Why Finland bans the weirdest things
Somewhere along the line, someone figured out a great job for themselves: Ban things. It does not matter what, just think of something for whatever reason you happen to think of at the moment. It is a convenient way to make yourself seem important and have an actual impact on the world. Banning things is easier than suggesting constructive ideas and improvements on society.
Excessive banning is not exclusively a Finnish phenomenon. What is astounding is our ferocity in enforcing our regulations. No matter how silly, we take them seriously. Next week when somebody comes up with a new regulation that will prohibit the sale of carrots on Tuesdays, two things will happen. First, we will shake our heads and laugh. Next, we will form a task force unit that will patrol convenience stores on Tuesdays.
Check out these funny things somebody somewhere wanted to ban.
Liquorice pipes are evil
Why? Because they look like pipes and therefore invite innocent children to smoking, drugs and satanism. It has not yet been scientifically proven that liquorice acts a gateway drug, but better safe than sorry. Liquorice pipes have been banned and released for sale an embarrassing amount of times because it keeps somebody somewhere busy. At the moment, the sale of liquorice pipes is not forbidden, but they are considered tobacco-imitation products. As such, they will not gather bonus points on your customer account.
Bruce Willis should not walk on broken glass
This is one of the funnier examples of how the official board of censors wanted to protect their citizens. There is a scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis walks barefooted on broken glass. Ever loving and protecting, the censors cut this scene from the video release. It is not official how many lives were saved, but it has to be a lot. Otherwise, this would just have been a random act of vandalism. The funny cuts do not end there. Many movies like Robocop, Predator, True Romance or any Seagal film looked a lot different here than the rest of the world. The days of movie censorship are over now, which might explain the sudden uprising of chainsaw massacres in our country.
Beer brands on trucks are the devil’s work
A couple of years ago this country was a mess simply because the beer delivery trucks were allowed to have popular brand names on their sides. Not on my watch, said somebody, and the naughty trucks were all repainted. Thanks to the government everything is a-ok now. Or have you involuntarily gone on a 5-day bender and woken up in the gutter recently? You haven’t, and it is all because you cannot see the brand names on trucks anymore.
No beer for you before 9 am
This regulation apparently eliminates the supply for people who set the alarm at 7 to dash off for more beer. So if you are at the checkout at 8:55, tough luck. Of course, there is a loophole to this. A clever consumer can buy some extra alcohol the day before and set the alarm at 7 to get wasted at the crack of dawn. Someone should put a stop to this.
I never understood why I can’t buy beer for breakfast and have to wait until 9am. That’s just plain stupid.
Try being in Norway. Even Life of Brian was banned in FULL… not to mention snowmobiles, jetskis, skateboards, segways, alcohol after 8 in the shops, beer at any sports arrangement, any alcohol logo visible anywhere, liquirice pipes (here too, but you can buy them from the airport taxfree, hidden in the tobacco department..) and so on… local radio was banned until 1982.
Local radio! Really? I mean I know it’s often terrible, but why ban it?
That was also the case in Finland. Radio broadcast was a state monopoly until early 80’s. Television was a different case, there was a commercial TV network, but it was allocated time on the two public broadcast channels. We got our first fully commercial TV channel in 1986 (a couple of years later it merged with the before mentioned network).
What’s weird about banning liquorice pipes. They sound foul!!
Beer brands are band not true. Here in Helsinki there is a Koff tram and also a koff hot air balloon flew over head the other night
Neither a tram or a hot air balloon is a truck though, is it? :) Prob why they have trams and balloons
What should be banned is the use of diacritical mark (´) in place of apostrophe (‘).
I heard that Donald Duck was banned because he doesn’t wear pants. Is that true?
True.