Trucker Story

 In the 'old days', before 1999....you could get a German drivers license without much effort that allowed you to drive a 7500 kilogram truck (16,000 pounds or 8-tons).

What did you have to do to earn that 'right'?  Just get your car license....that was it.  There was no test-drive or special training with a 8-ton truck.  

Now, you can  laugh about this standing and how the Germans got away with this for so many years, then corrected in 1999.

Why this comes up today?  Well....the UK is short on drivers and for years.....they've known about this license business.  Millions of Germans walk around today with a 8-ton mark on their license.

So with the truck driver shortage going on in the UK....word got out....recruitment is going on to hire up German drivers (mostly people over the age of 45 in Germany).  

Me?  Well....I did my US license over into the German license....in early 1999....so I missed the 'golden' era for the 8-ton license deal. 

How many Germans might sign up for this recruitment?  Unknown.  If I were guessing, I'd say less than a thousand.  

How This Coalition-Building Exercise is Going?

 Well....it's a curious trend.

The Greens and FDP parties are having various meetings, and basically building a 'all-or-nothing' script....so when the SPD Party finally sits down with them....it's going to be a complete list of cabinet posts, expectations, and priorities.  The odds that the SPD will be unhappy with this script?  I'd say it's a 99-percent chance of that presently.

I would even go and say that the FDP-Green agenda will force the SPD into a corner....either they accept this, or they fall back to build the coalition around CDU-CSU folks.  

The fact that there five or six very serious topics which the Greens and FDP can't agree upon?  Well....this is continually brought up now.  For example....the FDP doesn't want a national policy on the rental 'brake', while the Greens do.  The FDP also doesn't want a long list of tax increases, while the Greens have a list of taxation ideas.  

However, if these two work out the serious topics.....I'd say at that point that the SPD is in a world of hurts for coalition-building.

What happens if they fall back to the CDU-CSU situation?  Well....it's hard to see Laschet still being the chief talker for the CDU-CSU group, and he'll likely be edged out (my humble opinion).  For the SPD to get their top ten promises accomplished with this coalition?  It becomes a pretty harsh environment.  

Real Estate Trends in Germany

 N-TV had a early morning piece, and talked about the latest in real estate trends.

Where Germans are currently headed?  Out of major cities, and into medium-to-small cities.  

Average price of a house now?  487,000 Euro.  I should note this....in the Wiesbaden area...for a full-up house....in crappy shape and needing renovation....400k is now the minimum, and decent houses run a minimum of 700k Euro.  For a nice neighborhood with adequate property....you'd be talking one-million Euro minimum.  

The report also brought up that financing for the new buyers is becoming a more difficult problem.  

Recounts in Berlin?

 Well....yeah, because of all the chaos in those 100-odd polling stations (out of 2,000-odd stations in the city)....a recount started up.

Invalid votes in the mix?  Yes, that topic has come up as well.

At one point in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf neighborhood....SW Berlin....they wrapped up counting 450 votes, and noted 90-percent of that group were invalid votes.

So what really happened here....was it a lot of corruption or just plain badly handled voting procedures?

There's limited information around, and it's virtually guaranteed now to be a major investigation started up by the end of October.  

If you were asking humble views....I'd say a fair number of new people (new helpers) were part of the poll station business, that they got very marginal training for the job, and somewhere in the mix....a handful of people triggered invalid vote situations.  Intentional?  It's just hard to imagine getting forty-odd people brought into a conspiracy and intentionally corrupting a massive vote fraud in Berlin.

As for this being a major topic for the next twelve months?  Yeah....I'd say in local politics and regional problems.....this investigation will be a top-ten issue for most of 2022.  

Danish Covid Chatter

 Focus wrote up an interesting article today.  The hype?  Over in Denmark, they've moved on....concerning Covid.

Masks in trains or trams?  No.

On the 10th of September.....they (the country) declared Covid to be just a regular disease (like the flu).  

All this chatter of vaccinations or non-vax?  Zero.  Either you are protected by the after-affects of Covid or the vaccine....otherwise, no one cares.

The nation's vaccination rate?  Around 75-percent.  

Big Fire From Last Night

 Over on the far east part of Stuttgart, an explosion occurred last night at the bus depot on Elmer Strasse.  

It would appear from news video from this morning.....most of the bus station burned down.  Cause?  Unknown.  

Buses gone as well?  Twenty of them burned in the episode.

The fact that an E-Bus (battery bus) was in the station at the time....apparently recharging?  Well....so far, there is no connection to that in the fire.

At some point on one of the morning news pieces....journalists hinted that the whole remaining structure was pretty close to falling....nothing was going to survive the fire.

Injured?  Number remains at six presently.  

Update: 1 Oct, witnesses report the fire/explosion starting on the roof of one bus.....that's where the E-bus/diesel hybrid batteries are usually 'laying'.  

Secret Agent Chatter

I sat this morning and was watching N-TV news, and this odd news piece came up.....over the UK government, police, sex and female environmentalists.  By the end, I thought it'd be a swell movie to be made, if you could script it the right way.

So to tell this story.....back around 2003, the UK government (probably just the police bosses)....decided that the environmentalists were getting to be a problem, and they needed to infiltrate the 'gang'.

So they find this one Brit guy.  Journalists never describe the guy, his looks or his James Bond-like style.  

What they say is that 'Oliver' reached out and eventually hooked up with ten environmentalist women.....over and over.

No one says these were hot torrid affairs, or if they were just a every other Thursday sexual romps.  

Only ten?  Well....that's what the ladies claim.  I suspect if you quizzed  'Oliver', he might admit there were three times that number.

So getting paid as a secret agent.....to hook-up with Brit women?  Yeah.  

All of this eventually led to the women figuring out 'Oliver' and taking him to a complaints tribunal. 

Yeah, the Brit police had in some way violated the trust of these women.....there's zero doubt about this.

As for any insider info on the environmental movement?  Well....no one says much of anything.  So this was a total waste of time?  You just sit and wonder about that side of the story.

Merz Chatter

 Friedrich Merz gave an analytical interview of the German election results yesterday....covered by N-TV.  

Merz, if you will remember history....was a big insider of the CDU Party twenty years ago, and felt he was deserving of a ministry position under Merkel.  Merkel disliked the guy, and his 'star' dimmed....so he quit the party and went back to business.  Two years ago, he came back to the Party....angling to be the Party 'boss' and eventually the Chancellor candidate.  The pro-Merkel crew did everything possible to cancel him out.  In the past nine months, Merz gave support to Laschet, in hopes of getting the Finance Minister position.

So his hype about the failures of the party?  

He says the party got lazy....not just in the last couple of years, but for at least a decade.  

He also says that the core voters in this election for the CDU....were the hardcore folks only....that everyone of a lesser nature left the party for better offerings.  

I won't disagree with the guy....this whole center-center view of topics led people to certain views of what the CDU would or would not deliver.  In some ways, over the past sixteen years...it's been a caretaker-style government.  If you listed every problem existing back in 2010....most all of these problems still exist today.  The coalitions that came and went......patched up problems for a temp situation, and simply moved on.  

As for what happens with Merz now?  I think as the SPD creates the coalition government, Merz will quietly leave politics for the final time, and say adios to the CDU Party.