Well off germany
- 8 November 2012 09:16200278amazing how politicians find money to spend with an election in the offing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-attacked-by-homegrown-critics-for-preaching-austerity-to-europe-while-germany-goes-on-a-spending-spree-8294456.html - 8 November 2012 16:07200331"Ms Merkel's coalition of conservatives and liberal Free Democrats has increased allowances for pensioners, axed fees at doctors' surgeries, introduced a controversial €100 a month payment for stay at home mothers and upped the transport budget by €750 million."
Yes, take that German money away from German pensioners, stay at home mums, sick people and public transport users and give it to Greece.
Germany is in a better position to spend on public services because it has run its economy better, still scarred by memories of the Great Inflation in the 1920s, because it is not obsessed with home ownership, and because people there are much less prone to run up personal debt than in other countries, like, er the UK. They also still make things - remember when we did that?
Seems to me that a lot of anti-German sentiment is based on nothing more than ignorance, jealousy and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for their own mistakes.
Pitiful. - 8 November 2012 16:53200339Possibly, Andrew, but there's more to it than that.
You may have a slightly rose-tinted view of postwar Germany than, for example, me. Fact is that the Allied countries pumped more than they could afford into rebuilding Germany after WW2 and in the case of the United Kingdom, that was to the detriment of rebuilding our own country. A strong case could be made for saying that it would have been better to have let Germany stew in its own juices rather than sacrifice economic regrowth for something as noble as humanity; and, if I'm honest, for pragmatism too, otherwise the Russians would have taken Germany over lock, stock and barrel.
Your quip that Germany still has a manufacturing industry is also not quite as black and white as you make out. Without the use of cheap Turkish labour for the past twenty five years, the motor industry of which Germany is rightly proud would not exist in its current form and they, too, would be mostly driving round in Korean and Chinese tin boxes.
I accept that there is undoubtedly anti-German sentiment aplenty, but given the history between our two countries I think that is only to be expected; I do believe, however, that those sentiments are diminishing as the older generations die off.
I can tell you that the Germany I grew up in from a very early age was no whiter-than-white chapter of victimology; my father and his chums were openly spat at, had their car tyres slashed and were refused service in shops and restaurants as soon as the proprietors found out they were British servicemen. Despite that, I don't hate the Germans on grounds of ignorance, jealousy or any unwillingness to accept responsibility for my mistakes (although I'm not quite sure what you mean by that last bit), in fact I don't hate the Germans at all. What I do hate is that Great Britain is paying in the region of €50m per day for supporting what is clearly idealism; the EU is innately flawed and our money is being used to stop egg landing on the faces of the French and German politicians who refuse to give up on something that doesn't work.
Whilst the popular press' headlines may phrase that in more eye-catching terms - and by that I mean the usual xenophobic insults that always arise when the word 'Germany' crops up - the fact remains that you are tarring everyone with the same brush, which conveniently hangs a peg on the 'Xenophobic Little Britain' tag and, as I said in the opening sentence, there is more to it than that.True friends stab you in the front. - Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
8 November 2012 17:05200342Good post Andy, the Germans were in a very sorry state after WW2 and helping to get them back on their feet cost this country a lot of money.-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
------------------------------------------------------------------- - Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
8 November 2012 17:25200344posts #2/#3,intresting reads.one of my fathers storys stating more of a dislike to the yanks than the germans,stemed from anzio beach head where he and his where stuck for a week waiting for the rest of the force with supplys to turn up.from what he was saying that there was 1 yes 1 german mecanhic there.by the time the backup turned up the american genrael gave the order to move forward the where 3/4 german panzer divisions surouding them,half of my fathers regiment where wiped out due to the yank officer wouldnt move of the beach. - 8 November 2012 17:34200348the only anti-german sentiment i ever hear is over their ability to win penalty shoot outs, even then that takes second place to the dreaded "argies".
getting back to the link it comes across that their cobbled together coalition is blatantly trying to win votes at the forthcoming election after taking a bashing earlier at the regional polls. - 8 November 2012 18:17200359I also worked in Germany in the 1980s, must say we were not liked that much , But I go on well with the German family I lived with. But it took along time before they trusted me.
- 8 November 2012 18:46200362Germany protected its heavy industries with handouts during the 1980 1990
When UK industry was sacrificed on the alter of Thatcherism,
The baby went out with the bath water
Funny haw thing turned out in the end,
Government money for farmers, money for bankers,
And money for wind framers to. - 9 November 2012 09:27200437Sorry to interrupt this little anti-German club. Heard it all before - a mindset that is slowly crumbling as time advances.
Some posters here would do well to read this and then might take a more balanced view.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3z9NfMRRVrEC&dq=the+german+genius&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZMmcUKqLHoy10QW5vYGADQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA
One reviewer says:
"It is to those who find it difficult to move beyond Hitler that 'The German Genius' is dedicated." With these words, Peter Watson sums up the point and purpose of this study. It is an attempt to redraw the balance, for the English-speaking reader, between the pariah Germany that perpetrated atrocities during the first half of the twentieth century and the brilliant Germany that was for some two centuries before - and even during - that period the intellectual and cultural engine first of continental Europe and later of the whole of the developed world. In Britain in particular, knowledge of the German intellectual inheritance - the degree to which contemporary thinking on a host of subjects is in its origins German thinking - has been lost sight of. Watson seeks to correct that oversight and, more importantly, to move the debate 'beyond Hitler' by drawing attention to developments in Germany since 1945 that demonstrate both continuity with the Germany of Bach and Beethoven, Kant and Goethe, Marx and Weber, Helmholtz and Boltmann, and a new German spirit that has emerged since the events of 1968.
The story is extremely rich, and Watson is pressed to do justice to it in a single volume, even so large a volume as this. He is required to trace developments across a very wide range of fields - history, philology, philosophy, economics, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, mathematics, music, painting, architecture, literature, theology, psychology, the university - while at the same time attempting to demonstrate in what sense the idea of specifically 'German genius' is meaningful.
This means that the book is at root a study of a culture rather than a chronological compendium of instances of exceptional achievement. Watson builds his analysis around the historical development of key concepts - the division between 'Kultur' and 'Zivilisation': the peculiarly German notions of 'Bildung' and 'Innerlichkeit' - to draw a picture of a nation in which extreme refinements of cultural and spiritual development can co-exist with political and civil underdevelopment, a deep anxiety about the nature and meaning of scientific progress, and a profound cultural pessimism. It is a measure of his success that by the time he is obliged to speak directly of the deformations of German culture in the first half of the twentieth century - and he is unsparing when he does so - the reader understands not just how that failure came about but how mighty the preceding achievement had been and how much was lost in its disintegration.
Watson's culminating argument is that as a result both of the earlier achievement and the direct influence of the German liberal and Jewish intellectual diaspora of the 1930s and '40s 'the German genius' continues to condition contemporary thinking in the West across a whole range of disciplines. To this extent 'German' problems and modes of thought have become our own. More importantly, the story is not over. The forty years since 1968 has seen the rise of a generation that has nothing to do with German imperialism or Nazi totalitarianism, and that has confronted the sins of that period in a way that was impossible for the implicated survivors of the postwar years. Taken together, the richness of the German heritage and the potential for continuing contribution by the current and succeeding generations make it imperative that we in the Anglophone world reassess our increasingly unhelpful attitudes towards 'Germanness'. Peter Watson's book is potentially a new beginning: even-handed and thought-provoking, a fascinating read and a necessary corrective. - Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
9 November 2012 13:04200468Sorry to interrupt the pro-German club
but I think you are being unfair nobody so far has been anti-German I thought the posts were fairly neutral, you can not compare the feelings felt by either side after the war with those of today.-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
------------------------------------------------------------------- - Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
9 November 2012 16:06200507im neither pro nor anti the germans
but they seem to be moving forwardALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS - 9 November 2012 17:22200522That's a really childish reply Jan. You seem to pop up every time someone disagrees with my point of view and chime in. i know you have an agenda with me, but have you nothing better to do?
- Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,888
9 November 2012 17:29200523I am absolutely astounded by that comment from Andrew Stucken I am entitled to my opinion as much as anyone else on here as for having an agenda I have not got the faintest idea what you are talking about.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
------------------------------------------------------------------- - 9 November 2012 18:13200536Mrs Higgins you keep go and say what you think is right.
- Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
9 November 2012 18:14200537jan;
yep everyone has a right to a view
chill out guys and girlsALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS - 9 November 2012 18:36200546Must say both mywife and myself like Germany as I said I lived and worked out there now we go back from time to time and we would live out there if we had the funding,but there is also other places we would like to live ,Spain,Scotland and parts of England to,but we are very happy where we are,and our Sunhouse is now up,just the inside to do now and power to put on,so if you know somone who can put the power in for us,please aske them to phone or come and see me.A.S.P. please.
- 9 November 2012 18:58200554Yes Jan your always picking on me to you big bully
- 9 November 2012 19:30200559I find that remark very offensive Keith.
- 9 November 2012 20:14200570Pack it in,
- 9 November 2012 20:22200571Yes, Vic, you should.
Edit: this is the last post I will make on the topic and l won't bother looking back at replies because I have said all I wanted to and it serves no purpose.
It seems a few people want to shout me down just because I took the opportunity to balance out what I felt to be an anti-German article with a few facts about why Germany has deservedly performed better and a link to a book whose author holds the same viewpoint that I do: that a lot of British people can't see past Hitler.
The tone of this thread has turned quite unpleasant and personal - I doubt if I am the only one who finds it rather distasteful but I wouldn't blame them for not wanting to support me given the reception they would get.
A peaceful good night to all.
Thankyou.