The Black Book is published yearly in Germany, and it tells the story of wasteful spending by the German federal government, the state governments, and city governments.
So this is an example out of the book.
There's this small town in far northwestern Germany called Emden. It's about a 40-minute drive west of Bremen.
There's this canal or waterway that runs through the town. They decided to redo the pedestrian bridge there. They installed the new bridge.....the"Schiefe Tillie". Things were fine until the first small craft boat approached. For years, the normal bridge had this clearance level....which all boaters were aware of and met those conditions.
Well....this new bridge, was 40 centimeters too low (around 16 inches). The taller craft that had passed through before? They could not pass now.
Who screwed up? Unknown. No one wanted to admit fault.
Cost to repair this? 10,000 Euro (12,000 US dollars roughly). Paid out of the city pot of money.
They brought in a couple of jacks....jacked it enough on both sides, and then put some fitting under that. All of this then had to be certified by safety folks. It's 10,000 Euro wasted.
A fair number of Germans now pay attention to the Black Book and the examples. It demonstrates over and over.....year after year.....a level of incompetence that costs the nation millions of Euro.
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