21.1.02023

Post photo: Bicycles | © Couleur on Pixabay 

practice dance

I had just laid down two books to choose from when my better half reminded me that we had arranged to meet for a practice dance. Shortly rescheduled and I found myself surrounded by nice people who also wanted to hit the dance floor.

And as luck would have it, there were also a few people I spoke to who made it easier for me to decide on this year's big hit. In keeping with the practice dance evening, it is now certain that we will be holding the Europe Ball in the Harmonie on Saturday, September 23, 2023.

And even a practice dance has come to an end, whereby we finally found out that the times when people changed places and continued partying were not that long ago, but long enough that we all decided to spend the rest of the evening rather spend it at home.

But it's too late for my books, so I'll see if there's anything else I can do. There are a few small problems in the backend of this weblog and meanwhile you can also binge or do some mail.

wheelhouse

Heilbronn has a Radhaus and this is spelled in a very modern way - at least what the city leaders understand by modernity - and also completely wrong "radhausheilbronn". Those responsible probably speculated that this "artistic prank" would cause thousands of young people to flock to Heilbronn in the future.

My experience shows that if a product is not labeled correctly, the rest is no fun either. And if you had given some serious thought beforehand, this wheel arch would never have happened in the first place - so I have to assume that it was not about the matter at hand, but just wanted to give someone a little more pleasure, we are citizens it certainly isn't!

Today we can once again read in the Heilbronner Voice (January 21.1.2023, 25: XNUMX) everything that doesn't work with the Radhaus and learn in passing that it will only bring us citizens further completely unnecessary costs over the decades. We also learn that the Radhaus was probably only built so that there was another reason for a party. And who knows, maybe then the young people will flock to Heilbronn to take part in the annual Radhausfest. They then come by train, bus or car, because there is a lack of reasonable bicycle parking spaces in our city.

I recently explained something to "my" students about "sunk costs" and that's why I think it's better if we tear the wheelhouse down after the party, of course. City leaders and local councils could then make a pilgrimage to very attractive cities in the coming months and see for themselves how station forecourts are organized and designed. Some of these cities also have bicycle parking garages or covered bicycle parking spaces that also work in normal everyday life and for all citizens and their bikes.

Wind turbines

Yesterday there was once again speculation as to why we in Germany can't really get things right anymore. A television report even speculated that this would only succeed if a few very influential fellow citizens were able to derive a greater advantage for themselves, i.e. profit from it - unfortunately this report only contained very vague hints.

I would like to approach this topic from a different angle and my inclined readers will certainly already know what I'm getting at. We - or rather, the Federal Republic - have mutated into a completely oversized parliamentary and administrative apparatus in recent years, with a member of parliament whom I value very much publicly announcing decades ago that his successors are actually only slightly better administrative officials - and by that he meant the good ones among these.

Now let's look at the facts. With a little more than 80 million citizens, we allow ourselves a much too large and completely oversized parliamentary apparatus, although one could still approve of it if it consisted mainly of honorary fellow citizens with a halfway adequate staff.

As it is, however, we citizens have 96 MEPs who adequately represent us in the European Parliament. In addition, there are 736 members of the Bundestag who vote on the implementation of EU directives and decrees as well as on other laws that are usually not created by bodies responsible for this. The whole thing is supplemented, quite federally, by MPs for our 16 federal states, who actually only debate the distribution of our tax money: Baden-Württemberg (154 MPs), Bavaria (205 MPs), Berlin (147 MPs), Brandenburg (88 MPs), Hamburg (123 MPs), Hesse (137 MPs), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (79 MPs), Lower Saxony (147 MPs), North Rhine-Westphalia (195 MPs), Rhineland-Palatinate (101 MPs), Saarland (51 MPs) , Saxony (119 MPs), Saxony-Anhalt (97 MPs), Schleswig-Holstein (69 MPs), Thuringia (90 MPs).

That means that in the Federal Republic alone we already have 1 professional politicians in positions of representatives of the people, and the trend is: increasing. The National People's Congress, the next largest parliament, makes do with 828 people's representatives for a good 1,3 billion citizens.

Our 1 professional deputies are supplemented by other professional, semi-professional and honorary deputies serving in regional, county and municipal councils; a diligent reader could make a very rough estimate of their number.

However, it does not stop with our 1 professional politicians who hold positions as representatives of the people; they now all have their own staff, which, conservatively calculated, consists of five employees each. This adds another 828 people, most of whom have a very influential say in legislation and other decisions.

And the whole thing has long been impossible without its own administrations, of which the one for the Bundestag alone has more than 3 employees; you roughly multiply this by 000 and you get a good 10 other people involved in our legislation.

If you now also include the party headquarters, then we can confidently speak of a narrow circle of decision-makers of 50 fellow citizens, very few of whom are required to come up with any qualifications: "Dick & Stupid" in one person is enough, if I once to quote an influential Member of Parliament.

That's probably why it's so important that no parliament can do without its own lobbyist apparatus, which is estimated at over 40 people in Brussels alone. And so we can roughly calculate that there will be another 000 lobbyists in the Federal Republic.

But since all of the decisions made there now have to be implemented, we have the ministries that are increasingly being linked to the professional politician apparatus and are also continually growing. And it is not surprising that each ministry has its own orbit of consulting firms and other outsourced institutions.

And all these people involved in legislation not only want to secure their own livelihood, but also want to do their own part to legislate and improve our world.

My conclusion is that over the decades we have created a huge apparatus that can now deal with itself quite well and on its own, which is also hardly transparent, and there is also a lack of transparency, and as a result, the shows all observable and self-experienced effects. And this will continue to be the case, even if one concedes that every individual in this apparatus works for our country to the best of their knowledge and belief!

The point is, every democracy lives from the commitment of its citizens and then perishes when the most important function, namely that of the people's representatives - from the people for the people - to "professional" apparatuses - because otherwise nobody does this "work" anymore - simply outsourced. Because it is only too human that these then expand and become independent as if by themselves.

And how do we save ourselves and our democracy? Transparency! Responsibility (up to and including prison)! Education! Education! and especially by limiting all mandates as soon as they exceed the limit of voluntary work! Last but not least, former representatives of the people must be reintegrated into business and society and must no longer remain in the orbit of parliaments, e.g. B. as a lobbyist, ministry official or employee of a state institution.

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