Beautiful German weapon sale of the week (this time with extra added bribery).
Because somebody has to admire them.
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.
There must be something about the Christmas season that makes Germans want to take their clothes off, I guess. This year’s lack of snow?
While German police are looking for a motorcyclist who went riding naked through Münster’s Christmas market, A FEMEN lady with “I AM GOD” painted on her body jumped up on the altar and started screaming in the middle of a Mass on Christmas at Cologne Cathedral.
This “social nudity” is social enough already, if you ask me. Do they really have to introduce anti-social nudity now, too?
„Es gibt kein Argument, das eine solche Aktion rechtfertigt.“
The power bill, I mean. The Power Bill Blues, actually. Just like everybody else here in Germany.
The electricity prices in Germany are the highest in the EU. A household here shells out 1000 euros annually (approx. $1,370). The French pay half. The EU average is around 700 euros.
Is this what they meant by the Energiewende (energy turnaround)? The power may be renewable here but I’m not sure how much longer the money is going to be.
Well, at least the electricity prices in Germany will be going up even higher again next year.
Bei den Strompreisen gehört Deutschland innerhalb der EU zu den Spitzenreitern. Ein Haushalt zahlt mehr als 1000 Euro, der EU-Schnitt liegt bei 700. Und im kommenden Jahr dürfte es noch teurer werden.
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.
Concerned Germans everywhere (note the red scarf) weren’t quite concerned enough to actually offer poor and misunderstood professional leaker/Russian tourist Edward Snowden political asylum, but now they all hope in unison that Brazil will (tons of Germans have found refuge there in the past, you know).
Otherwise those awful henchmen/bogeymen from that horrible homeland of his might just get him and, well, we don’t even want to THINK about what could possibly happen to him then!
Ex-NSA-Mitarbeiter Edward Snowden will auf seiner Flucht vor den Häschern seines Heimatlandes offenbar nach Brasilien weiterreisen.
Hundreds of Amazon.com Inc workers in Germany went on strike on Monday, just as pre-Christmas sales were set to peak, in a dispute over pay and conditions that has raged for months…
The Verdi union said up to 700 workers joined the strike in Amazon’s logistic center in Bad Hersfeld, plus 500 to 600 in Leipzig. For the first time, the union also called a strike in Graben, where Verdi said 600 workers took part.
Now that’s what I call having the Christmas spirit. Just replace the Scrooge part below with Ver.di.
Fred: Merry Christmas, Uncle Scrooge!
Scrooge: What’s so merry about it? I’ll tell you what Christmas is. It’s just another work day, and any jackanape who thinks else should be boiled in his own pudding!
Cratchit: But sir, Christmas is a time for giving… a time to be with one’s family.
Scrooge: I say, Bah humbug!
Fred: I don’t care! I say, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas!
Cratchit: [clapping] Well said, Master Fred!
Scrooge: Cratchit, what are you doing?
Cratchit: [stops clapping] I was just trying to keep my hands warm, sir.
Amazon has recently announced it would build three new logistics centers in Poland and two in the Czech Republic, prompting speculation that it could seek to shift work across the border from strike-hit centers in Germany.
Whoopee or something. Germany’s grand coalition is finally here – a government the Germans didn’t vote for.
GERMANY’S language boffins were first: they coined “GroKo” (short for grand coalition) the German language’s word of the year 2013 (an accolade that is not automatically flattering). To some Germans, this neologism might evoke a “great crocodile” or something otherwise sinister.
What does this really mean? It means that the tail (SPD) has succeeded in wagging the dog (CDU/CSU) and will now force enough of its social democratic agenda (“social” = free lunch) upon the German ship of way-too-big-state to veer it off the proper course, once again. It had been heading, however timidly, toward more private initiative = responsibility and away from your typical German been-there-done-that world of ever more government waste, meddling and control. The CDU/CSU has now become thoroughly social democratized, in other words.
Just like with the “energy turnaround,” everybody will wake up again once they figure out that this is actually going to cost them personally way too much money. Hey, life is a zigzag course. They’ll get back on track again eventually.
PS: Something actually happened on German TV last night that was apparently worth watching.
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 