A happy, safe, caring society, you say? Fly me to Finland now

“I KNOW what I want for my next birthday,” I said.

They gaped at me. (My birthday is months away.)

“A one-way ticket to Finland.”

“Eh?” they said.

“Believe me,” I declared, “I’d go in a heartbeat.”

This cascade of longing was inspired by nothing more than the comment of a woman living in Finland.

She was responding to the announcement that this remote country, a third of which lies above the Arctic Circle, had earned the title of happiest country in the world in the 2024 World Happiness Report.

This is no flash in the pan by the way - 2024 is the seventh year in a row that Finland has earned that accolade.

And what did the woman say that resulted in such longing in me?

She said that she could walk home in safety at any hour of the day or night.

So:

None of the aggression, shouting, fighting or drug use on the streets or public transport that leaves decent passers-by and passengers in this country so nervous they want to curl up and hide?

No menacing gangs of dead-eyed hoodie youths loitering on street corners?

Nobody on e-cycles or bicycles terrorising footpath users?

Nobody following you home or breaking into your apartment and raping you?

No road rage? No speeding? No crazy traffic behaviour? No wannabe rally drivers screaming up and down outside your house night and day?

Are the Finnish traffic police actually allowed outside to do their job properly? Every day of the week and not just bank holidays?

No scumbags in balaclavas screaming up and down the streets of your neighbourhood on motorbikes, as is happening in an inner-city Dublin neighbourhood.

The gardaí reportedly explained to frightened locals that nothing could be done about this because (a) the scumbags haven’t actually assaulted anybody yet, and (b) if the gardaí put on the blue light and chased the scumbags out of the area, and the scumbags crashed into a lamp-post and knocked themselves out, the gardaí could actually be prosecuted for trying to protect the local residents from the scumbags who were terrorising them.

Just look at the excoriatingly stressful and unjustifiable ordeal endured by the garda sergeant who kindly helped out an oul’ fella during the pandemic by loaning him a €50 unclaimed bike from the Garda Property and Exhibits Management System to allow the pensioner to get out and exercise.

First, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation raided his house.

Then he was suspended for three years.

Let’s continue with that list of things not happening in Finland.

Nobody attacking you on the street out of the blue only because you just happen to be there and they happen to be out of their minds on drink or on a screaming high from the drugs that are flowing freely through our unprotected coasts (because the navy is totally on its uppers).

Say, what? Not in Finland? NO? Really?

Then there’s the Finnish health service with wait-times that are the envy of the known world (and that, apparently, was the case even during the worst years of the pandemic).

There’s the overall situation of better housing and lower homelessness levels.

And there’s that incredible steel-strong social safety net.

In Finland, apparently, there’s a social welfare system where you’re looked after, whether you are Finnish or a recent arrival, and even if you have worked ALL your life and paid your taxes before encountering some horrendous, life-altering bump in the road.

Even if you’re Finnish and HAVE BEEN SELF-EMPLOYED?

Can this be true?

There’s great respect at government level for the Finnish countryside there too.

Seriously? No denatured, decapitated hedgerows?

No destruction of natural, indigenous wild flowers and plants?

No litter and rubbish being dumped everywhere?

No foam-covered polluted rivers or black-garbage-bags dumped in laneways, forests or streams?

Finland has a government that is environmentally conscious (and not in a way that intimidates and harasses farmers and chases their children off the land into accountancy jobs to such an extent that the number of domestic family farms is dropping faster than green grass through a goose).

The country does this in a way which prioritises the best attributes of a healthy rural lifestyle, and has resulted in Finland being seen as one of the best countries in the world for ‘Green Living’.

Forests are always nearby and accessible. There are more than 40 national parks full of hiking routes, nature trails and campfire sites. Anyone can pick berries, collect mushrooms or fish with a rod.

In Finland, your kids automatically get to attend their nearest school.

Importantly, they are taught that it is good and proper to be kind and considerate to others, not brought up to act like spoiled, screen-addicted, vampire-pale, pint-sized emperors to whose every whim the world must kow-tow.

Education there, by the way, is free from before primary school right through to college.

There is a Finnish proverb. Onnellisuus on se paikka puuttuvaisuuden ja yltäkylläisyyden välillä, which means happiness is a place between too little and too much. Hmm.

Contentedness, really.

OMG.

Packing my bags now.