A group of well-heeled businessmen control 'an association for developing communities in Finland'. That association gave 10s of thousands € to various candidates in the last General Election. The PM, for instance, got 10k. The 'donations' went to leading figures in the Centre Party, The National Coalition and the Social Democrats. All of these since-elected politicians now claim to have known nothing about the people behind the association.

All this came to light because another elected MP, and secretary of the Centre Party, 'forgot' to declare the origin of his donations from this association.

Apparently one of the key movers/funders behind the association is a Mr Sugary (not his real name, but close to it) - a man who made billions selling crappy cheap furniture all over Finland, by  using crappy TV ads that featured, for example, buxom scantily dressed bimbos playing phalluses with electric drills. The man is a monster of bad taste, so it is little wonder that he was literally stabbed in the back, round Christmas, by one of his business partners, after a heavy boozing session at his dacha.

They were not even bright enough to claim that the catastrophic collapse of one of their dining chairs (rustic table and 6 chairs, 109€), caused the business partner to tip violently against his host at the dinner while holding a steak knife, while the host was turned to his wife on the other side, worried that she was in difficulties as her face had slumped into a large tureen of Koskenkorva.

No, they didn't claim that.

Anyway, the recent flight of kitsch fancy that our entrepreneur cooked up is a super mall with outdoors indoors (if you see what I mean) and specially built olde worlde nests of alleyways hired out to crafts people. It's the idea of an 'experience' shopping centre. They also planned to have a system, run by the Finnish Post Office, such that your purchased goods were whisked away to be collected at the exit to the car park. Thus, in theory, happy shoppers would shop on, undeterred by the mounting physical evidence of their consumerism that they would have to push round all the wonderful 'experiences'.

This is called an IdeaPark. It professes green values, responsibiity to the community and to existing local shopkeepers - professes, but ignores, and the principle idea in this park is an advanced method of parting people from their money. I have some knowledge of all these things because I was peripherally involved in the project at its earliest stages, before Mr Phallic&Decker came in with elusive spondulex. At which point I and several other consultants left. I admit with shame to getting involved, but the guy who came up with the concept was a nice guy and his green/caring spiel was believable.

So here's the twist. Mr IdeaPark wants to build another of these countryside-wrecking monsters (and I can now see that they are) in Vihti - very close to an old wooden house I once lived in. It is a beautiful area.

Many politicians are against the project and the Environment Minister has consistently refused to give planning permission. However just before the scandal broke, the PM came out in favour of the Vihti IdeaPark, saying that it would bring much-needed service jobs to the area.

Wel, well, well. He gets 10k for his election campaign from an association funded by Mr IdeaPark, and then involves himself, unusually for a PM, in a planning application.

There's the facts, work it out for yourselves.

Its worrying.

You can't be me, I'm taken