The bizarro-world of Tallinn city government

Posted: September 4th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: politics, things that suck, thoughts | 1 Comment »

People tend to think of municipal politicians all over the world as more corrupt and less talented as those governing a state. Tallinn however is in a class of its own. All traditional elements of corruption are present: nepotism, favouritism, special deals with certain businessmen, shady advisors, city officials forced to become members of the ruling party, increasing propaganda-machine to hold power, rigorous court actions to defend against supervision etc. Corruption in Tallinn has become so commonplace that people have ceased to expect more and kind of accepted dishonesty as a part of a political ideology used by the Centre Party. No one in their right mind would tolerate the kind of behaviour exhibited by those governing Tallinn among their friends, or in their workplace.

“They are all the same” is just another way for them to shift blame for corruptive acts to someone else, to the democratic system.

The idea for this blog came, as I took trolleybus no 3 back home from work I saw the new “conductor” the Centrist city government has put to many of the public transport buses, trolleybuses and trams in order to create “social” jobs ahead of the local government elections in October. There is nothing social about these people, to me this particular individual seemed to be bored out of his mind. No-one spoke to him, no-one even looked at him during the 25 minute ride. He strolled back and forth through the trolley-bus (which fortunately was not very crowded), fiddled with his phone and tried hard to look important.

In my opinion these people are not conductors, rather they are people who the city government pays to ride the buses and trolleybuses and trams the whole day. I think that being paid to be a commuter is a horrible job, because commuting already for half and hour is quite difficult task. I probably would not survive the full workday in this meanial, boring job. This reminds me of the film where it showed how Nazis tried to break the will of their prisoners in concentration camps by having them move a pile of rocks back and forth between one place and another. I don’t understand why they don’t just pay these “professional commuters” their small salary and let them do something productive. Or put them all in one bus that takes more diverse, scenic routes and where they could play chess, read books. This saves us, the commuters who are not paid to commute, some space and allows to travel comfortably, without having to tolerate watching a person who is in the brink of being bored to death.

I plan to vote for someone who is sane and sensible in the coming local elections and not for someone who only looks at everything through narrow ideological perpective.


One Comment on “The bizarro-world of Tallinn city government”

  1. 1 Paul Vahur said at 18:57 on September 5th, 2009:

    Good commentary, agree 100%!


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