Gulash Soup

There are two methods of having Gulash.  The first is the full-up meal, which is a hearty dish.  My favorite is always the Gulash Soup.  There's a hundred ways of making the soup.  The secret, in my humble opinion, is always to add a bit of spice and pepper...to make it a bit sharp in nature.

Typically, it's a lunch dish and it's inexpensive.  You get one piece of bread with the soup.

If you have issues with hot or spicy foods...this might be the dish to avoid.  You can always ask the cook to lessen the impact of the peppers, and hope just a pinch will be enough.

As for the "not enough" crowd?  Well....between your soup, your bread, and your drink (typically a beer)....this will likely fill you up enough and give you the calories to make it through the afternoon.  Will every restaurant serve it?  No.  There's usually three soups on a German menu, and it's simply luck if you find the Gulash Soup.

1 May 2011

This is a day that will be historic in nature for Germans, and Austrians.  This enormous gate will open up and Poles will have the chance to cross the border...legally, and seek employment.  Up until that date....Poles had to have paperwork and they tended to "sneak" in and work quietly.  They might work for weeks...maybe even months...until the Zollamt arrived to ask for papers.

So there's curious situation which will occur next summer as roofers, plumbers and electricians start to come over legally.  There's going to be this competitive state of affairs...and some Germans are going to face competition that they haven't seen in years.

But there's another side to this whole game.  Germany readily admits they've got a shortage of engineers and technicians.  There's also this shortage of nurses.

The Polish government, based on media reports, isn't worried about this upcoming shift in employment or a possible brain-drain.

I might lean toward the Polish attitude.  If you were heading up a Polish school with a bunch of fourteen year-old kids who show promise, then I'd hint everyday of engineering type jobs in Germany.  The Polish kid would strive to stay ahead and in eight years...know that he's got a decent job with real pay.  This might be the best incentive situation that you could ever offer smart kids.  On the negative side?  One out of every two kids might one day be exiting over to Germany for a highly technical job.

So stand by for 1 May next year.  It might be a pretty dynamic day that the German media misses entirely.  

Good Times Ahead?

There's a statistic which is a bold indicator of good economic times in Germany, but most folks have no appreciation for it.  It's tractor trailer rig sales.  If you went to a small operation and asked the operations guy how to tell if business is improving....he'd eventually say something to the effect that everyone wants to trade in their rigs and get new trucks.

A Bloomberg Report note came out today.....for the month of August....there was a 54 percent increase in big truck sales.....up to 3,812 units last month.

Course, it's not yet the best moment to admit the German economy is in full bloom....but there sure are some positive indicators to say that.

People get this way because they can sense a change and they've got contracts in their hand which look awful positive over the next twelve months.

Hartz IV to Basisgeld?

Various newspapers are reporting in Germany today that the term "Hartz IV" will be transformed.

The welfare program term has become derogatory since invented in 2002. This reinvented welfare program from the 2005-period is used daily by the news media throughout Germany and usually represents a negative story (against the government).

Everyone felt by the late 1990s that welfare was becoming an actual occupation and people were getting a substantial amount of money live a fairly good lifestyle. No one felt the system could sustain itself in the long run. So it had to be changed. Hartz IV become this chopping block where you got the basic necessities of life and that was the end of the deal.

The new name? They are bouncing this name of "Basisgeld" (basic money). This isn't final yet and still has to pass via a vote. I'm pretty sure it'll be a 100 percent vote...well...except for the Greens.

In five years...Basisgeld will also have a mean or ugly feeling to it, and it'll change again. That's the tendency of these events.

Trains and Buses

A couple of years ago...Wal-Mart came to Germany and felt it could "compete". It discovered about three years into this experience that Germany has stringent rules about competition and their vision of competition was considered unhealthy and illegal. They eventually decided their business model would not take off and give them the potential they enjoy in the US.

Today, via the New York Times, we learned that a long-standing anti-competition rule has finally been tossed. Sometime in 2011, you will be able to climb on a bus in Munich and actually end up in another German city....like Stuttgart or Heidelberg.

Yes, for almost eight decades...you just couldn't travel a long-distance within German borders via a bus, unless it was a tour. You could travel from Frankfurt to Paris. You could travel from Stuttgart to Amsterdam. But getting from one German city to another, just wasn't possible.

This was a protection deal for the Bahn folks. The train network made sure they had no competition. In the 1950s as air travel did finally occur, the Bahn folks couldn't say much. But the bus folks never could get the government to change the rule for them. It was a stupid rule by all accounts.

What'll happen now? Well...it's a curious thing. The Bahn could come up and match prices against the bus companies. For a short term strategy, this is likely the best possible direction for the Bahn. But the bus companies will be able to offer some dynamic changes for folks that the Bahn can't match, like picking up a load of thirty passengers in some smaller dead-end town like Kaiserslautern or Trier, and delivering into the heart of the Frankfurt shopping district in just eighty minutes. The Bahn can't deliver that precisely.

Added to this are the worker rides. Imagine a morning bus route that hits five smaller towns about sixty miles away from Mainz and it delivers folks to the nearest trolley car connection for the city. Guys could leave the car at home and pay 150 Euro a month for this direct run to their job in the big city.

My prediction is that the Bahn will realize that it doesn't have the upper hand to this deal, and the majority of these bus routes will end up being profitable. For the little guy with enough money to buy two buses and able to start a run from a rural area to a major shopping area....this might be a great investment opportunity.

The Stuttgart Mess

I blogged a piece a few weeks ago about the Stuttgart train station renovation....a ten-year project that would go into the billions. At that point, it was starting. In the past couple of weeks since the start....it's been an almost daily routine with protesters. We aren't talking about dozens or hundreds....it's into the thousands on a daily basis.

The Stuttgart political leadership never anticipated this type of reaction to the project. Over this past weekend....at least 65k people met and protested.

There's talk of the political leadership trying to arrange for meetings this week with the head protesters and trying to get agreements. Based on several newspapers and what they write, I'd say there's virtually no agreement possible. It's almost a comical opera now....in terms of the public perceptions of the project.

Today, the police finally came forward and said all these protests since day one....are wearing out the effectiveness of the local force. They want reinforcements. Added to this mess, the local cops still have to protect folks at the local soccer games and cover the local nuclear power plant. On a average night at the soccer stadium, there's well over four hundred cops involved in that detail for five hours of work.

The Stuttgart 21 project is massive. It'll cover eighteen brand-new bridges being built, and three city train stations being erected. And then you've got well over fifty miles of track that have to be laid in newly created tunnels throughout the entire city.

If you stand back and add up man-hours on this police episode and multiply by ten years, then you've likely spent an additional five hundred million on extra cops and protection throughout the entire period. The city might end up with the largest police force of any city in Germany. The amusing side of this is that it doesn't relate to crime, and cops are being pulled from regular patrols and law enforcement, to play games with the Stuttgart 21 protesters.

I don't see much positive action on this episode. It's going to be a long ten year period.

End of a Generation?

If you have ten minutes and an interest in green energy or wind mills....you might want to wander over to the British Telegraph. There's a fascinating story today.

The story relates to wind mills and Denmark. It appears that interest in building more windmills in the country....has finally peaked.

I've blogged this on a number of occasions...having traveled across Europe and seen the various issues up close.

If you can find an open area....miles away from civilization or cattle....windmills would readily thrive and multiply. The problem is that they put out a low-frequency noise. Any windmill within a mile of a village or home....disturbs people on a minute-by-minute basis. The experts now realize that you've got to put windmills out far away from civilization or people....to make this work.

While the story mainly describes Denmark's peak.....I would suspect the same issue for Germany. You can drive through central Germany on any afternoon and see dozens of windmills. The vast majority are all within a mile or two of some village. In the past couple of years after learning their lessons....most villages will now forbid any windmill construction near their town.

An eventual peak in Germany? I suspect that the "anti" crowd will eventually generate enough support and make it difficult to put a windmill anywhere. The ones currently in operation? I suspect if any lie within a mile or so of a village....they've got maybe a decade of operation left in them....before the locals chase them out. The ones in more remote locations will survive on.

That Luther Guy

Lets say you corner a German in a bar and you ask them to name the ten most significant Germans ever. It's a discussion topic that will shock an American in the end.

The German will pause and settle back in his seat. He'll sit and calculate for a minute or two. Then he'll lead off.

At least five of these guys will be political figures. The first guy will always be Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor after World War II. Everyone has this enormous respect for the guy and what had to be done in those days. He acted presidential and you can't find a single person to today to ever criticize anything this guy ever did.

Then Helmet Schmidt will be mentioned. For Germans....this guy is the Holy Grail of leaders. You can take him into a room and announce some colossal emergency and he goes into action and gives orders like a drill sergeant. He leads people to an end purpose. It's been twenty-five years since he wrapped up his chancellor duties and folks still view him today as an absolute legend. This is the guy that you can view today....in his eighties....who chain-smokes and still runs through two packs a day (my guess). He can still walk into a hotel or building where smoking is illegal and light-up....and not a person will ever say a word. He commands respect.

Then you've got Helmet Kohl who ran Germany for sixteen years and his glitter disappeared by the end. Most Germans still have this positive attitude about the guy. Some will openly criticize him for staying too long and probably becoming somewhat corrupted at the end.

For the fourth and fifth positions...it'll be toss-ups. There's Green Party folks like Petra Kelly or Joschka Fischer. There's your friendly Bavarian political boss....Franz Josef Strauss. Erich Honecker might be mentioned....even if he was the East German boss at the end as the wall collapsed.

Around the sixth spot will always be Ludwig II...the crazy Bavarian king who built the dream castle. He captures the mind and creativity of Germans. Bavarians still have this mythical view of the guy.

By the seventh and eighth position, you come to Richard Wagner or Bach or Beethoven. At least two will always be mentioned.

The ninth? Franz Beckenbauer typically gets mentioned. Der Kaiser. Most Americans would laugh that a soccer coach would rate into the top ten. Remember, this is a regular German at a pub....and they would have this view of the Kaiser holding the crown jewels of German attitude and vision on the field. If the Kaiser says something...it's typically worth remembering....that's what a German would say.

Then we come to the tenth man. The shocker here is that it's a religious figure who has been dead for four-hundred and fifty-odd years. Martin Luther. Most Americans can't envision how anyone would equate a religious figure to a top ten position. Germans have this different view of his achievements, and it lives on today.

If you put yourself in 1500's Germany....it's a country of have's and have-not's. Out of a hundred men, five have something to own, and ninety-five are just surviving. Somewhere in the midst of this daily existence for both....is the Catholic Church.

The church held power over the Kings, the Princes, the Lords, and even the little guys at the end of the line. The church had this franchise-like mentality. They wanted to come into every community and build up a church. And in significant towns....they wanted a cathedral. The difference between a church and a cathedral in today's world? It's like comparing a two-story mom & pop storefront, and then a Super Wal-Mart. Cost became this huge factor in the construction of every single cathedral.

So if you were a Bishop somewhere....to move up the food chain ladder....you needed to build cathedrals. Kings, Princes and Lords had this pocket of money....and the Catholic Church went after as much as they could get....but this wasn't enough. So this scheme was hatched to go after the little guy and his money.

The deal was simple....you create these sermons where sin was going to forbid you entry into heaven. The little guy was stupid enough to believe the deal....and then you offer up this special letter which was stamped, and it'd suggest that you were sin-free as of the date it was "sold".

For this one priest who was close to having a nervous breakdown because of his seriousness nature into religion....this smacked of a commercial nature. The comical thing was that the special letter would be sold on one week....and within a month....the local church bosses would convince you that new sins had been committed....so you'd need a whole new letter stamped. More cash would be involved.

Martin Luther becomes this magnet for trouble. He won't sit by and just let this happen.

An internal battle within the leadership of what exists in Germany in the 1500s now starts to emerge. In the end, the mighty Catholic Church emerges as the loser. This mythical character of a simple priest that stood up....now becomes a legend that endears to even this day.

It was a battle between good and evil, as far as most Germans see it.

So a simple priest from 450-odd years ago, ends up as the tenth man that most Germans would put on their list.

The End of a German Company?

To tell this story...I need to introduce the chief player....Beate Uhse.

For an American, you've likely never heard of the company. It's on the German stock market and up until a few years ago....was making money. It's the "Sears" of German sex shops.

Typically, if you walk into a Beate Uhse shop....it's a medium sized shop that features just about every item that you could dream up. Their reputation is based on being the friendly shop where either a guy or gal could walk in....with any weird taste, and find exactly what they need. Complimenting this...was their catalog effort.

For a number of years...they had built up a very organized business and actually have a great business reputation for what they actually sell.

But things in the last couple of years have gone downward, and they are reaching a point where profits are difficult to maintain, and they are searching for some way to soar back to the top. This leads us to their latest idea....announced today....3-D adult movies.

In the video market....Beate Uhse was actually getting three-quarters of his business from video sales when you go back over a decade ago. Today...it's just under twenty percent of their business. They are thinking this 3-D interest in the past year...will be a curious thing in the adult community.

I pondered over this idea. Twenty years ago...this might have been accepted. People still went to theaters. There really aren't 3-D TV's yet, and if you do find them....it's way more than the average German would ever pay. But this trend to run down to an adult theater to see 3-D? It just won't happen.

My prediction here is that Beate Uhse is on its last legs. It'll spend the money to make this one last big effort...and maybe produce a dozen of these videos....and then watch the banks close its operation. It'll take a year or two after the first release but this is likely a company that is coming to an end.

A buyer for it? Why? It's not a business where number two's really exist. You've got a bunch of small market Italian, Spanish or French guys who can probably step in sell their wares....and thats about the best you can see develop.

Germans and Drinking

I had a southerner once ask me if Germans had any dry counties. I looked at the guy for about 20 seconds and responded that for something like this to come up....a German was fully prepared to start another world war, if necessary.

You can line a hundred German guys, and around ninety-eight will readily consume a beer at a moment's notice. One will limit himself to wine only because of his good taste. And the last guy will ask for a wine-water mix. It's rare that you find any guy who is a "dry" individual. German women are mostly the same way...although wine might be the preferred choice over beer.

Alcoholics? There are these folks around. You tend to have a lesser number than you'd anticipate. The fear of losing your license is enough to make most folks limit their drinking to their village and their local pub. So they walk over....drink a couple of beers....and walk back. The judges won't hesitate to take your license for a full year. There's no hesitation on their part to fix a problem. They even added a funny rule for folks under 21....if you have a license and get caught drunk....it's fairly severe.

You tend to know the real alcoholics in your village...they all walk from place to place. Their license was revoked years ago and they never got it back.

Excessive drinking? You don't see alot of this unless there's a fest in the town. At that point, everyone probably over-drinks. The interesting thing is that you don't see fights occur. German drunks tend to just say silly things, or relieve themselves on the street, or just collapse in a city park.

If you are invited over to a German house....which tends to mean that they have taken you to the inner-circle of their friendly nature, then you will be offered a drink. If you are a teetotaler American....don't worry. You can always ask for mineral water or a soda, and it's totally acceptable. If you do accept the beer or wine....don't do anything stupid by getting drunk on your first visit to the neighbor's house (it'd be in pretty bad taste). Wait till the tenth trip when you both are sipping some cherry schnapps.

You can say some negative things and dwell on this topic a while, but face the facts....a German has worked hard for the simpler things in life. You can't take away this little desire for a tasty beer. This would be the last society on the face of the Earth where a "dry-county" initiative would be brought up and discussed. The German would likely want to engage you deeply into this conversation....and keep offering you a beer to show you their hospitality. Eventually, they'd weaken you enough....and convert you back to the "dark" side.

The Educational Report

I've blogged about this before. Bill Gates came to Germany in the mid-1990s, and made a significant speech about the underwhelming attitude of the German university system to produce the necessary computer engineers of the future. It was blunt and deflected quickly. The German folks in charge of the university system told the 'mere' Bill Gates that he knew nothing about their system. Eighteen months after Bill Gates...German technology companies came to the Bundestag and demanded green cards to bring in the necessary folks to produce their products. The university system then admitted that they weren't capable of doing the job.

Today...swipe two occurred.

The Local reports this today....the country is producing too few university graduates to sustain its supply of engineers and technicians...across the entire board. The numbers even indicate that a massive increase in spending would have to occur.

It's a fairly long effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development....500 pages.

Again, we go back to the Gates scenario....if they don't correct their operations...import of intelligent and university-trained immigrants will be mandatory.

There are several ways to review the data and come to various conclusions. First, the massive number of Germans who go through the university system....have nothing to do with technology. You've got a significant number who are basically headed toward a life of boredom within the insurance industry, teaching, and journalism. You've also got the arts crowd....left to study music, dancing, and the dead language of Latin.

The blunt side of the report goes against engineering and technology. In this aspect, the report might be very accurate. Unlike the US system....the German university hasn't exactly been a operation of change.

I suspect this is more of a poke in the side of the university management crowd. The sad thing is that they'd have to have more government funding in a time when it's not appropriate to ask for more funds. They'd have to take that funding, then turn in a fashion to gage the necessary changes, and bring in a larger crowd. And this assumes that the high school system of Germany can produce the numbers required.

I have doubts about the success of this angle of change. You are asking alot out of the system. In the end, they might have been better off inviting the University of Alabama to come into Germany and set up shop on some former American Air Base....and then develop an entire different option on university education....within the German system. Then, you'd have to accept that degree as being the same value (something of a miracle).

Boring Bankers Can Say Something Important

Normally...anything of substance that a banker says...usually goes in one ear and out the other. Occasionally, they might mention a 60-second bit over home loans or the future of Wall Street that would captivate you. Once in a great while...one banker might stand up and make a dynamic 12-minute speech over the financial direction of the nation.

For the past year, there's this German Bundesbank board member....Thilo Sarrazin...who decided to chat on some things that bankers would never chat on....immigration and Turks.

Almost every time that Thilo opened his mouth....he basically hinted that Turks weren't helping German society or culture. Then he'd hint that Turks weren't willing to truly integrate. And on at least one occasion, Thilo hinted that it wasn't in their generic makeup to be extremely intelligent.

For some odd reason....folks started to listen to Thilo. Naturally the majority of folks...especially Turks and any immigrant in Germany....had issues. German politicians started to have issues. Newspapers did their best to dump on Thilo and his comments.

Thilo, for the sake of argument...is a SPD guy (liberal left or center left). This has confused a number of folks because you'd assumed that most all liberals are accepting of immigration and want a simple simple agenda in approval of more immigrants.

If this was soley up to the Chancellor....she would have removed Thilo already. Part of this game for his board position is that you'd like for his period to come to a close (it has a limit), and just let him disappear into the sunset of non-importance. Another part is that he is actually an attractive magnet for some folks and their ideas.

For the Bundesbank crowd....they'd like for his removal because they are mostly a bunch of banker dudes with no logical reason to attract news interest on a daily basis. They are used to boring finance news....and Thilo is really dishing out lots of non-finance news.

So the Bundesbank has this legal opinion that if the Chancellor and the Bundestag gives a wink or nod....they are prepared to remove Thilo. Some folks (Der Spiegel is one of them) believe there is a 20-page report on Thilo that's prepared and can be used for his dismissal on a moment's notice.

But, there is a problem.

Some folks have been doing polls. Roughly twenty percent of German society are prepared to form up a political protest party, naturally headed by Thilo. It's not just CDU folks....who have a fair number of Bavarians who actually agree with Thilo....it's also the SPD folks of the left as well. In fact, the folks over at the Linke Party are rumored to have around one-third of their members who ready to jump and join up as well.

So, there is a nervous bunch of German political folks (right, left, and far-left). One guy has captivated the German imagination...outside of their political "ring-of-fire" for the first time in years.

Firing would be the worst possible option because Thilo just might stand up and gather the voters...and whack off twenty percent of the current establishment belonging to three or four parties. The Greens are apparently the only party insulated from this mess. He won't win the election...but he'd make life awful miserable for folks.

Imagine a situation where the CDU barely has 25 percent of the vote in an election...the SPD at 25 percent....the Greens at 10 percent....the Linke at 8 percent....the FDP at 7 percent....and here is Thilo's gang at roughly 24 percent. How would you partner up on this deal? It'd take a minimum of two parties to reach 50 percent, which is mandatory to run the government.

You'd have to start counting on alot of friendly nature between the SPD & CDU....or three parties in this arrangement.

So everyone would like for Thilo to mostly continue on....whispering terrible insults....until the news bubble is finished and then he just walks away into the sunset.

My humble guess? I predict that he's nowhere near finished on comments...and by December...it's going to be even more pointed on his views of immigrants in Germany. That's the main problem with the waiting game....he just might convince another ten percent of the country that he's right...and then the political power argument goes into turbo. I think by December, he'll be gone...and he'll do what damage he can to the major political parties in Germany who don't want to openly discuss the problems at hand.

German Doctors & The Spiral

There's an interesting article over at the Local today....the declining numbers of German doctors.

The just of the story.....there's a couple of shifts occurring, and this end result is really starting to worry the medical profession and the authorities.

You've got the deal involving the new doctor generation.....going more toward female doctors in the system than males. Call it a trend, or simply the fact that there's more interest amongst younger female teen population now to be doctors. The issue that pops up is that they take time off for having kids. So there's man-hours lost somewhere in this business.

Then you've got an aging German doctor population.

Then you toss on the desire of German doctors to leave the country. Back around 2005....for a 12-18 month period, there were 5,000 German doctor's who deregistered and left Germany. They went to Canada, Australia, the US and various places where their profession was in demand and pay was better.

There's not exactly a real solution here. The smaller and more rural communities of Germany are facing a situation where fewer doctors are on hand. You end up with a clinic in your town and it takes fifteen days to get a routine appointment and three days to get an emergency appointment.

Toss in the problem with rising costs. Gaze over at the new fee system for Germans to pay a monthly "donation" to the health care program....just to keep it above water. You've got a spiraling downward situation that isn't easily fixed.

My guess is that you will start seeing more nurse practitioners....someone who gets a four-year degree in nursing and then performs fifty percent of what a doctor does. It's the only method that might keep costs in check and fix the doctor issue.

A lesser system in the future? Yeah, this might end up being a system that isn't quiet as good as it was in the 1990s. You might have folks who have an aliment and it gets missed by the nurse....until it's too late to help a guy. But there's not much of a way to fix the cost side of this whole issue.

Taser Episode

You rarely hear about German cops using tasers...unlike the situation where tasers are used almost daily in some US states. Today, a hostage episode unfolded outside of Frankfurt at some gas station.

A guy went nuts....started threatening folks at the gas station. So this deal was made to provide a getaway car to the guy. As he backpedaled away to the car with a person he was holding with a knife....the German cops fired the taser on the dimwit....and down he went.

The guy will get several charges tossed on him, and I doubt that he gets anything less than four years in prison for his episode. The taser? He will remember this, I suspect.

18-Cent Guy Final

So today, the 2nd round of the job termination occurred with our guy who got fired after nineteen years of service when he charged up his battery-powered scooter with power from his boss. The 2nd court decided that it was still wrong to fire the guy.

The only comment added to this mess? The court said that a warning probably should have been issued, and if he repeated....then fire the guy.

I think the company will likely stop here and just avoid saying much of anything in public. This case is now being widely mentioned and you can imagine being a part of the management structure and having this come up in conversation with clients.

What will change? I suspect that most of the top 500 companies in Germany over the next twelve months will develop a simple one-page policy on charging of vehicles on company electricity. It will be very direct. It will make the practice unacceptable. It will allow for one warning, and then likely a termination.

This will trigger folks into thinking about this entire idea of battery-powered scooters and cars...and likely smile to pass on any chance to buy one. Some companies will be pro-electrical and set up some meter to measure what is used.....and just charge a guy once or twice a year for what he used.

The 18 Cent Act of Stupidity

There's a short story today to drive home a point that I made about a year ago on battery-powered vehicles. Basically....this guy had a scooter that ran off batteries...not gas. He drives up to his bosses business, and plug into it. The boss figures this out. He uses approximately 18 Euro cents (CENTs, note), and then the boss decided to fire him.

The labor court convened.

Round one, the guy won. The company has appealed and tomorrow....round two will occur. Adding to the story....this guy had worked nineteen years for the company....so it makes it a bit difficult to stand there and admit firing the guy for 18 cents.

The problem here, which I noted would eventually come is that folks are trying hard to convince the public to switch over to battery vehicles. Technology is arriving to make this possible...but my argument from a year ago still stands....where do you charge at work and how will the boss handle this? Free power? No....no company will dare offer that. Most folks don't grasp the implications of this matter.

If you explained that a guy would need $2.00 a day to power up the car at work, and then a second $2.00 at home for this battery deal....would you be willing to pay that? Most folks would start to add this up, and then the battery switch-out cost (figure a thousand Euro minimum to dispose of the old battery and at least 1,500 Euro for the new battery for a car).

My guess on the German case? The guy took something of value from the company. Make him pay for it and then establish a policy that forbids use for something like this. Remember, if you didn't have a company policy written down....then firing becomes a difficult task. But after you make it a policy....and the guy violates it....terminate immediately with no ill will.

The Kind Side of Politicians?

It is a bit shocking. Over the last sixteen-odd years that I've been a semi-insider of German society...never have German politicians ever been "helpful" on anything. Today, we learn that German politicians are calling on airlines to provide us....the woeful passengers....more leg room. This however, only comes after adjustment to the new ticket prices which are a bit on the high side.

I sat and paused over this. I'm a six-foot one-inch guy. I kinda appreciate any effort to give more leg room. This past summer, while riding Air Canada...I came to greatly appreciate the seat spacing on their aircraft (very ample).

I sat and thought over this situation. Never have any American law-makers ever considered the idea of forcing more leg room. Course, there could be Democratic or Republican operatives who watch this develop German strategy and suddenly get ideas to use in the US.

The odds of this having any success? That's the part that you can't be sure of. Maybe they will offer more leg room....for more on the ticket price, of course. Maybe there's a new category of tall-regular passenger....maybe at the end of the plane in the last four rows.

Then maybe, this is all bogus and the politicians were just looking for something to get folks all pumped up. So it's best not to get your hopes up.