1. Last night on German TV chat forums....was the ARD (Channel 1, public TV) show....'Hart Aber Fair' (live).
So the topic? German soccer, and if it's financially a 'mess'. Yeah, it was a weird topic, and I would imagine about 50-percent of the typical audience turned it off.
What I'll say....having watched about half of the show....the moderator screwed up royally by having too many guests, with a wide variety of opinions. The round-table? With the moderator....eight.
The big league of soccer in Germany has a lot of ownership....who used to believe that their teams were cash cows, with the prices of players and a peak on media attention....the ownership has grown frustrated. Maybe if you were a hyped-up sports fan....the discussion was worth hearing. Most Germans just want to watch soccer, and not get all into the money-angle.
2. Over the past weekend, ZDF (Channel 2,public TV) ran a news type show called 'Berlin Direct'. One of the segments had to deal with the Economics Minister (Habeck, Green Party), and the shutdown of nuclear power-plants around Germany (in 2023).
You can watch the segment here. It's segment three, about a 7-minute 'talk'.
What I'll say is that it's fairly critical of the nuke power shutdown, the rising cost of alternate electrical power, the affect on industry (price-wise), and blame dumped on the Green Party.
I'll just say....you can go back and find plenty of blame to dump on various other political parties...it's not just a Green Party thing (for the shut-down).
As for the cost angle? Here's the deal....once they said they were shutting nuke power down....to make up for what solar/wind could not provide....the answer was Russian natural gas power plants. Well....once the war started and Russian natural gas (cheaply sold) was turned off....the situation was screwed-up. If you were a German company needing a fair amount of electrical power....your bill went up drastically. So the reaction now? Why stay in Germany? You might as well plan to move to Poland, or Czech.....for cheaper power.
So this 'hit-piece' got the Green Party all disturbed and they came out Monday....blasting about the unfair nature of the article, and how ZDF portrayed them.
Lot of theatrical chatter....with the obvious landscape...virtually all of Germany's neighbors still have nuke power.
3. I was watch BR (Bavaria public TV) news this AM. A number of successful cafes are heading toward shut-down mode.....mostly because they can't find 'hired' help for the staff.
4. Lufthansa ground staff on strike today.
5. Court case opened in Bavaria....American male tourist brought up on murder charge....from spring 2023...near the bridge overlooking the Neuschweinstein Castle.
Defendant did confess to the crime at day one. It will end up being a fairly short case.
4 comments:
Funny how the CDU seem to forget that they're the party that initiated the whole nuclear shutdown policy. Typical conservatives always pointing at everyone else after making a giant mess of the place.
And next door, France has one of the largest nuclear power programs in the world. Nuclear power plants in France generated 361 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2021, accounting for 68% of the country’s annual electricity generation, the highest nuclear generation share in the world.
The Green party in Germany (to me) has no common sense, no business sense, and is a big part of Germanys problem.
You can lay out the blame for zero nuke policy in Germany on seven things: Chernobyl, inability of Germany to have a coherent disposal plan (Merkel as a junior minister was part of that spiral), Fukishima in 2011, political antics (to include Green Party, Linke Party, SPD, and CDU), cheap natural gas path leading to Russia as the 'back-up', a news media built into a propagandist unit at times, and finally getting full-tracked on this anti-nuke policy only after you'd fully dumped coal-production and coal-power plants.
I think you can ask a hundred German adults, and around 70-percent will say full-speed ahead on no nuke-power. However, once you say the grid is facing a shortage and you have to BUY power nuke power off the French (say 25-percent more than what you ought to pay)...the same group gets awful quiet.
One added belief that I've noticed...a fair sum of Germans over the past 20 years have had cancer issues, and there is a belief (whether bogus or true, it doesn't matter)....this majority of Germans believe it comes from Chernobyl issues.
Two things come out of this path: (1) Industrial companies in Germany that use a lot of power...will be exiting over the next ten years. Less industry---less jobs. (2) German consumers will have a limit put on energy use, and each day will be measured/transmitted to you in some digital form....making you 'shamed' over your consumption. I should add...E-cars won't be the 'answer' because of their power consumption.
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