Post photo: dancing | © Pixabay
Table of Contents
miscellany
It is very pleasing to read today in the Heilbronner Stimme (July 28.7.2023, 28: 139) that another New Year's Eve ball is being planned in Harmonie. The ticket for the New Year's Eve ball costs 17 euros per person and is available both at the Tourist Information at Kaiserstrasse XNUMX and online. My better half and I will definitely be there.
And if you like the New Year's Eve Ball, you will also like the Europa Ball on Saturday, April 13, 2024 in Harmonie. There will only be tables for eight, which can already be reserved with me.
The new Heilbronner monopoly, this time at E-scooters, makes me smile and cry. On the one hand I'm glad that these toys will be fewer in Heilbronn in the future, but on the other hand you have to ask yourself whether it's good for the users if there is only one company. After all, they want to continue to be represented in Heilbronn with 600 scooters and 300 bicycles. So it is to be hoped that this matter will continue to be regulated by the market and that the city administration will not allow itself to be carried away into subsidizing a monopolist or even making access to Heilbron more difficult for other possible providers.
The development of the new gas power plant is pleasing, because the municipal council has now also approved the development plan. In addition, a district heating storage system is to be added and the Heilbronn district heating network is to be expanded. Since Heilbronn continues to rely on district heating, it should now be considered whether district heating should not be generated by waste incineration at the latest when the gas power plant is converted to hydrogen, because generating district heating from hydrogen is probably not the last word. In addition, after the coal-fired power plant was demolished, we would already have space for a waste incineration plant. And we also have plenty of rubbish. So far, this has had to be transported by truck to Stuttgart or Mannheim and, after incineration, comes back to Heilbronn by truck to be stored with us.
The charm of this is that we save on truck trips and can use the expensively produced hydrogen for other purposes.
summer zone
As I feared, the Heilbronn summer zones are now becoming a pawn in local politics. As a former resident of one of these summer zones, who enjoyed living there for a good two decades and is still directly affected today, I have my corresponding conviction, which, incidentally, has not changed in the last five decades. There is also the realization that due to climate change alone, further redesign of our inner cities is absolutely necessary!
Back then, my father walked up and down Sülmerstrasse and Turmstrasse to convince the shopkeepers of the need for a pedestrian zone. And even then, the arguments of the opponents of contemporary urban development were the same as they are today. And these arguments are as wrong today as they were then.
I don't know of a single pub, shop or business that has gone bankrupt in the last few decades because you couldn't drive to the door. Overall, many shops and restaurants are having a hard time today, maybe even harder than a few decades ago. The reasons for this are very diverse. But no business has to close just because there is no parking space in front of the door — with the exception of large supermarkets and shopping malls. Interestingly, however, these have recently come back to the pedestrian zones with slightly smaller versions.
Even more exciting and very tragic is the fact that many shops and businesses had to close in those streets and alleys in my home district, even though they had parking spaces right in front of the door. In Turmstraße only Elektro Krauss is left and in the other streets and alleys all the shops and pubs I know of are already gone. And even Kaffee Roth didn't have to close due to a lack of parking spaces, as was always feared. Unfortunately, again, the girl who can't dance blames the music.
It would have been better if things had been nailed down decades ago and the city center as a whole turned into a pedestrian area. I claim that we are all in a much better position today and have exactly the customer frequency that is so missing now! In addition, there is what I have always complained about, the lack of cleanliness, the lack of public toilets, more checks on peddlers, beggars and petty criminals, better signage from the parking lots to the shops and a more attractive way to get there — ergo a viable inner-city concept!
Just look at how happy and satisfied people carry their shopping bags to the cars on the outskirts of Metzingen, including many people from Heilbronn who, if you ask them, would only shop in Heilbronn if they were right in front of a shop allowed to park for free.
I buy e.g. B. not a high-quality product in the center of Heilbronn, which by the way would be brought home to me free of charge after the purchase because I can’t find a parking space on site, but simply because I want to be served well in the shop for so much money! And I even walk a few kilometers for a good coffee; a parking space in front of the door doesn't make up for bad coffee or even bad service.
But I also think the summer zones are a complete waste of money! On the one hand, these continue to prevent a necessary urban development — the expansion into an attractive pedestrian zone — and on the other hand they give populists the opportunity to once again make a name for themselves very cheaply. The funny thing is that most of these people live comfortably in a part of the city, like to go to larger cities to shop, and only show up in my hometown if there's something for free or a nice press release.
If our municipal councils are now so angry about the summer zones, then they could explain to us what they have done for my hometown over the years; They had already promised the more than necessary conversion of Turmstraße four decades ago. I would like to know how many millions of tax dollars you have since spent on further concepts, ideas, experiments, inspection trips, expert opinions, meetings, exposés and events. Turmstrasse could have been weighed in gold long ago.
And so I suspect that the vast majority of our local councilors are not concerned with my home district, they only use it to be able to distinguish themselves - and this at the expense of my fellow citizens of Heilbronn and me!
Big cities
Today there was an exciting lecture at a meeting of the free voters at state level. Prof. Dr.-Ing. M. Norbert Fisch gave the current politics in terms of building renovations, new buildings and the adaptation of heating concepts a very bad report. That was to be expected, since for decades our politicians have only reacted to problems when the child has already fallen into the well.
The information about the environmental costs for current new buildings is very interesting. Even if these meet the latest energy requirements, they are currently not justifiable. And certainly no new single-family houses in big cities. Building has to be reinvented as a whole before this topic can be addressed more intensively again.
And so it fits quite well that the Wollhaus should not be torn down and rebuilt, but that the old building structure should be used. As I was able to find out today, the environmental costs saved by this alone are immense.
Finally, the free voters of the larger Heilbronn cities were able to exchange information about the status of the preparations for the municipal council elections in 2024. It was interesting to note that all major cities have to contend with similar or identical challenges. That's why it's also very good that the Free Voters in Baden-Württemberg have come together to form a state association - you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.
To finish could Herbert Burkhardt present our new Heilbronn election campaign concept to the other free voters, which by the way is the old one from 2019 - by the way, this also saves costs and even protects our environment a little bit.
exams
A few days ago I was able to complete this topic for myself and see the results Detlef Stern or transmit it to the university; i am very satisfied with the results. All that remains for me now is to hand in the exams at the university in the coming week. I'm hoping for a coffee and a good conversation.
At the end of two semesters, I have a few small observations to share and I'm excited to see how these things are viewed by the pros. Completely unintentionally and only now recognized by me, I had made these two semesters the practical part of my thesis, which was purely theoretical at the time.
Whether this falls within the area of professional deformation or whether all the "survivors of our educational system" were socialized in this way would be worth further observation.
Getting old in office
Today the New York Times took up this topic. And Jim Manleys insight: "The Senate is such a warm, comfortable place that you can live inside that bubble.' should by now be well known to all German people's representatives.
My predecessors in office at EUROPA-UNION Heilbronn had set an age limit of 20 more than 80 years ago. One board member has even left office at the age of 70 — but both are also much easier to accomplish if these honorary positions offer neither warmth nor other advantages.
The two authors of the Times article Lisa Lerer and Reid J Epstein Finally, the question arises as to whether making a fool of oneself in office purely for reasons of age could not induce politicians to simply give up all by themselves. Friedrich Merz and Winfried Kretschmann Both of them may have completely different opinions on this.
My readers can read the said Times article right away get here for free.
