The new Elbphilharmonie!!
Instead of costing the planned 77 million euros it ended up costing Hamburg 800 million instead!!!
Breathtaking or something. Enjoy your status while you can, Hamburg. Just wait until the final cost for Berlin’s airport gets determined. If it ever does, I mean. We will CRUSH you!
Die Hansestädter sind froh, dass das Ding endlich fertig ist. Der Bau sollte 77 Millionen Euro kosten, am Ende waren es fast 800 Millionen.
It’s all over now, folks. What will be next? The next thing you know the Germans will be demanding that Syrian refugees from Pakistan and North Africa enter the country with actual passports.
EU citizens who move to Germany without employment are to be denied social welfare for five years, according to the Funke media group. The news chain says draft law curbing entitlements goes to cabinet next week.
And yes, one could do this – up until now, at least.
Ohne Arbeit kein Hartz IV.
In Germany, too? You bet.
The latest “black book” has been published by the German Taxpayers Federation and here – not counting your regular, every-day kind of wasteful government spending – are just a few of the more special ways in which government tosses money out the window:
Garbage cans in the city of Leverkusen that cost 1,258 euros a shot.
A fish ladder near the town of Lauterbach that cost taxpayers 100,000 euros. The only problem is that the fish can’t reach the ladder.
Or how about a townhouse in an exclusive location in Manhattan, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany. The only problem here is that it’s been empty since 2009 and costs taxpayers over 80,000 euros a year in upkeep.
“Politik und Verwaltung gehen verschwenderisch, sorglos oder leichtsinnig mit Steuergeldern um.”
In another electrifying example of tax dollar waste (or in this case tax euro waste), Angela Merkel’s government has just made a deal with automakers to spend some 1.2 billion euros on incentives to boost sluggish electric car sales in Germany.
“The goal is to move forward as quickly as possible on electric vehicles,” one high-ranking government official said while attaching the electrodes to the German nation’s sweaty forehead. “With this, we are giving an impetus.”
And if that first shock doesn’t work, who cares? This is renewable energy they’re using here, folks.
Just over 30,000 electric vehicles, which are more expensive than conventional models, have been sold in Germany. That’s a tiny fraction of the more than 3 million cars bought each year in a country which has historically leaned on diesel technology to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
And it does. But the German state can burn the stuff up pretty good, too – at any level.
The German Federation of Tax Payers just came out with its latest “Black Book” of government waste, a breathtaking collection of 133 of the most impressive cases of abuse it found. Some are quite imaginative, I must say.
The city of Bergen on the island of Rügen, for instance, ordered 200,000 earthworms from a special firm in Holland for a sports field there – for over 7,000 euros. These special „Dutch Nightcrawlers“ were supposed to loosen up the hard playing field. They failed at that but made the field so “soiled” with worm Dreck (filth) that it couldn’t be used anymore.
Or how about the five manhole covers in Osnabrück with the colorful LED lamps on the side? They only cost 10,000 euros a shot. They sure are purty, though.
Then there’s the State Ministry for Culture boss who felt the need to have a “cemetery app” developed that would show its users where over 1,000 famous graves are located. It was called “Where They Rest” and all it did was redirect these users to the website with the same name. It only set tax payers back some 548,000 euros, however.
Nicht kleckern sondern klotzen, I say. Don’t take anything halfway.
European politicians everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief as a mentally challenged German couple holidaying in Greece made the first ever private WWII reparations payment of $935 to Greece to make up for their government’s bad and nasty attitude.
Spokesmen for Brussels and Berlin were quick to point out that this shows how private people with good intentions can also “burn up money like nobody’s business” and how “like you shouldn’t always point your finger just at us when we squander away our dough. Your dough, that is. You’re pretty good at this, too.”
“They made their calculations and said each German owed 875 euros for what Greece had to pay during World War II.”
Planning for the big party has run into a number of problems and cost-overruns that have made the postponement necessary, party planners announced today.
At least the party’s delay coincides with the latest delay for the completion of Berlin’s not-so-new-anymore-soon-to-be-new airport. The only problem here now is that the building permit runs out in 2016.
Party Klaus himself could not be reached for comment but is sure to attend the party if still alive, albeit no longer as mayor and El Architect Grande of Berlin.
“I leave voluntarily and I am proud of my contribution to the positive development of this city.”
The city of Berlin may be poor but sexy, but it is not poor but sexy enough to not be able to scrape up enough needed tax euros to introduce a traffic light woman quota.
I don’t make this stuff up, people.
“Women need to be more present in the appearances of our capital’s streets,” Martina Matischok-Yesilcimen, Germany’s Social Democratic Party district leader who signed a recent motion (PDF) to introduce female walk signals, told Bloomberg News.
“We’re a diverse city, and that deserves to be seen.”
PS: And have a happy election day or something while you’re at it.
So. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit knew for quite some time now that his SPD Culture Minister buddy André Schmitz had some funny money hiding in Switzerland (everybody‘s doing it these days) and just pretended that this problem would eventually go away all by itself. Well it didn’t, of course, and Schmitz has now had to resign and the mayor is in deep Scheiße about this right now or something, right?
Well any other politician would be but you clearly don’t understand with whom we’re dealing with here (unless you do understand). This is Klaus Wowereit HIMSELF (some call him Wowi – with that “v” sound, of course). This is the same guy who “did” the Berlin Airport that still hasn’t been done yet and will end up costing eighty-five quadrillion bazillion euros before it ever does get done, if at all.
Do you think there have been any consequences for that? Hardly. If anything, Wowereit got rewarded for his Engagement (commitment) by being put right back on as the “new” chairman of the board of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company after the “old” one had proven just how clueless he had been and had been forced to leave (that had been Klaus Wowereit too, of course).
Why is this guy always free from sin? Beats the hell out of me. There’s teflon, dann kommt eine ganze Weile gar nichts (then you can go on for a long, long while – way past normal teflon), and then there’s Klaus Wowereit teflon. He’s on his ski vacation right now and simply couldn’t be bothered by any of this. And he’s laughing his ass off all the way down the slopes I bet. Damn. Nice job if you can get it.
Kann ein Kinderschänder ein guter Bildungsminister sein?
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.
Observing Hermann 