Just this summer it was all over with the Rhine, I was told. But hey. The Climate Crises can be like that. One climate crisis is too dry. The next one is two wet. It’s kind of like the weather, you know?
River Rhine in south Germany remains closed to shipping – Parts of the river Rhine in south Germany remained closed to shipping on Friday after heavy rain and melting snow increased water levels, but could reopen later this weekend, navigation authorities said.
My back is starting to hurt from all the patting I’ve been giving it.
We’ll just get around that old debt brake six months from now by declaring another “unforseen emergency” for more debt our high court can’t stop us from making. We’ve even announced what that unforeseen emergency will most likely be: Ukraine.
Germany clinches last-minute 2024 budget deal, keeps debt brake – Germany’s government clinched a last-minute deal on its 2024 budget on Wednesday that will see Berlin return to its self-imposed limits on new debt despite warnings this could hamper growth in Europe’s top economy and its green transition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition was faced with either suspending what is known as the debt brake or finding some 17 billion euros ($18.3 billion) in savings and tax hikes after a Nov. 15 constitutional court ruling threw its plans into disarray…
Others said the deal simply delayed a necessary decision on how to fund investments in an economy that has already suffered years of chronic underinvestment. Last month’s court ruling has made clear the government will not be able to resort as easily to off-budget funds going forwards.
The Germans just had to have one of their own, of course. And I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but their insurrection was even more ridiculous than ours was. 27 old farts were going to “overthrow the German government.” Silly old farts too, They didn’t even know that Germany doesn’t have a government. Or that when it does it just overthrows itself.
Germany charges 27 suspects over Reichsbürger coup plot – German prosecutors have charged 27 suspects after carrying out raids against the far-right Reichsbürger movement last year.
For the first time after a series of raids last year, federal prosecutors in Germany on Tuesday brought charges linked to an alleged coup plot hatched by members of the far-right “Reichsbürger” movement… Also charged was the entrepreneur and aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, who is alleged to have been the ringleader.
Germany’s CDU questions Islam’s place in society – Muslims, migration, and nuclear energy all get fresh focus in a new CDU manifesto. The draft has already drawn widespread criticism.
The new color scheme a few months back was only a cosmetic step. Now, Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats are going under the hood. For the first time since 2007, the party that ruled Germany for most of the republic’s young history has revamped its party program.
Its leaders hope this is their ticket to returning to power, which they lost in 2021. In establishing what the CDU now stands for, the draft reflects ideological differences at the very top. Chairman Friedrich Merz needed three attempts to become party leader, rebuffed by a skeptical Angela Merkel when she was still chancellor and a powerful force in the party. With her gone and Merz in charge since early last year, he is seeking a different path…
Gone are the days of recognizing that “Islam now belongs to Germany, too” as the CDU’s Christian Wulff said when he served as Germany’s president during an early Merkel government. The new draft manifesto adds a key caveat: Muslims belong to Germany so long as they “share our values.”
“Teaching hate at German universities: our students learn to despise our values – Why do you send your children to university? So that they can be educated to become smarter people. But you can rely on that less and less. More and more often, they learn to hate themselves and the reason on which this society is based...
Israel as a bridgehead for colonial-racist imperialism controlled by the West: that is what young people are being taught. No wonder all hell is breaking loose at many universities. And not just at elite American universities, where a left-wing mob shouts down anyone who is too white, too privileged and too well-educated.”
The first night train between Berlin and Paris will depart on Monday evening after a nine-year hiatus, plugging a significant gap in Europe’s increasingly comprehensive overnight rail timetable and giving a boost to travellers looking for a realistic alternative to flying…
Demand for tickets is high, with many on the most popular routes selling out minutes after they had gone online.
Gardner said the buzz and the demand was so considerable, that “it’s now as hard to get a place in the compartment of a deluxe sleeping car on the night train from Paris to Berlin as it is to reserve a table at Paris’s best restaurants”
Sure, you’re burning too much of the taxpayers’ money but if you want to see how it’s really done, take a look at The Banana Republic of US-Amerika.
Hard-pressed Germans dabble in debt but want government thrift – Most Germans do not want their government to loosen its strict borrowing rules to fix a budget mess – but many in a nation that prides itself on thrift are building up their own debts as a cost of living crisis deepens.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition is reeling from a court ruling last month that has thrown its finances into disarray and forced it to suspend a constitutionally enshrined “debt brake” for the 2023 budget.
German Left Party dissolves parliamentary faction after key member breaks away – The faction was forced to officially disband after a prominent member split off to start a new populist party.
Members of the Left Party will remain in the German parliament, or Bundestag, but will no longer be part of an official faction, or caucus. The disbanding means the party loses financial support and is forced to liquidate assets and fire staff. The parliamentary rights of its members will also be limited.
You know, the warming device that needs government subsidies to get anyone to install it (promised subsidies that will now no longer be offered)?
German heat pump rollout at risk as government suspends climate subsidies – Move could also undermine nine funding programmes, covering schemes from energy efficient homes to cargo bikes provision.
Nine funding programmes, covering everything from energy efficient homes to cargo bikes for commercial use, are now on hold as Olaf Scholz’s coalition government seeks to make savings of about €17bn (£15bn).
The government was thrown into a quandary last month over how to finance its ambitious environmental and industrial transformation programme (KTF) when the country’s highest court blocked its attempts to switch €60bn of pandemic-era borrowing to pay for it.
Germany’s Greens thought their moment had finally come…But then, last month, Germany’s top court handed down a ruling that effectively stripped the ruling coalition of the full financial firepower it needs to make those ambitions a reality.
The bombshell ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court blew a €60 billion hole in the country’s finances, leaving the government scrambling to fill the gap. At the same time, the ruling sharply limits the government’s ability to draw from special funds created to circumvent the country’s constitutional debt brake, which restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP except in times of emergency.
These special funds were supposed to help finance several projects which are core to the Greens’ agenda — such as the transition of steel plants to hydrogen energy, subsidies for battery and microchip production, and the modernization of the country’s railway network.
Observing Hermann 