For rigging the prestigious (yawn) “car the year” award competition, I mean.
Mr. Ramstetter, 60, admitted to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung that he had increased the number of ADAC member votes tenfold for this year’s “Golden Angel” award which went to the Volkswagen Golf.
Although the ADAC did not admit it, there were suspicions that its executives may have taken sizeable backhanders from Germany’s powerful car manufacturers in exchange for manipulating the figures.
That’s why 6000 of them (half the German army?) have now put in for early retirement.
No war is hell, too.
Flexibles System der Kinderbetreuung, mehr Tagesmütter für Randzeiten, Teilzeitmöglichkeiten mit einer Drei-oder Viertagewoche in der Familienphase, ein Lebensarbeitszeitkonto für Überstunden. Auch will sie sich das System der nahezu automatischen Versetzungen alle zwei bis drei Jahre „genau ansehen“ und Schluss mit dauernden Ortswechseln machen.
PS: And thank goodness this just came in. Here are the top 10 places for Frührentner (early-retirees) and other retiree types to, well, retire around at (International Living Annual Global Retirement Index 2014).
A 4-meter-long UFO landed near a place called Zwickau yesterday and nobody there seemed to notice and/or much care.
I guess this kind of thing happens down here all the time (what else are you going to do in Zwickau?). Unfortunately for the rest of humanity, the object in question turned out to be a remote-controlled mini-me-Zeppelin and no trace of the alien intelligence responsible for its construction has yet been found.
Später stellte sich heraus: Bei dem Ufo handelt es sich um einen ferngesteuerten Zeppelin, der „Ufo-Konstrukteur“ ist ein Hobby-Modellflieger aus dem Ort.
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.”
Only Germans can come up with Pretraumatic Stress Disorder. But now we can take this puppy up a notch higher.
“German Taliban” Josef D. (the guy in the middle with the skin problem) joins a terrorist group, gets himself a Kalaschnikow, goes to Afghanistan intending to do that jihad thing but then gets Durchfall (diarrhea) and therefore cannot take part in all the cool attacks planned on US installations there so he has to return home to Germany where he promptly gets busted (I’m not sure for what, though).
Now his lawyer informs us that his Schuldfähigkeit (legal culpability) needs to be looked into very intensely and thoroughly-like because not only does this guy have terrible awful diarrhea problems, he also suddenly seems to be suffering from some kind of mysterious mental disorder. Uh, wait a minute. Don’t all terrorists suffer from some kind of mysterious mental disorder?
Anyways, this all has a certain logic to it if you ask me. Germany is the number one country when it comes to doctor visits, after all. Politicians get sick and throw in the towel here all the time. German intellectuals regularly get ill or “burn out” while analyzing the world around them. A huge portion of German youth suffers from “social phobia” and half a million Germans are hopelessly “addicted” to the Internet. Hell, even the German Pope gets sick and has to go into early retirement, for crying out loud.
It’s just not easy being a German, I guess. Without getting sick, I mean. But like doesn’t somebody out there – who is German – have to do it?
Wegen einer chronischen Durchfallerkrankung habe er aber nicht an Anschlägen und Angriffen der Gruppe auf afghanische und US-Einrichtungen teilnehmen können, so die Bundesanwaltschaft.
Zwangs- = compulsory. Umlage = levy, share in the costs. Put those two together and what do you get? Forced to share. But we’re talking about money here folks so let’s just call it another tax and get it over with already.
This latest planned tax consists of forcing German households to purchase so-called “smart meters” or modern electricity meters that are supposed to regulate energy consumption by drawing electricity from that so wonderfully green German energy grid whenever this energy is cheaper. You know, like when hell freezes over?
This will only set back German consumers another 70 or 80 euros after already having been hit with a seven percent energy bill increase planned for next year, too (the seven can and will change, of course, and we all now in which direction it will be going).
Turn it around as much as you want. Anyway you turn this German energy turnaround around, you’ll always get the same result. Once you’ve turned it around, I mean. She is like way too expensive, señor.
But what can you expect from a government that is about to go retro and way back in the Wayback Machine to the good old days of SPD Never-Never Land again?
“Verbraucher sollten mit attraktiven Angeboten überzeugt, statt mit immer mehr ordnungsrechtlichen Einbaupflichten gezwungen werden.”
PS: The next German word of the day will be Abzocke. Here’s a tip: It means rip-off.
Please tell me what I don’t understand here. I just have to have missed something. I reread this article several times, too.
According to a German report about posttraumatic stress disorder, about one fifth of German soldiers suffer from psychische Vorerkrankung (pre-existing psychic strain) BEFORE they are deployed abroad.
I mean, I know Germans are super efficient and all that. But how the hell do you get posttraumatic stress disorder before you ever even make it to the post?
Laut einer Studie zu posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen (PTBS) haben 20 Prozent der Soldaten eine psychische Vorerkrankung. So ist ihr Risiko größer, nach der Rückkehr unter Problemen zu leiden.
My, how time flies. It’s been two months now. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
Time for new elections, I’d say.
The SPD got 25.7% of votes compared with Mrs Merkel’s 41.5%. Mrs Merkel’s supporters are growing frustrated…
The bizarre situation has arisen because Mrs Merkel, her strong showing notwithstanding, fell just short of a majority of seats…
Mr Gabriel made another concession to the SPD’s left wing: a formal resolution on November 14th to be open in future to coalition talks with Die Linke. The two “red” parties used to detest each other, Die Linke considering the SPD sell-outs to capitalism and the SPD viewing Die Linke as a chaotic troupe of Marxists nostalgic for East Germany and dangerously hostile to NATO and America. Now, however, there is speculation that the SPD could break a coalition with Mrs Merkel in mid-term and go on to form an all-left government, unprecedented at the national level, dubbed “R2G” for red-red-green.
Just get it over with already, already, and call for a new election. They’ll never stop wasting your time otherwise.
The most important country in the European Union is thus being run by a caretaker cabinet, unable to take important decisions.
Observing Hermann 