In a bylined column in Friday's economic and business daily Kauppalehti, Arno Ahosniemi writes that judging from the latest polls, voters are mercilessly sending the conservative National Coalition Party into opposition. He sees the NCP's strong backing for NATO membership as a factor that could change the game.
Ahosniemi says that NCP thinking on NATO would be a welcome part of the election campaign debate. He argues that voters want clear proposals that parties, which are trying to secure their positions, have not provided. He adds that it is to be hoped that the parties will also present economic policies including concrete lists of budget savings measures.
Regardless of what happens in the security policy debate, movement forward towards NATO membership will be determined by the President, writes Ahosniemi. He sees a desire by the NCP to take a step in this direction and communicate this to the voting public. The conclusion drawn is that security policy and NATO will after all have a key role in the election campaign debate.
Meanwhile, the newsstand tabloid Ilta-Sanomat wonders whether or not beer may have become a factor in who wins and who loses in the April elections.
It reviews an Yle voter survey that indicates that droves of blue-collar men have abandoned support for the Centre Party.
The Centre was at the eye of a minor media storm recently when media reports claimed that the party was backing a change in alcohol policy that would take medium strength beers off supermarket shelves and back into state stores.
Ilta-Sanomat asked one expert, Pia Mäkelä, a special researcher at the National Institute of Health and Welfare, if the beer issue truly is influencing the political scene.
She said that while people are able to talk calmly about the risks of high blood pressure or heart disease, alcohol seems to be a holy cow for many Finns. She is unsure if it is such a sensitive subject that it has influenced support for the Centre Party, but she did say that people get annoyed by the thought of being looked after by a nanny. Even so, she believes that annoyance over the medium beer press reports will pass soon.
The paper also reports that while the director of the Centre Party's own parliamentary research centre, Markku Jokisipilä, concedes that blue-collar men are probably not keen to see any more restrictions on alcohol sales, his view is that the Yle poll sample was not large enough to establish a credible trend.
Whistle blowing
One month ago, Finland's national tax authority posted an online form that the public can use to report tax fraud.
The Kuopio-based Savon Sanomat reports that it has become a very popular link.
In past years, the tax authority has received around 3,000 tips about tax fraud annually by post or phone. Since introducing the online form, it received 1,000 in just one month.
The first week was the busiest, with around 500 whistleblowers contacting the tax authority via the link. About half the notices are expected to lead to some kind of action and about 20% are likely to lead to tax audits.
The most common reports centre on suspicions of labour tax fraud or undeclared income, bookkeeping irregularities and cases in which customers have not been provided a receipt for purchases or deals are made off the books.
Paper, thanks
Finland's largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat this morning reviewed some of the results of the latest national survey of media consumption - a poll carried out by TNS Gallup which interviewed around 24,000 Finnish or Swedish speakers over the age of 12 in mainland Finland.
The survey showed that the overwhelming majority those interviewed, 76%, take a positive view of printed newspaper advertising. A mere 7% felt the same way about advertising in the form SMS messages to their mobile phones.
Email advertising was considered in a positive light by only 11% while magazine advertising got the thumbs up from 68%.
In general, the Finns were found not to be very keen on internet or radio advertising either.
While this sounds good for newspaper publishers, the survey commissioned by MediaAuditFinland also confirmed some continuing bad news. Newspaper and newspaper supplement reading declined by 3.3% and 1.8% respectively.
Helsingin Sanomat noted that it is still Finland's largest daily. The survey shows that it has a readership of 742,000, but even that was down by 5.4% from the results of a poll conducted between the autumn of 2013 and spring of 2014.
The MediaAuditFinland report, being published on Friday, shows figures only for the readership of print editions of newspapers and Helsingin Sanomat points out that its own online service was shown last year to draw over two million readers a week. It quoted the CEO of MediaAuditFinland as saying that the main message of the study is that the vast majority of Finns still pay for editorial content by subscribing to newspapers or buying copies at newsstands.