German Budget Surplus Offers German Politicians Further Ways Not To Spend It

The dramatic growth in Germany’s public sector surplus over the first half means the government has extra room for manoeuvre, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Friday after data was released showing the surplus at a record high.

Scholz

“I’ll be looking into as many ways as possible not to spend any of it,” he said. Or could have said. And this is social democrat, too. This savings mania is a German thang.

And saving money is generally a very sound idea, I understand that. But how about considering giving that surplus back to the people you took it from in the first place? I’m just saying.

Der FDP-Politiker Dürr verlangte angesichts der hohen Überschüsse, den Solidaritätszuschlag abzuschaffen. Auch der Bund der Steuerzahler forderte eine Entlastung der Bürger.

Must Be The Heat

Modern German war machines aren’t made for it, if you know what I mean.

Heat

German army shows off ailing NATO helicopter – German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen is touring the ranks of the Bundeswehr this summer. But some of the military hardware she is admiring, like the NH90 helicopter, has seen more ground time than flight time.

Mismanagement or routine problems?

Can’t be mismanagement because Frau von der Leyen is Miss Management herself. She has been the Bundeswehr boss for ages now and would never allow this type of thing to happen even though it clearly is happening (a man would have been fired long ago). Besides, she’s one of Chancellor Merkel’s very top girls in the Chancellor Merkel girl group. They’re called The Untouchables.

“We can say that the NH90 has proved its worth.”

How State TV Works

When it comes to the news. Pretty much as you imagine it would. It’s kind of like CNN, only you have to support it with your tax euros whether you want to or not. And there is even less accountability, believe it or not.

Tagesschau

Take a recent murder case in Offenburg, for instance. Please. In what appears to be an unprovoked attack, a Somali migrant is reported to have stormed into a family doctor’s surgery area and stabbed the doctor to death. The man then attacked and wounded a medical assistant before fleeing the scene, where a knife was found by police.

Although clearly of great public interest – it was everywhere else in the papers – Germany’s Tagesschau news program chose not to even mention it. The program’s editor-in-chief doesn’t seem all too concerned about the harsh public cirticism that followed this omission, however. Why should he? It’s not like he can be held accountable or be fired for anything. And the show must go on.

“Wir berichten in der “Tagesschau” über Dinge von gesellschaftlicher, nationaler oder internationaler Relevanz.”

Just Like That Japanese Reactor

Not quite as dramatic, granted, but just like how Fukushima took down the nuclear power industry in Germany, all it takes is a collapsed highway bridge in Italy to suddenly put Germany’s bridge infrastructure in full tilt crisis mode. You gotta worry about something, after all.

Bridges

The latest reminder of the risks of aging infrastructure came Tuesday, when a highway bridge in Italy collapsed, killing at least 35 people. Germany is also exposed. Its once-envied network of roads, bridges and railways are decaying due to decades of underspending. The country has fallen to 15th in road quality behind Oman and Portugal, according to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings.

Autobahnbrücken in Deutschland – Jede achte Brücke in schlechtem Zustand.

German Of The Day: Vergewaltigung

That means rape. And three in a row popped up in the news today

Rape

Strange, they never used to be in the news this much. Now hardly a day goes by without a report or two. It’s been, I dunno, two or three years now. Times seem to have gotten a little rougher here in Germany – and elsewhere in Europe – for some reason.

Nach Vergewaltigung in Hamburg Politiker fordern Aufklärung – und Härte… Der Verdächtige ist vorbestraft und sein Asylantrag abgelehnt.

Agreement Kind Of Reached About Actually Sort Of Enforcing A Law That Has Already Been In Effect For Years

Remember when laws used to have to be followed? Me, neither.

Spain

Berlin and Madrid are demonstrating unity with a joint agreement on returning migrants from Germany to Spain. Now Germany wants to seal similar deals with other countries…

Isn’t this already determined by the Dublin Regulation?

Yes, in principle it is. According to the Dublin Regulation, a migrant is supposed to become the responsibility of the country where he or she is first registered. As a rule, it should be the country where they first set foot on European soil. If a refugee comes to Germany and it turns out that he’s already registered in Italy, the German government could send him back there. However, European law also requires it to consider whether it makes more sense for a refugee to stay in Germany — if, for example, they have relatives living here…

Many EU countries consider the Dublin Regulation impracticable. The transfer of migrants from one country to another is extremely time-consuming. Furthermore, many migrants are not even registered at the point when they first set foot on European soil. During her visit to Spain, Merkel too described the Dublin Regulation as “unworkable.”

German Of The Day: Unfassbar

That means unfathomable. As in it being unfathomable” to set free someone who helped the hijackers who seized Flight 11 and Flight 175 out of Boston, launching the War on Terror.

Terror

Mounir el-Motassadeq — who paid tuition and rent for the al-Qaeda killers while they plotted in Hamburg — is being deported back to his native Morocco early. He was sentenced in 2006 to 15 years, but is being given credit for time served, German’s Bild newspaper reported Thursday. He was jailed in November 2001.

“He was found guilty of 246 counts of accessory to murder — one for each of the passengers who died on all the four hijacked flights that day. It’s shocking he only got 15 years and this sends the message the cost of human life is cheap in Germany.”

Das Hanseatische Oberlandesgericht (OLG) hatte Motassadeq wegen Beihilfe zum Mord in 246 Fällen und Mitgliedschaft in einer terroristischen Vereinigung verurteilt.

Why Germany’s Army Is In A Bad State?

Duh. Because that’s the way Germany wants it. This isn’t rocket science, folks.

Army

DONALD TRUMP says it is “not fair” for Europe’s largest economy to spend proportionally so much less on defence than America does. Germany spends just 1.2% of its GDP on defence, and it shows. A report released in February showed that less than half the country’s Leopard tanks, 12 out of 50 Tiger helicopters and only 39 of its 128 Typhoon fighter aircraft were fit for action. At the end of last year, none of the country’s six submarines was at sea. In short: Germany’s armed forces are barely fit for purpose. Why?

Just 15 per cent of all Germans agree with Angela Merkel that the country should increase its military spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2024, with 36 per cent saying the country’s already spends too much on its military.

No Fake News Here

It’s called “miscommunication.”

Miscommunication

This week, two individuals became the focus of global celebration following an unlikely and joyous confluence of circumstances.

The viral story went that two elderly men escaped their care facility to attend a metal festival in northern Germany (or, as one headline put it: “Elderly Men Escape Retirement Home to Go RAGE!!”).

Except they weren’t, and they didn’t.

The two men, as it turns out, are 58 and 59 years old and had escaped “a home for people with mental health issues,” according to the Associated Press, before traveling to Wacken, a city roughly 50 miles north of Hamburg. They arrived there at the same time that the Wacken Open Air music festival — referred to as the world’s largest for metal — was happening.

If they can’t or won’t get the facts straight on a harmless little story like this then imagine what kind of fairy tale twisting must be going with the more politicized stuff.

World Ending Again

In Germany.

Heat

In a country where everyone is always complaining about the lack of sunshine, several consecutive months of heat and sunshine (in other countries referred to as “the summer”) have led the alarmist fringe of the population (that’s roughly 97% of the population) to the scientific conclusion that they now find themselves smack dab in the middle of a major “state of meteorological emergency” and are all going to die even before the sky gets the chance to fall down. If only the gray skies and rain would come back so they could bitch and moan about that again! As nature intended.

What makes summer 2018 an exception is the unusually long period of heat. Such a persistent period of fine weather, with lots of sunshine and little rain, occurs on average once every 10 years at most in the country. And given the lack of rain, it’s not the heat that’s the problem, but the drought — especially in northern and eastern Germany, where there has been virtually no rainfall in some places since May.

This may be due to climate change, but it may also be unrelated. Germany has also experienced extreme droughts in previous years. In 1992, for example, when wheat withered away in the fields, wells dried up and priests prayed for rain at church services. Or in 1971, when forest fires flared up in many places across the country. Or in 1947, when even drinking water became scarce.

“Somebody is always complaining. It’s sheer nonsense.”