Dedicated possibly to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I never actually got round to reading "Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire", though the title always appealed to me. Written towards the end of his life when everything was falling apart. I both sympathise and empathise.
A trip round Frankfurt (accompanied by some flights of fancy).
Let's start with the Occupy movement. Occupy Frankfurt's campsite was cleared by the police in August, though their leaders were talking of moving elsewhere. Not sure if elsewhere happened. One Conservative politician described it as a nuisance, an eyesore and a disincentive to people to come to Frankfurt (the business types I assume he meant).
Surprised he even noticed. Occasionally you would stay on the number 11 tram and go to Willi-Brandt-Platz rather than getting off at Hauptbahnhof, otherwise you would hardly have known it was there. Ask one of the protesters what was going on -
Me: What are you doing here?
Protester: Protesting. Capitalism stinks!
Me: I agree - capitalism stinks, but how is this going to change anything and what do we put in its place?
No real answer apart from some mumbo-jumbo about symbolic gestures. As a pragmatist I do not quite get that.
Maybe we should try Communism, but again they did in the Eastern part of the country and it was not exactly a raving success story. Maybe though .... Think of the work creation possibilities (well the Ossies are always complaining about the high unemployment, even with one of their own running the whole country!). Building barbed wire fencing, maybe a wall for graffiti artists in Berlin, gun turrets and windows for people employed to try real live target shooting.
No I don't think so, on second thoughts.
Read 'tother week incidentally in some fairly serious magazine like Spiegel or Stern that there are problems developing in the East as large numbers of qualified young women are heading West to find careers, and their not so intelligent male counterparts are staying put, causing a large male-female imbalance with all the problems therewith associated (maybe they need to consult the Chinese who have a similar problem).
Anyway back to Frankfurt. On to the U-Bahn, off to Bockenheimer Warte. Walk past the university library outside where the old bearded guy in the old raincoat is still living in his cardboard box (wonder which faculty he is in?). 2 hours at my favourite Internet place later (one day I will be able to afford the €188 for Microsoft Word plus licence and then I can work at home, my wife would love that ....), then back to the U-Bahn on 'tother side of the road.
Stand on the escalator and stare at the sticker that has been staring back at me for the past 7 months. "Let's Crack Capitalism". Written not in German, but in English, the language of the corporatocracy (that's a good start?).
This was about the Blockupy protests at the end of March this year. Bring the banks to a halt, show them what's what usw. Brilliant idea. 3 days of protests, sitting down blocking access to the financial sector. The first day, a Thursday, was a public holiday, so nobody was working. The Friday was a virtual holiday as people took a long weekend. And finally it was the weekend and whoever heard of banks being open at the weekend?
As the financial district is next to the shopping area though they did get in the way of the shopping crowd. Well as Rossmann, Kaufhof usw are also a contributory part of capitalism, I suppose .... And as future US President Romney believes in running countries as a business, maybe the example of Schlecker (major rivals of Rossmann and DM in the cosmetics retail business and biggest business crash of the past two years in Germany) should be borne in mind. "Let Schlecker go bankrupt!". They did, hundreds of people lost their jobs. Next!
Anyway 7 months later the sticker is still there, and so is Capitalism, and it still stinks, and it is not going away any time soon ....
Change on to the S-Bahn at Hauptbahnhof and go home.
Finally got all papers ready for my passport renewal. Not that I really want the same passport as the people in the UK who support the likes of the BNP and the UKIP/EXP.
In fact not that I really want a passport at all thinking about it - my German permanent residence card will get me round the Schengen zone if needed. But as my wife has insisted that I must visit her family in Thailand next month, and I do not like annoying her .... Maybe I should instead find some 15-year-old girl and cart her off to Bordeaux ("love" not "lust" of course, she would return to her parents as pure as the virgin snow. We could buy some of that stuff that narrows or reseals that part of the female anatomy after they have "misbehaved", nudge, nudge, wink, wink - apparently it is doing great business in parts of the Muslim world!).
Anyway just got around to the important bit of sending it off when I suddenly remembered the fairly insignificant point about them wanting money for this. €65 in 2002, now €195 (including forced, no-choice courier charges for returning it). Security is the reason for the sharp rise in price and the fact that you cannot get these locally in the country in which you are based any more.
Their security, not mine! Rip-off! My wife renewed her passport last time at the Thai Consulate-General in Frankfurt and for nothing like that cost. Wonder where the Thai concept of "security" has gone?!
Get to the Internet automatic form to fill out and arrange the bank credit transfer to pay this exorbitant sum. Bank credit transfer? Well the British Embassy / Consulates must have banking access somewhere in Germany, right? I mean they are based here and it is not 1940 any more?
Clearly visible on the form is one fact - payment must be by Visa or Mastercard! Visa and Mastercard are massive examples of the corporatocracy at work. But you cannot get a passport without using them? Are governments giving into the corporatocracy so much that something as significant as a passport is subject to their demands? Huh????
And if you live in a country like Germany where you can actually live without Visa and Mastercard? I have happily lived without them for 12 years. They are a rip-off extraordinaire. APRs at 7 times the rate of inflation, annual fees for what, and never complain to their service desk - they get really uppity!
Spent some time on a 0900 call (at €1.75 a minute - yet another rip-off) trying to sort it out. The matter has been escalated to the CG in Düsseldorf, but I am not expecting much joy. It sounds like the corporatocracy has already won this argument and the UK government is happy to comply with this.
Well I did not really want to go anyway. And my wife is not the same nationality, so she cannot exactly argue with them.
The question remains though what else is left to sell to them. The air we breathe maybe? Yes, Capitalism stinks. Now will someone please come up with a practical alternative?
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