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Germany

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What is about the Krauts?  Are they really that much cleverer than us Brits?  Where did we go wrong?  Back in the day, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were the clever dicks, they rowed over from Germany, took over Britannia and made it the most powerful nation on earth  The Goths, Vandals, Burgundians and other Germanic tribes had to settle for Middle Europe.  We thrashed them in 2 consecutive world wars, reducing them to abject poverty twice in one century.  I remember, as a 13 year old in Germany in 1957, seeing a farmer hitch a plough to his missus so that they could plough a field to get in a crop of potatoes.   Not any more.

Now they are one of the world’s most powerful economies and they have a government that actually behaves like it hasn’t completely lost its marbles, unlike our Anglo-Saxon regimes.  Where did they go right?

Luckily for them, after our victory in World War 2 we imposed a constitution on them to make sure that they had a truly democratic political system, to make sure that Germany could never again be taken over by a genocidal dictatorship that would launch wars of aggression (you know, like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan).   Then they developed an economic system that relies on a lot of small to medium enterprises (the ‘Mittelstand’) instead of favouring the huge inefficient corporations that Americans and Brits subsidise so they become too big to fail.  

Proportional representation means people can vote for the party they really want, not be faced with the Tweedledum and Tweedledee choices of us Brits.  The Green Party has 44 seats in the German Parliament,  while in the UK Caroline Lucas, an outstanding politician, struggles along with the only Green seat in the UK Parliament. When Fukushima blew up Germany sensibly committed to closing down nuclear power.  They already lead Europe in solar power, with nearly half the total installed capacity.  Compare Britain, where the Tories reacted to Fukushima by giving huge subsidies, guaranteeing double the cost of conventional electricity, to companies from communist China and socialist France to build nuclear power stations on the flood plains of the Bristol Channel!  The last tsunami in the Bristol Channel was in 1607 – it’s the worst place imaginable to build a nuclear power station. 

The Germans love organic food –they consume twice as much organic food per person as Brits or Americans.  In 2008, when the market for organic food in the UK slumped, it just kept on rising in Germany.   One factor main was that the government in the UK has been consistently unsupportive towards organic food.  You’d never get an Owen Paterson in Germany – singing from the Monsanto hymn sheet and doing the minimum required by the EU to support organic farmers.  The German government says organic farming is ‘economically strong, eco-friendly and sustainable.”  If Owen Paterson said something like that the NFU would have his guts for garters – they are insanely jealous of the handouts they get from us taxpayers (a typical 2000 acre farmer in Suffolk gets £500 a day in income support).   The Germans dedicate around £16 million a year to research into improving organic productivity and educating consumers about organic food and farming. The UK has never supported a bid for EU funding to promote organic food. The Organic Trade Board took the initiative to apply for the funding that paid for the  “Why I Love Organic” campaign.  Biofach every February in Nuremberg brings together the global organic industry in a massively impressive trade show.

The Germans also don’t like wasting money on war and toys for generals and admirals.  They only spend 1.4% of their GDP on military expenditure, compared to 2.5% in the UK and 4.4% in the USA.  The billions they save helps to support health, education, investment in industry and infrastructure and support for organic farming.   Their government debt as a percentage of GDP is 57%, compared to 83% in the UK.

Don’t get me wrong, the Germans drink too much beer and eat too many sausages – obesity is as big an issue there as it here.  Their sense of humour is, as Mark Twain observed, ‘no laughing matter.’  

But you have to salute them (keeping the elbow bent) for their common sense and commitment to sustainability.

 

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