Weekend Box: Estonia Still Nuts for ‘Squirrel Party’, Women’s Prize Turns the Page & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
Image credit/FinnishGovernment/License
ESTONIA STILL NUTS FOR ‘SQUIRREL PARTY’
Estonia held its general election earlier this week, with the actions of neighbouring Russia looming large.
The eastern European country is known for its digital-first approach to public services. Voting is no different: more than half of the ballots cast by Estonians were electronic, via the internet.
The result saw a ringing endorsement for the governing Reform Party, with prime minister Kaja Kallas’ popularity helping them top the poll with 31% of the vote. Reform, known colloquially as the “squirrel party” because of its charming logo, has been a strong performer in Estonian politics for many years. Its hawkish stance on Russia has yielded dividends, with voters noting Reform’s prescience on Russian aggression.
The major losers were the Centre Party, typically popular with Russian speakers, and the right-wing Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), who have historically been at least mildly pro-Russia. Russians make up some 25% of the Estonian population, but with public opinion and party politics swinging violently against Russia since the Ukraine war, political analysts believe many stayed at home on polling day.
For Centre, the loss of votes from Russian speakers compounds a corruption scandal in 2021, where Centre’s secretary-general was found to have taken cash for access and badly damaged their brand.
Ms Kallas has secured a commanding result and now holds all the cards in ongoing coalition negotiations. Armed with this vote of confidence, we can expect the Estonian government to deliver further strident criticism of Vladimir Putin and greater demands of NATO for more support.
Image credit/Kārlis Dambrāns on Flickr/License
HUAWEI: GERMANY RISKS ITS TECH
This week reports emerged from German media outlets Die Zeit and Handelsblatt that Germany is preparing to pull the plug on 5G devices made by Chinese company Huawei, potentially forcing telecom companies to strip out thousands of components they have already installed.
Whether this will end up being an outright ban, like that we have seen in the UK (which was estimated to have cost BT £500m), is yet to be seen, but reports from the Interior Ministry have confirmed there will be a review of the law in order to “better exclude security risks.” This marks a change from the country’s relaxed approach to this technology – in 2019 the country pointedly snubbed the US’ efforts to impose a global ban on the company.
The reports follow President Biden’s meeting with German President Olaf Scholz last week where the two leaders reiterated that they would remain in lockstep amid concerns China could be selling weapons to Russia. This week, America continues its European charm offensive to secure its allyship against China, with the President’s meeting with Ursula von der Leyen today. A significant topic of conversation has been de-risking dependency on China for key materials, particularly on the supply of rare earths which are key to the manufacturing of many hi-tech products. China produces 98 percent of Europe’s rare earth supplies, and this dependency is one reason behind the cautious approach EU member states like Germany have taken towards the communist nation. No doubt there will be some discussion of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has caused transatlantic tensions to simmer.
With Germany taking a new stance on Huawei and the Netherlands joining the US in its chip war, these could be small signs that Europe is aligning more closely with the US’ more hawkish approach to China. However, with the continent still grappling with the impact of reducing its dependency on Russia, there is likely to be a long road ahead before we see any action from the EU to challenge China that goes beyond ‘de-risking’ its dependencies.
Image credit/Ivan Samkov on Pexels
PARENTAL CONTROLS
‘Sharenting’: For those not up to date with their online vernacular, this is when parents overshare and broadcast private information about their children online. The post-TikTok boom in online content creation has spawned a whole genre of parenting influencer media. Now, at a time of legislative pushes for a child-friendly web such as the UK’s Online Safety Bill, President Macron’s government are clamping down on the types of content French parents make featuring their children.
A draft private member’s bill has received backing from the French government that would strip parents of the right to their children’s ‘digital image’ if they were seen to be exploiting their children for online fame or profit. The legislation was drafted in response to the sheer volume of media featuring children shared online and the rise in content featuring sometimes frightening or humiliating pranks played on children by their parents.
The legislation would enable family court judges to transfer the rights to a child’s image from offending parents to a third party such as a social worker.
Parents sharing media featuring their children with the world via the internet is, of course, no new phenomenon; do readers remember ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’? A reality of the explosion in online content creation and the birth of the ‘influencer’ is that, for many who make a living as online creators, the boundaries between ‘real life’ – that is, life offline – and content collapse as they transform their lives into content in order to maintain an online presence. For influencers who are also parents, this can mean transforming their children’s lives into content as well, if it means attaining or prolonging success. The possibility that they will exploit their children then becomes all too likely.
British MPs were calling for protections to prevent child influencers from exploitation by their parents last year. Perhaps we can all take a leaf from France’s book and add ‘sharenting’ protections to our draft online safety laws.
Image credit/cottonbro studio on Pexels
SOUND DESIGN IN THE OFFICE
In the ongoing post-Covid struggle that many employers have to get their employees back into the office, one factor has perhaps been underestimated: noise. For all the break-out areas, coffee-on-tap and other efforts to create a communal workspace that appeals and promotes productivity, the issue of noise as a distraction ranks highly for many as a disincentive. Architectural sound specialists Oscar Acoustics claim their data reveals that 75% of employees think noisy workspaces are preventing them from concentrating on their job. A quarter of the same dataset, aged 18-50, expressed serious concern about returning to the office due to excessive noise.
The issue combines the architectural trappings of open-plan office design with the tension between creating friendly, collaborative working environments and a growing awareness that sound affects concentration significantly. This is especially so for some people with neurodiverse conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder, as well as those with hearing conditions like tinnitus.
In response, firms such as Oscar Acoustics can fit acoustic decorative finishes that can deaden sound, while others such as office designers ESI Design advocate adding sound to actively shape mood and productivity. Writing in Quartz, the business and technology website, ESI Design’s Creative Leader, Layne Braunstein, said “We should take advantage of sound. Yesterday’s architecture should evolve past what we see to what we hear.” His experimental projects for companies such as Google and Microsoft have led him to foresee workers experiencing their own “personalised bio-soundscapes” as they move around a workspace. To his point, companies are already using sound to deliberately influence workplace atmosphere, such as with meditation tracks in quiet zones or uplifting music in receptions.
Meanwhile, many find their own solutions, such as with noise-cancelling headphones or by listening to ‘white’ or ‘brown’ noise - constant sounds such as that of rushing water that can cancel other distractions and fill a void to aid concentration. So, if you see someone with headphones on, staring intently at their computer screen, kindly ‘keep it down!’
Image credit/Pixabay on Pexels
WOMEN’S PRIZE TURNS THE PAGE
Award season. “Again?!?!” We hear you cry. Well, this week it’s all about books.
Following the PEN America Literary Awards last week, which has been described as the ‘Oscars for Books’, this week the Women’s Prize for Fiction released their 2023 longlist of 16 novels from female writers. Across the two awards, an array of writers have been celebrated, and unlike the BAFTAs, a far more diverse set of winners have been recognised.
Not only have the judging panels ensured there is diversity across regions within their finalists, but also a refreshing number of new writers have been celebrated. 9 out of the 16 writers for the Women’s Prize for Fiction are debuts as well as very few ‘household names’ were celebrated at PEN – showcasing new and emerging talent.
There was some critique that this new blood has left some literary stalwarts off these lists, but others have praised the award’s new emphasis on literary discovery. Robert Millen from The Times was one of the former who decried the exclusion of acclaimed author Elizabeth McCracken, who wrote ‘The Hero of this Book’ from the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
At Audley, we were pleased to see unconventional thinking and originality celebrated. One such example was Laline Paull’s Pod which is a novel written entirely from the perspective of a dolphin. The PEN awards, an organization that for 100 years has championed free speech and liberty for writers was no different. PEN America’s President Ayad Akhtar closed the event with an impassioned plea to “defend the rights of writers to imagine, and speak and create freely.”
A fitting message of inclusion and freedom, and a fitting note to go out on, as we come to the end of the week in which we celebrated International Women’s Day.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.