Big day, bad day

Woman voting at Hosseiniyeh Ershad, Round 2
Originally uploaded by siavush.

Three piece of news from today´s stream:

1. Reason for joy

It has been 100 years from the day when the Finnish parliament was decided to be formed as a one-house system and with voting rights for all. This included, as the first country in Europe, women´s voting rights. New Zealand and Australia gave women the right to vote before Finland but in New Zealand women did not have the right to stand as candidates and in Australia no women were elected. In Finland 19 women (nearly 10 %) were elected to the first Parliament. The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat has produced a beautiful webortage on the subject.

2. Reason for hope and optimism

Helsinki City Council decided yesterday to start a shelter for homeless people in the best area of Helsinki even if most of the schools, entrepeneurs and citizen groups were against it. I would like to congratulate the people voting in favour for their courage. Few comments from the debate yesterday.
"Marginalised people commit marginalised acts that are not things children should see." - Heikki Lampela, Conservatives
"You can´t raise children in a way that they would not see less privileged people." - Anni Sinnemäki, The Green Party

3. Reason for worry

A Russian online newspaper www.cursiv.ru was closed by its Internet service provider on 22 May, three days after prosecutors started investigating its editor, Vladimir Rakhmankov, on charges of “insulting a representative of the state” under article 319 of the criminal code in an article headlined, “Putin, Russia’s phallic symbol". Read full comment from Reporters Without Borders.

Dutch words of the day:
- spullen (stuff, equipment)
- derdelijk (thirdly)
- overnachten (stay over)