Sunday, August 13, 2017

Germany News, Sunday

Merkel talks cars.  ARD article.  The Chancellor did a campaign stop in Dortmund yesterday and countered the Schulz-SPD car point paper of this week.  Obviously, she took the issue with the 'bad' car industry and how they'd handled this whole thing.  But she also discussed this topic that Schulz laid out....the quota or mandatory electric car sales.  As she correctly said....what exactly do you do....if people don't meet the quota?  Punish them for NOT buying an electric car?  How?  The only way to really hype up this electric car talk in Germany....is to invent some kind of cash or deposit credit of 6,000 Euro for the first 250,000 people who make an order for such a car, and repeat this each year.  The topic of electric cars on the minds of Germans?  I'd rate this at problem number 11,486.  No one really thinks or cares much for this.  If electricity were cheaper (like in three-quarters of European countries)....then it might draw more interest, but German electric power is awful expensive and continuing in that direction.

Tourism a turn-off in Spain.  ARD article.  I sat and watched this video report last night....because of the frustration over Turkey....a lot of Germans have turned their attention on vacations back to Spain....which is a positive thing because if flushes more cash into the country, and helps to employs Spanish folks (who are still suffering from high unemployment rates).  Well....the Spanish say 'enough'....there are too many tourists now in Spain.  One of the growing issues is that money is being pushed into renovation and creating a tourist-zone apartment situation....where regular Spanish folks can't afford the housing costs.

Long term trucking problem.  N-TV article.  If you travel around Germany....particularly on Sundays....you will come to note that tractor-trailer-truck parking is now a massive issue.  As N-TV points out....German trucker numbers suggest a 30-to-40 percent growth coming up over the next decade, and the nation really doesn't have adequate parking for the trucks that now travel over the autobahns.  Germans are whining over trucks parking in their neighborhoods or in public areas.  There's a mandatory German policy as of Saturday night....you have to park the big rigs for 24 hours, and what you notice is that most all autobahn parking lots are crammed full.  I would take an educated guess that they need not just to double....but likely triple....the amount of truck parking on the autobahns....and start reviewing more parking around urbanized zones (Frankfurt, Mainz, etc).  Good piece that discusses the whole problem.

Too much English in Berlin:  Focus article.  Jens Spahn is one of the top dozen CDU members and spends a lot of time around Berlin.  So this week, he hyped up one of his criticisms....there's too much English-only talk from waiters in Berlin.  The real chat here?  The trendy neighborhoods in Berlin (not the working-class neighborhoods) have cafes and pubs which require waiters and waitresses.  Presently with the low unemployment rate....it's hard to find employees.....so they end up recruiting from places like the UK, Ireland, Sweden, etc.  A lot of these folks get dropped into Berlin, and start working without any German training.  In this case....Spahn is talking over an obvious issue, but this really doesn't rate into the top 10,000 problems of most working-class Germans.

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