Germany's ruthless housing market is tough on new tenants - but there are winners

(26 January 2023) In the mid-2000s, one of the most attractive things about Germany was the ease of finding a flat - and the cheap rents that went with it. Germans themselves were (not so) blissfully unaware of how good a deal they had.

Since then, things have changed. New-contract rents in Germany's major cities now equal those of neighbouring countries and good lettings are scarce. Yet this is not, as some think it is, a housing market in crisis. Germany retains admirable rental protections from which existing tenants benefit. Owners and landlords, too, are in a strong position. It's just not that great anymore if you're looking for a flat... Here's my analysis of the German housing market in The Local.

Britain’s democratic rot has continued under Rishi Sunak

(25 January 2023) New year, same old Downing Street lies: and, as ever, it's good to have Annette Dittert on hand to skewer them with such verve. In this column for the New Statesman, she uses the metaphor of the Emperor's new clothes - apt both to sharp-suited Sunak and to her own role pointing out what should be the blindingly obvious! As ever, a pleasure to translate.

Why Germany’s €49 travel ticket is far better than the previous €9 ticket

(15 November 2022) Germany's planned €49 ticket for local and regional public transport is genuinely transformative policy which will make using busses, trams, and trains easier and smoother than ever before while helping hard-pressed citizens as living costs soar - and if we’d never had the ill-thought-out €9 ticket bonanza this summer, it would be hailed as such. As it is, though, this important moment seems like an anti-climax. Read my take on the new ticket for The Local.

Rishi Sunak can’t escape the Tories’ post-truth policies

(14 November 2022) It's been a while since Annette Dittert's last column about British politics in the New Statesman. After all, as bureau chief for ARD in London, she'd had enough to be doing with her day job: Tory Leadership Drama No. 1, death of the Queen, the explosive Truss-Kwarteng Intermezzo, Tory Leadership Drama No. 2... So her examination of Rishi Sunak's current position is a welcome return to the written word - one which, as ever, I had the pleasure of translating.

German government is pushing ambitious agenda despite turbulent first year

(21 October 2022) Confession intime: the photos of me on this website are around 10 years old now. Whenever I mull over possible replacements, I'm shocked by how old I now look. In that, I'm very much like the current German government, whose fresh-faced 2021 look has - after eight months of continuous firefighting - deteriorated into a decidedly washed-out, haggard countenance.

Yet our tri-partite coalition, while no longer particularly photogenic and based on an agreement which Russia's actions have torn up, is doing better than many (including itself) think. With any luck, its participants will remember that and keep the show on the road. Read my thoughts on Germany's government one year in The Local.

Germany’s autumn Covid rules are a giant mess beyond parody

(25 August 2022) If every one of Germany's beloved observers of our national neuroses, from the legendary Loriot right down to today's Jan Böhmermann, were to come together to parody our love of excessive complexity and petty busy-body rules through the medium of Covid legislation, they would probably have trouble coming up with something as absurd as what is proposed from 1st October onwards. Read my take in The Local.

Germany has failed to do its energy ‘homework’ – and faces years of catching up

(05 August 2022) Germany's energy crisis is the result of our decades' long failure to examine our strategic position and take action accordingly. Every government since Schröder's first administration in 1998 - and by extension the German electorate - is complicit, and now we must learn to live with the consequences until we finally sit ourselves down and (as our patronising turn of phrase has it) "do our homework". In The Local, I look at what went wrong, where and how, and ask why we still aren't doing enough to become energy-independent.

The shocking state of German trains exposes the myth about punctuality

(27 July 2022) One of the most widespread stereotypes about Germans is that we are punctual and that our national efficiency means that trains run on time. It also the most likely stereotype to fall victim to reality: when tourists or business travellers actually come to Germany and use our rail network, they are reliably shocked - this year more than ever, as punctuality sinks to all-time lows. Read my rant/two cents on the matter in The Local.

The post-Johnson era is already a nightmare

(19 July 2022) In her latest piece for the New Statesman, Annette Dittert offers a refreshing and bracing look past the current obsessing about Truss/Sunak and into the heart of the matter: a post-truth political environment which many UK media outlets have played a conscious role in shaping. As ever, a pleasure and an honour to translate.

Why Germany can’t break out of its Covid rules rut

(04 July 2022) So Germany's Covid expert committee has delivered its verdict on the effect of the restrictions imposed at various points over the last two years. As expected, said verdict is Delphic at best - mainly, so the Committee argues, due to a lack of data in Germany. However, a brief comparison with neighbouring countries would be enough for anyone to see that we have gone wrong somewhere: despite comparable (and much reduced) rates of death and infection, we are one of the only countries left in Europe with mandatory restrictions - and are considering re-imposing the ones we dropped in spring. Here's why.

Will Germany’s motorists and cyclists ever learn to live with other?

(16 June 2022) It's that time of year again: the sun is out, and so the city streets and country roads of Germany are full with cyclists - and with their most bitter enemy, motorists. There's something particularly poisonous about the car-vs-bike debate here, and The Local asked me to look at why.

Criticising the government isn’t journalistic bias – it goes with the job

(02 June 2022) Rebuilding Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Allies took every precaution to keep autocratic tendencies at bay - including, for instance, decentralising public service broadcasting and introducing a strong professional ethos of independence from government interference. In the north-west of Germany, it was a man named Hugh Greene (who would later go on to become DG of the BBC) who was instrumental in inculcating these professional ethics into what has, today, become NDR/ARD.

I'm sure that he would be delighted to know that, 70 years on, German public service broadcasting has been able to stay true to its mission - and concerned to read Annette Dittert's analysis of how the BBC is being hindered in fulfilling it in the UK. As ever, it was a pleasure and an honour for me to work with Annette as a translator.

Germany’s €9 ticket for summer is just a gimmick, not a solution

(1 June 2022) There are plenty of plaudits going around for Germany's bold experiment to grant access to all local and regional transport for €9 a month in June, July, and August. Comparisons have been made to Vienna's €365 annual travelcard, for instance, and many see it as a quick and expedient way to make public transport more attractive and put money back in the pockets of the squeezed middle.

In my view, however, this fare gimmick will likely achieve the complete opposite. By making crowded busses and trains even more packed  in summer and forcing operators to run at losses for which Federal Government has only vaguely promised to stump up, it could end up making public transport look worse and forcing fares up this autumn while stifling much-needed investment. Here's my take for The Local - along with some suggestions for what could be done better.

Why the Greens are the real winners of Germany’s state elections

(17 May 2022) In Germany's federal system, regional elections have a habit of clustering – generally at points when national governments would rather not have people poring over electoral data. Certainly, just six months into their roller-coaster ride of a term and with Chancellor Olaf Scholz currently looking somewhat beleaguered, the Berlin 'Traffic Light' coalition would have preferred not to have its popularity examined at three regional elections.

What do state-level ballots really tell us about national politics, though, and how have the major parties come out of the recent elections in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein, and North-Rhine Westphalia. Read my analysis for The Local here.

Why Germany’s energy relief payouts are no fix for inadequate social security

(10 May 2022) Most people know the principle of a false economy: buy something cheap and you have to replace it more often. A classic examples is shoes: expensive footwear lasts longer and so works out to be better value. Still, many people prefer - or have - to buy cheaper shoes.

This, in German, is called "milkmaid maths": eine Milchmädchenrechnung. And as a country, we have, due to the miserliness of our social security system, a problem with false economies on two levels: firstly, we force poorer households to buy everything cheap by keeping them on an absolute pittance; secondly, the exchequer has to plug the gaps with one-off credits and additional payments every time there is a crisis.

In an age of continuous crisis, we would be far better off making our benefits system fit for purpose, as I argue in The Local.

Scholz is already out of step with Germany – it’s time for a change of course

(22 April 2022) As the old saying goes: Jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne - Beginnings are always magical. And Olaf Scholz' first months in office went, on the surface of things, rather well. His adventurous Ampelkoalition was running smoothly and he seemed to be delivering the change he had promised. The high watermark was his Zeitenwende speech radically altering Germany's foreign and defence policy. Uncharacteristically, however, it would seem this speech wrote cheques he is not intending to cash. This, a difficult legacy, and his Merkelian tendency to shroud himself in silence are contributing to a steep fall in popularity, as I explain for The Local.

How many massacres will it take before Germany turns off Russian gas?

(12 April 2022) In the end, it all comes down to gas. Germany’s singular historic crime, the Holocaust, was perpetrated primarily in the gas chambers. Many of those murdered in the death camps were deported from what is today the Ukraine; many others never even made it that far, summarily shot like the tens of thousands at Babyn Jar near Kiev in 1941.

Now, eighty years on, civilians have once again been executed in the Kiev suburbs and there may have already been gas attacks further east. While Germany is not the perpetrator this time, it is complicit. And gas, albeit of the less intrinsically perverted kind, is the problem. It’s almost as if history is standing here shouting: “Look, a metaphor!”

It's one that we as a country and our industrial conglomerates - specifically BASF - have chosen to ignore. In The Local, I argue that we need to take action and stop importing gas now, however damaging the potential consequences for our economy. If our famed Vergangenheitsbewältigung is to be more than just gestures and monuments when history comes calling, we have no other choice.

A baptism of fire for ‘Global Britain’ as Boris Johnson deals with the Ukraine war

(08 April 2022) I've once again had the considerable honour of translating for Annette Dittert, who has turned her sharply analytical eye for British politics to the Government's (lack of a) strategy vis-à-vis the Ukraine and Europe in German political monthly Blätter. Her piece - which I rendered into English - is essential reading for anyone looking for a perspective on the UK position in the conflict from outside the London bubble.

The worst of both worlds – Germany’s coronavirus policy pleases no-one

(29 March 2022) It couldn't get more bundesdeutsch than this: the German federal government has abolished most CoVid restrictions but the federal states, who previously pushed for lighter-touch regulation, are mutinying to retain restrictions. In the confusion, most people think restrictions are being lifted - and lifted too soon - when, actually, they're not being lifted at all.

The result is that, as I explain in The Local, we are now in the worst of both worlds. Those few of us who think it is time to ditch restrictions have been palmed off with an alternative legislative reality; meanwhile, the vast majority are now scared sick despite the fact that, objectively, nothing has changed and Germany still retains one of the highest levels of CoVid stringency in Europe.

Germany has been forced to learn the lessons from its post-war pacifism

(16 March 2022) We all like to be proved right every now and then, but I can honestly say that there is no instance to date I would ever rather have been proved wrong on than this one. It would be wonderful if, after at least ten years of thinking that Germany - by buying almost all of its energy from Russia and neglecting its armed forces to a deplorable extent - has made itself horribly vulnerable to blackmail and failed its European allies, it turned out that I had been worrying about nothing. If, as it turned out, talking to Putin until we were blue in the face really *was* the right thing to do...

Here's a recent history I wrote for The Local of why post-war Germany has thus far proven congenitally ill-disposed to military spending - and of how we have already learned the lesson we are currently learning before forgetting it again.

Germany has scuppered Nord Stream 2 but there are questions left to answer

(22 February 2022) So on 22/2/22, Nord Stream 2's number is finally up. It's almost as if Berlin was waiting for a fitting date to at long last do the right thing and cancel this cursed gas pipeline. After all, switching it on would have made Germany entirely dependent on Russian gas and outraged our closest allies, so it should have been cancelled months, preferably years back. In the end, Vladimir Putin's latest aggression was so egregious that it finally broke the project's backing. That it ever got this far, though, represents an abject national failure on the part of Germany, as I explain in The Local. 

Germany is stuck in Covid Groundhog Day – it’s time to move on

(02 February 2022) It's 29 years to the day since Bill Murray got stuck in time-loop with uproarious consequences - and anyone in Germany who remembers the film and the repetitive radio will have felt a sense of familiarity in switching on Deutschlandfunk. Ja: Und täglich grüßt die Siebentageinzidenz. Read my view on why Germany is stuck in a Covid rut and needs to move on (and why it can't) on The Local.

Germany is in a muddle over Russia – and it only has itself to blame

(24 January 2022) If Germany were a bond film, the title would be "From Russia with love" and rogue-ish Roger Moore would look a little less prepossessing than usual in the guise of Gerhard Schröder.

Yes, Germany is - for understandable, but no longer particularly relevant - historical reasons sentimental about its relationship to Russia, And swathes of its elite are beholden to Putin's roubles. It's a toxic mix that has led Berlin to build a quite unconscionable pipeline direct from St. Petersburg to the Pomeranian coast - against the stated interests and repeated requests of our closest allies.

And now, with the Ukraine and the Baltic nations staring down the barrels of Russian tanks, we're in a bit of predicament. Read my explanation of this shocking foreign-policy failure on The Local.

The pandemic has revealed Germany’s deep obsession with rules and compliance

(13 January 2022) In simpler times, it used to be funny to watch my fellow Germans standing, late at night, at a set of traffic lights waiting for the little green man while literally no cars were on the road. Now, of course, we are responsible for checking each others' vaccination status and enforcing compliance of busybody rules. And let's just say it's not bringing out the best in us… Read my plea for showing a little more politeness when checking CovPass and exercising some discretion from time to time in The Local.

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