h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Netherlands in Scandinavia? You *really* need to brush up on your geography!

We need a real Scandi to explain it to us - as I remember the Scandic countries are Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Their languages are comprehensible to each other and are very similar to read though they sound more different than they look. (Interestingly English as spoken in the North East of England has a lot of dialect words and pronounciations which are straight from Denmark and Norway).

Finland is a Northern anomoly - its language is closely linked to Roumanian, but neither language has close links to any other. Look at a map, and you'll see how extremely wierd that is. Finland, is borderd by Sweden to the west, and Sweden is bordered by Norway to the west, and I think it is these three which comprise the Nordic countries. Denmark sticks out from the north of Germany and has both a Baltic sea coast and a North Sea coast. It is surprising that it's history has been as peaceful as it has, considering its strategic location.

Then we have the Baltics: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia which run down between Russia and the Baltic Sea.

Poland, which sometimes has a Baltic coast and sometimes doesn't, depending on where its borders are being drawn that century, doesn't seem to come into any of those categories.

And yes, if medicine which is free at the point of delivery is the definition of socialism, then the whole of Europe is socialist, and long may it continue to be so. There are other supports for those who face poverty, such as housing benefit, unemployment benefit, and various disability benefits, which vary from country to country.

However the other key to socialism is public ownership and state control of industry, and there are significant differences between the different European countries in this respect.

Mind you, I couldn't point to Kansas or North Dakota on a map. The only reason I can point to New Orleans is because there have been rather a lot of maps of it recently.

B

OK, I'm Scandinavian (but not, I think, a Scandi... )

Scandinavia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

Yes, we usually think that it's Sweden, Norway and Denmark. And we do sometimes gently correct people who includes other countries (note: Greenland politically is a self-ruling part of the Danish Kingdom - though it's stuck over there looking like a part of North America...)

And yes, we have and believe in good welfare systems, And no, we don't think that makes us socialists.

(dept of pedantics: Finnish, I believe, is in family with Hungarian. I can vouch for both being uttely inunderstandable )

Bugger! Dunno where I got the Roumanian rumour from - you are right, Finnish is linked with Hungarian. *thumps side of head*

And I am annoyed with myself for forgetting Greenland. And those tiny wee islands in the middle of nowhere north of Iceland? What are they called Santra?

Sorry about referring to you collectively as Scandis, from me it is a term of affection not abuse. Your part of Europe fascinates me in the way it groups and divides, and I have a great affection for the whole area, each part with its different flavour and savour.

Thanks for putting me right where I went wrong.

B

No harm done - I for some odd reason don't feel quite right with the word, is all. Like having just eaten an ice cream that maybe was a wee bit off. Or such. Just continue - I like being affectioned (I was going to say 'affected' but quite didn't work... )

The Faeroe Islands, you mean? Denmark (-ish), too

Actually, the Greenland thing is behind a favourite prank of mine. Whenever I'm with Germans that are just a little too much full of themselves, I tend to casually mention that in area, Denmark is the largest country in Europe...

BTW - is this in anyway a classical topic drift?

"However the other key to socialism is public ownership and state control of industry..."

That's debatable. Some people believe that what are nominally socialist *goals* (high (or even full) employment, good-wages, high standard of living, social justice) are achievable through privately-owned enterprise and a market-economy married to good (rather than stifling) regulation of business. This theory is increasingly gaining-ground on the continent and is one of the keystones of Blairism and current thinking in the British Labour Party. I think it's called market-socialism or the social market.

Actually I can picture where all the nations appear on a map, but I didn't know which ones count as part of Scandinavia. We're lucky to name all the nations, let alone older designations for an area. We're taught to value nations and borders more than other important geographical divisions.

"And yes, we have and believe in good welfare systems, And no, we don't think that makes us socialists."

Is the idea of "socialism" a bad thing over there too? Is this like when you poll American women about women's rights, equal pay, abortion, childcare, and the majority answers in a feminist way, but they don't want to be called "feminists"?

Well, that's it for the Himalayas and the Nile then, isn't it, Deidzoeb?

Glad I didn't offend you, Santra. My apparent flippancy gets me into trouble a lot. My boss is about to banish me to a different building to work with two people, one of whom has No Sense of Humour At All, and the other of whom has Very Little Sense of Humour. I am worried now about what I might have done to deserve this. He's set it as an objective to make the first one of them laugh! Hmmmmmm.

Zagreb, that's interesting. I always wondered what Blairism was. Go on...?

B

"Is the idea of "socialism" a bad thing over there too?"

Maybe it's just that, as said, having a good welfare system does not make you a socialist. Socialism, as an ideology, is about far far more than that.

"Market socialism" sounds like something by the wordsmiths who gave us "compassionate conservatives" and "jumbo shrimp"!

>> Is the idea of "socialism" a bad thing over there too? Is this like when you poll American women about women's rights, equal pay, abortion, childcare, and the majority answers in a feminist way, but they don't want to be called "feminists"?

Mmmm. Ye-es, I think that's a fair comment both on socialism and feminism. As I get older I find my inner socialist is getting more and more restive. My inner feminist currently has PMT!

B

""Market socialism" sounds like something by the wordsmiths who gave us "compassionate conservatives""

But both exist. The idea behind market socialism is, as far as I can tell, to achieve socialist goals through using market forces (this was actually part of the basic philosophy of most of the democratic-socialist movements in post-war Western Europe and therefore, arguably, one of the important factors in discrediting and defeating Communism and revolutionary-socialism). "Compassionate Conservatism", from what I can gather, is a new movement in Western conservatism that intends to dispell the harsh image that conservatism developed during the 1980s by returning to community values and mutual-respect whilst retaining core-values of modern conservatism such as low taxation, self-reliance and patriotism. An example of "compassionate conservatism" might be a centre-right government that increases funding for schools and hospitals by reducing spending in other areas and therefore not increasing taxation. It's debatable whether it can work without harming public spending but it's becoming a popular idea in the post-Thatcher British Conservative Party and it's apparently gaining-ground in the United States.

So what's the difference between them? - because I'm buggered if I can see any.

B

Well, market-socialists would be more in favour of taxation (of business in particular) as long as it's in such a way as it doesn't ruin that business's possibility's for creating wealth. Market-socialists would also be much more in favour of business regulation and the welfare state.

Compassionate conservatism seems to be largely about keeping to modern conservative ideas about statism and business whilst accepting the need for a (very limited) welfare state. The main difference between them when compared to the Thatcherite tendency is that they are (or, to the cynic, want to be seen to) concerned about the needs of the poor, less-fortunate etc and will pursue populist policies on things like healthcare whilst sticking to more old-fashioned conservative overall spending plans.

Market-socialists see business and free-enterprise as being part of the funding system for a workable welfare state and more equal society. Compassionate conservatives are like a slightly more statist version of Victorian philanthropists. Hope that helps.

Mmmmmm. But if the compassionate conservatives go for populist policies on things like the welfare state can you, in practical terms, actually slip a rizla paper between them and the Market Socialists?

Populist policies... Don't start me on the Tories' election posters... just don't start me...!

B

"Mmmmmm. But if the compassionate conservatives go for populist policies on things like the welfare state can you, in practical terms, actually slip a rizla paper between them and the Market Socialists?"

Well, for starters I'm no expert on either - my descriptions are based on what I've managed to work-out for reading about both theories.

Secondly, it's the Fascist/Communist thing again. To anyone from the political centre, fascism and communism tend to look pretty identical, it's only when you dig deeper and understand the finer facts of the ideologies and (more importantly) what drives them that you realise that they are actually very different and there are reasons why one is regarded as extreme-left and one extreme-right.

I think, from what I can tell, Market-socialism and Compassionate-conservatism can sound similar (in theory) because they share similarities - both like market-economics, both are roughly "centreist" ideologies, both want to distance themselves from what is seen as cold extremism yet I think both attract different people. MS seems to attract people who are essentially socialist but loathe the rigidity and statism of Marxist thought and believe that statist-socialism has failed whilst CC seems to appeal to both ageing Thatcherites who's radicalism has cooled and who accept failings in their own ideology (think of Michael Portillo) and the softer, more centrist "liberal Tory".

Blair isn't a market socialist though, I'd say he was a pretty straight up capitalist.

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Probably their languages are the remanents of some pre-Indo-European language family that was mostly wiped out by the expantion of the proto-Indo-Europeans?