Who am I to question a long English television tradition? In Germany, I mean.
Do you know who Freddie Frinton was? Or May Warden? Nope. Don’t feel so bad. If English is your native language and you live in the US or the UK, then you’re not alone. But a German would likely know the names, or surely at least know their most famous characters.
Happy New Year!
Or at least the national deficit is all yours, my German friends (and mine – I live and pay taxes here, too).
But there’s good news, at least. Sort of. It’s only going to get worse!
It’s a paradoxical situation: The economy is braving the euro crisis, tax revenue is making the coffers ring and the German state still goes further into debt. The public sector deficit climbed to 30 billion euros during the first nine months this year. First and foremost the federal government, but also social security and other benefits have gone into the red.
And economists fear that this is just the beginning. Billions of new burdens have been tucked away in the coalition agreement just signed between the Union and the SPD. Tax, social insurance and other contribution increases are right around the corner.
Hey, you voted this coalition government into office, Germany. Oh, that’s right. You didn’t.
Trotz guter Konjunktur und steigender Steuereinnahmen macht Deutschland Milliarden neue Schulden. Jetzt befürchten Ökonomen: Das wird die Bürger teuer zu stehen kommen – und zwar schon bald.
Now that Christmas is over… Greetings from the Furred Reich!
“She’s lovely. It’s unfortunate she looks like a dictator.”
Ever!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!
I’d say yes. At least when it comes to films and documentaries, it seems. It’s just like way too “bo-ho-horing” to make it at the box office.
It (“An Inconvenient Truth”) made a ton of money which made some people think that suddenly the topic was unboring. Which produced a spate of climate documentaries that were all boring, and eventually resulted in an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker friend saying to me they all blend together — all the same shots of melting glaciers, polar bears, carbon emissions … blah, blah, blah. By 2008 another friend was at a gathering of indy film distributors in which they were saying, “no more environmental documentaries!”, there’s no audience for them. And by 2010 a producer friend of mine said, “Even the Green Channel doesn’t want “green programming…”
Climate definitely interests the climate crowd at some science magazines, talks or blogs. Some blogs are amazing. They will post one comment about one graph of temperature records from tree rings and get over a thousand comments. Which is boredom so purified and crystalized it’s in an unadulterated form that could make even a robot want to commit suicide.
Global Boring is a term used to describe the widely accepted scientific conclusion that the world is getting progressively less and less interesting, and will ultimately become so incredibly dull it will no longer be able to support human life.
Or Cryin’-Time TV, if you prefer. Or how about it’s-time-for-those-particularly-crappy-end-of-the-year-flashback-shows TV? Anyways, I got really emotional watching this collection of “The 25 Most Emotional TV Moments of the Year” last night on RTL.
Then I got an upset stomach, a bad case of the hives and had to barf.
Natürlich durfte die Sequenz aus „Supertalent“ nicht fehlen, in der Dieter Bohlen überrascht seinen Entdecker Rainer Felsen als Kandidaten auf die Bühne gestellt bekommt.
According to Semiocast, an analyst, Germany ranks 31st worldwide in terms of public tweets, with 59m per year. Germany’s 82m people have just 4m Twitter accounts. That puts it 22nd in the world, behind not only European neighbours like Britain (population 63m, 45m accounts) or Spain (population 47m, 16m accounts) but also Turkey (population 75m, 11m accounts) and the Philippines (population 98m, 8.6m accounts).
But they do like to google, however. Although what they googled most in election year 2013 is another matter. The number one German search item was Wahl-O-Mat, an online election tool that tells you who to vote for.
And Amazon didn’t even make the short list. That’s because it’s “designed for world domination,” I assume.
“Innovation erfordert den Willen, über einen langen Zeitraum missverstanden zu werden.”
The language, I mean. “Was Mir Sorgen?” Nice try. But way cool image, I must say.
Well, it is a weird state of affairs when you cannot give away free porn to anonymous people who only visit your site because it has free porn.
Yes it is. But welcome to Germany, sort of. What, me worry (was, ich soll mir Sorgen machen)?
It was originally thought that the letters were sent because of a court error. However, Thomas Urmann of the legal firm U+C told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that they plan to investigate more infringements on porn streaming sites next year, a move that would set a worldwide precedent.
Speaking of paying more for more of nothing…
Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD), the guy personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project, will be chosen later today to become the new chairman of the board of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company and thus once again become personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project.
What part of that don’t you understand? I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that if this were a comedy project we were talking about here it would be a raving success.
Wowereit had already been chairman of the board for the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company from 2008 to 2013 (not all that long ago), of course, until some trifling misunderstanding cropped up about the airport still not being completed after 10 or 20 years or something like that, I forget, but that is all now Schnee von gestern (long forgotten, “yesterday’s snow”) and everything will be OK again because if there is any one person in all of Germany who can possibly get this job done it is most definitely and certainly Klaus Wowereit himself.
By the way, he has to be reelected today because there is no other opposing candidate. Don’t be bothered by that, though. That kind of thing has a long tradition here in Berlin.
Ausgerechnet der vielgeschmähte Klaus Wowereit soll erneut den Aufsichtsrat der Flughafengesellschaft führen. Er erhält damit eine zweite Chance, das Projekt doch noch zum Erfolg zu führen.
PS: There’s more Klaus stuff here, if you like.
Come to Berlin Country! Come to where the City Tax is!
The city of Berlin loves youz tourists, honest it does. Sort of. In fact, the local yokel politicians here love youz guys so much that they feel the pressing need to show you just how much that is. And it’s a full 15 percent more than any of you out there were expecting. And that’s 15 percent more for getting absolutely nothing in return!
That’s right. Starting next month you will be permitted to pay an additional 15 percent City Tax on top of your hotel room bill here, at no extra cost to them and absolutely not free of charge for you! Now that’s what I call big City Tax hospitality!
I love you, you big dummy. You big dumb tourist. Book your flight to Berlin now!
“Es ist absolut nicht rechtssicher und wird ein bürokratisches Verwaltungsmonster sein.”
Observing Hermann 