The Finnish government has plans to cut 190 million euros in spending on vocational education next year. The freesheet Metro says that sum translates into a reduction of course spots for 18,500 vocational school students, or 3,800 working years for educators.
Protests planned for Monday at vocational schools are aimed at sending the message that without trained professional, Finland will grind to a halt, writes Metro. It quotes Petri Lempinen of the Finnish Association for the Development of Vocational Education and Training AMKE as saying,”People don’t think about who’s doing a lot of jobs. We train bus drivers, house-builders, child caregivers. Society needs them.”
Today’s protests are being timed to coincide with the start of the new academic year, and in advance of the start of government budget talks where any cuts in funding for education will be decided.
About those medals
Finnish participants in the Rio Olympics brought home only one medal – a bronze in boxing won by Mira Potkonen. This was the first time ever that Finland's medals table showed only a single entry.
However, looking at the bigger picture, the newsstand tabloid _Ilta-Sanomat _points out today that Finland’s all-time ranking in the Olympic medals table did not slip, and is still very good, indeed.
”Finland has always been one of the top countries in Olympic statistics – despite its small size,” it reminded readers.
Ilta-Sanomat tallied up the totals for the top 20 medal-winning countries and found that after all was said and done in Rio, Finland is still in 14th place (three ahead of Romania and five ahead of Canada) with 441 medals.
Several papers today noted that when returning home yesterday, Olympic boxer Mira Potkonen broke with tradition, and was not wearing her medal when she stepped off the plane.
A Finnish News Agency report carried by the Kuopio-based daily Savon Sanomat quoted Potkonen as saying, ”I haven’t yet been able get ecstatic about the bronze, but I’m glad that I won a medal.”
Potkonen now hopes that sponsors will sit up and take notice,”Hopefully this medal will have a positive effect, so I won’t have to go out and sell t-shirts. Last spring was it really hard when I had to come up with the money for training camp. My world championship budget was spent on rehabilitation for my [injured] leg.”
Crime at the door
The largest daily in the southwestern city of Turku, Turun Sanomat, today reports that Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) says that members of biker gangs have started taking over doormen's jobs in nightclubs in bigger cities - a move that is facilitating more or less open drug dealing.
The NBI told _Turun Sanomat _that it has no figures yet on how common this has become, but that it is a trend that police have been aware of for a number of years now.
"Up to now, police haven't had the tools to stop this development, but changes in the law will be giving us those,” Rabbe von Hertzen of the NBI told Turun Sanomat.
Where's my bike, dude?
According to the nation's leading daily, Helsingin Sanomat, around 4,000 bicycles are stolen annually in Helsinki and so far this year, 2,500 have already gone missing in the capital.
Most bikes that are stolen are taken from racks outside blocks of flats or bike storerooms, at shopping centres, and at bus and train stations.
The "Jopo" brand is the most popular with bike thieves.
Police say that most stolen bicycles that have any commercial value end up being sold online or at auctions. An offer of a new or nearly new bike in good condition at a rock-bottom price is usually a clear sign that it's been stolen. Another red flag is that the production serial number has been ground off the frame.
Buying such bikes can lead to charges of receiving stolen goods.
Timo Leppämäki of the Helsinki Police Department advises that anyone offered a deal on a bicycle who suspects that it is stolen should try to get as much detailed information about the bike and the person selling it and make a report to the police.
The _Helsingin Sanomat _article also includes a map and an interactive feature where you can check how many bikes have been stolen in neighbourhoods around the city.
