‘Finn angry
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- Date published:
3:54 pm, March 26th, 2012 - 45 comments
Categories: Gerry Brownlee, International -
Tags: finland
The ever-diplomatic Gerry Brownlee has got New Zealand coverage in the European press.
In an effort to try and score a point against David Shearer the former woodwork teacher called the country with the best education system in the world “uneducated,” and claimed that an economy with higher GDP per capita and faster growth than his government “can hardly feed the people who live there.” Furthermore a country with the highest rate of women in the boardroom and where 9 out of 19 cabinet ministers are women apparently “has no respect for women.”
Unfairly trash-talk another nation’s reputation and cause a diplomatic spat just to fail to make a political point?
All’s fair to Gerry.
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I suppose in National party circles this all equates with Brownlee getting a promotion and first in line for a diplomatic posting in Paris or Vancouver. If we have any diplomatic missions left open by then, of course.
Thanks to all those Cantabrians who voted this guy back in.
I utterly and wholeheartedly agree with you CV. Gerry would be FANTASTIC at an embassy. Now that it’s not PC to kill animals for sport and have them adorning the homes and offices of the toffs, why not have “Big Ger” as a very PC alternative to the bearskin rug – I know I’d love to walk all over him – how about you?
Canterbury is not responsible for Gerry Brownlee, even if National were barely crossing the party vote threshold Gerry would have returned to Parliament.
Frankly, how Ilam votes on whether Brownlee wins his electorate is irrelevant to me until such time as his return to Parliament would actually be questionable if he lost.
Let’s get rid of Brownlee for six months on a leaky boat.
This from Salsy’s link – check archives under Finland.
The performance of this small and remote European country springs directly from education policies set in motion 40 years
This wouldn’t do for us. Fancy planning ahead for the good of New Zealanders for more than nine years (three terms). How last century!
Lets’ hope Gerry runs into a Finnish version of Lisbeth Salander sometime and learns some ‘respect’.
Jabba and Lisbeth???? The imagery has put me off my tea. Urghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
Gabba stepped off the plane. His image wobbled in the oil slick underfoot. He looked into the bleak Helsinki skyline and felt the warmth of anticipation surge through his underbelly. Later at the taxi rank he caught a figure in black move in his peripheral vision a split second before she caught his balls with her foot and propelled them into his sagging belly. Before he could regain his footing his laptop was gone along with his Nokia Lumia 900. Ahhhh! he yelled. I thought this was Finland. Welcome to Finland arsehole she called as she flew onto her Suziki sport and gunned it off. Gabba sagged back into a cloud of emissions and felt the warmth spreading in his crotch.
The figure in black – whoah, I thought it was McCully slithering by, but nooo, – he’s clearly the oil slick underfoot! LOL – but what I want to know is this – you mentioned the underbelly, but what about the overbelly? The warmth in the crotch was obviously the people of Finland lighting a fire under old “Ger” and giving him the roasting he so obviously deserves!!
No I think he pissed himself.
Are you aware that you have been reading too much cyberpunk and have become infected with Gibson nanites?
Did anyone hear him on the news talking about his Finnish comments? I think he said it was just light-hearted satire. Don’t give him the foreign affairs portfolio. We must contain this WMD within our own bosoms. Just being satirical folks! Don’t need to raid me or anything.
My take on Bownlee’s comments; http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/gerry-brownlee-diplomat/
Of course, my words are “essentially humorous and satirical“.
didn”t Winston Peters get kicked out of parliament for using humour and satire, somthing about an illiteratate woodwork teacher.
Oh, well done, Katy!! *post of the week*
I had forgotten that!!
Interesting thought – he mislead the house as to the state of Finland – is that an offence of the rules of Parliament? Or is the standard reply to any lie in the house “it was a joke and I was being sarcastic”
Thank god, we aren’t located adjacent to Finland – we’d have 5 million angry Finns on our borders right about now. Those guys are tough…
Some interesting stories ftom the Helsinki Times. No wonder we lag so far behind our Finnish cuzzies. Finland is top-equal according to an OECD PISA report. We are at #7. The USA, bless their little fundamentalist, flat-earth values, is at #`15-equal with Poland.
And no wonder Brownlee is an uneducated fool.
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/news/index.php/finland/finland-news/domestic/748-no-room-for-complacency-in-finnish-schools-system-expert-warns
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/news/index.php/columns/columns/viewpoint/498-lessons-from-the-finnish-classroom
One example,
“A KEY difference is that the Finnish classroom has small numbers. I did not enter a Finnish classroom that had more than 19 students. It would be extremely rare to find a mathematics class that small in Ireland. It is unfortunate that our class sizes are rising and will continue to rise in the future. Personally, I believe it highly unlikely that any efforts to promote problem-solving will be successful with such a large student cohort squashed together.”
Oh come on Frank, didn’t you see the fancy dressed education Minister on the telly telling the sheeple there was no problem with a few more in the class. And besides theres other things of more importance to concentrate on than overcrowding and undermining teachers, like what designer outfit would work best next, it’s such fun playing smile and wave fashion dressups to fit the rock star mr keys magical mystery rule.
Check out “Fighting fat the Finnish way” on BBC news Gerry. They are one up on us in that regard.
Gerry,Gerry,if nz buys you a widdle stick and a block of wood could you please carve for nz
1000 times, ‘I must not ‘fin’ insult people’
How do the people of New Zealand has chosen the foolish about the minister himself. Gerry Brownlee does not know anything about Finland, and to give, however, comments like that. My children know how to behave better than Gerry Brownlee.
Congratulations to New Zealand!
Please Mr Turunen don’t judge all New Zealanders by the stupid Brownlee idiot. He has let us down with his uneducated remarks about your fine country. He was let into parliament to stand guard at the top of the stairs, and was suitably lacking in literacy to be included in the National grand theft dictatorship party. He’s actually a woodwork teacher and has a rasp for a tongue, a jigsawed brain missing many pieces and can eat more than all the termites on the planet combined.
Turunen means from Turku – don’t know if you’re actually from there or it’s your family name but it’s a lovely town!
Sorry about Gerry Brownlee. We want to get rid of him but we need to find some heavy lifting equipment to do it.
Hello Eddie!
My surname is Turunen, and I am from Savonlinna, eastern Finland. See the Google map of Savonlinna. A really beautiful city, more beautiful than the Turku.
Finland is also a car cranes which can lift the heavy loads (such as Gerry Brownlee) 🙂
Well, our airforce 757 might be able to handle him, or we can sea freight him from Wellington.
On a slow boat via China methinks.
I’m sure every port worker would work free of charge for one day to crane Brownlee onto a supertanker and ship him off to… Hmmm, where to send him? Who do we dislike enough?
FFS Mr Sawdust, go back and sharpen your chiseled out wooden mind. Stick to the stuff you know about, like the fine curly birch timber from Finland and what varnish to use for durability on stairs when throwing pensioners down them.
http://valtioneuvosto.fi/hallitus/en.jsp
Just by looking at the people in government I’d say finland is in better shape.
less double chins.
😀
I don’t think it’s too serious.
We are very patriotic and touchy about our country here in finland.
Mad dog Brownlee
The Finnish media have widely reported the insults and dubbed Brownlee the Minister of violent comments. Polls are running at around 84% of Finn’s wanting an apology and there are reports that the Finnish government has already made a diplomatic complaint…
At the very least, Jackal, we should all of us be sending a message to the Finnish Embassy in Canberra, expressing our regret that Brownlee is an uneducated fool, and will soon be receiving home-help/care to wipe the drool from his mouth.
Making a fool of himself, here in NZ, is one thing.
Abusing other countries, to score points in some childish game – is another.
Brownlee is an embarresment.
Time for an open letter to Finland from regular New Zealanders, you think? 🙂
Hmmm, well I did send an email to the Finnish consulate, which I posted here; http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/gerry-brownlee-diplomat/
If folks think an Open Letter would be suitable, I could draft one. I’ve written one or two letters in my life… 😉
What makes it even worse is that he hasn’t even got the humility to apologise properly. Instead he’s running the ‘I was only joking’ excuse …. which doesn’t even cut mustard on the blogs.
I would’ve shot for “I was being sarcastic,” because that’s the only excuse that will fly for saying things that plainly incorrect.
I compared some of our child health stats (e.g. infant mortality, pertussis) with Finland using the oecd health stats.
So many levels of shame.
But I’m also very intrigued as to what Finland did to get its respiratory mortality levels down since 2000.
edit: resp mort wasn’t an age cut, so would include care for the elderly too, btw.
Here’s a group on Facebook for more banter about this subject from all kinds of angles: https://www.facebook.com/groups/321199901278283/
A national party tosser completely ignorant of the world beyond Australia? How typical.
As typical as a national party tosser passing off expert opinion without any real knowledge and bothering to do any research…
Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVd4eCDZe_k
Actually, all New Zealanders i know are nice and intelligent people. So maybe this is for Mr. Brownlee only, a personal message from the Finns ;D
Don’t worry, kiwis. We have plenty of uneducated fools among our politicians in Finland too. Never ending natural recourse worldwide…
Brownlee is a particularly irritating example of the breed. Dumb, arrogant, has an inflated idea about his abilities and as no real understanding or appreciation of much beyond his own ego. I think that just about every author on this site has had a go at him.
http://thestandard.org.nz/category/government-and-politics/politicans/gerry-brownlee-politicans/
http://thestandard.org.nz/tag/gerry-brownlee/
Someone also needs to ask the wood worker ‘what was the joke’? because most people
dont get it, how can we? when nz’ers see it as an insult to the people from finland.
To think the wood worker has his hands on the re-build in chch,scary thoughts.
No hard feelings – Hug A Finn 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/HugAFinn
Listed below are some uneducated people from Finland with their creations:
Mr. Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux
Jarkko Oikarinen, creator of the Interner Relay Chat (IRC)
Michael Widenius, creator of MySQL
Tatu Ylönen, creator of SSH
All those gentlemen are in the computer industry. You sure have some personal computers in NZ, haven’t you?
You could also look where those deep sea diving vessels named Mir 1 and Mir 2 were made.
There are, however two things where you kiwis are in the absolute top of the world. The first thing is rugby and the second is fucking sheep.
Only the cute ones. 😉