Monday, February 18, 2008

Great Drama At the Finnish Parliament. Good Bye, Fish Fingers!

Eduskuntatalo. The center of the drama over Pieces of Fish.


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Fish fingers. Kids' all-time favourites.


But Fish fingers mean also the style of moustache, idolised by some Finnish (luckily male) members of the Parliament.

Let me go through this once again:

1) Some guys working for the Finnish Parliament, including some male MP's, have recently been accused of sexual harassment.

2) This accusation of some men giving hard time to female workers leaked out of the parliament when a memo on assessment of working circumstances was published.

3) Well, as expected, the MP's who were (thought to be) among the worst ones quickly claimed in public they are totally innocent, and that "women just do not understand the local kind of humour". As if in the rural areas they come from (and they come from various parts of Finland) the women there were just idiots.

Older ones also said "women have changed", and they (the men) are "just old-fashioned blokes with an old-fashioned sense of humour".

Denying, and minimizing the act: "it was nothing".

4) Some of these explanations were very embarrassing. Those arrogant men lacked consideration and understanding. Some humble but straight-forward act of claiming "there is a problem and we all must work on solving it" might have looked much better. (I am not saying they would have sincerely ment that. But gee, I would make a perfect PR manager, wouldn't I?))

But no. The crumbling attempts to trying to explain the bad behaviour were as a matter of fact revealing the accused do not even respect neither the case, nor the women behind it. This made most women – including women outside the parliament – think the insensitive men conserned MUST have done what they are accused of, no matter how much verbal effort they put into finding the way out.



5) In public the evening press leaked the female workers of the parliament call that ugly style of moustache "fish fingers".

6) The (still male) MPs who have fish fingers above their upper lip said they are very offended now. VERY offended.

"Fish fingers" finally made it.

...and what had happened today:

7) Little birds sang that the fish fingers on the menu of the lunch bar at the Parliament were now called "Pieces of Fish" instead.

So fish fingers are now banned inside the Finnish parliament.

EDIT: Banned from the menu only, unfortunately.

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...ja sama suomeksi: kalapuikot olivat Eduskunnan ruokalistalla "kalan paloja" Huimaa!

2 comments:

Vaiheinen said...

Oh my... I knew that there is some representatives who has problems with the moustache and sense of humour, but it is that serious? What next?

I.S. said...

Yes... And the interesting thing is they are now competing who has less sense of humor: the stiff ladies who don't want to have their tits touched, or the men with the ugly moustache!!!!!!!!