Articles about General Events

Eight Subjective Reasons for not Having Children

This is a list of unordered and very probably also incomplete reasons for not having children in Germany. Moreover, it is totally subjective and manipulated by medial coverage. Comparing real statistics you might find out how wrong some of these reasons are.

• supervision: Parents have to look after their children until they are 18. This is called Aufsichtspflicht and can lead to judicial consequences if the children do something illegal. You are e.g. guilty if your four-year old child plays in garden without being supervised and then leaves the garden.
• liability: Having a internet access at home you have to make sure that your child does not do anything illegal. Otherwise you as the owner of the access might be sued (if the real culprit cannot be found). This is e.g. a major problem with regard to copyright law.
• dislike against children: There have been several cases when people sued kindergartens because they did not want the noise of the children in their area. The kindergartens either had to leave the location or hide the children inside the house instead of letting them play in the garden. The same is valid for playgrounds.
• hatred in school: Childrens are faced with hatred and bullying in school nowadays. Having an intelligent child, there is a high possibility that it will be bullied due to its intelligence by the less smart ones. Teachers meanwhile try to ignore the problem as good as possible.
• stultification of society: Besides, you have to ask yourself if you want to rise a child in a society which is becoming more dumb. Either your child adapts to the stupidity or it will have problems finding close friends.
• future: Considering the reluctance of many people to put effort into their work and many limitations the state puts upon us, there is a high possibility that other states will overtake us. It is thus possible that a child in Germany would not have a good future.
• flexibility: You are often forced to be very flexible in industry. Of course this is not better in emerging countries, but it still is a problem for having children. On the one hand there are not enough places for children, on the other hand you should not stop working.
• youth violence: Do you really want your child to grow up in a world where there is youth violence all around? Especially lower class children (including both Germans and immigrants) tend to demolate mostly public property (windows, lamps, …). Besides, they also beat up and kill people who “look strange” (this is their answer) or want to help their victims.

Besides, these problems of course exist in many societies and can be dealt with. Where some of these problems do not exist, you will find other ones.

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Epic Fail in German School

Many public buildings, e.g. schools, in Germany are trying to make the buildings more energy efficient. This is done by replacing windows, renovating heaters or also exchanging light systems—sometimes with a lot of drawbacks.

It is always obvious in Germany that both politicians and business managers are easily blinded by modernization. Everything that is “modern” is also good at the same time, and there is no other possibility, it just has to be good.

Modernization as Loss of Control

This can be seen very well in case of a German school at the moment. In Itzehoe, a town in Schleswig-Holstein, the administration has decided to introduce a new light system with motion sensors. Removing the light switches also took away the full control over light and darkness. This is of course a problem when there are lessons and nobody moves in the room.

The problem with modernization is that we want everything to go automatically without caring about the loss of control. It’s not wrong to try solving problems automatically, but it is wrong to forget your own influence. To give another example: Some people take a car and they think the ABS will do their job so they can drive faster. However, you should only see the ABS as a feature, not as your saviour.

In the current case the administration bought a system which cannot be controlled by light switches directly. Since the school had complained about the new system, they received a remote control—which does not work steadily. The question is: Why not only use motion sensors as a feature and include manual light switches?

Opinion of the Affected?

According to the head master of the school, the government didn’t even ask him if he wanted the new system or if there were any problems. It was just installed: What’s modern is good, how should it be different? This lack of communication has now led to a faulty system in school and interrupted lessons.

However, this is a usual behaviour: When the administration of Baden-Württemberg wanted to introduce G8, a reduction of secondary school eduction by one year, they came to schools to ask teachers, but the criticism was ignored. The system was introduced and students have to learn for their final exams in 8 years while other students had 9 years time. Moreover, there will be the double amount of alumni one year searching for university places.

Politicians have to stop thinking they knew everything better (known as the Dunning-Kruger effect), they have to return to asking experts—which does not mean only asking companies. Sometimes it even isn’t about any experts at all, but only the affected persons. Can this be so difficult?

The Race for Extreme

“Catastrophic Blizzard”

It was two weeks ago when media announced horrible winter weather with huge loads of snow. What then came was rather normal winter incidents, because there were road problems in some regions, some towns in North Germany were isolated for a few hours, and in my region everything was totally normal, or even more harmless than normal.

However, the reports about it were hyped like hell, even in the so called “reliable news”. A reporter was standing somewhere in the snow and talked about plow men who removed the snow to a village were a young woman was getting a baby or an older one needed medical help. As if this had not been there every year! We’re seeing snow every year, we’re seeing cut off villages very often and—guess what—sometimes there’s even no electricity for some hours!

I can just repeat myself and say that it seems Germany is waiting for an apocalypse. Probably, it’s not the people who are waiting for this, but rather the media, because they always need to increase their viewer levels. This is easiest achieved by reporting about horrible incidents, unbelievable events and maybe also an upcoming apocalypse (without making the mistake to name it directly, because otherwise you would be called a Nostradamus and become noncredible).

TV superlatives

First Germany, then the world

You can also see this will for ever more important news in an advertisment for a TV movie. A German TV station is advertising a movie called Gonger 2 as “world premiere”. Now guess where that movie comes from: It is a German production for exclusively this TV station and it was never released in any other country. Therefore, the correct description would be just “premiere” or “Germany premiere”.

Moreover, they started calling their evening movies “blockbusters”. Of course, now this is not enough anymore, so they came up with the term “superblockbuser” for the same type of movies. I am already wondering if they do not even recognize that there are not any “blockbusters” anymore, so there cannot be a even higher level. Probably, the producers of the advertisment know it, but since the usual audience will not sense they do not care.

Oh my god, he will die!

Watching other TV series it is always the last chance if something finally gets done. There is only one last chance to rescue a specific person. Some series started with a nice concept, e.g. helping companies or restaurants to become better, but then they also surrendered to the lovely sound of emotion. They soon started to show only people who were deadly sick, who lost a son or suffer from some other stroke of fate.

It is just disgusting to use the sorrow of people for one’s own income, to increase the ratings. Moreover, it deadens tactfulness and makes viewers become dumb which is then reused by the media to avoid the need of new series. Instead the same sentences are repeated over and over, even only one or two days later.

Ruhr.2010 - European Capital of Culture for one Year

Some people in North Rhine-Westphalia celebrated New Year’s Eve at a former industrial plant, because the Ruhr Area is European Capital of Culture this year. This is—if I know it right—the first time that a whole region (it was registered as Essen + Ruhr Area) receives the title. Essen and Ruhr Area won the competition against some other cities, including other cities in North Rhine-Westphalia like Cologne.

Industry in Ruhr District

There was a lot of heavy industry in Ruhr Area, which means they have some problems with regard to unemployment nowadays. Still, there are some companies mining coal, but German coal is too expensive for the world market, so it has to be subsidized by the state.

This however will lead to even more problems in the future, not only in North Rhine-Westphalia: If the state spends money on outdated technology instead of using it for the future, then Germany will use its leading position in the technology market.

However, you should not reduce the Ruhr District on heavy industry only. When I talked to a girl from there (she by the way was even from Essen), she protested that the area was not as bad as people think about it.

Ruhr Citizens proud of it?

However, it seems like many Ruhr people are proud of their region and the heavy industry. As already said they even celebrated in a former industry plant, the Zeche Zollverein (Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex). There have been 100.000 people each day at the celebration on January 9 and 10.

Press photo taken by Manfred Vollmer

The German singer and songwriter Grönemeyer even wrote a song for the Ruhr Area. He sings about the typical character of people living in this area, however this is of course not true for everybody. Though, there might be special attitudes in different regions.

European Capital of Culture

It seems to be their way to show excitement about the new title, even though it does not change anything. Would it not have been the same region even if it was not called European Capital of Culture now? There would have been the same places, there would have been the same sights and there would have been the same people.

The only difference seems to be, there are a lot o parties these days over there and government has to pay for it. Federal government pays 17 million, state North Rhine-Westphalia and Regionalverband Ruhr (regional association Ruhr) each 12 million, and the town Essen 6 million Euro. There are some more public institutions and a lot of private sponsors.