On the brake - ready - go
Books for seniors - a small selection
As if we haven't been slowed down enough for years, now the government is telling us how to fill up our tanks and take the train. If it hadn't been practised for years how to fool people into thinking globalisation, but in reality bake the smallest of federalist buns from municipality to municipality and from district to district, you'd think someone had given it some thought.
Fortunately, after two years of pandemic, we know better. The citizen, the civic body is free to decide - within the framework of the regulations, which do not allow for any movement or interpretation.
So now we are free to continue to preserve our small remnant of quality of life and enjoy the perceived freedom of being stuck in a traffic jam at 200 km/h, or not being allowed to talk to other passengers in windowless trains without air-conditioning (because air-conditioning is a bad word) about the delay of the replacement train in which you are currently standing because the seats are unusable.
The nine-euro ticket
It was lavishly advertised without saying how it would work. It took until two days before the pre-sale before it actually leaked out that it was to be understood as a monthly ticket, i.e. it was to be called a nine-eighteen-or-twenty-seven-euro ticket. The limitation to three months - like the previous reduction of the VAT for non-food items to six months - has to do with the negotiating skills of our wise leaders, because, after all, it will not be discussed until March 2022 and not for years, how to make public transport more attractive and whether, in view of the billions in subsidies for the railways, it wouldn't be cheaper anyway to let the remaining trains be used free of charge instead of hoping that no more lines will be discontinued, that the remaining functioning trains can be maintained and tracks repaired to relieve the roads and blocked city centres.
This is comparable to the 'incentive' to buy a battery-powered car without the infrastructure to charge it, because the majority of the population lives in houses with garages and not in a block of flats without a parking space, so it doesn't matter if one of the charging stations hidden away from the streets is operational.
Barrier-free
The popular ticket, which is equally valid for everyone, cannot simply be bought at the machine, at the counter or on the train or bus, but can be ordered online by providing personal data such as food allergies, ID number to avoid fraud attempts or relationship status. The same sophistication as with the first plan to reduce fuel prices, when all one had to do was show the petrol station attendant one's salary or wage slip as proof that one was entitled to claim as an employee.
Of course, the solution that is now being sought is much better, simply to do away with one of the taxes that have been painstakingly devised and increased over the years. It's just a pity that the stationaries are now grumbling because they have a supply obligation and are supposed to offer the still expensively purchased fuel at a lower price from 1 June.
To prevent this, prices are simply being increased by a factor so that people will continue to fill up regularly at the beginning of June and not wait for the announced reduction to avoid queues. Only people who are sure of their source of income can be that clever.
The only question is how it can be, with all the whining about having to sell off the expensively purchased fuel in the tanks first, that the prices at the pumps fluctuate several times a day ... so has it been the case in the past that deliveries came several times a day in invisible tankers that the dimwitted consumer overlooked and therefore could not wait for the stationary to pay the delivery driver to see if it was getting cheaper. Or could it be that the tax is calculated according to the date of sale and has as much to do with the purchase of mineral oil as a fish has to do with riding a bicycle?
The best thing to do is to follow the instructions from 2020: stay at home (in the Free State of Bavaria: at home). Then you won't even have to decide whether to take the train or drive a car. But of course it's nice when politicians tell us that you can use it to get to know Germany instead of travelling somewhere self-determined by plane or car, because the majority of the population does nothing all day but make travel plans, how to increase CO2 emissions as irresponsibly as possible instead of thinking about your livelihood or how stupid it is to have to drive because neither carpooling nor bus and train would come close to saving money or time that you give to your employer. After all, the statement proves that politicians are more concerned with our leisure time than with our daily worries.
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