This needs to be fleshed out more, but I only have time at present for the occasional snide remark, but, hey, if I can’t be snide on the blog, when can I be snide? Isn’t that what political blogging is all about nowadays?

Anyway, we return today to the topic of German politics (attention there at the back).

Those with long, long memories may recall that way back in the late 90s when after 16 years of questionable government Helmut Kohl was finally given the boot by a bored and exhausted electorate the new Red-Green Coalition of Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer slightly took its time to learn the ropes of government.

But then again, the Greens had had no experience of governing much and the SPD had – apart from heading a few Länder – been out in the political wilderness for nearly two decades. Then there were all the systemic problems Kohl had conveniently swept under the carpet during his 16 years in power (well you know, there was that whole reunification thingy which legally should have meant a renegotiation of the German body politic, but, hey, why spoil a big party with constitutional issues and dire warnings of economic consequences. By the way, did you see how that birth rate just plummeted in East Germany after the Wall fell? I wonder what that was about. It can’t all have been the effect of West German beer.).

Tangent.

Anyway, Red-Green could have been forgiven for being a tad all over the place in its first year. Given the mess they inherited you could argue they actually did rather well: both the pacifist-leaning SPD and the Greens coped well with Kosovo, a start was made reforming the pension system, public health insurance was tackled as well as one could hope given the two parties’ basic philosophies, environmentalism and climate change were prioritised and simple stuff like allowing civil unions between homosexual partners or modernising the naturalisation laws were finally taken care of. In short, after 16 years of stodgy cabbagery Germany in the late 90s was just in time dragged into the 20th century.

Most important, even though Agenda 2010 proved the SPD’s own undoing it was a valiant attempt at dealing with Germany’s deep-rooted welfare and labour problems (obviously it was cocked up, but given the circumstances it was probably the best that could be hoped for and anyway we don’t live in a perfect world).

You see where this is heading?

Given that Angela Merkel has had four years of training on the job the sheer degree of incompetence on display first in the coalition agreement negotiations and now prior and just after the swearing in of her new government is astounding.

But at least this government has its priorities right. The one thing FDP and CDU could agree on from the word go was to extend the lifetimes of nuclear reactors.

And spend a bomb on tax cuts while using that money to reform the tax system might have been the wiser strategy.

And now we have run out of money to save the planet.

Oops.

For German speakers. Trust a Dutch journalist to firmly locate the spot where the foot shouldn’t go:

Merkel’s response is both breezy and breath-taking: Q: How can you entrust the state’s finances to a man who forgot he had DM 100.000,- laying around from a dodgy weapons dealer? A: Because I trust him.

I expect my four-year old to come up with better answers than that.

Via @schuetzefrank

What with S. on-call at the hospital I decided to take the little girl to town myself. A simple bribe of two lollipops, a packet of Gummibärchen and a lit candle – not to mention the potential bounty of assorted bakeries with further sweet enticements – convinced her to let her customary weekend allowance of telly be this Friday evening and indulge her father in living some history. Twenty years to the day the Monday Demonstrations started in Leipzig which cracked the hereto monolith political system and shortly thereafter would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 1989.

The commemorative event (or #lf2009 – Lichterfest 2009 – as it was twittered) would – apart from speeches by worthies – involve a walk around the city ring starting at the main square not far from the Nikolai Church where the protests so spontaneously began twenty years ago. The square was packed.  I had to park my bike and trailer – with a blissfully oblivious L. sucking on a cola-lollipop – against a free railing  a good kilometre away from it. People had heeded the warnings on the radio – and online presumably – to leave the car at home and either take public transport or the bike. Every sprig of a tree – and there are plenty along the streets leading to the centre – had already been clung tight by a cluster of bicycles.

Was I surprised to see so many people? The local paper mentions a hundred thousand, which, considering Leipzig has about 500,000 inhabitants, I daresay is quite a lot. At times during the march L. were standing still for longer periods of time. Along the route policevans had been placed to recall what it must have been like twenty years ago. A stroboscope light added to disorientation. More celebratory, the university building (pictured), lit up a giant 89. The highrise next to the main station alternated between green and blue colours and on the shoebox buildings along the ring phrases and words were lit. Unfortunately, we didn’t get very far. An hour in and we still had walked the 500 metres up to the station and I could tell from my nevertheless enthusiastically candle-carrying 4-year old that bed was calling.

But I was surprised to see so many people – and so many young people especially. There was a mix of pride and gratefulness and joy on people’s faces, which belies the impression I sometimes get from friends or students that history – and GDR history in particular – is not so important. Tonight it was more than important. It was alive and heart-felt and lit up on the streets of Leipzig.

Some quick thoughts on the election results. I really should be doing my tax declaration, but I am looking for anything to do to put that off.

Gnadenschuss: after eleven years in government, it is no surprise the SPD loses so much. It doesn’t seem a case of voting the SPD out, but SPD voters not going to vote at all. And why should they? The only way for it to remain in power would be in the unhappy liasion with the CDU. Now it can sort itself out in opposition, find its social democratic soul again, and after 4 years of painful budget cuts and tax hikes under Schwarz-Gelb return in a Rot-Rot-Grüne coalition with the Left Party and the Greens.

Schwarz-Gelb: will be very lucky to last for longer than four years. Apart from the ballooning debt which will not leave it much room to manouvre Germany has not suddenly rediscovered its petit-bourgois self again. It remains at heart a social democratic country. As soon as the SPD can inspire its large contingent of abstaining core voters to bother showing up at the ballot box the social democratic equilibrium will be restored again. At present these voters are stuck between their own distaste for the Left Party and the lack of realistic coalition possibilities. Meanwhile, the CDU will function as a social brake on the more gung-ho liberalisers in the FDP. Contrary to current perceptions on the left, last night’s election results are not the harbringers of a Reaganite apocalypse.

Progressive: Anyone notice that Germany will now be reigned by a female chancellor and an openly gay vice-chancellor? And it’s not even an issue.

Greens: seem destined to lose this game of musical chairs, despite – or because of – winning most of the arguments re environmentalism, nuclear energy, climate change and the economy. If they are lucky – and Germany isn’t – the next government will reverse most of the environmental policies of the last decade, extend nuclear power station leases, ignore climate change, cut renewable energy subsidies und und und. Then they might hang on to their raison d’etre. If not, they will have to come up with a new one soon.

Flat-tax: please. Now. I really can’t be bothered with my tax declaration this year.

Via Saltpublishing I see the Forward Prize shortlists have been selected. Siân Hughes’s The Missing from their stable has been nominated for best first collection. As I was in the mood for some new poetry I ordered it together with Jill McDonaugh’s Habeas Corpus, which got a very good review in Poetry London. Check the links for more details about each collection, if you’re interested, Salt always features a sample of each book’s poems on their website.

Meanwhile, given my recent purchases, I need to start thinking of putting up another shelf in the living room.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival, Richard Wilbur’s Collected Poems, Michael Donaghy’s Collected Poems and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. My scholar friend reckons I should become more systematic in my reading. He might have a point.

That being three posts in one day on three different subjects I think I might be back into the habit of blogging again. Either that or see you next month.

What with British papers going ape-shit (there’s a surprise) about swine flu and us being booked to fly to the UK within two weeks (1m projected cases a day in August!!!!!!*) and my own male hypochondriac paranoid tendencies going slightly ashiver I thought it might be a good idea to rent Diary Of The Dead and I Am Legend (quote: ‘the virus is airborn!!!!!’) last weekend for some confrontational therapy. It worked very well. Given the alternatives that one could either be changed into groaning, mindless, flesh-nibbling dullard or a hyperactive, overly sun-sensitive devolved vampire-like dribbling bald brute I couldn’t care less about a poxy flu virus now. Note that both films contain some longeurs, though.

For further desensitation I also recommend 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. For some sense about swine flu this Science and the City podcast.

*Not strictly true. I made that number up.

This is so sad. It underlines the fragile foundations of human existence. It also makes one wonder what will become of all the other mines and tunnels that have been burrowed under many a German city.

Christian Wiman builds worlds: his poems are so precise and so layered with experience and observation that the reader dwells within them. Sense unfailingly is sound and sound the substitute experience of being there, alive, not with the poet but in his stead. Five Houses Down is such a poem. As is the eponymous poem of The Long Home, his debute collection of 1998, more of which here. As a poetry collection it has become a retreat for this reader to dwell in, to reflect, to test assumptions – both linguistic and philosophical.  As good poetry should.