Wednesday, July 10, 2024

10 July 2024: Eleven German News Stories

 1.  Crazy episode in Darmstadt yesterday morning.  Guy apparently threatened construction workers on his street with a machete. 

What the cops say.....they arrived to find a 36-year-old guy in some state of psychological distress.  They recovered the guy....made things safe, then took him to a mental clinic.

This triggered me to ask the question....where exactly in Germany do you go and buy a machete?  Hardware store?  I've never seen them sold there.  About three or four times a year....you will see some German police report where they've had to react to some nutcase....waving a machete around. 

2.  Census reality....after the Germans completed the numbers....they've come to realize that population shifts have occurred in the past decade, and two German states are slated to get less state distribution money (Lower Saxony and Berlin).  North Rhineland Westphalia is slated to get more revenue money, because of a increase in population.

3.  Focus did an interview with Meryam Schouler-Ocak, who has to deal with traumatized refugees who've arrived in Germany.

So what she generally says....the whole 'adventure' of refugees is often too much stress and it polarizes them in their behavior.  So often, their bad-boy behavior 'clicks' on and this is the only way they have to deal with problems.

4.  I sat yesterday watching N-TV and this segment on the French election came up.  The winners of the election, left-wing populists in nature....have a general strategy to attract Muslim voters....being anti-German and anti-Semitic.  

The hint....there's problems ahead between France and Germany.

5.  This new 'threat' by the far-left party in France to bring up a 90-percent tax on wealth?  BS.

The far-let party won on 189 seats....you need 289 seats to pass a measure....the far-left only won 182 seats.  Macron's Party isn't about to jump into something like this.  

6.  During the last five years of the Merkel era, the German gov't got all hyped-up to end the coal-power-energy business.  The mandate was set....coal to be phased out by 2030, period.

Well....yesterday, the Energy Minister (Habeck, Greens) stood up and said there is no set mandate.  Coal might end in 2030.....it might not end.

Leaving out a lot of details?  Yeah, that was kinda interesting.  Some suggest that the energy sector is not that secure about where power will come from....if you turn off the remaining coal plants.  

7.  Unusual court case concluded in Germany yesterday.

Federal Court of Justice decided that the consumer advice center's lawsuits against Saalesparkasse and Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden were correct.  

What the banks had set up in the 1990s....a premium savings contract was offered up to consumers (approximately 1.1-million of them)....with a advertised rate of 'x'.  Somewhere in the fineprint....there was a way to erase the advertised rate and pay a point or so less.

The court said no.....you can't just make up rates out of thin air.  What happens now?  For each contract....the banks must recalculate premium savings contracts.  What this adds up to?  For some folks....it gets into 4-digit range.

Biggest problem?  Paperwork drill to contact each person and work out the mess.  I would imagine even if you had 300 bank officials working 40 hours a week....it'd take at least three years to fix the problem.

8.  The German Federal Employment Agency did a review on refugees in Germany.  Their statistics show....only one migrant out of five....has some kind of acceptable professional qualification.  

So, you end up now assuming...with the remaining 80-percent, you'd have to work on their basic education situation, and then coach them through a minimum of a year (maybe two) to make them productive in the job market.

9.  Heat wave here in my local area yesterday....Wiesbaden hitting 33 C  (91 F)....hottest day of 2024 so far.  Last night?  Massive thunder/lightning episode...temperature cooled off big time.  Next 10 days?  Nothing above 26 C (79 F).

10.  Yesterday was some kind of noted day for Germans to walk around and pick up litter.

Well....up in Borkin (north of Hanau)....some woman was walking around the railway tracks to pick up litter....not seeing the train approaching, and was hit (dead).  

11.  Yesterday.....Bavaria's state Environment Minister (Thorsten Glauber), wrote up a letter to propose starting a armed Bavarian brown bear unit. Chief job for the unit?  Well....to scare away and kill bears.

What this goes back to in 2023....some bear sightings in southern Bavaria, 

Anti-bear mentality?  Yeah, and Bavarians are pretty set on this.....there just can't be any bears walking around the state. 

Who would be in this bear unit? I would imagine local hunters would apply....get a Saturday of training, and get some special license.  Scaring tactics?  On that idea....I've yet to grasp the strategy (you might just stress the bear enough....to head deeper into Bavaria).  

1 comment:

Just a Worker said...

You can get a machete without a problem from gardening shops, including online.

Germany's weapon restriction policies in general are sometimes odd. Does not seem like many of their law makers have dealt with actual weapons much.
Unfortunately, the same can be said about them and jobs...