1. Focus had an excellent piece on electrical prices in Germany. For those who weren't aware....the current price per KwH is 36 cents...down about 8 cents from this period last year....but for most Germans, it's still high.
It's about double what it was in 2011.
Chief reasons? Focus gives several, but I tend to rate two as dynamic and critical: each time it goes up....the VAT tax increases. Adding to this burden....you not only pay for power, but for the C02 certificates that the power company has to buy.
If you engage with a German on the topic....it'll open up a 30-minute discussion...which they tend to be bitter about. They will also cite each angle they've attacked this....buying newer refrigerators, newer washers, LED bulbs, etc. Most will say since 2000...they've cut consumption by 50-percent....but watched pricing double.
Then if you bring E-cars....this encourages chatter over how they can afford the power bill by 2030...if it's near 55 cents a KwH, and this E-car business is dropped upon them.
2. For the Tuesday public forum (on ARD, Channel 1)....the Maischberger Show...the topic was defense and the Ukraine-Russia war. They dropped two political folks on opposite ends..... Amira Mohamed Ali of the BSW Party, and FDP Party defense expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
You can watch here.
I'll just say that it got awful intense, and you got a lot of talk of pro-Russia/anti-Russia. The spectrum over the past year has changed a good bit, and I'd say a quarter of the German population is not really focused on the Ukraine anymore.
3. When some German uses the term 'Besserwisser'...it's a criticism comment and kinda meant to be something fairly negative. I'd translate it into 'know-it-all'.
4. For those who didn't know....Germany has a number of rigid rules about night-time flights of helicopters and in poor-weather situations.
The DRF air-rescue folks are asking for some attention over this matter, and having the rules changed.
It's one of those odd topics that probably will draw attention in the Bundestag and force some type of evolution on night-time operations.
5. The Green Party is coming against mass distribution of credit cards for asylum folks. Most German states want the program implemented....with both the CDU/CSU folks and the FDP Party also supporting the program.
6. Focus science report on Covid:
Six to fifteen percent of people are now figured to suffer from long-Covid. Then they found this odd thing going on....they now say Covid can possibly stop the release of dopamine in the brain. Meaning....this is what give you motivation and 'pleasure'....so you might be affected, and grumpy a fair amount of time.
If you asked me to assess myself in the past 3 years (3 bouts of Covid), yeah, I am more grumpy than usual.
7. Some article came up in Focus....German 'experts' say you should regularly throw underwear out each year (after a year of use). Don't know where this came from or how Germans would react. Most older German guys won't throw nothing out until it's got holes in it.
8. Lot of hype over the FC Bayern soccer team coach (Tuchel) in the past week. Team has given him notice....end of season, he's gone. On the prime news from last night....they spent about 90 seconds talking over the issue (out of the 15 minute telecast).
2 comments:
Well, I read an interesting take down of the piece in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the electricity situation:
"Dear Julia Löhr, Dear Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
Unfortunately, your commentary is full of abbreviations, a lack of context and contentious contexts. The title alone stirs up resentment and therefore stands in the way of an objective debate. After all, who likes allergies, this burden of humanity?
The first three words set a tone of exclusion for the rest of the text.
However, the fact that the nuclear phase-out in your commentary is supposed to fall unilaterally only within the area of responsibility of the Greens, although the phase-out was decided thirteen years ago with far-reaching consequences to the thunderous applause of the Söders and Spahns of this world, does seem worth mentioning at this point.
You fail to mention that energy prices have already returned to the level they were at before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, although for once you could be a little less combative towards the Greens here:....
...And someone who places energy policy decisions in the here and now in the context of nuclear fusion could also claim that we should refrain from investing in railroads, as we will certainly be able to beam ourselves to our destination at some point in the future:
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Other correlations, such as the good climate balance of heat pumps and the subterranean poor climate balance of the building sector with almost 38% of global CO2 emissions, could also have at least been touched upon:
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I would also have liked to have heard at this point that climate protection is not a luxury, but an essential prerequisite for the continued prosperity of our society. Because differentiation and the admission of complexity are indispensable for peaceful and non-violent dialog:
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However, anyone who has ever had a history book open in front of them knows that there is certainly a connection between the cultivation of an enemy image and the increasing willingness to use violence against the Greens. With your commentary, you are feeding precisely this enemy image and thus becoming part of the problem and not its solution. Violence originates in the mind.
Julia Löhr and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, please live up to your journalistic responsibility and bring democratic discourse into our society, not populist and divisive discourse. Now more than ever, we need balanced journalism. Be a beacon of our democracy!
Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Bastian Fischer"
I removed the links so the SPAM filter didn't kill the comment. But it's interesting that there's at least some people who pay attention to how the parties actually vote, and not just what they say through their client media.
I sat through the era when both the coal-phase-out and nuke-phase-out was on the table being discussed. Most all of the parties leaned into it....some without any issues...some with reservations. But they all supported Merkel in the end.
Both the nuke companies and coal plant companies got tons of compensation and cash to handle employees and their re-training (tens of billions put on the table).
The sales job relied upon Russian 'cheap' natural gas as the back-up to solar/wind. On paper at the time, the news folks readily sold it to the public, and support to conclude coal/nuke power was a done deal.
I'll just ask in a pleasant way...who do you think is raising the primary 'stink' at this point? German news media. Even they grasp...there is a rising price problem and it's basically chasing away heavy industry relying on energy. They also figured out...no one else in Europe gave up nuke power. Then they figured out that Germans will eventually have to buy power from the awful neighbors with nuke power.
It's just too bad they (the news analysts) didn't see this coming back a decade ago. This discussion will linger on...all the way to fall of 2025's fed election. Jobs have to exit Germany over future pricing of energy.
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