Germans and Drinking

I had a southerner once ask me if Germans had any dry counties. I looked at the guy for about 20 seconds and responded that for something like this to come up....a German was fully prepared to start another world war, if necessary.

You can line a hundred German guys, and around ninety-eight will readily consume a beer at a moment's notice. One will limit himself to wine only because of his good taste. And the last guy will ask for a wine-water mix. It's rare that you find any guy who is a "dry" individual. German women are mostly the same way...although wine might be the preferred choice over beer.

Alcoholics? There are these folks around. You tend to have a lesser number than you'd anticipate. The fear of losing your license is enough to make most folks limit their drinking to their village and their local pub. So they walk over....drink a couple of beers....and walk back. The judges won't hesitate to take your license for a full year. There's no hesitation on their part to fix a problem. They even added a funny rule for folks under 21....if you have a license and get caught drunk....it's fairly severe.

You tend to know the real alcoholics in your village...they all walk from place to place. Their license was revoked years ago and they never got it back.

Excessive drinking? You don't see alot of this unless there's a fest in the town. At that point, everyone probably over-drinks. The interesting thing is that you don't see fights occur. German drunks tend to just say silly things, or relieve themselves on the street, or just collapse in a city park.

If you are invited over to a German house....which tends to mean that they have taken you to the inner-circle of their friendly nature, then you will be offered a drink. If you are a teetotaler American....don't worry. You can always ask for mineral water or a soda, and it's totally acceptable. If you do accept the beer or wine....don't do anything stupid by getting drunk on your first visit to the neighbor's house (it'd be in pretty bad taste). Wait till the tenth trip when you both are sipping some cherry schnapps.

You can say some negative things and dwell on this topic a while, but face the facts....a German has worked hard for the simpler things in life. You can't take away this little desire for a tasty beer. This would be the last society on the face of the Earth where a "dry-county" initiative would be brought up and discussed. The German would likely want to engage you deeply into this conversation....and keep offering you a beer to show you their hospitality. Eventually, they'd weaken you enough....and convert you back to the "dark" side.

The Educational Report

I've blogged about this before. Bill Gates came to Germany in the mid-1990s, and made a significant speech about the underwhelming attitude of the German university system to produce the necessary computer engineers of the future. It was blunt and deflected quickly. The German folks in charge of the university system told the 'mere' Bill Gates that he knew nothing about their system. Eighteen months after Bill Gates...German technology companies came to the Bundestag and demanded green cards to bring in the necessary folks to produce their products. The university system then admitted that they weren't capable of doing the job.

Today...swipe two occurred.

The Local reports this today....the country is producing too few university graduates to sustain its supply of engineers and technicians...across the entire board. The numbers even indicate that a massive increase in spending would have to occur.

It's a fairly long effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development....500 pages.

Again, we go back to the Gates scenario....if they don't correct their operations...import of intelligent and university-trained immigrants will be mandatory.

There are several ways to review the data and come to various conclusions. First, the massive number of Germans who go through the university system....have nothing to do with technology. You've got a significant number who are basically headed toward a life of boredom within the insurance industry, teaching, and journalism. You've also got the arts crowd....left to study music, dancing, and the dead language of Latin.

The blunt side of the report goes against engineering and technology. In this aspect, the report might be very accurate. Unlike the US system....the German university hasn't exactly been a operation of change.

I suspect this is more of a poke in the side of the university management crowd. The sad thing is that they'd have to have more government funding in a time when it's not appropriate to ask for more funds. They'd have to take that funding, then turn in a fashion to gage the necessary changes, and bring in a larger crowd. And this assumes that the high school system of Germany can produce the numbers required.

I have doubts about the success of this angle of change. You are asking alot out of the system. In the end, they might have been better off inviting the University of Alabama to come into Germany and set up shop on some former American Air Base....and then develop an entire different option on university education....within the German system. Then, you'd have to accept that degree as being the same value (something of a miracle).

Boring Bankers Can Say Something Important

Normally...anything of substance that a banker says...usually goes in one ear and out the other. Occasionally, they might mention a 60-second bit over home loans or the future of Wall Street that would captivate you. Once in a great while...one banker might stand up and make a dynamic 12-minute speech over the financial direction of the nation.

For the past year, there's this German Bundesbank board member....Thilo Sarrazin...who decided to chat on some things that bankers would never chat on....immigration and Turks.

Almost every time that Thilo opened his mouth....he basically hinted that Turks weren't helping German society or culture. Then he'd hint that Turks weren't willing to truly integrate. And on at least one occasion, Thilo hinted that it wasn't in their generic makeup to be extremely intelligent.

For some odd reason....folks started to listen to Thilo. Naturally the majority of folks...especially Turks and any immigrant in Germany....had issues. German politicians started to have issues. Newspapers did their best to dump on Thilo and his comments.

Thilo, for the sake of argument...is a SPD guy (liberal left or center left). This has confused a number of folks because you'd assumed that most all liberals are accepting of immigration and want a simple simple agenda in approval of more immigrants.

If this was soley up to the Chancellor....she would have removed Thilo already. Part of this game for his board position is that you'd like for his period to come to a close (it has a limit), and just let him disappear into the sunset of non-importance. Another part is that he is actually an attractive magnet for some folks and their ideas.

For the Bundesbank crowd....they'd like for his removal because they are mostly a bunch of banker dudes with no logical reason to attract news interest on a daily basis. They are used to boring finance news....and Thilo is really dishing out lots of non-finance news.

So the Bundesbank has this legal opinion that if the Chancellor and the Bundestag gives a wink or nod....they are prepared to remove Thilo. Some folks (Der Spiegel is one of them) believe there is a 20-page report on Thilo that's prepared and can be used for his dismissal on a moment's notice.

But, there is a problem.

Some folks have been doing polls. Roughly twenty percent of German society are prepared to form up a political protest party, naturally headed by Thilo. It's not just CDU folks....who have a fair number of Bavarians who actually agree with Thilo....it's also the SPD folks of the left as well. In fact, the folks over at the Linke Party are rumored to have around one-third of their members who ready to jump and join up as well.

So, there is a nervous bunch of German political folks (right, left, and far-left). One guy has captivated the German imagination...outside of their political "ring-of-fire" for the first time in years.

Firing would be the worst possible option because Thilo just might stand up and gather the voters...and whack off twenty percent of the current establishment belonging to three or four parties. The Greens are apparently the only party insulated from this mess. He won't win the election...but he'd make life awful miserable for folks.

Imagine a situation where the CDU barely has 25 percent of the vote in an election...the SPD at 25 percent....the Greens at 10 percent....the Linke at 8 percent....the FDP at 7 percent....and here is Thilo's gang at roughly 24 percent. How would you partner up on this deal? It'd take a minimum of two parties to reach 50 percent, which is mandatory to run the government.

You'd have to start counting on alot of friendly nature between the SPD & CDU....or three parties in this arrangement.

So everyone would like for Thilo to mostly continue on....whispering terrible insults....until the news bubble is finished and then he just walks away into the sunset.

My humble guess? I predict that he's nowhere near finished on comments...and by December...it's going to be even more pointed on his views of immigrants in Germany. That's the main problem with the waiting game....he just might convince another ten percent of the country that he's right...and then the political power argument goes into turbo. I think by December, he'll be gone...and he'll do what damage he can to the major political parties in Germany who don't want to openly discuss the problems at hand.

German Doctors & The Spiral

There's an interesting article over at the Local today....the declining numbers of German doctors.

The just of the story.....there's a couple of shifts occurring, and this end result is really starting to worry the medical profession and the authorities.

You've got the deal involving the new doctor generation.....going more toward female doctors in the system than males. Call it a trend, or simply the fact that there's more interest amongst younger female teen population now to be doctors. The issue that pops up is that they take time off for having kids. So there's man-hours lost somewhere in this business.

Then you've got an aging German doctor population.

Then you toss on the desire of German doctors to leave the country. Back around 2005....for a 12-18 month period, there were 5,000 German doctor's who deregistered and left Germany. They went to Canada, Australia, the US and various places where their profession was in demand and pay was better.

There's not exactly a real solution here. The smaller and more rural communities of Germany are facing a situation where fewer doctors are on hand. You end up with a clinic in your town and it takes fifteen days to get a routine appointment and three days to get an emergency appointment.

Toss in the problem with rising costs. Gaze over at the new fee system for Germans to pay a monthly "donation" to the health care program....just to keep it above water. You've got a spiraling downward situation that isn't easily fixed.

My guess is that you will start seeing more nurse practitioners....someone who gets a four-year degree in nursing and then performs fifty percent of what a doctor does. It's the only method that might keep costs in check and fix the doctor issue.

A lesser system in the future? Yeah, this might end up being a system that isn't quiet as good as it was in the 1990s. You might have folks who have an aliment and it gets missed by the nurse....until it's too late to help a guy. But there's not much of a way to fix the cost side of this whole issue.

Taser Episode

You rarely hear about German cops using tasers...unlike the situation where tasers are used almost daily in some US states. Today, a hostage episode unfolded outside of Frankfurt at some gas station.

A guy went nuts....started threatening folks at the gas station. So this deal was made to provide a getaway car to the guy. As he backpedaled away to the car with a person he was holding with a knife....the German cops fired the taser on the dimwit....and down he went.

The guy will get several charges tossed on him, and I doubt that he gets anything less than four years in prison for his episode. The taser? He will remember this, I suspect.

18-Cent Guy Final

So today, the 2nd round of the job termination occurred with our guy who got fired after nineteen years of service when he charged up his battery-powered scooter with power from his boss. The 2nd court decided that it was still wrong to fire the guy.

The only comment added to this mess? The court said that a warning probably should have been issued, and if he repeated....then fire the guy.

I think the company will likely stop here and just avoid saying much of anything in public. This case is now being widely mentioned and you can imagine being a part of the management structure and having this come up in conversation with clients.

What will change? I suspect that most of the top 500 companies in Germany over the next twelve months will develop a simple one-page policy on charging of vehicles on company electricity. It will be very direct. It will make the practice unacceptable. It will allow for one warning, and then likely a termination.

This will trigger folks into thinking about this entire idea of battery-powered scooters and cars...and likely smile to pass on any chance to buy one. Some companies will be pro-electrical and set up some meter to measure what is used.....and just charge a guy once or twice a year for what he used.

The 18 Cent Act of Stupidity

There's a short story today to drive home a point that I made about a year ago on battery-powered vehicles. Basically....this guy had a scooter that ran off batteries...not gas. He drives up to his bosses business, and plug into it. The boss figures this out. He uses approximately 18 Euro cents (CENTs, note), and then the boss decided to fire him.

The labor court convened.

Round one, the guy won. The company has appealed and tomorrow....round two will occur. Adding to the story....this guy had worked nineteen years for the company....so it makes it a bit difficult to stand there and admit firing the guy for 18 cents.

The problem here, which I noted would eventually come is that folks are trying hard to convince the public to switch over to battery vehicles. Technology is arriving to make this possible...but my argument from a year ago still stands....where do you charge at work and how will the boss handle this? Free power? No....no company will dare offer that. Most folks don't grasp the implications of this matter.

If you explained that a guy would need $2.00 a day to power up the car at work, and then a second $2.00 at home for this battery deal....would you be willing to pay that? Most folks would start to add this up, and then the battery switch-out cost (figure a thousand Euro minimum to dispose of the old battery and at least 1,500 Euro for the new battery for a car).

My guess on the German case? The guy took something of value from the company. Make him pay for it and then establish a policy that forbids use for something like this. Remember, if you didn't have a company policy written down....then firing becomes a difficult task. But after you make it a policy....and the guy violates it....terminate immediately with no ill will.

The Kind Side of Politicians?

It is a bit shocking. Over the last sixteen-odd years that I've been a semi-insider of German society...never have German politicians ever been "helpful" on anything. Today, we learn that German politicians are calling on airlines to provide us....the woeful passengers....more leg room. This however, only comes after adjustment to the new ticket prices which are a bit on the high side.

I sat and paused over this. I'm a six-foot one-inch guy. I kinda appreciate any effort to give more leg room. This past summer, while riding Air Canada...I came to greatly appreciate the seat spacing on their aircraft (very ample).

I sat and thought over this situation. Never have any American law-makers ever considered the idea of forcing more leg room. Course, there could be Democratic or Republican operatives who watch this develop German strategy and suddenly get ideas to use in the US.

The odds of this having any success? That's the part that you can't be sure of. Maybe they will offer more leg room....for more on the ticket price, of course. Maybe there's a new category of tall-regular passenger....maybe at the end of the plane in the last four rows.

Then maybe, this is all bogus and the politicians were just looking for something to get folks all pumped up. So it's best not to get your hopes up.