Soaring German energy costs in the wake of the country’s transition to renewable energy have seen more and more firms thinking abut relocating their operations. The US looks like a sound alternative, associations claim.
And this even though everybody (everybody Green or SPD) knows that fracking is EVIL.
“If we don’t get on top of the country’s energy transition to renewables and are not able to rein in energy costs in the process, German industry’s competitiveness stands to suffer.”
Denmark’s Loreen and 19 others sang crappy songs that took in way more votes.
Böse Zungen (malicious tongues) have even suggested that Germany’s crappy Eurovision showing last night might not be entirely the fault of its crappy Cascada entry.
“We are in a difficult situation,” Thomas Schreiber from the ARD TV über-network said. “This is clearly a political situation.”
It wasn’t like Angela Merkel was singing (she might have actually won), but “you also have to see that it wasn’t just Cascada up there, Germany was on stage, too.”
Der ARD-Unterhaltungschef deutet ein Imageproblem in Europa an: “Da stand auch Deutschland auf der Bühne.”
PS: It wasn’t all bad news for Germany this weekend, however. Justin Bieber’s monkey will now become a German citizen.
When it comes to money matters, I mean.
Like I mentioned earlier, only in Germany can a political party go for (and actually get) votes by promising to raise taxes.
But I now stand corrected: (actually hope to get) is what I should have written. It turns out that not even do-gooder mainstream green-like German green people like the idea of increased taxes all that terrible much. At least not when the cameras have finally been turned off and they can answer a survey in peace and quite when the Green Shirt party watchdogs aren’t breathing down their necks.
Ever since the announcement of that wacky plan of theirs to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent for those earning 80,000 euros ($104,000) a year or more (and to 45 percent from 42 percent above 60,000 euros), voter support for them has dropped steadily.
I guess there’s GREEN in theory and GREEN in practice after all. And practice makes perfect, you know.
Die Grünen erreichen im Politbarometer nur noch 13 Prozent. Dass die Steuerpläne der Partei schaden, glauben 53 Prozent.
Just when Germans thought that they could own a drone of their own, one of those fancy European-made Euro Hawk drone type drones, somebody finally did the math and figured out that the 508 million euros already spent for the prototype had already been more than enough already.
Now Germany is in talks with Israel on buying something called a Heron TP drone instead. I assume that the TP stands for Total Preiswert (totally inexpensive) and this is definitely the way to go because if you absolutely positively have to own killing machines that you will never ever use in a million years anyway, cheapness is what you want.
Berlin sucht den Drohnen-Depp!
And here you thought that the Germans could bitch and moan about Europe.
And boy can they ever. But the reigning Weltmeister of Whining is now suddenly getting some unexpected stiff competition from France, of all places (with Spain, Italy and Greece picking up speed in the griping department, too).
“No European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned (with Europe) faster than France,” according to a Pew Research Center report, released in Brussels and Washington. “The French are negative about the economy, with 91 percent saying it is doing badly, up 10 percentage points from 2012.”
France’s malaise with the European Union’s outlook is more similar to sentiment in Spain, Italy and Greece than it is to the mood in Germany, which is the only EU nation of eight surveyed where at least half the public backed giving more power to Brussels to deal with the economic crisis.
So let’s get with it already, Germany. This race ain’t near over with. We (as in you) can do this. When the going gets tough, the tough get moaning.
“Deutsche leben mental auf ihrem eigenen Kontinent.”
Remember that Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Berlin back in the bad old days with all those signs and scribblings about “Don’t Buy from Jews!” and the like? Of course you don’t.
But many from Berlin’s enlightened anti-gentrification left do remember and have now come up with the breathtakingly brilliant idea of introducing this same simple asymmetrical tactic against the “hated” Berlin Swabian community by spraying “Don’t Buy from Swabians!” on the walls around town, too.
The evil Swabians are hated here, you see, because they work hard and are successful and make lots of money (and the cliché goes that they’re tightwads, too, but that’s beside the point) and, through their very presence, therefore increase Berlin property values which is an awful thing to do because those of the enlightened left (like most other Germans) do not own property but prefer to pay rent instead and this pushes the rents up and laber, laber, laber (blah, blah, blah) been there done that.
There can be no losers in Germany in general and Berlin in particular, you see (it’s verboten or something). That’s why there are so many of them here, I guess.
Der anonyme Unmut regt sich gegen die Schwaben, weil sie angeblich die Besonderheiten des Stadtviertels veränderten und die Preise auf dem Wohnungsmarkt in die Höhe trieben. In Berlin leben schätzungsweise rund 300.000 Schwaben.
„Kauft nicht bei Schwab’n!“
The issues at stake are not trivial ones. At the core of the Franco-German conflict is no less a matter than the question of how Europe can shake off the current crisis. Merkel is convinced this can only be achieved by implementing reforms — austerity, liberalization of the labor market and restructuring of social welfare systems.
But Hollande is unwilling to let Germany impose its model on France. He fears the European recession will only worsen if Berlin succeeds in implementing its austerity plans.
Even in the euro crisis, Germany is reluctant to be seen as sole leader. It badly needs a French economic revival to have a plausible partner at the top again.
“This is why, ultimately, it does not matter whether they like each other—that has not been the case for years.”
Ever feel like you fell down the rabbit hole? Spend some time in Germany and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Only in Germany can a political party go for (and actually get) votes by promising to raise taxes.
Delegates at a Greens party convention in Berlin yesterday voted through plans to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent for those earning 80,000 euros ($104,000) a year or more, and to 45 percent from 42 percent above 60,000 euros. They also backed a “wealth levy” on the richest to pay down 100 billion euros of Germany’s state debt over 10 years.
And a whole lot of German voters actually get excited about this kind of nonsense. It’s often a zero-sum mentality game over here, you see. You know, the way of thinking that hinges on the notion that there must be one winner and one loser and for every gain there is a loss? Take from the rich and give to the poor, in other words. Or Umverteilung (redistribution), if you prefer.
Of course what the Green Shirts are actually doing is selling “equality” where there is a huge demand and buying Neid (envy) where there is an even bigger supply.
“Nirgendwo in der OECD ist die Ungleichheit so schnell gestiegen wie in Deutschland.”
Or will not be happening, I should say.
As you know, Germany is green. And Germans are greener than green. Why, Germans are so green that Jamaicans want to roll them up and smoke them.
And Germans also like sticking to “the plan,” too (think Stalingrad). So they do not, I repeat do not appreciate it when, as in this case, their ambitious environmental plans get disturbed by unforseen technological developments that were not considered in the original plan and therefore start turning the whole Schlamassel (mess) into a really, really big and annoying, well, Schlamassel (think Stalingrad again).
It goes like this: “Ambitious environmental goals are far less meaningful if the economy withers in achieving them.” So when something really tempting comes along like shale gas drilling (hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”), a technology that could give Germany access to enough reserves to feed natural gas demand for 20 years, then that gets not-so-thoroughly-green people (yes, there still are a few specimens left) to thinking, plan or not.
So there we have it. And that’s the end of it (ask any German Green Shirt). Fracking can’t happen here. It is ideologically inadmissable. Fracking is something that those crazy Americans and their evil multi-national oil companies do, not us (multi-national oil companies are always American, by the way – don’t ask). Nope, fracking can never happen here. Never in a million years. Not this year anyway.
“We are sitting on Swiss cheese. The risks are just too high.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected again today claims that her country was seeking hegemony in the European Union.
“We already are the largest economy in Europe,” she might have said. “Like, by a long shot. So why on earth would we want to do that? All we want to do is just keep exercising our predominant influence over all those other namby-pamby nations around us and with time, through peaceful terms and non-aggression, achieve world, I mean, total European domination.”
“Germany has a sometimes complicated role,” she actually said. “Because we are the largest economy – we are not the richest, but we are the largest. Therefore Germany will only act together with the others – hegemony is totally foreign to me.”
Observing Hermann 