Monday, December 16, 2024

16 Dec 2024: Four German News Stories

 1.  Off the Sunday night public forum show from ARD's with Caren Miosga....Green Party guest Ricarda Lang. When asked about how the Green Party gets numbers back up in polling....Lang responds: "We have to treat people like adults again."

Polling presently?  Around 11-percent. 

The one odd suggestion brought up by the Greens.....having a 'citizen's retirement fun'....meaning if you took low-wage jobs all your life....they'd create tax revenue to ramp up your pension to some fair level.

2.  Renovation done on Hamburg to Berlin tracks.....ride can be accomplished now in less than 2 hours.

3.  Record year for apartment evictions in my local state of Hessen.

4.  Hamburg set up a total/absolute weapons ban on all stations and  on all buses/trains.  If the cops come up to you and ask for an ID and to frisk you.....you have no choice but to cooperate.  A knife on you?  Automatic 5,000 fine.  

I expect most cities  in Germany to have this rule by the end of 2025.

4 comments:

HD Wrench said...

I think the Green party would be better off ACTING like adults. I have never heard a more whiny bunch with no idea or concept of how to manage anything.

Schnitzel_Republic said...

It was easy to read the Green Party agenda...up until the 2021 national election. At that point, instead of being purely anti-nuke energy/pro-environmental....they added social program agendas. They were essentially bleeding off voters from the SPD and trying to be working-class friendly. With the Ukraine-Russia war, Covid-aftermath, and crappy economical handling....the country is in a bad-way. I won't use the word 'whiny'....but they need an introduction to small business-people and the harsh reality of economic woes facing the bulk of the country. There's no reason to explain why Germans pay more on electrical rates....than any country in the EU.

HD Wrench said...

The Greens around here (Lower Saxony) are always trying to guilt trip everyone. If you do not agree with what they are saying, they say 'Then you don't care about the environment, bla, bla bla.' I said, Fine...show me an alternative. That is when they shut up. They actually have no plan, they can only repeat what some teenager from Sweden has told them.

Schnitzel_Republic said...

The talking points for taking down nuke energy (successfully, we can now admit)....has reached a new level where folks are now getting smart, and there's a reverse trend underway (CDU platform)....where the brownout-blackout issue is openly discussed, and various failures of wind/solar energy. So nuke energy is likely to make a comeback by 2030 (the mini-technology).

This is one of the issues of public TV...that it became a one-sided lecture, and people needed to hear various arguments to grasp the whole story. Today, I was reading a piece from the Green Party where they suggest the end of coal-power....thought to be 2038 (on paper)....may NOT happen, and that it might be around for decades more.