Estonian Healthcare - Redux & Personal

I've written before about Estonian healthcare - how it's considered crap, though probably undeservedly. Of course, it is difficult to pass judgement on a system that you've only ever used for trivial matters. I've had major surgery when I was very young, but that was still in the Soviet times and I remember nothing of it. Otherwise I never had cause to avail myself of Estonia's hospitals for anything more serious than an adenoid removal, which took half a day and resulted in as much ice cream as I could eat; not a complete waste, then. A couple of years ago I got into a fairly impressive car accident, was ambulanced to Tallinn and checked over at the ER; I was sent home the same evening with some stitches and a concussion. That was luck. But in 2008, I've been deliberate.

I'm a big guy. Always have been. I'd resigned myself to being fat for the rest of my life; and then I decided I was going to do something about it. The key factor was the appearance of bariatric surgeons in Estonia; but the turning point was late last fall, after I'd been swimming regularly, three times a week, for about half a year. I was feeling a lot better and gaining muscle mass, but not really losing much weight. My last bit of self-deception - that I could get into shape through diet and exercise - fell away: there is no way I will ever have the sort of self-discipline for the sort of massive weight loss I need. There are people in the world who've done it, and I have the greatest respect for them, but that's not me. Growing up fat meant a lot of confidence issues; Antyx readers will recognize that confidence is not something I have a problem with. The way I did was to stop hating myself. Self-discipline on the order required to go from the clinical definition of morbidly obese to more or less normal would have to stem from a burning hate for my own body; and that is not a choice I am prepared to make. Even if it kills me.

Fortunately, I now have the opportunity to cheat; to achieve the result while bypassing the part that makes it so difficult for me. Not that the cheat itself is particularly simple, but it's something I can do. There are surgeons in Estonia who do the operations that result - reliably - in radical weight loss; I am still young and have most of my health; and I can afford the surgery. I'm paying a little over two thousand Euro for it, which isn't a lot. Thanks to the Estonian healthcare system.

My first move was at the end of 2007, when I saw my GP (or rather one of the GPs sharing a pool of patients) for a severe sore throat. I got a week's bedrest and a referral to an endocrynologist - a specialist on metabolism. Since this was not an urgent matter, I got put in the back of the queue; a little over a month till my visit.

When the time came, it was all remarkably efficient. I paid 50 EEK (3 Euro and change) for the initial visit. The doctor ran a bunch of tests, some that afternoon, the rest on the next morning. A week later I got the results, with commentary, and some research on the state of bariatric surgery in Estonia. The doc confirmed the diagnosis I'd known already: hyperinsulinemia, the most remarkable thing about which is that it is not diabetes. What it does do is cause an appetite disproportional to consumption. By this time I'd recognized that I eat more than most people; but I do it without really thinking about it. It's the difference between hunger and appetite, and it's something that ought to be fixed well by an operation that constricts the volume of the stomach. The endocrynologist gave the go-ahead.

I then contacted the surgeon, from a Tallinn private practice. It took a while to set up a visit, and when I did travel to the capital, it turned out that he was in surgery; apparently he actually works as a gastric surgeon on the staff of Tallinn's regional hospital as well. Fair enough, really; but what I did find out was that the metabolism workup was not sufficient. I'd also need to be cleared by a gastroenterologist. Fortunately, I could do that in Tartu.

This time I didn't feel like waiting a month, so I cheated. I paid the university hospital for an unreferred visit to a specialist doc. My 300 EEK (20 Euro) got me a time within two business days of putting in the request on the hospital's website. Since I did actually have national health insurance, that was all I paid; the ultrasound, gastroscopy and doctor's consult were all free. The GE was one of those old doctors that somehow instill tremendous trust. (I've never been afraid of docs, not even of needles when I was very little; an old relative that died before my birth had been something important in Estonian medicine, so all through my childhood various doctors had been very pleased to meet an heir to that family. Comes with having an uncommon last name.) She gave me the OK, and mentioned what she knew about the bariatrics in Tallinn; some 70 surgeries had been performed successfully there.

Most of those were of the really hardcore kind. There are three types of surgery available, and the most radical one is an actual bypass, where the patient's guts are rerouted. (Curiously enough, since it's purely surgical and does not involve any medical gadgets, it gets paid for in full by the national health insurance.) The least invasive type is the gastric balloon, which they insert through a tube down your throat - but it stays there for no more than 6 months, and I needed a longer-lasting effect than that. So I'm getting a lap band - a sort of belt that gets tied around the top part of the stomach. The upshot is that very little food can actually fit in there, so I can't overeat - and apparently most of the nerve endings are at the top of the stomach, so I constantly feel really full. It's not a magic pill, but it's been around for decades, and it seems to really work.

The great thing about the lap band surgery is that they're not cutting any internal organs - just adding a new bit. Sounds safer than removing an appendix.

Today, after my extended three-day birthday celebrations involving cake and a last Chateubriand stake from the Crepp meatery, I weigh 149.8kg. My surgery is on Wednesday. I'm about to put my gut where my blogging finger is.

A Bang and a Whimper

The game was epic. Not without a few glitches here and there, but considering that this was the team's first experience actually organizing it - with very light input from the regular game master, adjusting a few bits here and there - it was a roaring success. There were some unusual and well-received tasks, and the scenario I wrote for it even made the news.

The rest of the fun planned for April 26th? Nada. Tallinn was making a conscious effort to ignore it. People were lured out to shopping centers to bid in auctions for cheap package holidays, schoolkids were occupies and exhausted by the national essay exam, etc. The police were out in force, but didn't seem to actually go around harassing anyone. Night Watch did have a meeting downtown, but they had the good sense to not respond to provocation, for which I genuinely applaud them.

A beautiful spring Saturday spent far more productively than anyone feared.

Oh Snap

Talking to Justin the other day, we got onto the topic of Andrus Ansip as the longest-serving (continuously) PM in the history of postsoviet Estonia. In fact, only one Estonian leader has ever served longer than him.

The Päts syndrome is a constant issue in Estonian internal politics. Personally I find it reassuring that since '91, Estonia has never had a government make it from one election to another. But Ansip is a prime candidate for a latter-day Päts, as he does have that central quality: an absolute conviction that he is right, and everyone around him is a moron. (If you think I'm overstating the issue, go and watch a Steinbock House press conference, especially one where the reporters ask him about something less than utterly practical.) He also has a core team that seems loyal to him.

What he does lack is vision. Reform is supposed to be the party of economic competence, but Ansip wants more than that - he wants to be a statesman. Unfortunately, that's pure ambition; he doesn't have an overarching idea of what needs changing, like Laar and his mates did back in the early 90s. He wants to be in power for the sake of power.

In this, he is destroying Reform's credibility. In the context of Estonian politics, it seems ludicrous that the bankers' party is firmly in charge of a country, but cannot stop an economic recession. We've missed the Euro accession (nevermind that a lot of people were unconvinced by the idea, it's annoying that we weren't allowed into the Eurozone rather than choosing not to enter), inflation is high, unemployment is growing for the first time in recent memory, and now it turns out that even our balanced budget, one of the cornerstones of Estonia's economic miracle, might not be that balanced after all. This is where Ansip's cult of personality is coming back to bite him, because nobody cares about the coalition - this is Ansip's fault.

The disingenuous bit here is claiming that the Bronze Soldier debacle caused the crisis, by cutting off Russian transit. It certainly contributed, but let's not exercise selective memory: for most of 2006 at least, everybody was saying that 12% annual growth was unsustainable and that the shit was only a few millimeters away from the fan. Russia accounts for 8% of exports and 13% of imports; losing Russia's business hurts, but it's not going to bring the economy crashing down all on its own. (It didn't before, when the double tariffs were introduced, and we're in much better shape now.)

But Russian trade aside, Ansip was still supposed to mitigate the effects of the upcoming crisis. This is what the Reform Party is for. The most public effort so far was the new labour bill, which significantly curtailed employees' rights and benefits in favour of the employers. I can see the idea behind it - make the market more attractive to foreign investment - and at the time I didn't much care, as I've never drawn unemployment or any other welfare benefits from the state, but then I have the advantage of apparently marketable skills. The labour bill was designed to achieve a similar effect as the flat tax system, but whereas Laar's great coup was a feat of engineering - making corporations happy while the people shrugged and were mildly grateful for simpler tax returns - Ansip's plan was going to make life demonstrably more difficult for the actual voters. Since the favourite food of an Estonian is another Estonian, even the other coalition parties took advantage of the public outcry, and delivered the thermonuclear boot to the labour bill.

Now, there are things that Ansip's cabinet gets to be quietly proud of - they seem to have managed to stave off the Eurocrats and keep the zero corporate tax provision alive. But as far as the public is concerned, that is overshadowed by practical embuggerances like the higher fuel excise, which - correct me if I'm wrong - the goverment did not strictly need to implement quite yet. (As far as I understand it, we are obliged by EU policy to eventually both get the fuel excise up to Central European levels, and to bring the tax system in line with the rest of the confederation, but not quite yet.) Ansip is determined to take credit personally for everything happening in Estonia, but the upshot is that he gets blamed personally as well. Reform approval ratings are still decent, though falling, but opinion polls do not actually tell you who people would vote for if the ballots were handed out tomorrow. A lot of people are angry at Ansip, and some of them, like former Prime Minister and transit mogul Tiit Vähi, have stopped being subtle about it:

The most serious problem [in the Estonian economy] is that our Prime Minister is incapable of discussion or listening. As long as that is the case, I do not foresee any positive changes for the Estonian economy. We'd all rather take monuments down and put monuments up, and damn the economy. The politicians' infighting is more important.

New policies come with new people, but right now, nobody wants a change of government. They'd rather let the Reform Party roast for as long as they can.

The solution would be a government of specialists or technocrats, like we had in 1992. [...] Andrus Ansip does not solve problems, he sees myths and thinks that the economic slowdown is the fault of international imperialism and the four seasons.

Of course Vähi's words should be taken with the appropriate amount of salt, and the economy will bounce back up once the current crisis has shaken people up a bit. But I have a sneaking suspicion that when we come out on the other side of this mess, PM Ansip will be conspicuous by his absence.

Land Tax Considered Hilarious

Feel like Estonian politics has gotten boring again? That's about to change.

We're almost a year away from the Europarliament elections and a year and a half away from local ones, but it's starting up already.

I said last year that Savisaar was probably damaged beyond repair by his actions in the wake of the April riots; Reform and Isamaa would never let him live it down. It's a bit too early for them to drag out their biggest buckets of filth, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the government will do KERA no favours at all.

Alex has mentioned that property tax in Estonia is essentially zero. It's not really property tax; the property is taxed at the moment of purchase. This is land tax, something that is collected by the local council for administration purposes. (Most of the local council's budget comes from income tax, which is why the council is pretty much the only entity that gives two shits about the population register.) Alex pays 756 kroons a year on his farmland in Põltsamaa. I pay a proportional share of some tiny percentage of the assessed value of the land under my apartment building (the market value of the apartments is irrelevant), and it comes out to 22 kroons per year. Two dollars. I'm sure the postage, bank costs and administration overhead for the council are more than that sum.

There is a certain leeway in the land tax assessment for local councils. Each council can establish the size of the tax, between 0.1% and 2.5% of the assessed value. The rate in Tartu is 1%, and has been such since 2002; there is also compensation for pensioners who own plots up to 1000m2 (which is a decent chunk of land for a private residence).

The rate in Tallinn used to be 0.6%... but as of this year, it has grown to 1.5%. Retirees on a fixed income, who are now faced with a massive tax bill, are naturally livid, and the press is jumping on the story. This is where the Centrists' complete control of the Tallinn municipal government is coming to bite them in the ass, because there is no way for them to shift the blame. If Tartu (historically a Reform stronghold) and other towns can get by without raising land tax, it would be disingenuous for Savisaar to claim rising costs.

Predictably, the coalition parties are not rushing to the Centrists' aid. Harri Paabo, the chairman of the Tartu Homeowners Union, dismisses the issue as one irrelevant in the second largest city, and doesn't bother being too subtle about it: "The land tax is not a heavy burden on Tartu homeowners because we don't have Edgar Savisaar for a mayor."

The national homeowners union and its international counterpart have responded by suggesting a waiver on land tax for homeowners to begin with. The point of land tax is that land is a finite resource, and should not be hogged. If you buy land and don't do anything useful with it - such as farming, construction or other development - it becomes too expensive. Under this logic, there is certainly a valid point to be made that homeowners are not misusing land; they are doing the best thing they can with it, given local zoning regulations and the good of society in general.

A homeowners tax waiver would have to be passed as a national law. The Finance Ministry (controlled by the Social Democrats, who ought to be protecting the interests of the pensioners) is stalling, saying they haven't really considered it - this was never an issue until the 2008 tax notifications started arriving in the last few weeks. The press then turned to the Prime Minister.

Ansip, in his typical style when annoyed by what he feels is a stupid question, was unsubtle to the point of being politically incorrect: It's your own fault, dumbass. The population of Tallinn elected Edgar Savisaar's party to the municipal government, and now it is reaping the benefits. Sure, the government could interfere and block the massive tax hike, but this is going to reflect poorly on Savisaar alone, and there's no way in Hell that the Reform or IRL are going near this mess. Even the prospect of getting to say "we made sure the land tax wouldn't rise" come election time is not appealing enough. No, the coalition wants people to get hit where it hurts - in the wallet - and to hate Savisaar for it.

From the safety of Tartu, this is going to be entertaining.

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Bonus story: the domain names isamaaliit.com and isamaa.com have apparently been squatted by one Virgo Kruve, a Centrist party member who publishes the Pärnu municipal newsletter (Pärnu's mayor is KERA), the town's KERA propaganda sheet, and also owns the keskerakond.com, .net, .org and .info domains (all of those lead to the party's official website). The Isamaa domains however are more naughty: one was redirecting to an anal porn website (and not the relatively innocuous landing page either, but to a full compliment of genitalia) and the other was a mock advertisement for a Tallinn brothel that got shut down a couple of years ago - though not before Isamaa's Jüri Mõis got caught there and had to resign from the position of Tallinn mayor.

When quizzed by Eesti Ekspress, Virgo Kruve commented that the redirects were social commentary on the state of Estonia under Isamaa leadership.

Like I say, entertaining.

Diene at it againe...

Postimees gloats that Doudou Diène, the UN's racism envoy, has presented his long-awaited report on Estonia today, at a UN session in Geneva.

In his report, mr. Diene, remembered for coming to Estonia last year, accusing us of racial discrimination and telling us to make Russian a state language, recognizes the great work of Estonia's political leadership and government institutions in promoting tolerance and human rights.

His report apparently recognizes the controversial nature of the Soviet legacy in Estonia, and urges us to resolve the issues through a consistent integration policy and social dialogue. The report also calls for a solution to the problem of stateless persons.

The official UN press release is not quite as celebratory, obviously (Ctrl+F and search for 'Estonia'). I wonder what the actual report states.

Debriefing

It is unlikely that Medvedev is entirely Putin’s creature, or will remain so for long. Yes, Putin is not quite letting go, and there is a legal loophole that would allow him to run for President again in 2008, but even in a situation as unprecedented as the one we have now, it would be disingenuous to suppose that a leader of Russia will give up the power willingly. The top job is not one fit for a puppet, and Dmitri Medvedev is decidedly not a fool.

Full text at Baltlantis.

They're at it again.

Fancy a bit of light KERA-bashing this afternoon?

Postimees reports that Centrist big wig Lauri Laasi has gotten his way with some property in the posh Nõmme suburb. It's an area of private houses, and has a statute whereby new buildings cannot be built on plots of less than 1200 m2 (13 000 sq ft for the metrically impaired). Laasi wanted a plot of his split into two, and zoned for a new house on each half. The head of the suburb's council, also a KERA man, suggested an exception be made in this case on the grounds that the street is already ruined by ugly terraced houses.

The council's planning commission technically has a right to overrule the statute, but chose not to in this case - but the planning was still approved by Savisaar's City Hall.

Full disclosure: Lauri Laasi is married to someone I used to go to school with, so this is more fun for me than taking pleasure in the misfortunes of a complete stranger would be.

Local Warming

Just as the first spring month begins, Estonia has finally gotten to the point of winter. It's a few degrees below zero, with a nice coating of powder to cover up most of the sludge - at least here in continental Tartu; I understand it's less pleasant on the coasts. We've managed to go through the entire winter of 2007/2008 without a single proper frost, with the exception of an odd cold snap in November and a few days of -15C in January - which, compared to the experience of standing in the middle of a field waiting for the bus in -30C and a Holy Shit chill factor, is nothing. The sort of weather where Icelanders start debating whether they should put on a sweater.*

It's difficult to get Estonians excited about any cause, and despite obvious exceptions, environmentalism has an especially tough fight ahead of it - climate change has been decidedly changing Estonian weather for the better. Although there is a väliseestlane in my inbox gloating about +14C in the Toronto area. Bastard.

Also in my inbox is some Orkut spam on behalf of Marek Strandberg, calling for a public outcry over the plans to build a nuclear power station in Estonia. Strandberg has been an odd duck since the parliamentary elections, and I'm afraid the Green party's reserve of voter enthusiasm is going the way of Res Publica very quickly. They're not in the coalition, and thus they are more or less by default in bed with Savisaar (and I apologize for the mental image). They have singularly failed to get anything useful done, but I've seen the tabloids have a go at them for living posh at the taxpayer's expense - the yellow press defaults to MPs' company cars on a slow news day.

Never mind his suspect claims that the power station would be of an outdated type - Finland's building one now, a completely new design, safest one ever constructed, and it seems pretty self-evident that we'd get one of those - or the fact that a nuclear power station in Estonia proper is a spacey last resort, an idea bounced around if we are muscled out of both the Ignalina reconstruction in Lithuania and Finland's continuing nuke construction. Oy, Marek - if it really comes down to that, do you really suggest we keep mining shale or running the Narva plants on fossil fuels instead of nukes? Very funny, Mr. Environmentalist. Now pull the other one.

I didn't vote for Strandberg, but I enjoyed the idea of him, so I'm sorry to see him overcome by the KERA influence and resorting to shameless populist agendas. This entire sordid business has a faint green afterglow, and I don't like the look of it.

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* You think I'm joking, but I've been to Iceland. At the rotten shark farm the local dude gave us a 20-minute lecture about the curing process, in a wet Arctic blizzard, wearing sandals and a fleece.

Estonia's Ugliest Computer

A campaign by a local weekly, to find the ugliest machine in IT wonderland Estonia. Winners get a couple of posh new HP laptops.

This one for example was put on a hot stove, out of the reach of little kids, who nevertheless managed to turn the hotplate on. :) Melted (and exploded) battery, half the RAM gone, but it still runs!

The Estonia Syndrome

...here.

Links/plugs/feedback welcome.

Oh do sod off, Kevin.

Continuing with the Esto-blogroll...

It is appalling that the very country that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (that is, the new and improved all-inclusive NATO) regards as an international leader in cyber defense, according to Mike Collier's article in the February issue of City Paper, still sows a thin string of sand on its sidewalks as well as on the platforms of its train stations to keep people from slipping on the ice and snow. It is scandalous that the country that is, according to Collier, "committed to developing a cutting-edge cyber-security industry [and selling] its expertise around the globe" doesn't know what the hell road salt is.

They do still use road salt in some places, most notably hilly bits of road and busy intersections (the former being rare in Estonia, the latter increasingly less so), but not for sidewalks and train platforms and level roads, for a very good reason: salt fucks things up. It's incredibly bad for cars, because it goes right through the paintjob and causes corrosion; and it's incredibly bad for your shoes. Moving about on foot in Estonia in the winter is a trick you can learn, and locals inevitably do - it helps to have shoes with interesting tread patterns on the soles - but ubiquitous salt usage is something that was done in the Soviet days, and mercifully is not done any more.

Then again, mr. Hogan there lives in Tapa - presumably of his own free will - so without knowing more, I am not entirely confident in his judgement. [grin, duck, run]

Tartu blog scene, redux

The scene is growing. Yesterday me and Giustino went over to check out the Hostel Dirty Sex, run by Joel Dullroy (nee Alas), of the No Estonian Unturned blog. It's a lovely place, with a very nice chillout room equipped with the second most comfortable couch in the world (after my own bright red leather one). Definitely a great place to hang out, smoke a waterpipe with some friends, and explain to a jetlagged Nsync refugee exactly what Wired Magazine did to piss me off.

Meanwhile, it seems that Trek of The Eesti Connection is considering moving out of Tallinn. Go over there and convince him to choose Tartu over Pärnu, and save a man and his family from annual flooding.

As master Dullroy intends to depart in the mid-term future, blogging Estonia will not be left aussie-less: apparently Loius (Zezeran) is moving to Tallinn.

Did I forget anyone?

You go, Rein!

Remember the blue laws? The ban on sales of alcohol in Tallinn after 8pm?

The entire idea is now being challenged by the Justice Minister, as unconstitutional. Freedom of enterprise is protected. Alcohol is not a banned substance, so the right of local councils to restrict trade in alcohol is iffy.

The JM has made a statement to this effect to the Minister for Economic Affairs, who is none other than former PM and Res Publica leader Juhan Parts. The MEA tried to introduce a bill that would ban alcohol sales between 11pm and 8am across the country; the Justice Ministry refused to sign off on it.

Now, I have no great love for Rein Land, I think he's a bit of a blowhard. (Then again, I'm not that big a fan of Parts either.) But in this case I admire what he is doing, even if he might have an ulterior political agenda to show the IRL camp its place.

By far the biggest problem in Estonian politics today is loss of vision, drive and confidence. The fifteen-year miracle of this country was based on a shared understanding that there was a best way to do things, and this way was to give people as much freedom as reasonably possible. It was this implicit trust in competence and common sense that allowed us to pull off something which most people said could not be done - and most people in other communities still say is impossible.

Estonian politics has consolidated into a few large parties, who are trying hard to come up with an actual platform. With Rahvaliit effectively discontinued, and Keskerakond unlikely to survive the next round of elections (and flailing about in embarassing ways as a result), the two big coalition parties are trying to resort to rhetoric.

For IRL, this means suddenly remembering that they are the conservative, right-wing party. While the Isamaa bit has primarily been about patriotism, the Res Publica bit seems to have decided that now they are going to be the defenders of family values, temperance, and unless we're all very careful, God.

This is deplorable. The unique working amalgam of positions that makes Estonia what it is requires us to be conservative in economic matters, but liberal in social ones. If Res Publica are now going to go start taking pages out of the US Republican book (and all the wannabe Repubs in Canada, Australia, etc.), then Parts needs to be taken out back and given what Mr. Bridger called "a right talking to".

If Reform starts to take its formal rhetoric seriously again, that's fine; they are officially the bunch that keeps the economy running and doesn't particularly bother with third-rail type issues. I don't really believe that's going to happen, but irrespective of all that...

For Rein Lang to come out and tell Parts and the prudes to stop it, because such a restriction of free enterprise is not the Estonian way - to bring back that level of discourse - is extremely admirable, and I wish him luck in his endeavours.

(Holiday positivity bonus: more babies were born in Tartu last year than people died.)

The AnTyx Fix: Education

Wrote about education a few weeks ago, and of course somebody asked me what we're supposed to do about it. Which is a very good point; it's my job as a blogger to suggest the proper way to do things which I think are broken.

There was a news blurb in the papers yesterday: apparently there is something called an IT Council, and they recommended that the national school-graduation exams include mathematics as a mandatory test. This would produce a lot more youths with aptitude in mathematics, solve Estonia's labour shortage, and generally save the dolphins.

Well, that's a silly idea. It would be valid in India or China, but it's inappropriate for what we are trying to do here. Making maths mandatory is going to produce a large number of people with just enough math knowledge to pass the test, and they will be expected to go into IT, and we will have a workforce of semi-competent code monkeys that are far more expensive than semi-competent code monkeys in Bangalore, and nobody will have any use for them.

Estonia needs to be a knowledge economy. Our marketable skill is competence, and the ability to design and implement the optimal solutions to a problem. Solutions which are remarkably useful, and I mean remarkably - so good that you can't help but remark on it. To sustain this, we need to give our people the opportunity to become really good at what they do, and we can't do that by forcing all of them to learn Java.

Now, I've seen something recently which made me think about these things. It was a list of things you have to do when you're poor. It had really sad and hard-hitting lines like "Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw". It made me think of my own family, back in the early 90s, when often enough my dad would simply not get his salary; he'd do the work, but there would be no money to give him. We were properly poor back then. But these days - I'm not rich, but I've fooled some people. I'm comfortably middle-class, with enough disposable income for a moderate selection of toys. So's the rest of my family. So are my friends, including the ones I grew up with.

And it occured to me that the biggest external contributing factor - other than the fact that I'm just naturally good at something that I've managed to earn money doing - was education. More importantly, the fact that I could go to the best university in the country and pay no tuition at all. I worked through most of my uni days, and my parents helped out, and I took out student loans some of the time (secured by the state - the interest is actually less than inflation now), but I couldn't have done it if I had to pay tuition as well. And yes, I have a BA in English, which is about the most practically useless degree one can have (second only to semiotics and philosophy), but it's still helped to find a good job. It has also given me an excuse to move away from my parents, and get the confidence of being able to take care of myself.

So how do we scale that experience? Keeping in mind that our ultimate goal is to create a steady stream of intelligent, well-trained and highly competent specialists? I don't have a guaranteed solution, but I have an idea on where to start.

1) Money. Estonia's free-market ideology means that the government does not own the companies that provide a government-regulated service. The national universities (like hospitals) are commercial enterprises; and every year, the government calculates how many specialists in a certain field it will be able to use 3 to 5 years down the line. Based on that, it signs a contract with a university, paying it to train the specialists. The university has a certain, significant but limited, number of tuition-free spots, which are assigned to applicants based on academic achievement. Usually, those who didn't make it will have a chance to get a paid spot - a thousand Euro per semester or so. Same curriculum.

Obviously we end up with more specialists than the state ordered. The state is limited by its budget, and relies on the commercial spots and all-private universities to make up the shortfall. The problem is that the all-private universities are generally crap (I think Tallinn's EBS business school might be the only exception). More money for more free spots would allow a concentration of students to the better institutions. We'd be fine with a University of Tartu and a University of Tallinn, and their colleges in Pärnu, Narva, Haapsalu... I have no faith in places like Mainor or Euroülikool.

More opportunities for free tuition will attract more students to the universities that can provide good education. Education from a good university is a useful thing even if the student ends up with a job that has nothing to do with his degree - as a lot of people do.

2) Exams. Currently, there is a single set of exams for high school graduation, and the results of these are used by the universities to generate an average passing grade. The results of all applicants are averaged out, and those who have a grade higher than the threshold, get the free spot.

The problem with this is that the exams cater to the lowest common denominator. Not all the kids who leave high school will go to university. Not all universities are the same in the level of education they offer, and thus the level of student knowledge they require.

The universities need to re-introduce their own entrance exams. This will allow the good colleges to accept good students; or rather, because they will be the ones with an abundance of free-tuition spots, it will motivate more students to study hard and bone up on the subject matter. It should also intrinsically limit the number of kids applying for a major with a low entrance barrier that they have no long-term interest in - just to get that student status.

3) Support. Estonia's tertiary education system has been criticized for mostly being inferior to universities abroad, but that is the wrong approach. Obviously it is not possible for a country of 1.3 million to build up a talent pool as comprehensive, diverse and advanced as a country with thirty or fourty times the population. Fortunately, we don't have to! The fact that it is so easy for our kids to go and study in Oxbridge or the Sorbonne is an advantage, a very significant resource bestowed on us by EU membership, and one that we would be fools to ignore. By the very nature of the Estonian people, they will not stay away forever; even those with an education and a career in the confederacy or further off will still return sooner or later, because of the fundamental Estonian sense of home. EU's best universities should be exploited by Estonia in the same way that EU funds are used to renovate our infrastructure.

Of course any application for EU funds is accompanied by a mandatory self-financing component. The same point applies. The Estonian government needs to dedicate resources - financial, administrative and political - to supporting those of its youths who choose to go abroad and study at the best colleges in Europe, or indeed the world. In the same way that the state secures student loans at a low interest rate, pays for tuition, and ensures discounts on vital goods and services (I'm still convinced that there is a state tender for the 1.90 EEK packets of ramen in the shops near Tartu's dorm cluster), there needs to be an extensive government program of supporting kids that study abroad. Something similar exists in a basic state - you can get your student loans written off if you work for a government agency after graduation - but it needs to be greatly expanded.

So, what do you think? Does any of this make sense?

Expect Trouble

Something big is going down in Narva.

For some time now, the city council has been fighting the Kreenholm factory over some disputed utility bills. The Kreenholm textile factory is one of Estonia's biggest manufacturing enterprises, contributing a serious chunk to the country's exports. It is also an extremely important employer in the troubled Ida-Virumaa region.

Tomorrow Kreenholm will lay off 900 employees.

From what I gather, Narva's municipal water company has raised prices sharply. According to Kreenholm management, the amount that the factory is being charged is 14 times above cost; as Narva Vesi is the monopoly, this does appear extremely fishy. Kreenholm, which consumes some two hundred million kroons' worth of power and water annually, challenged the price hike and took it all the way to the Law Chancellor (a high-ranking civil servant, used as a nonpartisan arbiter), who demanded an explanation from the city. The arbitration court has not yet ruled on the lawsuit of Narva Vesi against Kreenholm, claiming 20 million kroons in unpaid fees.

The Narva city council, which has been backing the water company aggressively, has arrested Kreenholm's bank accounts on December 4th. With no way to pay suppliers, or its employees, Kreenholm has cut its losses. The factory employs some 2400 people total, after an earlier layoff of 500. Another nine hundred jobs lost will in itself be devastating for Narva's economy; more could follow. The factory's Swedish owners say they will not close it down completely, but by next Christmas it will hardly employ more than a thousand people.

It's been a bad day for Estonian business. Skype, the darling of the Estonian IT sector, has been in trouble. Its owner, eBay, which paid $2.6 bln for the company and then announced it had overvalued the business massively, has not been able to develop the service in any significant way. The former owners, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, have quit to pursue other projects. And today, around 30 Skype employees suddenly found themselves out of a job.

Estonian Education in "Not Completely Shit" Shocker

So, this is old news, but it's worth mentioning.

Apparently there was a test of science proficiency among 15-year-old schoolkids, and Estonia scored quite well. Fifth place overall, second place in general achievement (how good the entire student body is on average). The test was conducted by the OECD, which is a fairly credible organization, and nearly 5000 kids from Estonia took part, so it's representative.

Which is nice. I've been asked about education in the comments to a previous post, and I genuinely believe it is the most important long-term issue for the country. We have some natural resources we can use in a clever way (the timber, and the shale), and there's always the tourist industry, but first and foremost Estonia is a knowledge economy. We have great software developers, we have a great biotech scene, and we have great engineers coming up with stuff like ultra-smart fabrics for skiing jackets. That's what will keep us going and make us rich in Europe. Estonia has been such a success story because we got to start from scratch in 1991, but it's not just that: everyone east of Vienna started from scratch in 1991. We were simply very clever about it. That cleverness, the ability to find the best solution and implement it, ignoring all the reasons why it probably won't work, is what makes this country great.

To keep it up, we need lots of highly skilled specialists, and therefore lots of very good education. We already have completely tuition-free university education for the top performers, but we need to expand on that. I don't have a well thought-out Antyx Fix for you right now, but my first thought is to give the University of Tartu more money to take in more kids, and let it reinstitute entrance exams, so the faculty can have more control over the quality of students they accept. (Right now university entrance is based on a bell curve number calculated from high school graduation exams.) So yeah, let's keep up the good work.

But there is an interesting point here. Russophone kids scored demonstrably worse in the OECD test than the ones in Estonian-speaking schools. This is ever so slightly counter-intuitive. Back when I was in high school - which wasn't all that long ago, after all! - we still used Soviet textbooks for a lot of the science courses. This is fine; the laws of the universe don't really change over time, and the superiority of physics & chemistry education in the Soviet curriculum was unassailable. The SU really did teach kids a lot more science than the West did.

You would think that the Russian books and especially the Russian teachers, trained in the old Soviet system, would produce quite good results. And yet, they don't.

The Education Minister, Tõnis Lukas, suggests that this happened because the Estonian teachers have had more opportunity for further training and raising their own skill levels. Teachers from Russian schools, who don't speak Estonian all that well, would not have the same opportunities. But hold on, this is science; surely all the training materials would be in English anyway? And in that case there shouldn't be a difference?

Maybe there is. Maybe the older teachers, the ones who learned their trade in the Soviet days, the ones who have been teaching physics for thirty years - they can't learn English any more than they learn Estonian. Can't or won't. Maybe the general sense of pessimism has gotten the better of them, and they really can't be bothered making an effort any more. Maybe.

In any case, it does rather put a new twist on the old Russian-schools issue. We're told that the kids would have too hard a time learning science in Estonian, with confusing terminology and such. But if they're doing badly learning it in their native tongue, and the gap clearly correlates with language, don't we owe it to the future generations to make sure they get the best education - in Estonian - they possibly can?

Economy Redux

Oh all right then. I really didn't want to talk about the devaluation scare, because it's just too mind-bogglingly stupid, a cringe-inducing example of lemming behavioral patterns. But if you insist...

Here's what happened:

Back in early November, someone at an Estonian Russophone messageboard posted a game scenario where the Estonian government announced a snap devaluation of the kroon, and asked the regulars to suggest their actions.

Because the disclaimer was in fine print, some people didn't notice it, and thought it was an actual information leak. So they started converting their assets to Euro and calling all their friends to warn them. This apparently caused a wave of vague rumors: nobody knew where they were coming from, but everybody was talking about an imminent devaluation, and people were scared.

A few days ago, the original messageboard post got picked up by someone from the Night Watch, who posted it on their website. This sparked a mass panic among the Russian population: if Night Watch says it, it must be true. The information spread so pervasively that even those who didn't care about Night Watch were convinced by all their friends. Since the text said that the devaluation would happen on Monday morning, Sunday saw a run on currency exchange companies: people were buying up Euros, Swedish kronor, British pounds, even gold (but curiously, not dollars). Tallinn's big independent currency exchange company, Tavid, actually ran out of foreign cash.

This run was almost entirely confined to the Russophone population. The Estonians had gotten wind of the original rumors, but never panicked. They had good reason not to: devaluation of the Estonian kroon is extremely unlikely, for multiple very good reasons.

First of all, the law. The kroon is pegged to the Euro by legislation; removing the peg would require a new bill, and a bill can only be passed if it has gone through no less than two readings in parliament, with no less than two weeks between them. The Bank of Estonia can only vary the peg rate by 3% (0.47 EEK). In theory it is possible for the BoE board to hold a continuous series of sessions through the night, adjusting the rate by 3% every time, but I will dare you to find a politician who could pull that off and not get lynched by an angry mob the next morning. Otherwise, a devaluation with forewarning is entirely pointless. The idea of devaluation is to remove excess wealth from the economy, wealth which defeats motivation to try harder. If everyone just converts their savings to Euros and back again, you've lost a lot of voter confidence with no benefit at all. Say what you will about the Estonian government, but they know a bit about economy theory.

Second, the kroon is secure. Estonia operates on a currency board system, whereby the BoE only issues kroons in return for foreign currency. Every kroon in circulation is backed by a dollar, Euro, pound, yen or dinar sitting somewhere deep in the vaults under Estonia Puiestee. While the total worth of these reserves does naturally vary, overall the BoE is capable of redeeming all the money out there at the peg rate. The sort of concentrated market effort that would drive the value of the kroon down enough that the BoE reserves would be depleted is not possible due to the rules of international banking. So the kroon isn't going to crash on its own; it can only be devalued by the government.

Third, there is simply no reason to do it. The kroon has been in far worse trouble than today. It wasn't devalued then (when it was still pegged to the Deutschmark) and it won't be devalued now. There is simply nobody who would benefit from it. The banks need their Euro-denominated mortgages paid back, and don't want the general population to suddenly lose a big chunk of its purchasing power. The businesses don't want it, because the devaluation only benefits industrial exports, which are a minor factor in the Estonian economy. Estonia's main economic force is its skilled labour, and that has shown willingness to go abroad in search of higher pay. To retain their workforce, the employers would have to recalculate salaries in Euros, which they can do with relative ease because they sell their products for Euros anyway. So devaluation is pointless.

But why did the currency run happen, then? The scare is rooted in the general sense of pessimism that has arisen in the wake of the economic slowdown. We seem to be heading for the soft landing rather than the hard crash, but people have come to expect wild growth and are discouraged when they don't find it. Accession to the Eurozone was our next grand project, after EU and NATO membership, and now that looks unlikely for at least a decade. Consciously or subconsciously, people want their government to jumpstart the economy, initiate another period of massive growth. Without a deep understanding of economic processes, based simply on hearsay and Delfi editorials, they expect that the government would do something like this - trade off a momentary lapse against future growth. And besides, who in Estonia has savings anyway?

The reason that the scare was prevalent among the Russophones is that - and I know I'll be called all sorts of bad things again for this - the majority of them are working-class immigrants without the education or the curiosity to try and figure out what is happening, exactly. Their pervasive distrust of the government, a reflex applied through surviving the Perestroika, coupled with a nagging suspicion that Andrus Ansip personally hates each and every one of them, makes them susceptible to such rumours.

People are mostly lemmings. There isn't much we can do about that. In this case nobody got hurt very much, although people will indeed lose money on the exchange rate. Far from being critical, the situation is simply embarassing.

It's the Economy, St00pid

Our neighbours aside, the thing that is supposed to kill Estonia is an economic implosion. Ostensibly fueled by cheap lending from the Scandinavian-owned banks, it has resulted in very high inflation and a very high current-account deficit. The harbinger of doom, they say, is the crash of the real estate market.

Now, certainly things are not as rosy as they've been in the past. But is the sky really falling?

Inflation is the first boogeyman. A year ago we were desperately trying to stuff it that last bit under 3%, so we could join the Euro. Now it's around 8%, year-on-year. Horrible, isn't it? The EEK is losing value fast!

Except it's not, because it's pegged to the Euro. All sorts of analysts have been calling on the Bank of Estonia to float the currency, but they don't seem about to do it. Pegging to the Euro makes sense because most of the Estonian economy is tied into the Eurozone. People pay their mortgages in Euros, and they get paid by companies that sell their wares for Euros. So as long as the kroon stays pegged, and stays freely exchangeable, it's losing value at the same rate as the Euro - which isn't much at all. You can go to Paris today and buy as much stuff with the same amount of kroons as you could a year ago.

What's happening isn't that the currency is losing value, but that the cost of living is going up. Prices in Estonia are going up; in fact they're inching ever closer to the Central European ones. But the economy is growing much faster than the Eurozone's - and despite a noticeable slowdown, it's still growing faster than inflation! So we are still getting more wealthy, just at a slower rate than before. As long as this keeps up, it's not an economic crisis - it's just part of the process of catching up to the European living standard. Oh, did you think you'd end up getting European salaries without European prices? Silly rabbit.

The current account deficit is a nebulous economic term: to put it very simply, it's the difference between the worth of stuff that Estonians own abroad, and the worth of stuff that foreigners own in Estonia. So we owe them more than they owe us, which is why we have the deficit.

The problem with this number is that people tend to assume it means something different; they think it's the amount of money we owe to somebody. Which is not the case. The current account deficit is the result of the specifics of the Estonian economy, which has been successful by attracting lots of foreign investment. Our favourable tax code has resulted in lots of companies using local labour to produce goods or services, but not actually selling anything here. So the Estonian subsidiary, a locally registered company, sells its product to the mother company for exactly enough to cover costs - wages of the employees, office rent, equipment purchase, etc. This makes sense because the company has no profit left over at the end of the year - everything is being reinvested. So the company doesn't pay any tax on that profit. (The government gets income tax from the individual employees' salaries.)

But the subsidiary still has revenue, and capital assets, and those do keep growing. So the foreign company's worth of stuff they own in Estonia goes up. And the current account deficit increases. Mind you, there's still money coming into the pockets of both Estonian employees and the Estonian government. But because this money is on the books as cost, it doesn't get included in the current account calculations.

Now, the current account deficit is still a bad thing for the economy, because we'd rather own stuff than be salaried employees. There are a few big movers in the right direction, like Tallink, an Estonian company which is now the biggest ferry operator on the Baltic. But a current account deficit is by no means a sign of imminent economic crash. In fact, it means that our economy is secured by the stability of established European markets. Which is nice.

The third, final and most overhyped issue is the real estate crash. The banks have been giving out lots of loans in Euros, with low interest. People have been taking advantage of that to buy lots of apartments. Because the number of people with the money to buy a home is growing, and the supply of apartments is limited, their prices skyrocketed. Because old Soviet apartment blocks are rather unpleasant, people were willing to pay more for new apartments. Because the market prices for apartments were insanely above the costs, lots of companies scampered to start developing residential properties.

This cycle continued for a while, until the end of 2006 or so, and then it hit a wall. Prices got too high, the inflation rose, the economy started to slow down, people started losing faith. The first victims were the speculators, who were trying to buy up properties still in development and sell them for a profit when they were completed. Because the bank loan rules are fairly strict, they had to turn their money around quickly. When the demand dried up, they had to get out of their investments quick. But this had a relatively minor effect on the market. There weren't very many of these guys, and what they were doing was kind of assholey, so fuck 'em.

The market ground to a halt. The number of sales fell dramatically. Prices also fell, but curiously, not all that much. There are people like this guy, and Postimees staff writers, who keep bringing up massive discounts in apartment prices as proof of a meltdown in progress. But the important thing that a lot of folks don't notice is that all these grand discounts come not from owners - but from developers.

There's an important difference. An owner of an apartment is getting back the money he paid for the apartment when he got it. With any new building, the sell price is going to be only slightly higher than the price the owner paid for it. A wave of massive discounts on the secondary real estate market would mean that people are actually losing money. But interestingly enough, this is not happening.

The 200 million kroons of total discount on apartments that this dude talks about is money that never existed. Nobody ever paid those 200 million kroons and then couldn't get them back. All of that money is developers' discounts; profits that they hoped to get by putting new properties on the market for improbably high prices at the peak of the boom, when they actually had some chance in hell of getting that sort of money. Now the peak has passed, the market is not willing to pay improbably high prices, and they're having to lower them. But - they're not lowering them past the level of cost. With the exception of tiny, one-shot development ventures that ran out of cheap loans before they could finish their properties (probably due to the lack of construction labour - all the workers went abroad for better pay), everyone is still getting a profit. Just not as much of one as they'd hoped.

One point that has been brought up is the number of evictions. Year-on-year, it has increased tenfold. What the sensationalist articles are slow to point out is that the absolute numbers are still very low. And we don't know how many of those evictions were speculators, who only lost tiny down payments. There were some very dodgy deals available at the height of the lending spree, but most people who buy apartments to keep, have to adhere to the mortgage rules: down payments of 10-15% or more, and the monthly payment cannot exceed 30-40% of the household net income (and that percentage includes all repayments, including car loans and credit card debt). And you have to be able to afford the mortgage when you buy the apartment; any raise or additional income you get afterwards eases the pressure.

Even for the poor buggers who bought at the peak of the price rally, there are some good news. Most mortgages in Estonia are issued in Euros at EURIBOR + the bank's margin, and the margin is usually pretty low (less than 1%). EURIBOR has now stopped growing, and might even fall - the European Central Bank has to do this to keep the world financial markets running. And as long as the economy growth stays even a little ahead of inflation, salaries in absolute EEK numbers continue to grow, and the EEK stays pegged to the Euro, the effective repayment level will only shrink. Because everyone here will be getting more kroons, but while they won't be able to buy that much more milk with them, they will be able to buy more Euros.

To conclude: yes, the Estonian economy has problems. But they're not unsolvable, and they're not grave. So could the journalists and the lemmings please stop being apocalyptic about it?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Võru

South Estonia, especially Võru county, is a place hiding many interesting things - and many interesting people. There is a Barclay Hotel in Tartu, named after Barclay de Tolli, the Russian army general from the Napoleon wars. It is located in the building which, in the Soviet days, used to house the headquarters of the South Estonian Military District. The presidential suite of the hotel used to be the office of the district commander - one Djohar Dudaev, later on the first president of rebellious Chechnya.

There's also an urban legend about nukes in Võru. I thought it was improbable, myself - strategic munitions so close to the Western border - even though the Raadi airfield near Tartu was designated as an emergency strip for Soviet nuclear bombers. But stranger things have happened. Below is an account by a friend who grew up in Võru county.

There were as many as eight Soviet military objects in Võru county: a surveillance station in Meremäe, a communications unit in Mõniste, missile bases in Sänna and Nursi, firing ranges in Nursi and Kubija, an airport in Ridali and another missile base in Palometsa.

Nursi and Sänna were the nuclear missile sites. In Sänna, at least one of the cupolas of the underground launching silos should still be there, although access to the base is restricted now. Both bases stored intermediate-range ballistic missiles - R-12/SS-4 - targeted to cities in Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Norway. The R-12 Dvina missiles were exactly like the ones deployed to Cuba in 1962.

A missile was actually fired to Novaya Zemlya once from the Sänna base, without the nuclear warhead, supposedly, but this fact has nevertheless a highly gasp-inducing factor.

The missiles were removed from Sänna and Nursi around 1988-89, although yeah, there are all sorts of stories about how some of them were left behind, hidden away with other weaponry. Around 1999 people became sort of paranoid about some supposed secret storage facilities...

When the missiles were gone, most of the Russians living at the bases quietly left as well, and local farmers couldn't have been happier. They explored the sites and brought all kinds of stuff home with them and used it in their households. Some barracks were never restored either, and roughly about 6-7 years ago, some local schoolboys went to Nursipalu and brought with them a huge glass jar filled with mercury, which was stored under a layer of petroleum. The word is that those glass jars were in abundance there. I wonder what these were used for.

Another interesting fact is that although the nuclear parts of the warheads were removed a long time ago (some warheads still remained, but without the radioactive stuff - some local farmers have made use of these as bee-hives, actually), they are still conducting radioactivity surveys regularly, the last one was apparently in 2001-2002.

As far as the urban legends go, people do talk about the high incidence of leukemia in Nursi.

...in which Flasher turns into a chauvinistic pig

Cute, no? (Click image for full gallery.)

That, my dear readers, is one Anna-Maria Galojan, the Reform party's project to create a positive role model of a Russian politician. Blonde, sexy and confident, her election posters in Tallinn were a welcome change from the faces of Klenski, Savisaar and a bunch of other ugly old men. She had no accomplishments at all prior to becoming a billboard babe, but then that's hardly ever stopped anyone.

In the months since the election, Anna-Maria (having failed to get into Parliament) has found herself in control of the Estonian European Movement. She's in the news today for being promptly ejected from that particular easy chair, due to having embezzled around 600,000 EEK (just under 40,000 Euro) of the foundation's money. Apparently spending it on clothes, jewelry, and a flash lifestyle.

In my flame wars, I often get asked why there are no Russians in prominent political positions in Estonia. My standard reply is that there are no people to fill the positions; nobody the people would like and trust. Miss Galojan here was the party-in-power's attempt to create such a figure from scratch, and yet having just done a round of profiles and interviews in the local Russian papers on being a person of principle, she goes and does (or, well, gets caught doing) something like this. With all the good will in the world, where the hell are we supposed to get enough decent Russians to put into government?

Which is not to say that Estonian politicians don't embezzle. But this is Estonia, and any Russian that wishes to be a credible politician with a mainstream party is held to a higher standard. It's not even an issue of distrust on the part of the Estonians. The local Russian-speakers are quite disenfranchised, but the slice of the electorate which is up for grabs is intelligent enough to be disgusted by Savisaar and Zarenkov. Whereas Estonians will tolerate a bit of modest nepotism and self-serving from their politicians as long as the rest of the country is in good shape - on the principle that if they were in power themselves, they'd surely do the same - the unclaimed Russians are far more careful with their trust. They feel betrayed and unrepresented, and suspicious of any advances by Reform or IRL to begin with. It's commendable that the coalition is trying to bring these guys back into the fold, involve them in the political process, but it's not easy winning their trust.

It's not a Russian Kristiina Ojuland that we need, it's a Russian Marek Strandberg.

This place needs a chill pill.

The reason the blog has been silent recently was because I've been in a bad mood. I'm just too annoyed by human stupidity. I guess at least partially it's a result of autumn in Estonia - predictably drizzly and depressing. But beyond that, it's been a silly time.

The big story in Estonian ethnic relations is a 7th grade textbook, which references a collection of kids' folklore published back in 1992. It references three books in fact, one of which is listed as homework, and the other two are at the teacher's discretion. And one of those, the one that contains jokes that kids sent in some 15 years ago, includes a bunch of properly irreverent and politically incorrect ones. About a lot of population groups, not just ethnic. But of course, it's the Russians who had to make a grand fuss.

The newspapers are playing to their audience by coming out with headlines like "7th Grade Textbook Promotes Racism against Russians", which is factually untrue (there's nothing objectionable in the actual textbook). The LiveJournal bloggers have taken up the cause, naturally.

Now, yes, the jokes may very well be insulting, and it was a goof on the part of the textbook's author to not check her sources. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that before the April riots, this wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal, and the textbook isn't all that recent. And whether any of us want it or not, little kids will continue to make jokes like "What animals are most common in Estonia? - Russians". So yes, it was a bad move. But for the love of God, can these people please stop trying to start another round of pin-the-tail-on-the-Ansip every time they stumble upon a perceived insult? Please?

On the other side, the newspapers are still publishing editorials on integration, why (and whether) it failed, what should be done about it, etc. This is getting quite old now as well, mainly because nobody's making particularly interesting points. Much like my manifesto* was an attempt to publicly state the truth that nobody wants to admit, none of the current commentators dare say what they all know: integration is a pretty, but meaningless word. The program has always been a mix of assimilation for the willing, and giving the unwilling ID cards so they can move to Barking and become Gordon Brown's headache instead of hours. There will never be a Russian cultural autonomy in Estonia, and there will never be a Russian PM. But this is far too drastic for most commentators - I've seen a few approach the point, though. Still, the riots and Russia's continuous assholeyness is a good topic to talk about.

To paraphrase Holden McNeil: Delfi has given everyone in Estonia a voice, and everyone in Estonia has chosen to use that voice to bitch about integration.

And it's getting really annoying. In the immortal words of Will Smith: Why don't you exercise your right to shut the fuck up?

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* What? I couldn't let Giustino get away with stealing my Estlander schtick. ;)

EE Healthcare in "Not Completely Shit" Shocker

Just got a link to this article (Thanks J.!), from the International Herald Tribune, mentioning a study of EU-and-affiliates' healthcare systems. While Austria placed first overall and Latvia placed last (which is predictably satisfying), Estonia was actually first in terms of value for money. Admittedly Estonians don't like to go to the doctor - this is where Giustino would say they just treat all illnesses with vodka and jellied meat - but it's a surprising factoid in any case.

The Estonian healthcare system is a source of much criticism among the people. Some years ago it was reformed to a Swedish model, with every person assigned to a GP that then refers them on to specialists. There's some sort of trick to the financing where supposedly the GP actually loses money by making these references, and the system has resulted in long wait times in some cases. I haven't really noticed this, as I stayed with my old doc back in Tallinn - the same pediatrician who treated me since I was born - and by the time I finally could be bothered to get a GP in Tartu, I just went to the university clinic where a team of half a dozen GPs pools resources: I get the first available time slot from any of them. Combine that with registered nurses who actually have some measure of authority, and a reasonably effective walk-in ER, and I haven't had cause to complain. To overseas readers not familiar with the state of affairs, healthcare is free in Estonia: hospitals are commercial enterprises (though subject to significant government regulation), but the bills are paid by the state insurance agency, which is financed through taxes.

Estonians like to complain about stuff, especially about public services, and there's a sort of general permeating sense of the Estonian healthcare system being complete crap. Most Estonians don't come into contact with doctors often enough to build up an opinion to the contrary. So it's a bit strange to see an authoritative source claiming that the system isn't all it's fucked up to be.

Gas Pipe Redux

Nord Stream's reaction so far has been, "we're taking our toys and going back to Finland". Good riddance. Any crap they dig up from the bay floor is still going to do damage to Estonia, but at least now it's Big Brother's job to sort out the mess, and deal with the Russkies. That lot's been in the EU for ages, they use the Euro for heaven's sakes; let them handle it.

Giustino asked a few questions in the comments to the previous article, and the answer is long enough for a separate post:

Didn't Edgar also come out against this?

Do you buy the Laar partners with Savikas, facilitates Ansip's downfall, don't let the door hit you on the way out, Andrus, concept?

I do feel that Ansip is a bit like Tony Blair post-Iraq War invasion. Ie. he can stay in office for no matter how long, but the honeymoon (if there ever was one) is long over.

AND, why are the Sotsid so not front and center here? Not worth their time/political capital?

1) Edgar is irrelevant, to the extent that I don't think anybody bothered to ask him. It's a government decision, and even Edgar can't play Loyal Opposition with a straight face at this point.

2) I do buy the concept, since I'm getting the distinct feeling that Andrus won't last. I'll put a sixpack of Tõmmu Hiid on Laar getting the PM seat before the next elections, and there are three ways of doing it.

One, my perfect option - a coup in KERA, new blood signing a pact with the fuzzy-cheeked devil to preserve some credibility for the party. Unlikely simply because Edgar will not fade quietly into the night, he'll let go of the party about five minutes after he's dead.

Two, Edgar sees the light, comes crawling to Laar, accepts a high-level ministership in return for a coalition spot. The local elections aren't that far away, and his alcohol law hasn't exactly ingratiated him with the Tallinn population. Once he loses control of City Hall, he's done. As much as people are disgusted with Ansip, Edgar is actually hated and despised; for what it's worth, generating that attitude in a large swathe of the Estonian population is a commendable effort.

Three, Reform whips toss Ansip (he's never really been in charge of the party, hence his ploy for a massive personal vote of confidence), and for lack of a convincing figurehead, give Laar the PM seat in return for some truly heinous favours. From their POV, it's justifiable because it puts Laar in the position of having to sort out the mess Ansip left. As I've said before, Laar seems the only person capable of doing that properly, and if he does, there's a very good probability he'll be our next President, after THI's eight years are up.

3) The difference is that Estonian politics thrive on kicking the PM in the nuts. Ansip is in power until his first major goof, providing that either Edgar or the Reform bosses kiss and make up with Laar.

4) To be honest, I'm not sure. SDE has had less coverage than the Greens or the farmers throughout all this. They've just been sitting there, waiting for the consensus. They did well in the elections as the default bourgeois nonconformist choice, but half their leadership is in Brussels and I suppose whoever's left feel out of their depth.

Then again, this has been an utter Reform vs. IRL affair. The Greens made a statement because they really couldn't not bite, but SDE may just be biding their time and not getting sullied by the media circus: they have no obvious stake, and for them inaction may very well be the optimal course.

Steinbock House to Nord Stream: Stick That In Your Pipe and Smoke It

(UPD: Apologies for the bleeding obvious pun.)

So, the government has denied permission to Nord Stream AG to conduct exploration of the Baltic seabed, which was a prerequisite for laying down the Russian-German gas pipe. The official excuse is that such work would uncover information about the natural resources in Estonian economic and territorial waters, and the feasibility of their usage. As the government doesn't want that information public, the exploration is not allowed.

This was somewhat predictable. Ahead of today's decision, Reform was the only party saying it might be a good idea to let them dig - it seems that the whips are finally waking up to the idea that Ansip's bid to politicize the party's image is not in its best interests, long-term. IRL was decidedly against the permission, so were the Greens (obviously), and the Social Democrats seemed to have no obvious preference.

It's still a bit too early to tell what this decision means for the pipe - I'll report once something interesting comes up - but there's a significant point here for internal politics. Ever since the April riots, IRL has been on the sideline, mostly letting Ansip's gang take the heat (with the exception of Defense Minister Aaviksoo, whose domain was directly responsible for the monument). But this vote was the first time in recent memory when Estonia had an opportunity to actually poke the Kremlin in a way that would properly hurt - and neither Berlin nor Brussels could do anything about it.

Yesterday, Postimees published excerpts from reports by Finnish government agencies, saying that the pipework would disturb the silt that had absorbed lots of highly toxic stuff over the years (the Baltic is really an extremely dirty sea), and the construction is likely to result in massive environmental damage. This alone was an unassailable excuse for Estonia to deny permission, but even that was not necessary.

And the loudest voice was that of Mart Laar, who heads the IRL party, but has no position in the government. He's now seen as the driving force behind this jab at Putin, an active bit of foreign policy, and so far, a resounding success.

I keep saying he's in line for the PM job, and this only makes it that much more likely.