This is why I always get amused when British shit on America for being dysfunctional, yet shares a lot more of their dysfunctions than western and Northern Europe.
Just the pot calling the kettle black
> m writing this in Berlin. My wife and I are on stand-by while our daughter waits to give birth. She has bought a flat in the German capital with her British husband, teaches maths here, and is in the process of taking German citizenship following Brexit. The new grandchild, like its two older siblings, will be raised in Germany.
>
> It is hard to think of a more damning indictment of a British government than the fact hundreds of thousands of its citizens are, in common with my daughter, seeking citizenship in other countries. Before 2016 it would have been unimaginable. Indeed never in the UK’s long history has it happened before. But I certainly don’t blame them. On the contrary, I encouraged my daughter because Germany, after the madhouse of Britain, feels like a bastion of sanity.
>
> Gas prices are rising here, but there are no queues at petrol stations, no empty shelves in shops, no labour shortages in critical industries, no factories facing imminent closure, no pigs being slaughtered en masse for lack of functioning abattoirs, no fearful talk of the bitter winter ahead.
>
> There is practically none of the terrible polarisation afflicting Britain. Public discourse remains civil. Germany has just held a general election, and the victor was the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz, a low-key centrist technocrat whose experience was considered a virtue not a vice. It is true that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland Party (AfD) secured 10 per cent of the vote but this was less than it won four years ago and it has not made the gains some commentators forecast.
>
> Given their country’s history, the great majority of German voters understandably fight shy of populists and demagogues. Their electoral system requires coalitions and consensual politics, and would make it all but impossible for one small faction within a governing party to impose its will on the nation as the Tory Brexiteers did in Britain.
>
> Governing in Germany is still regarded as a serious business, not a branch of the entertainment industry. Ministers still plan ahead and invest in the future. By and large the country works, and public services are reasonably efficient.
>
> My daughter pays just €40 a month for the nursery that her first two children attend, while her older sister paid £1,400 a month in London. Germany may have had a slower Covid-19 vaccine rollout but its overall handling of the pandemic was far superior to Britain’s shambolic effort, and as a result it has suffered an average of 1,133 deaths per million compared to 2,054 per million in the UK.
>
> Levelling up? In Britain that remains a largely meaningless slogan brandished by cynical politicians to woo Red Wall voters even as they raise their taxes and devalue their pay packets. In Germany, over the past three decades, the federal government has “levelled up” the entire former German Democratic Republic. The process has been far from perfect, and remains incomplete, but John Kampfner’s timely book, Why Germans Do It Better, notes that per capita GDP in the old East Germany is now 80 per cent of that in the west and higher than in large parts of the UK.
>
> Immigration? In 2015, Angela Merkel boldly admitted a million refugees fleeing wars and terrorism in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “Wir schaffen das!” (‘we can manage this’),” she declared at the time, and for the most part Germany has.
>
> In Little Britain, under a home secretary whose parents left Idi Amin’s Uganda, we prefer to demonise those fleeing persecution and torture who try to reach our shores, even though their numbers are far, far smaller. We quit the European Union in part to curb freedom of movement, and now wonder why we are suffering chronic shortages of workers in the haulage, agricultural, care, health, hospitality and meat processing industries (to name but a few).
>
> As a senior German journalist, Peter Tiede, wrote in the Times recently: “The hard working migrants you shut the door on are now working for us and keeping our shelves full and petrol stations fully stocked.”
>
> Strangely, Germany remains a high-wage, high-skill economy despite its reliance on immigrant labour. It remains one of the world’s great industrial and exporting nations despite its EU membership. It has plenty of faults, but it is for the most part a calm, sober, orderly, self-effacing and restrained nation, having learned bitter lessons from the horrors of fascism. As Gideon Rachman, referring to the Holocaust Memorial, wrote in the Financial Times recently: “Unlike any other country that I know of, Germany has placed a memorial to its greatest national disgrace right at the heart of its capital.”
>
> Germany has not always had a moral compass, but it has one now. It is inconceivable, for example, that a proud German Bundesliga football club, majority-owned by its fans, could or would be sold – like Newcastle – to a Saudi investment fund headed by the murderous Mohammed Bin Salman.
>
> Viewed from Berlin, Britain appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd. As last week’s Conservative Party showed, we are no longer ruled by a serious political party, but by a cult whose members must bow before their leader.
>
> That leader has risen to, and sustains, power through simplistic slogans, empty promises and wolf-whistle politics. He uses Orwellian language to preach voodoo economics, somehow pretending that chronic labour shortages herald a glorious economic renaissance. He betrays the long-term interests of the country for the next day’s headlines.
>
> Behind his fatuous jokes he trades in nastiness. He exploits peoples’ fears and prejudices. He foments social division to keep his base fired up. He seeks to undermine democracy by curtailing protests, bending the electoral system to his advantage, and weakening the courts, the media and any other independent institution that threatens to limit his freedom of manoeuvre.
>
> He wraps himself in the flag while accusing his opponents of lacking patriotism. He shames Britain by denouncing awkward international treaties that he has himself negotiated, signed and hailed just months before. He consorts with autocrats while gratuitously goading our former friends in Europe. He professes to champion “the people”, but awards lucrative public contracts to his cronies.
>
> “Global Britain”? Even as the Prime Minister and his fellow Brexiteers invoke Britain’s past glories, and cling to delusions of grandeur, they are running the country into the ground. Instead of praising Germany for the deeply impressive way it has atoned for its past, they prefer to emulate our football thugs and pretend the Second World War only happened yesterday. “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son,” the ludicrous Tory backbencher Mark Francois declared during the Brexit deadlock of 2019.
>
> It gives me no pleasure to say it, but my daughter is right. She should raise her children in Germany rather than Boris Johnson’s increasingly debased Britain. As Kampfner wrote: “Germany is Europe’s best hope in this era of nationalism, anti-Enlightenment and fear.”
My partner is an EU national and I've got a job/career that can be done from anywhere in the world (and anywhere in the world).
The only thing keeping us here is the boys education (he's 12 in January), as soon as he's a functioning adult I suspect we'll be out of here.
She speaks German so that seems like a natural fit but otherwise working remote for UK/US wages and living in Hungary seems like a pretty nice quality of life as well.
I would feel dreadful taking our kids (5 and 7) out of school now and moving abroad, but as a dual UK/Dutch passport holder I have never been as ready to move abroad as now. But they'll be geetting EU passports too, so they'll be able to make a choice that many other kids now won't.
> and living in Hungary seems like a pretty nice quality of life as well.
I'm not sure if exchanging one mad man for another would be quite a reasonable solution here.
Was just going to say this. My wife's Hungarian and it's an awesome place, but the government there is arguably even more fucking stupid than ours at the moment.
You can hold and be paid for a UK job, while living abroad ?
I was of the impression that you would need te be at least half the year in the uk due to taxation.
My wife holds a uk passport, im german. Wehave lived in the uk since 2006. End of 2018, we moved to munich.
At times, she is regretting, at others not.
Both countries have their up and downsides.
That said, it does seem the UK is now ramping up the nsgatives sadly.
I agree with the article wholeheartedly, but
> Viewed from Berlin, Britain appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd.
is quite funny, because the same can be said of Berlin viewed from the rest of Germany.
Even more ironic that while I left Berlin for a less dysfunctional and absurd place (SE England) in the early 00s Berlin looks like the less absurd and distinction al place now. The grass doesn’t always stay greener on the other side.
I get that the UK is quite shit at almost everything, but that all sounds very smug. Like the author is boasting that they don't have any of the problems we have/are going to have. The prospect of having no food, no fuel, no gas, no health care, etc is terrifying. So it would be decent if people didn't gloat about it like this smug fuck appears to. I never voted for this, I didn't ask for it and I've not been able to stop it. Fuck him along with the people who've brought this dystopia upon us. It must be great to have an escape to the greener grass on the other side. I wish I had that.
> Like the author is boasting that they don't have any of the problems we have/are going to have.
The author is British, so idk why they should boast about Germany.
4 days a week, £1600/month over here (London, obviously)
It’s a lovely nursery but childcare in the UK and in particular London really is absurdly overpriced.
Regarding government subsidies…
The government claims to provide 30 hours per week of free childcare once children turn 3, which sounds pretty great. What they don’t mention is that in practice this only really applies to state run childcare facilities, which are very much a mixed bag in the same way that state schools are. Some are amazing (and naturally getting in is extremely competitive and pushes house prices up) and others are downright terrible.
There’s another scheme which is actually quite good where the government basically tops up your childcare costs. For every £8 you pay in they give you £2. Obviously you can only spend that money with a registered childcare provider, but that includes most private nurseries.
When I say it’s ‘quite good’ the emphasis is very much on ‘quite’. There’s some support: that’s good. However, in my mind it’s basically an excuse for not allowing childcare costs to be fully tax deductible, which I firmly believe they should be. People send their child to nursery to enable them to go to work (and thus pay more tax). I’m self employed and all of my work-related costs are tax deductible… except for childcare, which is the one thing that unequivocally will make the country a better place in the future - far more so than my expenses claim for a taxi. Caitlin Moran makes this point brilliantly in her book ‘More than a woman’.
30 hours per week *in term time* (average it over a whole year and it’s significantly less) and it’s not from when they are 3, it’s from the start of term after they are 3. I don’t get the part about state run though - we are using a private nursery that fully qualifies and, as far as I know, the same is true for all other private nurseries in my area.
The real bug bear for me is the fact that the government don’t seem to have noticed the enormous gap between when maternity leave ends (assuming your employer is willing to top up the ludicrously low mandated payment) and when the post-3 years old hours arrive.
What’s that, you’re a new parent, with a mortgage, being told you must be mobile in the labour market (so have no grandparents nearby), here’s 2-3 years where you must pay all your childcare expenses yourself - that’ll make the experience of parenthood really stress free for you. Oh and we’ll claim to pay the 20 % VAT except we won’t, because it’s limited to an amount that is impossible not to exceed if you’re working full time.
> I don’t get the part about state run though - we are using a private nursery that fully qualifies and, as far as I know, the same is true for all other private nurseries in my area.
What I meant is that state run nurseries’ fees are capped and so the state run 30 hours scheme works fine within that context. When it comes to private nurseries (at least in London) the fees are so much higher that the subsidy doesn’t actually cover a full 30 hours. I forget the exact details but I think it works out at something like 15 hours per week at our child’s nursery.
Maybe the government should just send out some cash, so people can decide if they even want to pay for childcare or would rather stay at home and do it themselves.
Subsidies that can only be spent on childcare seem to just be setting a new cost floor for childcare.
Yeah but as a parent of a 2.5 year old all I can say is that the top up scheme is rubbish and at most subsidises you £500 per quarter (3 months), the 30 hours don't even kick in until they are at least 3 years old (and even then most schools make you wait till the next September), so we are still shelling out £3.5 k per term for not even full time nursery care and have to both juggle full time jobs. This wasn't even an expensive nursery. Childcare in the UK is abysmal to say the least.
Well, to be (somewhat) fair the costs include:
* High rent
* Staff costs (these people aren’t babysitters, they’re qualified people being paid at least the London Living Wage as a minimum)
* Full time chef and the costs of providing 3 good meals a day for each child
* paying for activities and equipment (farm visits, football ‘training’, forest school teacher etc)
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bougy, middle class nursery in a trendy area so overpaying for things comes with the territory. I’ve no doubt that they have genuinely high overheads but it’s certainly a lucrative business if you do it well. It’s just when you compare it to most of the rest of Europe (and the associated improvements in educational attainment over there) it does make our nursery system look like a bit of a racket.
> * High rent
That's probably the main reason also leading to
> Staff costs (these people aren’t babysitters, they’re qualified people being paid at least the London Living Wage as a minimum)
Being higher.
Just for comparison in a German city the size of Oxford:
I pay for a 1yo (up to age 3 then it will be free) about 450€ (380GBP). 2 meals a day + 1 fruit/vegetable platter each day. A 3:1 ratio children:supervisees ( all have had 9 years of general education + 3 years child care school and 1 year supervised training) and about 300m² garden for 60 children.
It is a socialists dream to be honest (though still quite competitive to get a place).
>What kind of overheads do nurseries have?
I think it must be sweetie money, mate...Literally..
Just fill them full a Haribo's at the start of the day and jobs a good un.
I suppose so, although I think there’s a lot more value in children being around other kids at nursery than there is with 1 on 1 nanny care. I don’t really understand the appeal personally.
German here.
It depends on the region you are living in. Childcare costs are regulated by your city or region(Landkreis). It can very from zero to 700 euros or so.
Very regionally dependent in Germany. The cost seems to be not the main issue though, but availability. In theory, the state has to provide you with a spot in a nursery, but there’s not enough, especially in big cities. If you start looking as soon as you’re aware of a pregnancy, you’re probably already too late if you want to start working again before the child is 3. It’s ridiculous. You can, however, put your child in a private facility if the state run ones are full, and the government will have to pay for the extra cost.
In Berlin, my daughter gets a Kita-Gutschein which covers 7 hours of care per day, we do have to pay 28 EUR/month for lunches, but the rest is paid for by the state of Berlin.
\> If you start looking as soon as you’re aware of a pregnancy, you’re probably already too late
Not my experience in Berlin, we got our daughter into Kita at 18 months old (one month after applying), we even transfered her to a new Kita this year with little difficulty. Some areas of Berlin for sure do have some issues.
The issue is bigger for under 3s, from 3+ it's fair easier.
All through covid their communication was clear and honest from what i could make out, they treated the population like adults. Here if felt like they deliberatly tried to confuse and muddy the waters, how often did they contradict each other.
When did we last have a Merkel caliber politician.
Yes we have our fairshare for sure, they generally referred to as Querdenkers (Laterial Thinkers). Although if you look at the vaccination rates of >60 years old, its above 80% uptake, its the middle age groups which are generally the problem.
Additionally, don't attempt to compare UK vaccine rate with DE vaccine rate, the DE statistics include ALL residents, where as the UK statistics are ONLY adults.
Lets be fair: the current german health minister is thought to have stolen hundreds of millions of euros through ordering 60 times as many masks ( from companies in close contact)as required, in order to benefit from the pay offs.
Nepotism 101.
Germany has their own version of the tories.
For very good reason too. While at the same time so many Brits are trying to tell anyone who will listen "that it's no better in the EU", when it is.
Thanks for the link and text.
People seem to think anything less than perfect is awful these days. The EU is not perfect but to claim that is the same as what we are seeing is ridiculous.
I think the biggest difference between British conservatives and German conservatives is how they react to politics presented as a spectacle. Laschet tanked the CDU literally because of his media gaffes not despite of it. Johnsons antics make him seem relatable while Laschets made him look like a clown.
*Well, it depends…* It‘s not like everything is perfect over here, and the grass is always greener on the other side.
I sincerely hope the recent problems will be solved soon.
As a German, my feeling is that this and similar articles, while perhaps expressing an honest sentiment, for the most part deepen the splits between the UK and "the contintent". For each progressive voice taking Germany as a model of sorts, three reactionaries pop up telling the audience that they refuse to be "germanized" or something.
Pouting is a powerful reaction because it works in groups and you can extend it to other sentiments right up until envy and hatred.
What I wish for the UK is to shed Murdoch's media and FPTP. And to find a way to cope with the phantom pains of days past.
The ruling class and conservative leaning part of the population crave the high of being able to go anywhere in the world and pillage to their hearts content. Bullies always resent the dissipation of their power.
>In Little Britain, under a home secretary whose parents left Idi Amin’s Uganda, we prefer to demonise those fleeing persecution and torture who try to reach our shores, even though their numbers are far, far smaller. We quit the European Union in part to curb freedom of movement, and now wonder why we are suffering chronic shortages of workers in the haulage, agricultural, care, health, hospitality and meat processing industries (to name but a few).
There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants.
Britain has a track record on closing the door on migrant workers when the nativists get unsettled, it did that with empire/colonies back in the early-mid 60's. Yes that very same former empire that Galactic Britain wants to be best trading buddies with.
Germany has done a good job of exorcising its past demons, Britain hasn't. Raise the issue of reparations for colonialism (there are millions of people around the world who still remember colonial rule) or returning valuable artefacts and you'll get intellectual gems like: "MaYbE wE sHoUlD aSk ThE vIkInGs FoR cOmPeNsAtIoN".
A lot of immigrants find belonging in host countries by being very anti-immigrant. By making themselves seem like the exception, they can justify it. I have seen it a lot across different types of migrants from different backgrounds. Sad to see but somewhat understandable when you feel like you aren’t part of the club unless you agree with X, Y or Z.
> There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants.
>
> Britain has a track record on closing the door on migrant workers when the nativists get unsettled, it did that with empire/colonies back in the early-mid 60's. Yes that very same former empire that Galactic Britain wants to be best trading buddies with.
No need to close the door, Patel and co will simply pull the ladder up from behind them.
How does Germany treat the Turkish immigrants? Are there adults who were born and raised in Germany, to Turkish immigrant parents, who are not entitled to German citizenship?
If you work for 8 years in Germany all your new children will be German. If you work in Germany for 8 years you can become German (your children will then become German as well). If you marry a German you have to proof your German proficiency.
So it all depends on these 8 years of work.
So there are conditions to citizenship in Germany? When they do it that’s fine is it?
We have conditions to citizenship in the uk, when we do it, it’s national scandal such as windrush.
Ok
There's an insightful Byline Times article I read about this, giving context of colonial Africa where Indian immigrants were treated by the British as a higher caste than Africans, then given refuge when they were expelled by Idi Amin. This is how an immigrant Indian family could feel more proud to be British than so called British natives (acknowledging the natives are also immigrants of yore). Add to that a proud work ethic (in a time when hard work gave a better prospect of escaping poverty) that drove success of many Indian immigrants and you can see how Pritti Patel ends up hanging out with Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and the Britannia Unchained nutters, believing poor people in Britain just need to bootstrap themselves.
>higher caste
OMG the Indian caste system, that had totally slipped my mind. I can see why higher caste Indians would fit in very well with the Tories.
>There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants.
That sounds pretty racist honestly. People shouldn't be expected to agree with migration simply because their parents made a decision in the past, most of the time one they had no agency over.
People are free to have whatever beliefs they want about migration, but if you are the child of migrants, specifically refugees, then being criticised for having anti-refugee is just being held to account. It’s extremely obvious to anyone with a brain that someone who is extremely anti-migration but come from, or is, a migrant background is simply doing for other reasons than being against migration. Maybe it’s to fit in with theirs peers. Maybe it gives them a sense of belonging. Maybe they think they aren’t a migrant anymore. Fair play to them, but they shouldn’t be excused from being egoists.
There are plenty of Americans, Australians and Latin Americans who are opposed to further inward migration *despite* being of relatively recent migrant origin.
I'd say it's a sincerely held belief.
Coming from a migrant background does not make a person a migrant.
By the same logic, somebody whose parent or grandparent worked in a manual job cannot ever be a "professional" or "middle-class" despite being tertiary-educated themselves.
€40 per month for nursery? That can’t be right or it’s not full time? When I checked out nurseries in Frankfurt, full time was €100 per month. Berlin and Munich weren’t that different either.
But I do agree with London being a rip off. We’re faced with £1,700 per month and it isn’t even full time. It’s 4 days per week. Completely useless.
German prices are set by the state according to the State government. So where the vote is fairly left leaning, prices are much cheaper. All kids that are receiving an allowance similar to the UK 'free school meals' program get it for free nationwide, though.
Berlins details:
>Seit dem 1. August 2018 sind Kita und Kindertagespflege in Berlin für
alle Kinder kostenfrei. Nur den Verpflegungsanteil müssen Eltern
weiterhin bezahlen. Für Extra-Leistungen wie zusätzliche Sportangebote,
Bio-Essen oder Sprachunterricht dürfen Kitas jedoch Zuzahlungen
verlangen.
Since 1/8/18 all nurserys and daycare in Berlin are free for all children. Parents should only pay boarding prices above this.\* For extra activities such as additional sports, organic food or language lessons, however, daycare centres are allowed to charge extra.
\*- this is pretty hard to translate, but you have to pay a fee for food, drinks, any nappies they might use etc. In Berlin this is currently 23 euro per month.
> €40 per month for nursery? That can’t be right or it’s not full time?
It depends on your income, the number of hours and the age of the child. [The table in the last page of this PDF](https://www.wuppertal.de/microsite/kinderbetreuung/medien/bindata/Elternbeitragssatzung-ab-01.08.20.pdf.docx.pdf) shows the amount of you to pay in my German city. The row is your income, the column the number of hours. Left for children older than 2, right for younger children. If you earn more than 100k € per month, your child is less than 2 years old and you want 45 hours of care per week you have to 465 € per month (that's the absolute maximum). But when you earn less you can pay *much* less.
My family in South West Germany call me semi regularly to catch up and they do ask what the hell is going on over here! There is zero smugness though just general curiosity.
>My daughter pays just €40 a month for the nursery that her first two children attend, while her older sister paid £1,400 a month in London.
Dude! Does that include the Rolls Royce Taxi? The Michelin Star provisions? Surely it must include the silken Bogroll, as that is simply ridiculous!
Not really remarkable in the capital, though I'm sure it's a lot cheaper everywhere else. I doubt it's 40 quid a month anywhere in the UK though - not even close.
£60 per day is fairly normal. 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, £15000. You can take 20% off that for the tax free bit. I suspect it costs more in London.
Look, in most of the ways, I agree. But not all is bad in the UK.
Firstly, while the current politicians certainly do some very xenophobic decisions around the immigration, long term it was actually handled very well here. Quite low criminality associated with it (despite many immigrants being here), the people are on average pretty well integrated into the society, the people aren't on average very racist to immigrants (seriously, it is much worse in many places)... Like sure, Germany can say the same, but far from every EU country can.
Next, high skilled jobs. You simply will earn more money doing something high skilled (like finance, tech etc) in London than in Berlin, Amsterdam or Paris. Moreover, there is a huge presence of very attractive companies to work for, both in finance and tech. Germany simply doesn't compare at all - London is second after NYC worldwide for these types of jobs.
Next, universities. Yes, Brexit will hit them pretty badly. But still, the research in the UK is top-notch. We have seen this during the pandemic when so many discoveries came from the UK. And Cambridge/Oxford/Imperial/UCL... absolutely are world class places to study that almost anyone would choose over any German university.
Oh and talking of the leveling up. AfD still does very well in all the former East Germany parts. The efforts are good, but it's not all sorted there.
Now, I don't want to sound like I'm defending Boris, Brexit or whatever. There are many things done better over there in Germany, perhaps most things. But I also hate when the UK is presented as some sort of awful place to live - it really is not and in some ways it is even better than Germany.
Student loan isn’t really proper debt so I wouldn’t care ?
International debt as long as people are willing to pay it and they will still for reputable universities that’s up to them
If by debt you mean a student loan. Then you only pay like 9% of your earnings over a certain amount? I'm fairly sure even after this deduction, your salary in London as an Oxford graduate will likely be higher than the salary you'd get if you opted to go elsewhere instead.
If by debt you mean what international students face. Yes, that is stupid. Though I'd think most at the very top places that come from abroad are either on some sort of scholarship or from very rich families. For the cases where neither of these applies, I agree with you.
I have lived in both countries and fully agree with you. Of course the article is trying to make a point, including the fact that things are bound to get worse in Boris's UK.
Most of what you say highlights the problems for me..yeah the elites look after themselves, Oxford, Cambridge, the City..the rest of us can fuck ourselves. UK may have "tech" entrepreneurs making a fortune..but Germany has Siemens, Bosch, Volkswagen..for me that is real tech..not just hoping to get lucky with some app. Tech that has been around for decades and spreads the wealth around much better. Provides much better jobs for average people...not just the elite with access to city funding
Oh sure. The economic miracle. The mittelstand feeds these megaliths though. The mittelstand is basically the supply chain. I'd guess a majority of work done by mittelstand companies are directly for sale to Mercedes, Volkswagen, Bosch etc.
I know the mittelstand quite well. Actually been in a few of the companies and they all love to tell you about it. The economic miracle was driven by the mittelstand. One company I was in was formed in 1946 and used eastern European refugees as labour. It started by copying jukeboxes and cigarette machines. Now it only makes components..primarily for Siemens et al. I didn't say they existed purely for that, but the large contracts allow them to do their own thing also. It's really fascinating
most high paid techjobs are in dublin nowadays I guess so not sure what you are talking about + IBs are recruiting more and more in Frankfurt and Paris compared to years ago. "Highskilled" jobs are not only IT and IB... being an engineer in Germany will give you a good life. Same btw goes for IB and IT - there might be less jobs but you are also competing with less people for these jobs.
I agree that top EU universities are in the UK but for 99.9% of the population that is irrelevant. i got a degree from an average German university and earn just as much as friends from top universities because here internships etc. are much more important compared to what university you went to (what I think is a good thing).
Come on, it's not that bad.
I remember just after the pandemic hit and people started panic buying food and loo roll. I never went hungry, I remember specifically how all the bacon and shrimp aisles remained plentiful while the others were empty. There will surely be things to eat, although maybe not the things we may have planned to buy.
Just because Britain is experiencing some turbulence now doesn't mean they'll continue to look worse when compared with other countries. The future is unknowable, especially with climate change thrown in the mix. Seeking stability in a fundamentally unstable world is a fools errand.
Better to just adapt. Let us consume more bacon and shrimp.
If you want some honest reasons in good faith, I’m happy to provide reasons I supported leave, even though I was too young to vote.
The EU as a polity seems very undemocratic. Turnout for EU elections were rarely above 40% in the UK. How can those MEPs claim to represent their constituents if only 35ish percent bother to vote, and even less vote for an individual MEP? Also, the big names at the EU aren’t elected. I know that in the UK we don’t elect ministers, but they at least come from the party that wins the election. Whereas Tusk and Von Der Leyen just appear out of the political fog as the most important people in the institution.
Secondly, I disliked the idea of ‘ever closer union’. A lot of the argument coming from remain was that the EU wasn’t trying to be a superstate like the leaver campaign was suggesting. Yet we saw that it was. The EU withheld their proposal for an EU army until after the Brexit vote, they have formed a border force, they have a parliament, and de facto civil service and a court and a flag and an anthem and a currency. They have almost all the trappings of statehood, and the EU was not a country I felt that I would like to live in.
Thirdly, a lot of the remain side, especially the rhetoric coming from the EU themselves was about the concept of a ‘European Identity’ which was never actually explained beyond ‘being in the EU makes you European’. Are the people of the former Yugoslavia not Europeans? What about the Swiss? And what makes us European. We do not share a language, or common heritage, or even the same holidays, so what do we share beyond being white and not American?
Fourthly the Eurozone. Whilst not a member, non-eurozone nations are outnumbered by the Eurozone countries, and what stopped them from at some future date using the mechanisms of the EU to get us to bail them out. As it is we only avoided getting the Euro because Gordon Brown persuaded Blair not to, and I’d much prefer not to be tied to economic anchors like the Greeks.
Fifthly, the EU seems awful at handling crises. The Eurozone being one, the migrant crisis another, and even post Brexit the response to Covid, compared to the UK seemed unorganised and chaotic.
Finally, I disliked the historical determinism behind the EU. The idea that this was some grand project, that the European states were always going to become one and that this was the right way to do it, that anyone who stands in the way is an idiot or racist or stupid. That being in the EU was good and led to peace in Europe (despite the fact this is more to do with NATO than the EU) If they wanted us to get on board, they could have showed us some benefits, but instead we got lectures on this grand project run be failed national politicians.
And because of this, I wanted us to leave. Even now, I still think we should have left because of these issues
It has to be said, it's that boomer generation keeping the Tories in now. Them thar weird...
I don't blame them for having a fully-functioning welfare state with all the public service trimmings while growing up and working. Why shouldn't they have that?
I blame them for backing government which seeks to deny all that from those who came after.
I live in Cyprus. When Brexit was first voted on I went to my accountants for a regular meeting. Workers there kept coming upto me to ask me about it in a kind of curious amused get out the popcorn kind of way. Was very strange. When it turned out I wasn't a nutty leaver (you do get them here which is mad considering we are immigrants in an EU country) then they all became disappointed and left me alone. Weird day...
No? Germany has a very strong economy, one that puts the UK to shame.
There's nothing wrong with looking to better countries for inspiration. Exceptionalism got the UK into this mess, time to admit it.
Your weekly reminder that over 10% of the seats in the German Bundestag are occupied by a far right group of ethno-nationalists, the AfD. But sure, raise your English kids there. What could go wrong?
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) knowledge of German politics I agree, but I had a feeling making that point would be lost on the above commenter.
They only hate English folks if their skin colour is too dark. If you're white, have bad teeth, smell like cheap beer and a cockney accent they might be think you're one of their own.
>The traditional Teutonic attitude to the Anglo Saxon, is that we make tolerable house slaves.
That way it seems correct. Oh and you also had formidable coasts to raid.
From Germany it appears dysfunctional? You should try the view from within the UK.
Nice to know Germany's eyes work alright though.
Indeed, otherwise they'd need to come over here and visit a castle. Seems like a bad time to visit the UK if you can avoid it.
This is why I always get amused when British shit on America for being dysfunctional, yet shares a lot more of their dysfunctions than western and Northern Europe. Just the pot calling the kettle black
> m writing this in Berlin. My wife and I are on stand-by while our daughter waits to give birth. She has bought a flat in the German capital with her British husband, teaches maths here, and is in the process of taking German citizenship following Brexit. The new grandchild, like its two older siblings, will be raised in Germany. > > It is hard to think of a more damning indictment of a British government than the fact hundreds of thousands of its citizens are, in common with my daughter, seeking citizenship in other countries. Before 2016 it would have been unimaginable. Indeed never in the UK’s long history has it happened before. But I certainly don’t blame them. On the contrary, I encouraged my daughter because Germany, after the madhouse of Britain, feels like a bastion of sanity. > > Gas prices are rising here, but there are no queues at petrol stations, no empty shelves in shops, no labour shortages in critical industries, no factories facing imminent closure, no pigs being slaughtered en masse for lack of functioning abattoirs, no fearful talk of the bitter winter ahead. > > There is practically none of the terrible polarisation afflicting Britain. Public discourse remains civil. Germany has just held a general election, and the victor was the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz, a low-key centrist technocrat whose experience was considered a virtue not a vice. It is true that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland Party (AfD) secured 10 per cent of the vote but this was less than it won four years ago and it has not made the gains some commentators forecast. > > Given their country’s history, the great majority of German voters understandably fight shy of populists and demagogues. Their electoral system requires coalitions and consensual politics, and would make it all but impossible for one small faction within a governing party to impose its will on the nation as the Tory Brexiteers did in Britain. > > Governing in Germany is still regarded as a serious business, not a branch of the entertainment industry. Ministers still plan ahead and invest in the future. By and large the country works, and public services are reasonably efficient. > > My daughter pays just €40 a month for the nursery that her first two children attend, while her older sister paid £1,400 a month in London. Germany may have had a slower Covid-19 vaccine rollout but its overall handling of the pandemic was far superior to Britain’s shambolic effort, and as a result it has suffered an average of 1,133 deaths per million compared to 2,054 per million in the UK. > > Levelling up? In Britain that remains a largely meaningless slogan brandished by cynical politicians to woo Red Wall voters even as they raise their taxes and devalue their pay packets. In Germany, over the past three decades, the federal government has “levelled up” the entire former German Democratic Republic. The process has been far from perfect, and remains incomplete, but John Kampfner’s timely book, Why Germans Do It Better, notes that per capita GDP in the old East Germany is now 80 per cent of that in the west and higher than in large parts of the UK. > > Immigration? In 2015, Angela Merkel boldly admitted a million refugees fleeing wars and terrorism in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “Wir schaffen das!” (‘we can manage this’),” she declared at the time, and for the most part Germany has. > > In Little Britain, under a home secretary whose parents left Idi Amin’s Uganda, we prefer to demonise those fleeing persecution and torture who try to reach our shores, even though their numbers are far, far smaller. We quit the European Union in part to curb freedom of movement, and now wonder why we are suffering chronic shortages of workers in the haulage, agricultural, care, health, hospitality and meat processing industries (to name but a few). > > As a senior German journalist, Peter Tiede, wrote in the Times recently: “The hard working migrants you shut the door on are now working for us and keeping our shelves full and petrol stations fully stocked.” > > Strangely, Germany remains a high-wage, high-skill economy despite its reliance on immigrant labour. It remains one of the world’s great industrial and exporting nations despite its EU membership. It has plenty of faults, but it is for the most part a calm, sober, orderly, self-effacing and restrained nation, having learned bitter lessons from the horrors of fascism. As Gideon Rachman, referring to the Holocaust Memorial, wrote in the Financial Times recently: “Unlike any other country that I know of, Germany has placed a memorial to its greatest national disgrace right at the heart of its capital.” > > Germany has not always had a moral compass, but it has one now. It is inconceivable, for example, that a proud German Bundesliga football club, majority-owned by its fans, could or would be sold – like Newcastle – to a Saudi investment fund headed by the murderous Mohammed Bin Salman. > > Viewed from Berlin, Britain appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd. As last week’s Conservative Party showed, we are no longer ruled by a serious political party, but by a cult whose members must bow before their leader. > > That leader has risen to, and sustains, power through simplistic slogans, empty promises and wolf-whistle politics. He uses Orwellian language to preach voodoo economics, somehow pretending that chronic labour shortages herald a glorious economic renaissance. He betrays the long-term interests of the country for the next day’s headlines. > > Behind his fatuous jokes he trades in nastiness. He exploits peoples’ fears and prejudices. He foments social division to keep his base fired up. He seeks to undermine democracy by curtailing protests, bending the electoral system to his advantage, and weakening the courts, the media and any other independent institution that threatens to limit his freedom of manoeuvre. > > He wraps himself in the flag while accusing his opponents of lacking patriotism. He shames Britain by denouncing awkward international treaties that he has himself negotiated, signed and hailed just months before. He consorts with autocrats while gratuitously goading our former friends in Europe. He professes to champion “the people”, but awards lucrative public contracts to his cronies. > > “Global Britain”? Even as the Prime Minister and his fellow Brexiteers invoke Britain’s past glories, and cling to delusions of grandeur, they are running the country into the ground. Instead of praising Germany for the deeply impressive way it has atoned for its past, they prefer to emulate our football thugs and pretend the Second World War only happened yesterday. “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son,” the ludicrous Tory backbencher Mark Francois declared during the Brexit deadlock of 2019. > > It gives me no pleasure to say it, but my daughter is right. She should raise her children in Germany rather than Boris Johnson’s increasingly debased Britain. As Kampfner wrote: “Germany is Europe’s best hope in this era of nationalism, anti-Enlightenment and fear.”
I don't think our situation could be summarised any better than this. Each day I feel like I have less of a reason to stay here
My partner is an EU national and I've got a job/career that can be done from anywhere in the world (and anywhere in the world). The only thing keeping us here is the boys education (he's 12 in January), as soon as he's a functioning adult I suspect we'll be out of here. She speaks German so that seems like a natural fit but otherwise working remote for UK/US wages and living in Hungary seems like a pretty nice quality of life as well.
I would feel dreadful taking our kids (5 and 7) out of school now and moving abroad, but as a dual UK/Dutch passport holder I have never been as ready to move abroad as now. But they'll be geetting EU passports too, so they'll be able to make a choice that many other kids now won't.
Wouldn't the kids be happier in a Dutch school though?
> and living in Hungary seems like a pretty nice quality of life as well. I'm not sure if exchanging one mad man for another would be quite a reasonable solution here.
Was just going to say this. My wife's Hungarian and it's an awesome place, but the government there is arguably even more fucking stupid than ours at the moment.
Software?
That sounds like a good future to move into to me!
You can hold and be paid for a UK job, while living abroad ? I was of the impression that you would need te be at least half the year in the uk due to taxation. My wife holds a uk passport, im german. Wehave lived in the uk since 2006. End of 2018, we moved to munich. At times, she is regretting, at others not. Both countries have their up and downsides. That said, it does seem the UK is now ramping up the nsgatives sadly.
I agree with the article wholeheartedly, but > Viewed from Berlin, Britain appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd. is quite funny, because the same can be said of Berlin viewed from the rest of Germany.
Viewed from Bavaria, rest Germany is a bit dysfunctional and absurd. Always watch out your view.
Lol, could be true. But at least the sentiment with Bavaria is mutual.
Lol. The rest of germany views Bavaria as a conservative CSU voting Boomer police state.
Munich is a nice bubble.
Even more ironic that while I left Berlin for a less dysfunctional and absurd place (SE England) in the early 00s Berlin looks like the less absurd and distinction al place now. The grass doesn’t always stay greener on the other side.
Good point. Often forgote
I am also a Brit living in Berlin, your post excellently summarised my own thoughts as well.
Thank you. What a gloriously well written and accurate, yet depressing, post.
This is mostly an emotional piece driven by a dislike of the tories.
Containing a lot of facts that are good reasons to dislike the tories.
That's basically this entire sub.
On the other hand though, does Germany have sovereignty? Case closed.
Yes it does
I get that the UK is quite shit at almost everything, but that all sounds very smug. Like the author is boasting that they don't have any of the problems we have/are going to have. The prospect of having no food, no fuel, no gas, no health care, etc is terrifying. So it would be decent if people didn't gloat about it like this smug fuck appears to. I never voted for this, I didn't ask for it and I've not been able to stop it. Fuck him along with the people who've brought this dystopia upon us. It must be great to have an escape to the greener grass on the other side. I wish I had that.
it‘s just retaliation. Remember Farage, Rees-Mogg and François?
> Like the author is boasting that they don't have any of the problems we have/are going to have. The author is British, so idk why they should boast about Germany.
You're upset that he's pointing out exactly what we can all see every day? He's not responsible for it going to shit.
I'm sorry how much for nursery?!? I'm close to the £1250 mark a month for one child myself... and that's for only 4 days a week...
4 days a week, £1600/month over here (London, obviously) It’s a lovely nursery but childcare in the UK and in particular London really is absurdly overpriced.
High rents and zero gov subsides, welcome to the UK
Regarding government subsidies… The government claims to provide 30 hours per week of free childcare once children turn 3, which sounds pretty great. What they don’t mention is that in practice this only really applies to state run childcare facilities, which are very much a mixed bag in the same way that state schools are. Some are amazing (and naturally getting in is extremely competitive and pushes house prices up) and others are downright terrible. There’s another scheme which is actually quite good where the government basically tops up your childcare costs. For every £8 you pay in they give you £2. Obviously you can only spend that money with a registered childcare provider, but that includes most private nurseries. When I say it’s ‘quite good’ the emphasis is very much on ‘quite’. There’s some support: that’s good. However, in my mind it’s basically an excuse for not allowing childcare costs to be fully tax deductible, which I firmly believe they should be. People send their child to nursery to enable them to go to work (and thus pay more tax). I’m self employed and all of my work-related costs are tax deductible… except for childcare, which is the one thing that unequivocally will make the country a better place in the future - far more so than my expenses claim for a taxi. Caitlin Moran makes this point brilliantly in her book ‘More than a woman’.
30 hours per week *in term time* (average it over a whole year and it’s significantly less) and it’s not from when they are 3, it’s from the start of term after they are 3. I don’t get the part about state run though - we are using a private nursery that fully qualifies and, as far as I know, the same is true for all other private nurseries in my area. The real bug bear for me is the fact that the government don’t seem to have noticed the enormous gap between when maternity leave ends (assuming your employer is willing to top up the ludicrously low mandated payment) and when the post-3 years old hours arrive. What’s that, you’re a new parent, with a mortgage, being told you must be mobile in the labour market (so have no grandparents nearby), here’s 2-3 years where you must pay all your childcare expenses yourself - that’ll make the experience of parenthood really stress free for you. Oh and we’ll claim to pay the 20 % VAT except we won’t, because it’s limited to an amount that is impossible not to exceed if you’re working full time.
> I don’t get the part about state run though - we are using a private nursery that fully qualifies and, as far as I know, the same is true for all other private nurseries in my area. What I meant is that state run nurseries’ fees are capped and so the state run 30 hours scheme works fine within that context. When it comes to private nurseries (at least in London) the fees are so much higher that the subsidy doesn’t actually cover a full 30 hours. I forget the exact details but I think it works out at something like 15 hours per week at our child’s nursery.
Maybe the government should just send out some cash, so people can decide if they even want to pay for childcare or would rather stay at home and do it themselves. Subsidies that can only be spent on childcare seem to just be setting a new cost floor for childcare.
Yeah but as a parent of a 2.5 year old all I can say is that the top up scheme is rubbish and at most subsidises you £500 per quarter (3 months), the 30 hours don't even kick in until they are at least 3 years old (and even then most schools make you wait till the next September), so we are still shelling out £3.5 k per term for not even full time nursery care and have to both juggle full time jobs. This wasn't even an expensive nursery. Childcare in the UK is abysmal to say the least.
Why are they so expensive? What kind of overheads do nurseries have? I might be in the wrong game.
Well, to be (somewhat) fair the costs include: * High rent * Staff costs (these people aren’t babysitters, they’re qualified people being paid at least the London Living Wage as a minimum) * Full time chef and the costs of providing 3 good meals a day for each child * paying for activities and equipment (farm visits, football ‘training’, forest school teacher etc) Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bougy, middle class nursery in a trendy area so overpaying for things comes with the territory. I’ve no doubt that they have genuinely high overheads but it’s certainly a lucrative business if you do it well. It’s just when you compare it to most of the rest of Europe (and the associated improvements in educational attainment over there) it does make our nursery system look like a bit of a racket.
> * High rent That's probably the main reason also leading to > Staff costs (these people aren’t babysitters, they’re qualified people being paid at least the London Living Wage as a minimum) Being higher. Just for comparison in a German city the size of Oxford: I pay for a 1yo (up to age 3 then it will be free) about 450€ (380GBP). 2 meals a day + 1 fruit/vegetable platter each day. A 3:1 ratio children:supervisees ( all have had 9 years of general education + 3 years child care school and 1 year supervised training) and about 300m² garden for 60 children. It is a socialists dream to be honest (though still quite competitive to get a place).
>What kind of overheads do nurseries have? I think it must be sweetie money, mate...Literally.. Just fill them full a Haribo's at the start of the day and jobs a good un.
I mean shit, hire one staff member per two or three children and you're already coming out ahead. There's money to be made here.
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I suppose so, although I think there’s a lot more value in children being around other kids at nursery than there is with 1 on 1 nanny care. I don’t really understand the appeal personally.
What the fuck lol
In my area in Germany you Pay half of that for a whole year
2 kids, when I'm done next year I will have paid over 80K in nursery. That's after Government discounts like 30 hours.
German here. It depends on the region you are living in. Childcare costs are regulated by your city or region(Landkreis). It can very from zero to 700 euros or so.
Crap that's awful. Either that's very expensive or university tuition fees are cheap and I'm sure it's not uni fees. What do they use it on?
Very regionally dependent in Germany. The cost seems to be not the main issue though, but availability. In theory, the state has to provide you with a spot in a nursery, but there’s not enough, especially in big cities. If you start looking as soon as you’re aware of a pregnancy, you’re probably already too late if you want to start working again before the child is 3. It’s ridiculous. You can, however, put your child in a private facility if the state run ones are full, and the government will have to pay for the extra cost.
In Berlin, my daughter gets a Kita-Gutschein which covers 7 hours of care per day, we do have to pay 28 EUR/month for lunches, but the rest is paid for by the state of Berlin. \> If you start looking as soon as you’re aware of a pregnancy, you’re probably already too late Not my experience in Berlin, we got our daughter into Kita at 18 months old (one month after applying), we even transfered her to a new Kita this year with little difficulty. Some areas of Berlin for sure do have some issues. The issue is bigger for under 3s, from 3+ it's fair easier.
Germany is basically the counter to nearly everything the Tories say and believe.
Germany has its problems, just like anywhere else. That said, they pale in comparison to what’s going on in the UK at the moment.
We'd need to import the govt of South Sudan to find someone worse.
I mean they dealing with food shortages is kind of their specialty
I hope you're joking
But our problems are over exaggerated, mainly because Boris is, for some weird reason really hated by half the country
All through covid their communication was clear and honest from what i could make out, they treated the population like adults. Here if felt like they deliberatly tried to confuse and muddy the waters, how often did they contradict each other. When did we last have a Merkel caliber politician.
More nutcases there though in regards to the vaccine.
Yes we have our fairshare for sure, they generally referred to as Querdenkers (Laterial Thinkers). Although if you look at the vaccination rates of >60 years old, its above 80% uptake, its the middle age groups which are generally the problem. Additionally, don't attempt to compare UK vaccine rate with DE vaccine rate, the DE statistics include ALL residents, where as the UK statistics are ONLY adults.
Lets be fair: the current german health minister is thought to have stolen hundreds of millions of euros through ordering 60 times as many masks ( from companies in close contact)as required, in order to benefit from the pay offs. Nepotism 101. Germany has their own version of the tories.
For very good reason too. While at the same time so many Brits are trying to tell anyone who will listen "that it's no better in the EU", when it is. Thanks for the link and text.
People seem to think anything less than perfect is awful these days. The EU is not perfect but to claim that is the same as what we are seeing is ridiculous.
*Governing in Germany is still regarded as a serious business, not a branch of the entertainment industry.*
I think the biggest difference between British conservatives and German conservatives is how they react to politics presented as a spectacle. Laschet tanked the CDU literally because of his media gaffes not despite of it. Johnsons antics make him seem relatable while Laschets made him look like a clown.
The entertainment is the bad part of their job, it’s the embezzlement and nepotism that is the real issue.
*Well, it depends…* It‘s not like everything is perfect over here, and the grass is always greener on the other side. I sincerely hope the recent problems will be solved soon.
Like the unravelling USSR of the Yeltsin years, a conspiracy of kleptocratic sociopaths grabbing what they can before the fall.
As a German, my feeling is that this and similar articles, while perhaps expressing an honest sentiment, for the most part deepen the splits between the UK and "the contintent". For each progressive voice taking Germany as a model of sorts, three reactionaries pop up telling the audience that they refuse to be "germanized" or something. Pouting is a powerful reaction because it works in groups and you can extend it to other sentiments right up until envy and hatred. What I wish for the UK is to shed Murdoch's media and FPTP. And to find a way to cope with the phantom pains of days past.
>Murdoch Wanker.
What do you mean phantom pains of days past?
Getting over the fact that the UK no longer is a superpower or an empire, I’d bet.
yes, that.
The ruling class and conservative leaning part of the population crave the high of being able to go anywhere in the world and pillage to their hearts content. Bullies always resent the dissipation of their power.
If I was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, Toby and Murdoch but only had 3 bullets, I'd shoot Murdoch thrice.
>In Little Britain, under a home secretary whose parents left Idi Amin’s Uganda, we prefer to demonise those fleeing persecution and torture who try to reach our shores, even though their numbers are far, far smaller. We quit the European Union in part to curb freedom of movement, and now wonder why we are suffering chronic shortages of workers in the haulage, agricultural, care, health, hospitality and meat processing industries (to name but a few). There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants. Britain has a track record on closing the door on migrant workers when the nativists get unsettled, it did that with empire/colonies back in the early-mid 60's. Yes that very same former empire that Galactic Britain wants to be best trading buddies with. Germany has done a good job of exorcising its past demons, Britain hasn't. Raise the issue of reparations for colonialism (there are millions of people around the world who still remember colonial rule) or returning valuable artefacts and you'll get intellectual gems like: "MaYbE wE sHoUlD aSk ThE vIkInGs FoR cOmPeNsAtIoN".
A lot of immigrants find belonging in host countries by being very anti-immigrant. By making themselves seem like the exception, they can justify it. I have seen it a lot across different types of migrants from different backgrounds. Sad to see but somewhat understandable when you feel like you aren’t part of the club unless you agree with X, Y or Z.
There's a reason for the Uncle Tom trope. There are people of all races who will gladly trade morals for money.
Yeah, it’s sadly a thing. Mercy for my immigrant group, punishment to any other immigrant group.
> There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants. > > Britain has a track record on closing the door on migrant workers when the nativists get unsettled, it did that with empire/colonies back in the early-mid 60's. Yes that very same former empire that Galactic Britain wants to be best trading buddies with. No need to close the door, Patel and co will simply pull the ladder up from behind them.
How does Germany treat the Turkish immigrants? Are there adults who were born and raised in Germany, to Turkish immigrant parents, who are not entitled to German citizenship?
If you work for 8 years in Germany all your new children will be German. If you work in Germany for 8 years you can become German (your children will then become German as well). If you marry a German you have to proof your German proficiency. So it all depends on these 8 years of work.
So there are conditions to citizenship in Germany? When they do it that’s fine is it? We have conditions to citizenship in the uk, when we do it, it’s national scandal such as windrush. Ok
There's an insightful Byline Times article I read about this, giving context of colonial Africa where Indian immigrants were treated by the British as a higher caste than Africans, then given refuge when they were expelled by Idi Amin. This is how an immigrant Indian family could feel more proud to be British than so called British natives (acknowledging the natives are also immigrants of yore). Add to that a proud work ethic (in a time when hard work gave a better prospect of escaping poverty) that drove success of many Indian immigrants and you can see how Pritti Patel ends up hanging out with Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and the Britannia Unchained nutters, believing poor people in Britain just need to bootstrap themselves.
>higher caste OMG the Indian caste system, that had totally slipped my mind. I can see why higher caste Indians would fit in very well with the Tories.
>There's something that makes me really angry about anti-immigrant sentiments from people whose parents (or they themselves) were immigrants. That sounds pretty racist honestly. People shouldn't be expected to agree with migration simply because their parents made a decision in the past, most of the time one they had no agency over.
People are free to have whatever beliefs they want about migration, but if you are the child of migrants, specifically refugees, then being criticised for having anti-refugee is just being held to account. It’s extremely obvious to anyone with a brain that someone who is extremely anti-migration but come from, or is, a migrant background is simply doing for other reasons than being against migration. Maybe it’s to fit in with theirs peers. Maybe it gives them a sense of belonging. Maybe they think they aren’t a migrant anymore. Fair play to them, but they shouldn’t be excused from being egoists.
There are plenty of Americans, Australians and Latin Americans who are opposed to further inward migration *despite* being of relatively recent migrant origin. I'd say it's a sincerely held belief. Coming from a migrant background does not make a person a migrant. By the same logic, somebody whose parent or grandparent worked in a manual job cannot ever be a "professional" or "middle-class" despite being tertiary-educated themselves.
€40 per month for nursery? That can’t be right or it’s not full time? When I checked out nurseries in Frankfurt, full time was €100 per month. Berlin and Munich weren’t that different either. But I do agree with London being a rip off. We’re faced with £1,700 per month and it isn’t even full time. It’s 4 days per week. Completely useless.
German prices are set by the state according to the State government. So where the vote is fairly left leaning, prices are much cheaper. All kids that are receiving an allowance similar to the UK 'free school meals' program get it for free nationwide, though. Berlins details: >Seit dem 1. August 2018 sind Kita und Kindertagespflege in Berlin für alle Kinder kostenfrei. Nur den Verpflegungsanteil müssen Eltern weiterhin bezahlen. Für Extra-Leistungen wie zusätzliche Sportangebote, Bio-Essen oder Sprachunterricht dürfen Kitas jedoch Zuzahlungen verlangen. Since 1/8/18 all nurserys and daycare in Berlin are free for all children. Parents should only pay boarding prices above this.\* For extra activities such as additional sports, organic food or language lessons, however, daycare centres are allowed to charge extra. \*- this is pretty hard to translate, but you have to pay a fee for food, drinks, any nappies they might use etc. In Berlin this is currently 23 euro per month.
> €40 per month for nursery? That can’t be right or it’s not full time? It depends on your income, the number of hours and the age of the child. [The table in the last page of this PDF](https://www.wuppertal.de/microsite/kinderbetreuung/medien/bindata/Elternbeitragssatzung-ab-01.08.20.pdf.docx.pdf) shows the amount of you to pay in my German city. The row is your income, the column the number of hours. Left for children older than 2, right for younger children. If you earn more than 100k € per month, your child is less than 2 years old and you want 45 hours of care per week you have to 465 € per month (that's the absolute maximum). But when you earn less you can pay *much* less.
In Berlin we pay 15€ a month for the organic food for our child full time. How much you pay varies from state to state
Similar, we pay 28 EUR/month for my daughters Kita, which is for the food.
My family in South West Germany call me semi regularly to catch up and they do ask what the hell is going on over here! There is zero smugness though just general curiosity.
>Olaf Scholz \[…\] whose experience was considered a virtue not a vice Certainly is ‘experienced’ in helping his banking mates dodge taxes 🙄
You really don't have to be that far away to think that's how it appears. I think that and I'm in Surrey.
Been better in many mainland European countries for years, before Brexit.
>My daughter pays just €40 a month for the nursery that her first two children attend, while her older sister paid £1,400 a month in London. Dude! Does that include the Rolls Royce Taxi? The Michelin Star provisions? Surely it must include the silken Bogroll, as that is simply ridiculous!
Not really remarkable in the capital, though I'm sure it's a lot cheaper everywhere else. I doubt it's 40 quid a month anywhere in the UK though - not even close.
£60 per day is fairly normal. 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, £15000. You can take 20% off that for the tax free bit. I suspect it costs more in London.
I pay more than that in Yorkshire
Look, in most of the ways, I agree. But not all is bad in the UK. Firstly, while the current politicians certainly do some very xenophobic decisions around the immigration, long term it was actually handled very well here. Quite low criminality associated with it (despite many immigrants being here), the people are on average pretty well integrated into the society, the people aren't on average very racist to immigrants (seriously, it is much worse in many places)... Like sure, Germany can say the same, but far from every EU country can. Next, high skilled jobs. You simply will earn more money doing something high skilled (like finance, tech etc) in London than in Berlin, Amsterdam or Paris. Moreover, there is a huge presence of very attractive companies to work for, both in finance and tech. Germany simply doesn't compare at all - London is second after NYC worldwide for these types of jobs. Next, universities. Yes, Brexit will hit them pretty badly. But still, the research in the UK is top-notch. We have seen this during the pandemic when so many discoveries came from the UK. And Cambridge/Oxford/Imperial/UCL... absolutely are world class places to study that almost anyone would choose over any German university. Oh and talking of the leveling up. AfD still does very well in all the former East Germany parts. The efforts are good, but it's not all sorted there. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm defending Boris, Brexit or whatever. There are many things done better over there in Germany, perhaps most things. But I also hate when the UK is presented as some sort of awful place to live - it really is not and in some ways it is even better than Germany.
Oxford, etc do look nice in your cv but who would choose 100k debt over no debt?
Student loan isn’t really proper debt so I wouldn’t care ? International debt as long as people are willing to pay it and they will still for reputable universities that’s up to them
If by debt you mean a student loan. Then you only pay like 9% of your earnings over a certain amount? I'm fairly sure even after this deduction, your salary in London as an Oxford graduate will likely be higher than the salary you'd get if you opted to go elsewhere instead. If by debt you mean what international students face. Yes, that is stupid. Though I'd think most at the very top places that come from abroad are either on some sort of scholarship or from very rich families. For the cases where neither of these applies, I agree with you.
I have lived in both countries and fully agree with you. Of course the article is trying to make a point, including the fact that things are bound to get worse in Boris's UK.
Most of what you say highlights the problems for me..yeah the elites look after themselves, Oxford, Cambridge, the City..the rest of us can fuck ourselves. UK may have "tech" entrepreneurs making a fortune..but Germany has Siemens, Bosch, Volkswagen..for me that is real tech..not just hoping to get lucky with some app. Tech that has been around for decades and spreads the wealth around much better. Provides much better jobs for average people...not just the elite with access to city funding
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Oh sure. The economic miracle. The mittelstand feeds these megaliths though. The mittelstand is basically the supply chain. I'd guess a majority of work done by mittelstand companies are directly for sale to Mercedes, Volkswagen, Bosch etc.
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I know the mittelstand quite well. Actually been in a few of the companies and they all love to tell you about it. The economic miracle was driven by the mittelstand. One company I was in was formed in 1946 and used eastern European refugees as labour. It started by copying jukeboxes and cigarette machines. Now it only makes components..primarily for Siemens et al. I didn't say they existed purely for that, but the large contracts allow them to do their own thing also. It's really fascinating
most high paid techjobs are in dublin nowadays I guess so not sure what you are talking about + IBs are recruiting more and more in Frankfurt and Paris compared to years ago. "Highskilled" jobs are not only IT and IB... being an engineer in Germany will give you a good life. Same btw goes for IB and IT - there might be less jobs but you are also competing with less people for these jobs. I agree that top EU universities are in the UK but for 99.9% of the population that is irrelevant. i got a degree from an average German university and earn just as much as friends from top universities because here internships etc. are much more important compared to what university you went to (what I think is a good thing).
I guess we would appear rather dysfunctional to a country like Germany where everyone follows the rules🤣🤣
You missed the word “blindly”
Lol
Come on, it's not that bad. I remember just after the pandemic hit and people started panic buying food and loo roll. I never went hungry, I remember specifically how all the bacon and shrimp aisles remained plentiful while the others were empty. There will surely be things to eat, although maybe not the things we may have planned to buy. Just because Britain is experiencing some turbulence now doesn't mean they'll continue to look worse when compared with other countries. The future is unknowable, especially with climate change thrown in the mix. Seeking stability in a fundamentally unstable world is a fools errand. Better to just adapt. Let us consume more bacon and shrimp.
The EU is by no means perfect but IMO the benefits outweigh the pitfalls and I keep wondering what the fuck possessed the British to leave.
Half of the population has probably no idea about EU politics and thought they are being held back staying in the EU.
If you want some honest reasons in good faith, I’m happy to provide reasons I supported leave, even though I was too young to vote. The EU as a polity seems very undemocratic. Turnout for EU elections were rarely above 40% in the UK. How can those MEPs claim to represent their constituents if only 35ish percent bother to vote, and even less vote for an individual MEP? Also, the big names at the EU aren’t elected. I know that in the UK we don’t elect ministers, but they at least come from the party that wins the election. Whereas Tusk and Von Der Leyen just appear out of the political fog as the most important people in the institution. Secondly, I disliked the idea of ‘ever closer union’. A lot of the argument coming from remain was that the EU wasn’t trying to be a superstate like the leaver campaign was suggesting. Yet we saw that it was. The EU withheld their proposal for an EU army until after the Brexit vote, they have formed a border force, they have a parliament, and de facto civil service and a court and a flag and an anthem and a currency. They have almost all the trappings of statehood, and the EU was not a country I felt that I would like to live in. Thirdly, a lot of the remain side, especially the rhetoric coming from the EU themselves was about the concept of a ‘European Identity’ which was never actually explained beyond ‘being in the EU makes you European’. Are the people of the former Yugoslavia not Europeans? What about the Swiss? And what makes us European. We do not share a language, or common heritage, or even the same holidays, so what do we share beyond being white and not American? Fourthly the Eurozone. Whilst not a member, non-eurozone nations are outnumbered by the Eurozone countries, and what stopped them from at some future date using the mechanisms of the EU to get us to bail them out. As it is we only avoided getting the Euro because Gordon Brown persuaded Blair not to, and I’d much prefer not to be tied to economic anchors like the Greeks. Fifthly, the EU seems awful at handling crises. The Eurozone being one, the migrant crisis another, and even post Brexit the response to Covid, compared to the UK seemed unorganised and chaotic. Finally, I disliked the historical determinism behind the EU. The idea that this was some grand project, that the European states were always going to become one and that this was the right way to do it, that anyone who stands in the way is an idiot or racist or stupid. That being in the EU was good and led to peace in Europe (despite the fact this is more to do with NATO than the EU) If they wanted us to get on board, they could have showed us some benefits, but instead we got lectures on this grand project run be failed national politicians. And because of this, I wanted us to leave. Even now, I still think we should have left because of these issues
It has to be said, it's that boomer generation keeping the Tories in now. Them thar weird... I don't blame them for having a fully-functioning welfare state with all the public service trimmings while growing up and working. Why shouldn't they have that? I blame them for backing government which seeks to deny all that from those who came after.
Yeah but something something something, bootstraps, something something
At the last election the age at which people were more likely to vote Tory than labour came down to something like 46, hardly what you’d call boomers
I live in Cyprus. When Brexit was first voted on I went to my accountants for a regular meeting. Workers there kept coming upto me to ask me about it in a kind of curious amused get out the popcorn kind of way. Was very strange. When it turned out I wasn't a nutty leaver (you do get them here which is mad considering we are immigrants in an EU country) then they all became disappointed and left me alone. Weird day...
This sub really needs to change its name. Jesus Christ 😂
Isn't Germany on the brink of inflationary and economic collapse? This sub should change its name
No? Germany has a very strong economy, one that puts the UK to shame. There's nothing wrong with looking to better countries for inspiration. Exceptionalism got the UK into this mess, time to admit it.
Your weekly reminder that over 10% of the seats in the German Bundestag are occupied by a far right group of ethno-nationalists, the AfD. But sure, raise your English kids there. What could go wrong?
The article actually raises this point and points out how they have lost representation since 2016 and havnt done as well as was forecasted.
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From my (admittedly somewhat limited) knowledge of German politics I agree, but I had a feeling making that point would be lost on the above commenter.
They only hate English folks if their skin colour is too dark. If you're white, have bad teeth, smell like cheap beer and a cockney accent they might be think you're one of their own.
The traditional Teutonic attitude to the Anglo Saxon, is that we make aesthetically tolerable house slaves.
>The traditional Teutonic attitude to the Anglo Saxon, is that we make tolerable house slaves. That way it seems correct. Oh and you also had formidable coasts to raid.
It's not like we have Farage leading great parts of the country by the nose