In Actual Fact…

I think, although I’m not entirely sure I’m quoting Steven Wright when I say, “Broken promises don’t upset me. I just think, why did they believe me?”
I did, however, say that I was going to write about the German elections but in fact I found something much more exciting and enjoyable to do (and if it was more exciting than talking about German politics, it must have been pretty damn good). It’s not as if I didn’t do any research – I asked a friend who he thought would win AND read the Süddeutsche Zeitung on two consecutive days (yes, I have a subscription so that it’s only delivered on a Friday and a Saturday, I always read the Süddeutsche on two consecutive days, but this time it was “research”. I‘m also considering research into the denigration of women in the German edition of Playboy. How I suffer for you lot).
Sparky commented that “there is no ‘one central issue’” in German politics, which I tend to disagree with. An unemployment rate of close to five million and a tax burden that’s sucking jobs to flat-tax Eastern European countries even faster than it is cash out of my wallet are pretty high up on my list of issues, but I couldn’t vote. I could however do the wahl-o-mat test (a bit like the “who should I vote for” website, but Teutonic) and I did, before the election. There were 30 questions which one could weight if a question was of particular importance to you. I answered truthfully and this is what I got out:

The FDP were (unsurprisingly) first. I’d double-weighted lots of things that I know they stand for and if I could vote, they’re probably the closest to my “libertarianism-lite” views that I’d get. It was the fact that they were followed by the Linke.PDS that disturbed me immensely and got me thinking – I thought they must surely be diametrically opposed to the FDP on just about everything. Then it hit me that Sparky is right, for too many Germans there is no one, central issue. One in nine workers might be unemployed, but the economy isn’t so bad for enough Germans that it’s the number one priority. Global warming, whether German troops should be deployed abroad, closing nuclear power stations, numbers of free places in Kindergartens etc. all seem to be of equal importance to the idea that the economy might be structurally unsound. It’s a bit like Britain in the 1960s: other countries might be catching up and overtaking economically, but for enough people, life is still pretty rosy – it’s going to have to get a lot worse before Germany’s Thatcher comes along, because it sure isn’t Angela Merkel.

Phrase For Today: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope. Oh, and where there are mining communities, may we bring riot police”
Song playing as this was published: Oscar Peterson - “Dreamsville”