More than 10,000 Britons are claiming unemployment benefit in Germany because they are not “hassled” in to finding work there.
I dunno. What’s worse? The folks who abuse a system or a system that invites you to abuse it?
“In Britain I had to put up with patronising officials, some of whom tried to get me to accept a job as a cleaner despite my degree.”
And just when you thought that this might maybe truly and honestly be the last time any of us would ever have to see or hear anything more of Claudia Roth again…
Denkste (not a bit of it)! She just got the office of Deputy Presiding Officer of German Parliament “thrown at her” and something deep down inside of me (causing me a whole lot of indigestion) tells me that she’s going to take it.
We’ll see. Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt (hope dies last), you know.
Wer meinte, endlich Ruhe vor Claudia Roths mitteilsamer Betroffenheit über so ziemlich alle Missstände dieser Welt zu haben, hat sich zu früh gefreut.
PS: And not much of a surprise here, I guess. Germany’s Greens ruled out any further coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s conservatives early on Wednesday, leaving the chancellor to focus on discussions with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) in her efforts to form a new government.
To keep Willy Brandt as Chancellor, the GDR was prepared to bribe members of German Parliament. Brandt’s intimate friend Egon Bahr (both SPD) negotiated with a GDR mediator in 1972 about payoffs for CDU and CSU parliamentarians. This has emerged in Stasi documents available to Der Spiegel. Brandt should thereby be kept in office. Bahr was State Secretary of the Chancellery at that time.
And this is completely unrelated, of course, but for you history buffs out there: There was a very controversial Misstrauensvotum (vote of no confidence) in German Parliament back in 1972 which Willy Brandt won – with two decisive votes mysteriously missing for the conservative opposition that had proposed it.
“Das muss absolut verschwiegen bleiben.”
After bringing by an ärztliches Attest (doctor’s certificate) certifying that he is “in fact like really and truly actually still alive,” ex-soccer star Lothar Matthäus has received an official apology from the otherwise infallibel Deutsche Post for returning a letter addressed to him from his ex-wife as unzustellbar (undeliverable) due to his being, well, like verstorben (deceased) already.
“Look, I’ve been dead for my ex-wife for years now, but this is taking it a little over the top, don’t you think?” the living and breathing Promi (celebrity, sort of) said, still alive and kicking.
Weil ein Brief seiner Ex-Frau Liliana nicht zugestellt werden konnte, wird der 52-Jährige kurzerhand für tot erklärt.
Seven percent in the coming year! For starters.
Hot dog. And all because of the The German Renewable Energy Act.
And this act kind of goes like this: Every kilowatt-hour that is generated from renewable energy facilities receives a fixed feed-in tariff. Renewable energy plant operators receive a 20 year, technology specific, guaranteed payment for their produced electricity. Anyone who produces renewable energy can now sell his ‘product’ for a 20-year fixed price.
And who pays this tariff? You guessed it.
Die EEG-Umlage steigt im kommenden Jahr voraussichtlich um einen Cent je Kilowattstunde.
As if Germans did not have enough to worry about already, a study from Credit Suisse has just confirmed that more than 1.7 million German citizens are now living above the millionaire line.
In fact, despite the so-called financial crisis, the amount of personal wealth has nearly doubled here since the year 2000.
German experts are grappling to find a sufficient explanation for this troubling development, as the causes of excessive German wealth were hitherto thought to have been fully understood and firmly under control.
With the release of these new findings, however, it appears as if some sources of this disgusting German wealth may be attributable to certain socio-demographic characteristics or other social, political, economic and cultural factors that may not have been fully comprehended up until now.
“This is absolutely shameful,” one grudging expert said. “It is an absolute outrage that wealth like this could exist in such an advanced and envious society as ours. We will not tolerate it and we shall never cease our efforts until the causes for this injustice are found and alleviated.”
Seit Mitte 2012 seien 221.000 Menschen hinzugekommen; insgesamt lebten in Deutschland nun gut 1.735.000 Dollar-Millionäre.
In a move that will clearly bring Amazon to its negotiating knees, German union Ver.di is threatening to strike the evil American online retailer’s logistic operations in Germany during the Christmas season itself should said evil retailer not increase wages for its German employees real pronto-like.
Shocked spokesmen at Amazon were clearly speechless here, prefering to announce that their company will now be opening three big new logistic centers just down the road in Poland in the very near future instead.
„Ich würde mich an Amazons Stelle nicht darauf verlassen, vor Weihnachten alle Kundenversprechen einhalten zu können.“
When it comes to that dreadful, awful and inhuman Mexico-United States border fence, I mean?
Not right now? OK, I understand. There must be more important news items to cover at the moment. But I’m sure we’ll be hearing from you in the future again.
The Mexico–United States barrier – also known in the United States as The Border Fence, Rotted Fence or Border Wall – is a collection of several barriers, designed to prevent illegal movement across the Mexico–United States border.
The Unification Day celebrations are now officially over. Red-Red-Green coalition talks anyone?
Well what do you know? It turns out that the chief executive secretary of the Left Party in the Bundestag was a “top agent” of the Stasi. Sachen gibt’s die gibt’s gar nicht (what will they think up next?).
Left Party boss Gregor Gysi is absolutely shocked, of course, and just cannot understand how a person like that could infiltrate a political party like his.
But at least Left Party members are able to take solace in the fact that said agent was clearly not an insidious agent of North American imperialism (excluding Canada) and a rotten capitalistic scumbag opertive working for that reactionary bourgeois NSA spy system so in the news and up in our faces these days but rather an easy-going and progressive comrade type who was not at all forced to work for a quaint totalitarian state once located in the immediate vicinity but then inexplicably disappeared and was only trying to make the world a more, you know, social place to live
Schwerer Schlag für die Linke: Die Geschäftsführerin der Fraktion im Bundestag, Ruth Kampa, war offenbar eine Top-Agentin der Stasi. Fraktionschef Gysi will davon nichts gewusst haben.
Germans still have walls in their heads? Why should that surprise anybody? Everybody else does, too. It’s just that the Germans are the only ones who have an excuse for it, sort of.
“Eastern Germans often say that western Germans are arrogant, materialistic, more bureaucratic and superficial.”
…But Eastern Germans aren’t the only ones still holding prejudices – western Germans have their own clichés about Germans from the former GDR. According to surveys conducted by leading opinion research centers, western Germans think Eastern Germans are sour, mistrustful and anxious. On the other hand, only 43 percent of western Germans considered eastern Germans “motivated” and “flexible.”
And both are right, of course. Hey, if you believe you are a second class citizen, then you are one. And if you believe you are the superior one who calls all the shots, then you are. But it’s kind of fun watching these folks slowly ride off into the East-West sunset. Both camps know quite well that they’re already von gestern (yesterday’s news). Or as Butt-Head used to put it: “Uh-huh, old people, uh-huh.”
“The second and third generations after the unification are much more optimistic, and see more equality between east and west. The proportion of those who think there are more differences than similarities between eastern and western Germans has continuously decreased over the past years.”
And have a happy Unification Day already.
Observing Hermann 