1,269 karma · joined May 25, 2017
Eventually the German government got fed up with them running a business out of their embassy and they had to shut it down.
Every government in the world has a permanent set of employees which enact policy and turn political intentions into legislation. Usually these are split into departments, each headed by temporary political appointee.
So exactly like the European Commission, then. Why is it only "undemocratic" when the European Union does it?
Are you suggesting that all 32000 people working for it should be elected? I'm quite certain there is no government in the world which does that and it seems quite impractical.
Or should every political appointment be directly elected, instead of appointed by a head of state? You could do that, but I am not aware of any major government which does so, so if that's the sole reason to call it "undemocratic" then it's a double standard.
So arguably the US equalivalent is the freshman year of college.
Of course you can disagree with it, but the way people frame it as as some sort of doomsday decision is just utterly, totally, ludicrous.
If this were a regular german language news site this would not be the top comment, nor would there would be a discussion about nuclear power in literally any post about Germany.
I'm quite sure I could make a post about some German film director and someone would claim his films would have been better if only it wasn't for the cataclysmic decision to not have 13% nuclear power.
I mean seriously, WTF? You think all the problems of the economy(global demand trends, phase out of ICE cars, red tape, lack of skilled staff), and all the problems of politics(immigration, healthcare, social cohesion, taxation, budget balancing, social system) could be solved by having a different type of power station?
Posts like this are what is utter madness.
If there is any reference to a disaster, a catastrophe or poor decision(which there always is in any thread about Germany, even if it has nothing to do with energy), it's ALWAYS about Nuclear.
My favourite was a comment which unironically described it as "the most catastrophic peacetime decision in human history".
Compared to other countries American cops aren't really trained at all.
In Germany the training period for a police officer is 2 to 3 years, in the US it's usually less then 6 months.
If you apply the same test to other things you mentioned then often they are the same. They will continue doing the same job if you want them to, but they won't meet new requirements placed upon them, and the only realistic option is complete replacement.
For instance, cars over 20 years old are no longer allowed in central London because they lack emissions filters for particulates which are hazardous to health in high concentrations. These cars are considered ancient and it's acceptable to ban them from one of the most important cities in the world. They're not better, and in this specific case you literally can't still drive it(if you live London).
My 20 year old DVD player cannot play BluRay discs. It's considered ancient, and it was acceptable to create a new incompatible standard. If I want to play the latest discs I'll have to buy a new one.
My dwelling has no gas supply. I have an induction cooker, which heats far faster than either gas or thermal electric whilst also avoiding the dangers of flame and uncovered heating elements. 80 year old pans would not work with it. They're ancient.
> For a counter example look at the French SNCF Connect app. It is not perfect but it is a pretty workable solution.
I am extremely surprised that you would write this. The SNCF Connect app has a lot of problems. Just for starters, it can't cope with any journey with more than 2 changes. SNCF shut down there international ticket sales computer system - because it was too old. They no longer sell any international tickets, unless it's on a train actually run by SNCF.
The DB App has train services for the whole of Europe. It can plan a journey from Oslo to Sofia if required.
The €9 ticket was a 3 month temporary offer, which was not originally intended to continue permanently at all.
> I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.
The ticket is subsidised by the German government(beyond the amount that all rail infrastructure and most services are subsidised) for the purpose what is covered in the article - encouraging permanent modal shift of regular travellers(primarily commuters) from road to rail. If you're a tourist, it's not meant for you. Sorry.
Back then it had hardliners like John Redwood and Bill Cash, but also pragmatic moderates such as William Hague, Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart.
Brexit destroyed the party from within. Over time as it became more and more difficult to defend in any non-ideological way and the party leadership became more and more autocratic in ever more desperate attempts to force it to a conclusion, they all either left politics, switched allegiance or were expelled from the party. What was left were the hardliners, the truly crazy and those willing to say anything at all in return for power.
For some reason Americans have a strong tendency to come up with these kinds of itineraries in the name of having a relaxing vacation, even though to any European it appears completely bonkers.
5 Minutes for disembarking, 10 minutes cleaning, 10 minutes for boarding and you have 25 minutes platform occupancy. But on top of that the tracks will be blocked by the train going in and out for a few extra minutes, you need to find a slot on the line itself, and you need to allow for disruption.
It's all very inefficient in terms of occupying scarce and inelastic inner-city track capacity, so modern practice is to build through stations if at all possible and send trains off to sidings to be cleaned, but that wasn't practical 100 years ago.
He's no whistleblower with inside information. His engineering role is to design track geometry and nothing to do with stations or passengers so he has no professional authority to speak on the subject beyond that of an ordinary rail passenger.
The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who uses the station.
In fact, the UK rail safety regulator issued an improvement notice with legal force requiring the operator to take steps to change the situation: https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/rail-regulator-requires-c...
People are sacked all the time in the US for bringing their employer into disrepute, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually did or not, since the employer doesn't have to give a reason anyway.
He's way, way than more than just some guy who has been rail minister for a month, he's one of the most respected, perhaps the most respected transport executive in Britain(at least until yesterday). He's not an elected politician, he has worked professionally in rail transportation since 1975.
For 10 years he was Chief Executive of Transport for London which runs all public transport in London. Following that, for the past 10 years he was and still is Chairman of Network Rail, the organisation which is responsible for the entire British Railway Network. It's in this capacity that he sent the letter, not as a minister.
Unless this turns into some huge scandal, which seems unlikely, he'll be fine.
What on earth are you going on about?
The vast majority of all current and new passenger trains in the EU are multiple units with no power car, because they are pretty much better in every possible way. They are cheaper to build and cheaper to operate(mainly due to being lighter overall) and can be shorter without reducing passenger capacity. Only a couple of the wagons are powered, more is not needed.
> hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers
Passengers want to get where they are going quickly. No train accelerates at a speed which causes discomfort to passengers.
Raspberry Pi Foundation released a RP2040 based dev board(Pico W) with an additional external wireless chip, as have others(including boards with an additional ESP32 just do comms).
You can also get version to fit the Pico, or even a RP2040 based board with integrated battery management.
Sometimes you also get issued a "token" and the refund is only possible with the token, so you can't return other cups you find lying around.
It's measurable biological certainty that reaction times as measured in milliseconds and fine motor control degrade with age. Vision and hearing also degrade. The nature of hands on control of flying a plane means there are no ways to compensate for this.
None of this applies to a politician making decision in a time span of hours, days or months and who can delegate tasks as they wish.
Of course a skilled engineer could write a tight output loop that computes and outputs every value on the fly with a guarantee that the time budget won't be exceeded, but your average Arduino user probably doesn't have the knowledge to do this. So all the control libraries that I know allocate a memory buffer for the whole output stream and let the user update it whenever they want.
Now it was changed back to how it was before, because of exactly what was predicted.
It's doesn't reflect well on the German government, but it also doesn't deserve the amount of histronics it generated.
People tend to obsess over DB and it's management, but they only control maintenance. All decisions about renovations are made by the government.
So what do you want?
- Wait years for large renovation projects on all major routes, including lengthy closures for work(the current strategy)
- Cancel 25-50%% of all trains permanently, if then people can't travel because it's impossible to get through the door, tough
The latter one is the French solution - just run very few trains, regardless of demand. The last time I wanted to travel by train in France, I simply couldn't because all trains on the route for the entire day were 100% sold out.
Then there's Spain. The last time I wanted to travel there, I didn't because the first(!) train of the day left at lunchtime and arrived mid-afternoon.
What I don't get is why people are still having children in societies where it is not necessary to have offspring to provide you with income and care in your later years. Anyone approaching middle age can still look forward to a relatively comfortable life, but it's the babies being born today that are truly screwed.
It's perfectly reasonable for the default setting of a phone to forbid sideloading apps. And anyone who doesn't want to can leave it that way. That's the 'option of safety'.