Interruption over…

It’s been quite a while since my last post now. Out in the real world, I’ve had a few complaints about the less “political” turn my blog has taken since the election, as well as about not having written anything at all since Christmas. Well, I’m going to try and get back into the habit of posting and will be aiming for a mixture of “serious” and less “serious” posts. To add to becoming party secretary, I’m also now a replacement member for Kalle Fogelström in “stadstyrelse”, the town council’s executive body. That means I’ll be getting deeper into town politics, so I shall hopefully find plenty to write about there. Something which is both “current” on the agenda and which I’m personally very interested in is the fate of Bio Savoy, the town’s recently-demised cinema.

For now, I’ll just update the blog with my sporting progress. In my first session back after Christmas, I thought I’d take it easy and drop back to a 70kg squat (down from 80kg after nearly three weeks without lifting anything). Thank God I did, because I was aching for a full week afterwards. I’ve now got back up to a couple of sets at 75kg without killing myself. The basketball is also getting a bit more serious now, and I am aiming to be playing twice a week.

The Multicultural Society’s Integration Debate

There was a good turnout for the multicultural society’s election debate on integration on Åland yesterday evening. It took place in Mariehamn’s library. All the parties were represented in the panel and I was there for the Social Democrats along with Siv Hallbäck and Mats Granesäter, both of whom put in excellent performances. Though it was only one of the four questions that we were asked to discuss, almost the entire debate which followed the initial presentation of the parties’ positions by their panelists was given over to discussion of “hemspråksundervisning”.

All the panelists were strongly against with the excpetion of the Social Democrats. Pleasantly, there was much more support from the audience. An audience which, perhaps unsurprisingly given the location and the topic of discussion, seemed to have a high proportion of Liberal and Social Democrat supporters.

Agruments raised against were:

1. that it will cost too much to offer it to every possible language group

FS. Many, many, many times, despite repeated attempts to explain that we’d said where there are sufficient students to warrant it.

2. that it is discriminatory against those language groups we can’t offer it to because there aren’t enough chlidren who speak the language

Olof Erland, Liberal. It’s a misuse of the word discriminatory. Every group is treated the same, what counts is if there are enough children who speak the language. I understand, for example, that there is some variation in which languages are taught at Lusse depending on how much interest there is from the students in learning them, but we don’t say those students who want to learn a language where there isn’t sufficient interest are discriminated against. In the case of hemspråksundervisning, it’s an attempt to prevent an improvement in the situation for many children by arguing that it does not improve it for all of them.

3. that it is discriminatory because we only proposed introducing it in Mariehamn

Centre. She didn’t want it outside Mariehamn either, but objected to it being offered in Mariehamn on the grounds it wasn’t going to be offered outside Mariehamn! It was therefore discriminatory against chlidren in Geta. There was me thinking Centre were all for the municipalities making decisions for themselves. Mariehamn appears to be an exception.

4. that we are trying to create an elite who are bilingual English/Swedish or Finnish/Swedish

Åland’s Future. No, we aren’t. But at least this argument implicitly accepts that hemspråksundervisning is a good thing for the children. There are also other languages, such as persian, where there could be sufficient pupils to merit hemspråksundervisning. What’s notable about English and Finnish is that they are already taught in schools here, but that very little account is taken of the fact that there are children for whom they are not foreign languages.

5. that it is bad for the children

Ben Haidari, Liberal. No, it isn’t. There is a general consensus in the field that it doesn’t have negative consequences for how well they learn the dominant language in their society. There is also research which shows the opposite to be true (see, for example, Professor Kenneth Hyltenstam’s work in the area). At the same time it’s extremely important not to neglect Swedish. We are not suggesting all teaching should be in the children’s home language. Just that they should get an extra couple of hours a week of support-teaching in the language they speak at home. There is no inherent clash between doing that and providing top quality teaching of Swedish.

Would you vote for this man?

The picture of me that will be used to woo the voters of Mariehamn.

STADSFULLMÄKTIGE: 513

Manifesto

I was at a meeting of Mariehamn’s Social Democrats last night. Top of the agenda was our manifesto for the municipal elections. I managed to get a change made to it with a positive reference to “hemspråksundervisning”. That is, that children with other mother tongues than Swedish should be able to get extra tuition in them in school assuming there are sufficient pupils and teachers qualified to teach them. As far as I could tell, there was pretty unanimous support for it at our meeting, but I read in the paper the other week that Centre are giving a clear “no” to it in their manifesto.

I’ve argued for it before here, but it was pleasing to get a commitment to it in the manifesto. If I’m elected its one of the things I will be working towards achieving.

Just a quickie!

I’ve been extremely poor on the old blogging of late due to spending all my free time on trying to finish my dissertation. The deadline is only a couple of weeks away, so after that I shall be getting back into the swing of things for the election.

It’s not just the politics side of things I’m missing out on either. The town is currently overflowing with beautiful bodies because of the international beach volleyball tournament, and I’ve not had a chance to go and see any games. It’s not often I feel small, but I was stood at the checkout in citylivs yesterday behind two girls both of whom must have been at least three or four inches taller than me. There’s a more than usual multicultural feel about the place, and it always gives me a buzz when I hear people with different mother tongues all communicating in English.

P.S. Check out our new website!

Early Campaigning and Mariehamn’s Buses

I spent several hours stood outside a garden centre in my voting district in town today. Mariehamn is divided into four districts and we’re in the Strandnäs district. It was the social democrats’ strongest district in all of Åland at the previous municipal elections, so we were well placed! The weather was nice, I had pleasant company and the people who we met were almost all friendly. The vast majority of those I asked answered our questionaire. I was a little suprised by just how strong support was for the toll-free town bus. Something I am also strongly in favour of.

There was an article in Nya Åland a couple of days ago about them. They have been wholely funded through the tax system since 2000. The article noted that a recent investigation found that there was general satisfaction with the bus system in town by those who use it, but that were also a number of non-users who were very discontented that it was funded through general taxation. It also noted that the number of passenger journeys had more than trebled from 80,000-90,000 to 300,000 per year since the buses became toll-free.

I’m sure Mariehamn’s social democrats will head into the election calling for the system to be maintained. I’ve noticed some signs, however, that the liberal’s support for toll-free buses in town may be wavering. Given that their support was needed to introduce it, I wonder if they’ll have a policy on it for the municipal elections, or whether it will be quiet on that front?

The End of Cinema

It looks like Mariehamn’s only cinema, Bio Savoy, could be about to disappear. It’s been put up for sale and Tom Andersson, who runs it and owns a large part of, has been forced to close it for two weeks because of a lack of customers. I love going to the cinema, before I had two kids I used to go pretty often, so I’ll be very sad to see Mariehamn’s cinema go under.

Whenever I’ve been to Bio Savoy, with the exceptions of during the very successful VERA film festival and when I went to see one of the Harry Potter films, customers have not been abundant. Is this because there aren’t enough people in Mariehamn and the surrounding municipalities to support a cinema? I don’t think so. Yes, we are living in the age of the “home cinema” and, yes, the time in takes for films to move from the silver screen to the small screen is reducing, but I don’t think things have things gotten so bad that we can’t sustain a cinema here in Mariehamn.

So what’s my wonderous solution to keep it alive? Well, I’ve not carried out any scientific studies of the audiences Bio Savoy attracts, yet it seems to me that some groups are better represented than others. The chaplin film club does a good job getting the support of the more arty crowd behind our cinema, but for the more mainstream stuff teenagers are not represented in the kind of numbers you’d expect. I’ve not infrequently heard the complaint that there’s nothing for teenagers to do here on Åland, so why aren’t they taking advantage of the cinema? When I was a teenager, I thought going to the cinema was cool. Is Bio Savoy likely to be seen by a teenager as “cool”? No, it’s about as far from cool as you can get. It’s seriously run-down and feels like some kind of relic from another age. However, could it be cool with new ownership/mangement/investment? I think it could.

Coming out Fighting?

I notice that the debate about boxing on Åland may be about to restart. When I first came to Åland, I helped out -along with several other members of Åland’s Judo Club- with the security for a boxing gala in Mariehamn’s Baltichallen. In 2004, a couple off years later, the town of Mariehamn saw fit to ban the use of its facilities for boxing events.

How do they justify that then? As far as I can see, there are two main reasons advanced. Firstly, it’s said that boxing is very dangerous. There are obviously lots of different ways of measuring how dangerous something is, but in terms of fatalities and serious injuries, boxing is far less dangerous than many other sports that no one ever argues should be banned. Rugby, for example, is far more dangerous at both amateur and professional levels, yet many children are forced to play it while at school in England.

Given that there are other more dangerous sports which we don’t hear calls for bans against, I suggest that it is in fact another reason which primarily motivates those who favour a ban on boxing. That is, it’s thought that boxing isn’t very nice. Fighting isn’t nice. Those who want to ban boxing don’t like the fact you can win by knocking your opponent out. That isn’t very nice. But why then does Judo not come under the same pressure? You can win a Judo match by strangling your opponent unconscious, or by causing them such physical pain by locking their joints that they submit for fear of a break.

Now, I’m not saying that anything should go. Boxing should be properly regulated. There is a referee, a limited number of rounds, a doctor/medical team on hand, fighters wear padded gloves and so on.

This is probably going to come up before Mariehamn’s municipal council pretty soon. There’s no good reason why Mariehamn should refuse to allow boxing in its facilities, and there are plenty of benefits for the town with the visitors boxing events attract.

In Praise of Mariehamn

In his leader on Friday in Ålandstidningen, Niklas Lampi claims people are voting with their feet and moving out of Mariehamn to the surrounding municipalities. Old people are moving in and young people with families are moving out. I’ve just had a look at the ÅSUB report he bases his article on, and I think he has painted a misleading picture.

For a start, the statistics show that many more people are moving into Mariehamn than out. The only age groups that are moving out faster than they are movin in are 0-14 and 30-39-year-olds. But what I found most interesting in the report was the part dividing those moving in and out of town into these four groups – Ålanders, Finns, other Nordics and Rest-of-the-Worlders. The only group that is moving out of Mariehamn in greater numbers than they are moving in are the Ålanders, and it’s us Rest-of-the-Worlders who are increasing our numbers fastest.

I’ve only lived on Åland for four years, but even in that small period of time I’ve noticed a change. Mariehamn has become slightly more multicultural. Sitting on Mariehamn’s free (taxpayer-funded) bus, as I regularly do, it’s not unusual to hear four of five different languages on the go. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like an Ålander, but, after only four years of living here, I’m starting to feel like a Mariehamner. Part of that is no doubt due to the fact that there are more of us Rest-of-the-Worlders about. I only hope the trend continues.