Saturday, November 25, 2023

Seven German News Stories

 1.  Locally (in my town of Wiesbaden)....if you walk around over the past couple of years....you tend to notice a fair amount of beggars.  In an average 4-hour walk along the shopping district (downtown) and at the train station....you'd probably get approached three times minimum.   Some locals will say the approach business in the past year has become more 'aggressive'.

So this week, the city government announced that as the Christmas-market starts up....more police patrols will start and action will  be taken against the beggars.  They aren't that clear about the action to be taken, but it would seem that city council is hyped-up in some way to lessen the interaction.  I would imagine that the guy will get a five-minute lecture and some business-card to go and visit some social office in town. 

I'll just say that the profile fits into three types....druggies (particularly around the train station), drunks (they usually just want enough to another bottle), or migrant-guys.  

2.  This week, the Bundestag was set to 'give' cities an enormous amount of control over traffic (bringing 30 kph speed as the norm in cities, more bus lanes throughout cities, and more openness about 'zebra-stripes' for folks to cross with priority over traffic.  

Well....all it had to do was pass the Bundesrat (their form of the senate).....where the sixteen states have a say.   They voted it down ('NO')....which shocked the hell out of cities who were expecting this new 'power'.

3.  Not really front-page news, but Ukrainian President Zelansky fired a couple of the Ukrainian national guard generals. 

4.  Over next five days across about half of Germany.....fair amount of snow to fall. Up to this point....no reals snow fall for the winter.

5.  German health insurance authorities are saying that sick-days off....are reaching epic levels  where the typical German is using an average of 20 days or more now.

6.  WELT piece: survey of school principals shows that German school 'bosses' are 'burdened' by the idea that they are have to resolve/fix social problems. 

7.  German Post (the mail guys) are reviewing a new draft law....which would allow longer delivery times for letters within Germany.  Basically, it'd give them three work-days from the moment the letter is picked up....to deliver.

3 comments:

Bigus Macus said...

I thought you might find this of interest.

Germany Cancels $840 Billion Slush Fund! ft. Peter St Onge - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zilbZ9cbLtA

Bigus Macus said...

Here's another video you might find of interest.

Germany To Wreck The US Housing Market - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wo80BlAEJU


Schnitzel_Republic said...

The 'slush-fund' has been a top 3 topic for 3 weeks now. I talked about it the first week...developing more into a crisis where they've halted a lot of spending until they can figure an exit to the lack of revenue to spend. Could crash the 3-way coalition. Note: this was to be used for Covid crap...then Covid was declared over.

German constitution says if you create a budget and dedicate x-funds for something....you can't cancel the something and devote the funds to something totally different. In their rush to find all these 'gifts' to make party people happy...they now have a problem in that they can't deliver a single gift. Ton of money was to build e-car charging stations across the country....so that waste of money won't happen.

There was supposed to be a budget meeting for all 3 parties next week...that got cancelled. I doubt that they can resolve this in the Xmas-period...just lingers like a pile of $hit.