#211: Digital Bürgeramt?, mandatory bike helmets, Görli security summit
#211: Digital Bürgeramt?, mandatory bike helmets, Görli security summit
Also the M10 goodness is spreading
Hey 20 Percent!
My father loves the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I didn’t understand it until it was in my 20s but I thought of it the other day when I went to pay for a beer with my visa card.
We’ve all spent so many years whining that we’d like more payment opportunities (ergo: credit/debit cards as well as cash). Now that we’ve gotten them, the hospitality industry has trumped us — they present us with a payment screen obviously programmed for the US and demanding to know if we’d like to leave a 20, 25 or even 30 percent tip.
Even worse, we’re greeted with a German stare while we decide whether to be magnanimous or stingy. Judgy much?
I’ve had to toughen up and just stare back while entering a 10 percent tip (or none if all they did was throw a few Brötchen in a bag). Don’t strong employment laws protect workers here and prohibit employers from relying on customers to pay their workforce (unlike the moronic tipping culture in the US)?
I would almost go back to cash but nothing makes me roll my eyes quicker than a hand-written sign that says: keine Karte/nur Bargeld.
So we’ve gotten more options but also a new level of awkwardness. Touché German businesses. Touché.
Have a good cash-or-card weekend!
Andrew
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Helmets instead of bike paths
New Berlin traffic minister Manja Schreiner (CDU) isn’t a fan of any kind of path (she prefers roads and parking spots) but finally had a suggestion to make riding a bike in Berlin safer: Mandatory helmets. She apparently told news agency dpa of her big idea, which is supported by science, but the German bike club — the ADFC — said she’s just trying to distract from her misguided attempt to halt construction on bike paths. That may not be all she’s trying to distract from: German plagiarism zealots early this month said the conservative politician lifted significant parts of her doctoral thesis from other sources, according to Der Spiegel. Such accusations are a powerful weapon in German politics: rich-boy politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) was forced to resign as German defense minister in 2011 after a university stripped him of his doctorate because of word theft and, closer to home, Franziska Giffey (SPD) stepped down as federal education minister in 2021 after she was accused of copypasting her doctoral thesis. She accepted a consolation prize as a mayor of Berlin.
Bürgeramts of past, present and future
If the path to hell is paved with good intentions then it only stands to reason that the path out of hell is also paved with those same intentions (it’s the same path, right?): The Bürgeramt of the future is currently being tested in Kreuzberg and it sounds more like the Bürgeramt of what should have been 2021. Free wifi and charging stations coupled with check-in terminals so Beamte know who’s actually present and ready for their appointment. Some services can also apparently be completed using the terminal without an appointment but it’s vague what those services are. The Bürgeramt of the future is Berlin’s training Bürgeramt at Schlesische Straße 27, so new employees learn from the beginning how to be condescending while answering questions about how to use the new terminals. Private to Berlin bureaucrats: The real Bürgeramt of the future is online, not in Schlesische Straße.
Even pre-cops can be corrupt
And sometimes my father’s favorite saying is just true: A trainee Berlin police officer lost his spot in the academy this week after having the good intention of smuggling his friend into the backstage of German rapper Shindy’s gig Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Arena, according to T-Online. The would-be cop had already blagged his way into the backstage by flashing his Polizei credentials but security personnel caught on to his ruse when he tried to get his buddy in by claiming he was a cop too. I’m listening to Shindy for the first time while I type this and … bro, it wasn’t worth your police career.
Görli and Leopoldplatz security summit
Mayor Kai Wegner is today hosting a security summit on the problems with Görlitzer Park and Leopoldplatz specifically and Berlin generally. The results will most certainly lead to unintended consequences (ergo, hell), if anything at all. Every political party has its own proposals for how to deal with the situation but probably the only real result will be a stronger police presence. Up for debate are fences, closing hours and video monitoring of parks as well as more money for battling poverty and addiction. We’ll let you know Tuesday what the city-state’s mucky mucks decide.
Factoid
The number of drug-related deaths climbed to 230 in Berlin last year from 223 in 2021, according to Berliner Woche. The figures — the result of a parliamentary enquiry — show the most deaths were in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, where the number nearly doubled to 41 in 2023 from 24 a year earlier.
Indeed, 'the science' is correct that, if you find yourself being hit by a car, wearing a bicycle helmet is better than not (wearing a motorbike helmet is even better than that, and being wrapped in two tons of German steel and reinforced glass is best of all, of course). Trying instead to make it less likely you are hit by a car in the first place is the kind of simplistic, poor person coddling, dependency-inducing, touchy-feely, green nonsense that if anyone gives me a passport, I'll vote for every opportunity I get.
what about 'm10 goodness'?