It is a question of getting used to things, but in the meantime I am enjoying the capital of Lappland,
Rovaniemi. It is not possible to see the Northern Lights as these are at the Winter solstice in

December- here at present the sun sets for about half an hour a day and it never gets dark. The 8am
temperature is 14 degrees. I have heard that it is cold in Australia.