Skip to main content

Dot.ee

I spent the weekend in the Estonian countryside. Firstly on the islands of Muhu and Saaremaa and then in the family summer house of some friends on the mainland.

During the inevitable saun party I start to chat with the rest of the family (even the youngest speaks English that is more than respectable for a seven year old).

The teenager of the family, despite an unhealthy obsession with the thriller film genre, turns out to have a nicely subversive sense of humour. We discuss the extraordinary pace of technological change in Estonia. I remark that I was in the first generation to grow up with colour television.

We, the post baby boomer generation seem to have struggled a little with our identity. "Generation X" grew up in the 1970s and 1980s and did not see the dramatic party of the 1960s- only the hangover from that party. However, I ask this rather poised young man what he thinks defines his generation. Immediately he responds that growing up with the internet has been part of their self definition. He points out that the use of the internet amongst Estonian teenagers is essentially universal. He says that its is a specifically Estonian way of use, to the point that he rejects the label the "dot.com"ers.

"Oh no!- we are the dot.ee generation".

I wonder what kind of country this generation will build?

I have just read in one of the local newspapers that a world survey collating different surveys of economic, press, and political freedom has just rated Estonia as the freest country in the world. I am not surprised, but I am impressed; it is only 15 years since Estonia was occupied by one of the least free political systems that has ever been used by humans against each other, and whose poisonous legacy continues to paralyze many of her neighbours.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch